Songbird Piano Lessons

Are we already at the end of November?! Only three weeks of lessons left before the Christmas recital? Wow!    Holiday prep is in full swing in the studio. Students have been diligently working on their Christmas pieces and their second piece they will play.    Next week I'll pull out all the Christmas games I've been saving till now. ;)      Just for fun. Christmas is not about the presents, the decorations, or even the wonderful songs we save for that one month -- but those are nice accessories to my favourite holiday!    Also, parents, please encourage your children to perform for others in the next few weeks! This year, students have really been racking up the points under "Word Whizzes" and "Practice Champions." (And claiming their prizes too! I think nearly everyone has claimed a prize at least once, and some are getting close to their second prize.) But as for "Performance Stars" . . . just take a look at the brag wall.    Hmm.

Da Capo From the beginning

Leggiero Lightly

   The people who should be highest on a Christian musician's list of heroes . . . are not the great composers.    Don't get me wrong. I like to play Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms in the background while working or driving. And I also like to play them and other composers in the foreground at my own piano. I'm excited to teach students about these men who were geniuses in the music world.    I'll probably talk more about the great composers' spiritual lives (believe me, they all had one! Just not always the right kind) a different time. Today my goal is to look at one of the many people who can serve as a role model today: Isaac Watts.    He wasn't actually a musician. He was an all-around writer. Besides the expected theological works, he also wrote "discussions of psychology . . . textbooks on logic, and a variety of other works" ( 101 Hymn Stories, Kenneth W. Osbeck, pg.112). But today we know him best for the hymns he wrote that are still in

Con Brio With vigour (vigorously)

What's new in the studio this week?    Erasers.    Originally I bought these because *clears throat* when it came to theory that had to be erased, certain students would insist on using only the eraser at the end of the pencil. It didn't matter if I placed the big eraser right in front of them. Soon my pencils had no eraser left, and they were still trying to erase with the (non-existent) eraser on the end!    So I went to the dollar store, got a big package of these erasers, re-capped all my pencils, and still had lots of erasers left.    Then one day, I was playing one of TPT's games with two of my students. These games invariably use coins, and I had run out. So I made a quick scan of the studio, trying to find something that was plentiful and would work, and my eyes landed on . . . the erasers.    So ever since then, erasers have been used    for  TPT's games,    reinforcing keyboard awareness/note reading,    teaching inverted chords,    a

Legato Smooth and connected