Songbird Piano Lessons

 February went like this:    January 30, me: "This is nice. If I pull out the Valentine's Day games right now, we have two weeks to play them in.    February 3, me: "Wait a minute! It's February! February is a theme month! I was going to do composing, but I don't have a composing theme! Oh, boy, gotta think of a theme, gotta think of a theme...."    Evening of February 4: "OK, I give up. I'll just go back to the theme my friend suggested to me way back in August. It'll be Tell Me a Story Month."    February 6: "Whew! Got the first week's worksheets done. I'll have to think of decorations next week. I don't have time today before my first students show up in an hour. Besides which, I also don't have ideas."    February 12: "Great! I love all these story-bookish pictures I downloaded from the internet, not to mention the adorable cartoon images from Winnie the Pooh, Clifford, etc. Now just to print them and stick...

 Interval The distance between two notes

 I want to share something from  one of my earliest Piano Parent Helps posts . I'll never forget it. I was standing by the church door with our handbell director and several fellow handbell ringers, thanking people for coming to our concert as they left the building. One of them stopped to express appreciation over the piano solo I'd opened the concert with. I told her, as I try to, that I had a great mom who had really helped me out the first few years of piano.    After the lady left, the ringer standing with me -- a gifted pianist himself -- smiled and said to me, "Yeah, now I'm so glad for all those years my mom made me practice."    I chuckled. Clearly our 'recipes for success' had the same ingredient . . . the 'tough' moms who simply wouldn't let us quit.    I think my opinion is pretty obvious: I'm a piano teacher today (and I love it, and hope you all know that!) because Mom didn't let me quit piano in my second, third, or ninth...

 Molto Very, much (Example: Molto dolce would mean very sweetly. You don't need to tell me this part. ;) )

 "Use your head."    "Think before you act."     Either of these sound familiar to you?        When you're practicing piano, that clip above from Toy Story 2 is definitely not the way I want you to be using your head!    However, if you're going to practice effectively, you do need to be using your head in the figurative sense of the phrase.    OK, OK, let's break that statement down. Let's take a look at two different ways you can practice.    Way #1: You sit down. You play your songs three times over. You completely forget your scales, or your sight reading, or both. And, while you're playing your song, you're not paying attention to what you're playing. You know you've got the notes down, so why do you need to pay attention to the rhythm, your fingering, or the fact that you've made the same mistake every time you've played this song in the last week? You aren't really listening to what it sounds like. And whe...

 (Note for those who may not know: The word "Amen" comes from an ancient word -- whether Greek, Hebrew, or some other language, I do not remember -- that expressed agreement with truth. It is a transliterated word; that is, it's very similar to the original word in the original language. One person claimed it was one of two words that has been transliterated rather than translated across all languages, the other word being Hallelujah. Fun fact for the day. 😀)    Again, I had writer's block and didn't know what to write about. All I could think about was how it's February, it's a theme month, and I haven't finished planning the theme, even though the month has already started. So, once more, I turned to Pinterest . (If that link doesn't work, let me know, because I'm not sure it will actually take you to my Pinterest profile.)    This time, instead of music humour, I found this beautiful musician's prayer. And I went, "Yes! That is exa...

 Leggiero Marked or accented