dawn's piano

Having a good instrument to regularly practice on is a key component of a successful piano experience. And this is something that I've touched on before in this blog post from a few years back all about choosing the right type of instrument (acoustic/digital) for your home practice environment. An acoustic piano is an excellent choice because you get the full action & resonance of the instrument. The flip side is that acoustic pianos require annual maintenance, and they can be more expensive to purchase up front. This is where used pianos come in, often students can find inexpensive or free used pianos available. So how do you know when it's worth it? What makes a used piano a good bet? Today's post is going to provide some tips into shopping for a used acoustic piano.
Take a piano technician If you're seriously considering an instrument, I'd recommend taking a piano technician with you. This is akin to having your mechanic look over a used car before purchasin…

This one's for the other studio owners & private music teachers! Most of you who've followed the studio for any length of time will know that around this time last year I relocated from Southern California to Central Kansas, and rebuilt my studio in our new town. Going in, I knew that one of the things that would be vital when relocating was building awareness in the community and to get that crucial word-of-mouth going, so I did several things to get the word out locally with pretty good success. It definitely didn't hurt that the town I moved into really supports the arts, and there was more demand than current piano teachers in the area already. Within 3 months the studio had hit a good running capacity, and 6 months in enrollment was capped out with a waitlist. 

Since then, I've often seen posts in the online music teaching groups from other studio owners asking for tips or advice on how to successfully rebuild their studios after a move, so today I'm sharin…

This past Saturday (April 27th) students of Dawn's Piano gave their Spring Recital, and if I do say so myself, I thought we had a terrific show! Being a studio that relocated just this year means that we had lots of beginning students participating in their first ever recital with a few seasoned intermediate students sprinkled in. I enjoyed seeing the confidence on stage, and the personality & musical expression of each student as they performed. It was fun to have them cheer each other on, and share compliments after the show during our Ice Cream Reception (which was earned when each student completed the 20 Piece Challenge!).

Online students from the Pasadena area also had a live Recital on Saturday, where they performed in the joint studio recital of my former associate teachers Aki Saito & Mallory Byers. Dawn's Piano was represented by 5 students there, and I'm so proud of each of their progress in adapting to an online lesson format and continuing to grow in th…

To wrap up this month's blog series all about sight reading, I'm sharing some easy-to-implement ways to support your piano kid in building this essential musicianship skill during home practice time.

The best thing you can do is to simply make sight reading a regular part of home practice. This doesn't have to take more than a minute or two each practice, and is as simple as getting your student to look at notes in a new order and play them. Doing this regularly will build into a confident sight reading ability.

 Daily Sight Reading Exercises
Apps are my personal favorite because they gamify the sight reading process for students. And the best part about all of the examples below is that they use the mic on your phone or tablet so your student can practice sight reading on your piano, not just a screen.Piano Maestro - this one is the star of the piano lab at the studio! A very robust app that introduces new notes & technics with tutorial videos, then students play piece…

Thank you for joining in on this Sightreading 101 series, if you're joining us now and haven't checked out the previous weeks, you can find them here! 

I know I've said this series of posts was going to be all about sight reading, but I sorta fibbed. Today I'm talking about one of the valuable skills that musicians have that definitely relates to sight reading, but is really a skill in and of itself, and that is Audiation. Audiation is the ability to 'hear' or comprehend music internally in the absence of the actual sounds that would comprise it. This can be with or without sheet music, but being able to read sheet music while comprehending the sounds can really take our sight reading to the next level. I think the best way to introduce this is with a picture. A little while back, this image made the rounds among the classical music circles on social media.


And I think this sums up the idea quite nicely. This really is a musicianship superpower. And while it may …

Welcome to week 3 of this Sightreading 101 blog series! If you read last week's post, you may have noticed that several times I mentioned the 'relationship between the notes,' today we're getting into what I meant by that in a discussion of "intervallic reading." So, jumping right in:

The movement from one note to another, or the relationship between one note & the next, is described in music theory as an interval. Intervals can be a step from one note to the following, a skip, or a leap from a low note to a higher note or vice versa. Intervals are given numbers depending on how far the movement is. For example,
One note to the adjacent note is a "second" because they're two notes apart. A skip over one note is described as a "third" because they're three notes apart.If the notes are 7 keys apart, we call them a seventh, and so on. The line below shows us what each interval can look like on the staff.

You may be thinking this mu…

Here we go into week 2 of our deep dive into sight reading. If you missed last week's post and are wondering why we bother with this, check it out here. 

This week we're talking about landmark notes - what they are and how they help: Landmark notes are a handful of strategically placed notes, that when memorized, make sight reading simple & intuitive without having to memorize a bunch of mnemonic devices,* or memorizing the locations of every single note on the staff.

The first 3 landmark notes are very simple. Middle C (the one with the 'whiskers'), Treble G on line 2 of the treble clef, and Bass F on line 4 of the bass clef. These are often the first 3 notes beginning students learn in their first few lessons with me, because learning these 3 from the start establishes the relationship between the notes & the staff with 3 easily distinguishable notes (they're not too close together). When we move forward and learn how to find the remaining notes, we reinfo…

Hello everyone, and Happy Spring! I'm going to be kicking off the Spring season with a blog series all about sight-reading. I've definitely touched on this in the past, especially with some app recommendationsover the years, but I've not dedicated any blog space to why we bother learning it, or to really dig into how we can help young pianists train their brains to be successful at it. So this April, we're diving deep into sight reading!

Today's post is about the 'why': 
Why do we bother learning sight reading?
Music literacy - Playing music vs. reading it is often compared to speaking vs. reading language because all of the reasons we value language literacy translate to musical literacy as well. It's universal - you can hand any classically trained musician anywhere in the world a piece of sheet music, and they'll be able to turn it into music. Much like language can cross borders & build bridges, so can music, and music literacy makes the commu…

If you're looking for a great way to kick off piano study for the summer, you'll definitely want to check out Espressivo Piano Camp.

What is Espressivo Piano Camp, who's it for and what are the benefits? 
EPC is a summer day camp for piano students from elementary (entering 2nd grade in fall 2019 and up) through advancing levels hosted & run by the local KMTA chapter. It provides an opportunity for local piano students from different studios to interact and become a part of the larger musical community in McPherson. Since the camp is run by area piano teachers, students will get valuable learning & feedback from teachers beyond their usual studio experience.We get to focus on extra-musical learning, such as music history, composition & theory, performance classes, aural skills, rhythm etc in a group setting. All those things that can often get squished into the last few minutes of typical lessons can now take center stage. The camp also includes 2 performances! …

One of my current students asked to learn this song, and I must say this was a fun piece to put together for late beginning piano. I strongly encourage my students to pursue playing the music they like, because it connects us to our own learning process and demonstrates the value of the skill we are learning.

This pop/rock classic offers good practice in syncopation, changing key signatures and dynamic range. Because the themes are repetitive, it works well as a late beginning piano solo with only a couple rhythms & passages to work out, and then the player's job is just to follow the patterns and repeats, and have fun.

As with all my arrangements of popular pieces, the sheet music is available for purchase on Sheet Music Plus where you can also preview the sheet music.

look insideAfrica by Toto - Easy Piano Solo By Toto. Solo Part. 6 pages. Published by Dawn Ivers (H0.510797-SC000003618).
You can also hear a short preview of this arrangement in the video belo…

Progress in piano study can be difficult to recognize because it is so gradual. This can sometimes feel discouraging for the student, because even though we make strides from week to week, it's not always easily measurable from the student's perspective. The best way to remedy this is to track and celebrate long term progress. Those who follow the studio on social media will know that I often share student videos. In addition to celebrating current success, these videos can also be a way of marking where we've been so at a later time students can look back and see how far they've come. But you can go further than this by keeping a video or audio journal of your child's piano progress. 

In episode 128 of the Piano Parent Podcast Shelly gives us some tips on how to keep just such a video or audio journal of a piano student's musical journey.

You can listen to the episode right here, or read the full show notes on the podcast's website: 


One of the added benef…

Enrollment for the Summer Session at Dawn's Piano is officially open! For new beginning students, Summer is a terrific time to try out piano lessons and see if they are a good fit for you before committing to the coming school year. 

For existing students, or those who have a little musical experience, summer is when we get to stretch our creativity with a Young Composers project. What this means is each student who participates will work on composing an original piece of music, notating it, and recording it. At the end of the summer we will publish an e-book & album of all the collected compositions. Because tuition at Dawn's Piano is always all-inclusive, this program is no extra cost to you! Check out one of the past Young Composers projects here.

Here's how summer session works: 
Session runs from June 11th-Aug 2nd (8 weeks). The studio is open for lessons Tuesday-Friday 11:00am-7:00pm Tuition is one fee paid by May 31st, calculated on the cost of 6 lessons, so you…

Save the date for our Spring Recital! 
When: Saturday, April 27th at 1:30 pm Where: The recital will be hosted at the Free Methodist Church at 1010 S Maple St, McPherson. To tune in online, head over to our Facebook Event for details. This Spring Recital will also mark the end of our 2018/2019 School Year in the studio, and so we will be showcasing & celebrating what students have learned and achieved since the session began in August. This is also the end of our 20 piece challenge that launched last August. This means if every student has completed their 20 pieces by the recital date, we will have an ice cream party for the reception! 

FAQ's
What about online students? 
You will participate by recording video of your performance to be played during the recital. And my hope is that you'll be able to tune in and watch the recital from home with a zoom.us conference call or a youtube livestream. More details will be coming your way in the coming weeks.

Who can come?

For many…