dawn's piano

Today's post is a wish for a very Merry (and musical!) Christmas and holiday season from our studio to your home.  And I'm sharing with you an elementary leveled piano solo of "The First Noel" that I prepared when I couldn't find exactly the right thing for one of my late elementary students who wanted to learn it this season. 

My goal was to create something with movement in the bass clef and to include some intro & interlude sections that would add some sophistication to this piece as a piano solo, but still be an appropriate level for an elementary leveled student. 

You can preview what the arrangement sounds like here:  



The sheet music is available for purchase on Sheet Music Plus, but for you, dear reader, you can receive a copy as my holiday gift to you by entering your email below!



The studio will be closed the next couple weeks so students and teacher alike can all enjoy some holiday down time with family & friends. The blog will go quiet for those…

We've wrapped up our Pianovember practice challenge! If you want to see the final leaderboards on the challenge website you can head over to pianoparentpodcast.com/pianovember. Our studio collected 4,395 total tallies. And here are some shout-outs to our top 5 Pianovember practicers: 

1. Elliot S - 895
2. Emory W - 659
3. Ruby T - 569
4. Gentri C - 393
5. Sloan S - 252

Way to go! 

For the month of December we'll have another little rest from practice challenges while we finish preparing for the Christmas Festival on the 14th, enjoy some holiday themed theory games, and work up some short playlists of Christmas pieces to entertain family over the break. 

When we resume lessons in January, we are going to kick off the Happy Birthday Practice Challenge. This one is actually quite easy, we just have to learn how to play "Happy Birthday"! I feel this is an important song for students to know because when birthdays come around, playing a piano accompaniment along to the singing of…

Today I'm sharing a fun idea, that is not by any means new, to bring some music to the holiday table at your upcoming celebrations and family dinners during the holiday season: Musical Crackers! Christmas Crackers are a holiday tradition in the UK that sort of resemble the celebratory poppers full of confetti that we sometimes use here in the states during the 4th of July or other celebrations. However instead of containing confetti, they usually contain a paper crown and a small gift, favor or joke. Christmas Crackers make appearances in Harry Potter and other iconic British shows and books that have scenes taking place around Christmastime, and are traditionally opened at the end of the holiday meal while still at the table.

The sets that I am highlighting today are musical because each cracker contains the traditional paper crown and joke, as well as a small numbered instrument (chime, whistle or bell depending on the set you choose). They also come with some simple guides to so…

Going into this discussion of repetitive stress injuries, I want to take a second to re-frame the way we think of playing a music instrument. I think for a lot of us who may not regularly play, sitting down to play an instrument seems like a relaxing, somewhat sedentary activity. And while there is a calming element to playing beautiful music, I would argue that it's more our mood or spirit that feels the calm, while our bodies are very engaged in the fine motor movements that make the music. A colleague of mine from the McPherson Area Piano Teachers' League describes playing an instrument as being a 'fine motor athlete.' And that is exactly how I want us to frame our thinking as we head into a discussion about technique. 

I think to some extent most of us can understand the importance of learning proper form when playing a sport so as to avoid injury. We need to to do the same with learning to play an instrument. So my first two tips are going to be about form: 
Posture…

I've recently received our studio copy of a brand new picture book that puts teaching the treble clef notes into a story format, it's called Here Come the High Notes and is written by Marin Marka, illustrated by Alexandra Tatu. 

I am looking forward to using this book in lessons, especially with my preschool and primer students, as a way to both introduce and familiarize the treble staff. Learning note reading takes time, and the directional reading and abstract thinking required for music notation can be difficult for younger learners. This is why I use so many resources that gamify this skill. And with the addition of this book to our studio library, we can start putting the treble notes into the context of a story as well!

One thing that I enjoyed in this book is that each note is given a little bit of personality that comes into play as they choose their place on the staff. This helps differentiate them without weighing down the story with too much detail. The book does unde…

Welcome to our Fall 2019 Online Video Recital! Thank you for tuning in. 
Over the past month or so, piano students have been working hard both at home and in the studio on their recital selections, and once a piece was prepared we would grab a video for this online performance. What you'll watch below is a compilation of all those collected videos.
This online format for our first recital of the school year provides a lower stress performance opportunity, while still providing the essential practice in working a piece up to a performance level. It also provides a way for all of Dawn's Piano students, in McPherson and online around the country, to participate in a recital together. And I especially really like this format is because it's perfect to share with out of town friends and family who want to cheer on your piano kid but might not be able to attend a traditional recital setting. 
Parents, friends and family, thank you for supporting your piano kids on their musical jo…

This post is a huge pat on the back for all of you studio parents who are giving your kids the benefits of a music education. There is always new research being published about the positive effects music education has on brain health. In this post, I'll be sharing two studies that illustrate both the immediate academic advantages of practicing and instrument and the long-term role that music study can play in protecting the brain from effects of aging.

The first study I'll be sharing is a large-scale study performed by Peter Gouzouasis at the University of British Columbia. In his research he compared the academic test scores of high school students who had studied music in elementary school, and continued to study it in high school, with those of their peers who had not. The findings were that across the board, regardless of socioeconomic factors, teens who had studied a musical instrument not only scored higher than their non-musical peers, but were on average 1 year ahead o…

Have you ever wondered what it's like to have perfect pitch? Or what perfect pitch even means? Do you suspect your piano kid might have it? How do we, as parents or teachers, train and equip young musicians who have this tool in their toolbelt to use it effectively? If you're curious about any of these questions, you'll want to check out this recent episode of the Piano Parent Podcast where Shelly hosted a Teacher Chat with two piano teachers who have perfect pitch. They discussed the benefits and challenges, as well as some teaching and home practice strategies for these students.  

You can listen to that full episode here, and if you want to know what some of my big takeaways were, read on below: 



I've been teaching for 13 years now, and have definitely had a few students in that time with some degree of perfect pitch. A few of the things that teachers Cheryl Reeder & Brianne Lundberg shared really made sense to me. 

First, perfect pitch is something of a spectrum, …

As I announced at the beginning of the year, instead of doing a year-long practice challenge this time, we are trying 4 short one-month practice challenges spread throughout this school year. I like to think of this as something like running intervals: we will do some short sprints with the month challenges, and we'll also have some time slow down to a walk to breathe in between. So, what's coming up next? Well, we wrapped up the "Fall Into Music" challenge in September, and our next one is going to start up in November when we'll be joining Pianovember hosted by the Piano Parent Podcast. 

In this practice challenge, students get one point every time they practice a song outside of lessons. Each student will need to keep track of tallies during their practice sessions each time they play a song, and at your lessons we will update the total tallies on the studio chart. 

But it doesn't stop there because this practice challenge is also global! This means at the e…

During the first couple weeks of our Fall term, I had several students who were very interested in (and somewhat distracted by) the moving parts in the piano while they played their music. So I decided that during the final week of August, we'd have an "Open Piano Week" here in the studio. During lessons that week, the lid on the studio's baby grand was lifted and each lesson included in introduction to what goes on under the lid when we play music. Students had some great questions and observations, and were so engaged that I think for next school year, we will dedicate our first Piano Party to a detailed look at how the piano works!  So here's what we learned as we identified all the tiny moving parts that work together to make music when we strike the piano's keys: Strings - these are often the first things students noticed as we looked under the lid. We discussed how most of the notes on the piano have 3 strings that ring together, except at the lower regis…

This month's sheet music feature is All of Me by John Legend arranged for early intermediate piano solo. 

With a clear melody and a chord based harmony, All of Me lends itself well to piano solo, especially since in the original artist recording, the accompaniment is played primarily by a piano. So it really doesn't take too much change for this piece to be pleasing to play for late beginners or early intermediates, and enjoyable to listen to for friends and family of young students.

This arrangement is in the song's original key of A-flat, and will give early intermediate students some opportunity to practice a trickier key signature while playing a familiar melody. The melody is syncopated to follow the vocal line, with the harmony simplified to play the chords on the downbeats. Intermediate students who are ready for more complexity could be encouraged to use the chord progression to create an accompaniment pattern or rhythm of their own.

The sheet music is published thr…

Earlier this month we had our first piano party of the new session where students learned about Improvisation. At our piano party, we discussed what it is, it's deep roots in classical, jazz and popular music and introduced some easy ways to get started, then we jammed with a Rock Your Way Back to School improv. Improvisation is a terrific rhythm and ear training tool, and the goal of this piano party was to help take some of the potential awkwardness or shyness out of this creative exercise.

Today's blog post is looking at how you as a piano parent can support you piano kid improvising at home. What I'm going to share are some simple tips that even completely non-musical parents can use to create original improvisation with your piano kid.
Some things to know about Improv: Operates within a structure. Accomplished musicians rely on chord progressions, scales, knowledge of different genre styles, and tempo/rhythm structures to improvise. But total beginners can do it too w…

You've probably heard me talk about the Piano Parent Podcast before, and that's because it's a terrific resource for parents of piano students that covers a range of topics from getting creative with music and practice time, to common struggles, to some simple music theory lessons so parents know what's what in their students music. 

Today, I'm sharing a recent discussion with piano teacher Vicki Conway that had some really insightful information about the importance of movement in brain development, and even gives some really simple activities we can do with kids to help them build some of those essential pathways in the brain to build skills in different kinds of reasoning and understanding. 

I'm embedding both part 1 and part 2 of the conversation here so you can listen to them, and get the info straight from the source, and I'll also include some of my own thoughts below. 

Developmental Fitness, Part 1


Developmental Fitness, Part 2


Here were my four big ta…

Last week I told you about our first performance of the year, and here I am already talking about the second! And that's because our first on-stage performance is just a little over a month after the Fall Video Recital.

On Saturday, December 14th our studio will be a part of the Multi-Piano & Guitar Christmas Festival. This annual show is a long standing tradition in McPherson, and a terrific way to kick off the holiday season with some piano ensemble and guitar ensemble Christmas music for an incredibly supportive audience.

How it works: 
We prepare the songs in lessons leading up to the show, and on the 14th will run rehearsals during the day leading up to the performance. (This means if you give me the go-ahead to sign up your student for the show, know that there will be a commitment earlier in the day to rehearse with their ensemble.) These rehearsals are mandatory, because as you can imagine, coordinating up to 16 pianists for each number can take some doing.

At perf…

As we head into the Fall season, it's time to start thinking about our first performance opportunity of the school year - our Fall Video Recital! 

This performance is a little different, because in it we bring together students  in McPherson & online from all over the country. Each student will record or submit a video of their prepared piece during lessons. Those videos will be compiled together, and on Saturday, November 2nd at 10:00am CST, that compilation will be posted on the Fall Video Recital facebook event as well as here on the blog. 

Some of the things I love about a video recital: 
Students are reminded that they are part of a national studio community, and get to cheer on their peers all over the country in the video comments.Family & friends who live out of the area and would love to support your piano kids can tune in from wherever they are.Having our first performance of the year be a recorded video helps build confidence for new students before they find thems…

I'll be honest, this is truly one of my favorite blog posts to write every year. I'm just so thrilled to unveil our student compositions! And this summer I was particularly excited to relaunch the Young Composers summer program after having to pause it last year due to the studio relocating. Having a composing focus rolled back into our regular summer curriculum reflects the value this studio places on creativity and self-expression as a crucial part of learning to play an instrument.

Composing & notating music is also a terrific way to apply music theory knowledge and gain a more fluent understanding of the concepts learned in lessons. And that's definitely something we saw happening this year! So many students, from beginning through advanced levels, impressed me with their ability to take what they were playing on the piano and translate that into sheet music using the notation software with very minimal guidance. And then we went one step further and during our last…

Our School Year Session is now under way, and as we head into September, we're going to participate into the "Fall into Music" Practice Challenge hosted by the Piano Parent Podcast. This is a short-term, world-wide practice challenge where each student tries to practice 20 days during the month of September. Any student who completes the challenge will receive a completion certificate, AND a place on the studio social media wall of fame. In addition, we will be running a total of 4 one-month practice challenges throughout this school year, and any student who completes 2 or more of them will win an exclusive Dawn's Piano tote bag. This will be great for carrying their piano books to and from the studio!

So how does the Fall into Music challenge work? 

Well we know that the real work of learning to play an instrument is in the practice time spent between lessons, and we know that parents are the ones who reinforce the practice habit at home. This challenge is designed t…

Starting piano lessons for a lot of people means that we have to look at acquiring an instrument. Today, I'm sharing my favorite digital models for beginning piano students. These are at a lower price point than comparable instruments, but still provide the hammer action feel, touch sensitivity and good quality sound samples that replicate a grand piano well. 

If you are deciding between an acoustic & a digital, be sure to check out this article, and if you're in the market for a used piano keep the tips in this article in mind.

So if you're still reading, you've decided on a digital, and are wanting to know the best, affordable options that will still provide the quality your budding pianist needs. All pianos listed below feature Graded Hammer Standard or Weighted Keys, meaning the keys are engineered to feel like an acoustic piano. Having this feature shortens the learning curve on transitioning from a keyboard to an acoustic, so that when a student is at less…

Since I am in prep week between the summer and school year sessions, this post is all about how you can prep at home by setting up Piano Maestro, AND how we can use it to encourage practice by enabling the Home Practice challenge. I've had several parents recently ask me about the piano lab set up after watching their kids sit down and be self-motivated to sight read music using the Piano Maestro app. And that's because this app uses the best parts of gaming technology & the psychology of gamification to create an environment where piano students are learning new notes and technic while actively sight reading and practicing on their actual piano (not just interacting with the screen). All the while, they are receiving in-game rewards and milestones that keep them excited to work for excellence and to progress forward.

What you need: A piano (acoustic or digital both work) and an iPad.

First step: let me know that you'd like to try Piano Maestro at home and I will se…