What's on Your Playlist? - Free Printable

I think it's pretty safe to say all musicians have had the experience of someone saying "play us a song!" and your mind goes totally BLANK. You can't seem to remember a single piece of music you know, let alone how to play it. So today, we're talking about the importance of maintaining a playlist. 

Sometimes in the effort of learning to sight read, count and perform, we forget why we got into this in the first place. Was it to play music we've heard before? To share music with others? To create new music? Maybe all of the above? If we actively maintain a playlist of pieces we know how to play, we can do all of these things and more. We can confidently perform for family & friends when they ask. 

For some young musicians maintaining more than 1-2 pieces of music at a time can feel like a challenge. It's pretty easy to fall into a pattern of memorizing then forgetting, or mastering a piece and then moving onto the next without wanting to look back. But if we want to grow your piano kids into whole, well-rounded musicians, we have to break this pattern and encourage our students to build a playlist. This is why I encourage a lot of review work in regular lessons. Plus, in addition to having a good repertoire of pieces, it shows students how much they've accomplished to have mastered all that music!

Piano Parent Podcast did an episode on this topic earlier this year, so I am just building on that idea by offering a free Playlist Printable! Print it out, stick it in your music folder, or put it up near your piano, and see how quickly you can fill it with a group of songs you can rotate through playing with confidence. How awesome would it be if each student kept a playlist each year? 

And the next time someone says, "Hey, you know piano, play us a song!" You'll be armed with an entire list of pieces you know and love to play that you can share, so go ahead and impress them and feel great about it in the process!

And stay tuned for next week's post to hear one of my favorite playlists!