Songbird Piano Lessons

 Da Capo Repeat from the beginning

 Students, your turn this week! The recital is coming up quickly. Maybe you're feeling nervous about getting up in front of everyone, or maybe you're excited for the big event. Either way, if you know what you need to do, things will go much smoother, so please read to the end! On Friday or Saturday before the recital, flag your books! Put a sticky note on the page with the song you are playing, so you can flip to it easily and quickly at the recital! If you have loose sheet music, make sure you have it with you (preferably in a binder and flagged). If you're playing from a book, and you have a page turn and haven't memorized the second page, get your mom or dad to photocopy pages so you don't have to do a page turn. (This does not apply if you're playing from memory, though it won't hurt to bring your books along anyways even if you're not planning on using them.) Does it make you nervous to play in front of people? If so, that's OK -- most people f...

  Ahh. It's that wonderful time of year again! Does anyone else other than me feel like it's already Christmas, even though it's still November?     With December comes the annual Christmas recital. And with the annual Christmas recital comes the annual blog posts for parents and students about what to expect and do at the Christmas recital! Read all the way to the end, please.       Make sure you and your family arrive at the church on time (a few minutes before 2:30 P.M.). Check the address ahead of time, so you know where you're going! Onoway may be a small town, but that doesn't mean you can't waste time driving in circles looking for your destination in it.;)      Please be respectful of church property while we are there, and remind your children not to run in the sanctuary, play with things in the church, etc.      Also please sanitize your hands upon entering.       Help your child feel relaxed ...

 Cantabile In a singing style

 Back in  my MYC days,  Mom was always sitting in on my piano lesson. All the parents in my group, and every other group, did. It was a requirement of the course. I didn't realize how much that was to my advantage, but I was perfectly OK with having Mom around during lessons. It was a comforting thing. This was also to both of our advantages: Mom knew what was going on during lessons, so during the week, she had a better idea of what my practice should sound like.    As a teen, Mom would drop me off and go shopping during my hour-long lesson... until I switched to a teacher who did not write neat, tidy practice directions for me. His notes to me consisted of "Sonata in E Flat" or "Rhapsody" scrawled in huge letters across the page. However, his lessons were amazing, and as his studio was large, Mom would often sit and listen. One day she started taking notes for me. Everyone was happy. My teacher was pleased to see Mom's involvement, and I finally got specif...

 Chord Three or more notes played at the same time. 

Yes, I'll admit, I was way more excited about sharing  our recently-uploaded music video than posting the October update. My apologies! But, a week later than usual, here's what was new in the last month.     Normally October is a pretty dull month to blog about, but not this time! This time I tried something very new and very exciting: group lessons!     Normally I teach private lessons, which are great. But for the week following Thanksgiving, I split my students into three groups instead. We spent an hour per group doing some low-pressure performing and doing different activities. Activity #1 was a rhythm game. Students took turns rolling dice to randomly select a note value, and I added the matching note value onto Zoom's whiteboard. Then they worked together to figure out where the bar lines would go. As you can imagine, sometimes this meant rearranging the random notes to make sure there were four beats and not five in a measure!    ...