dawn's piano

Our studio recital was Saturday! If you missed it, you can still enjoy the video feed here . I want to give a huge thank you to studio parents, friends & family who supported these piano kids on their work in learning their recital pieces and preparing for the performance, especially as we transitioned to online lessons for the final 6 weeks of the session.  This week in lessons is going to be a fun week to wrap up the school year session! Here's a peek at what we'll be doing:  Debriefing the Recital -  We'll talk about everything from favorite pieces they saw their peers play (and any of those that we might be inspired to learn) to their thoughts about that type of online performance. We'll also discuss the successes and growth that we can recognize from their own performances, and students will have a chance to debrief areas that felt difficult that we can plan ahead on for the next recital. The goal of these conversations will be to help students establis...

This week's post is just a quick one to share an update about our Spring Recital moving online, as well as to share with all the Dawn's Piano followers that a couple weeks ago, I wrote an article I wrote for the Alfred blog on the topic of Online Recitals! Alfred's is one of the industry leading music publishing houses started in 1922, and they now maintain a blog with articles from music industry professionals on a wide range of topics. They approached me about sharing some ideas from my experience with online recitals to help out other music educators during this time.  If you would like to read that article 'Creative Solutions for Online Recitals' on the Alfred blog, Click Here . And, for those who may have missed the announcement on Facebook, our upcoming Studio Recital will officially be moving online as well. To learn more, or to RSVP, head over to the Spring Recital Facebook Event on the Dawn's Piano Facebook page. Studio parents are invited to s...

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 2020 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 include...

We're talking about metronomes today! This is one of those tools that depending on what kind you have and how you implement it, your piano kid will either learn to use as an effective tool, or to dread it. I'm not here to tell you which kind you have to get, because I believe different students can have different experiences and responses. And the good news is that we really do have a lot of options! So I'm sharing some of my observations on several different types of metronomes and their usefulness that will hopefully help you find a good fit to try in your home practice space. Smart Speakers When I was travel teaching, I had several students with smart speakers in the same room as the piano, and I loved the convenience of saying "Ok google, set a metronome to 120 beats per minute" and bam!, it would. I also saw that when the piano kids got to tell Google or Alexa to turn on a metronome, and articulate how many beats per minute they needed, or the time signa...