dawn's piano

They say necessity is the mother of invention. And this was certainly true this past Monday when my studio had it's July music theory Piano Party coming up on the schedule. I looked at the student RSVP's and noticed at least half of the group would be brand-new beginners with just a couple of lessons experience, half would be early intermediates, with a few late beginners thrown in. Choosing a game that would be engaging and level appropriate for all of them to play together was going to take some thinking.  Rhythm review is always a good way to go for a multi-level activity. I flipped through the body percussion activities, rhythm cups etc that I had on hand and nothing was exactly what I wanted. But I did have a large stack of rhythm cups with various note values drawn on them for quarter, half and whole notes that I've used for a spin off of this stacking game . Using those, I came up with my Rhythm Relay game.  The object:  Be the first team to collect rhythm cup...

Sometime last year our studio contributed to a kickstarter for a tabletop card came called ' Lord of the Chords' , and several months later received our physical copy of the game. Not too long after that I scheduled a game night with a couple local music teachers so we could get the hang of game play before implementing this game in our teaching. Today I'm writing up a short review of Lord of the Chords, and how I look forward to implementing it in lessons.  A short sum-up of game play: You try to build chords, and when you've built a chord in the chosen key signature, you get that key signature tile. Whoever gets 3 tiles first wins. It sounds fairly simple, but there's lots of fun strategy opportunities built in like 7th steals, and action cards that create all kinds of surprises as you go along. Also, when you first sit down to play, you look through the instrument cards and decide which one you'd like to be. Each instrument offers different advantages spe...

Happy New Year! We know the new year is a great time to get a fresh start & form some new habits. So to kick off 2019, I'll be sharing a series of blog posts all about my favorite practice tools & tricks complete with tips for how to help you use them at home! Teachers & parents alike, we all know that piano practice is necessary, and sometimes the discipline to keep it going can be tricky. But many of the tools that us teachers use in lessons to make things engaging & interesting can be adapted for easy use at home so your piano kid is digging into their music in new & fun ways. This helps piano students to grow into well-rounded musicians because they develop a whole toolkit full of ways to engage with and make music. To kick off this series, I'm going to talk about games. Gamification is an incredibly effective learning tool. Did you know that on average it takes 400 repetitions for the human brain to create a new neural pathway? BUT if we're havi...

In the past year, I've reviewed a few different sight reading apps, because as we all know, I think sight reading is important . But today's app is a little different, Meludia is an Ear Training app that works on developing good aural skills in musicians. Aural skills are what we use to play a song by ear, to take a melody we've heard and translate it into keys, steps, skips, intervals & chords. It's what helps us learn a song by rote - when there isn't any sheet music and we're taught note by note. It's also what helps us catch when we've played a wrong note. And the more notes being played, the harder it can be to catch small mistakes within the chords or passages, so our ears have to be well trained to picking up each tone of a chord, or each note in a phrase or pattern. Ear Training is an essential skill to being a well-rounded musician. And Meludia is a terrific way to build that skill. It is very easy to play and free to install with 1...

I am very excited to make some of my beginning piano games available for sale (except for the one that's free!). Most of these I made by hand in my early teaching years, until very recently when I decided to spruce them up and make them available for other piano teachers & parents to use too.  In this great deal. You get all three of the beginning games together in a studio licensed bundle. Buy Beginning Piano Bundle - $3.00. Musical Memory is a memory matching game that reinforces sight reading  note values  clef signs spatial memory Get an email with your free copy of Musical Memory   Piano Land is a racing game builds confidence in: keyboard awareness & navigation key names landmark notes (optional for beginners) Buy Pianoland - $2.00   Hands Down is a board game that assists students in:   Finger Numbers Key & Note Names Putting fingers on the correct keys with confidence!  Buy Hands Down...

A piano has 88 keys, we have 10 fingers, this means finding where to put your hands can sometimes feel pretty difficult for young beginners. I can't count the number of times I've received a midweek text asking "where do we put our hands for X song?" (and I love getting those, honestly, because it means someone is practicing! So keep the questions coming) What this does tell me is that the work & reminders we do on finding positions in lessons isn't always quite enough for students to feel confident finding it again on their own. So, this week's game "Hands Down!" gamifies the skills & routine necessary for young students to place their fingers on the keys with confidence. This is a great way to supplement at home practice. Parents, you can play these early games with your children and partner in their learning process. Allow them explain the rules & teach you about position finding, because in teaching it they will reinforce their ow...

This week's beginning piano game I've just always called "Piano Land." And it's one of my go-to games for working on keyboard navigation because it uses the actual keyboard as the playing field. So students are learning their way around all 88 keys, and having fun doing it. For piano parents, this is a terrific, and easy, game that you can play with your child, or that siblings can play together to enhance practice time. The premise is a simple race to see who can reach the other side of the piano first.  Game play is: flip over a card, read the letter and move your game marker to the corresponding key. (For game markers the cuter and more engaging the character, the better! I use keshigomu erasers and my students love them.) Over the years I've added some variations to the deck in the form of landmark notes so students who enjoy it can continue to play Piano Land beyond those first few lessons of learning key names. These also add a fun twist becaus...

I hope you all enjoyed our Ship Shape Pianist series, and found some inspiration & motivation to set up 2018 as a productive year of piano study! Heading into February, I thought I'd switch focus to something a little less business-y and a bit more fun. Huzzah! So, this month, I'll be sharing a series of beginning piano games that can be played at home (or in lessons) to supplement early piano study. And the best part, this first one is a free printable! This game is a classic - a Memory Matching game for music. I started making versions & variations of this game by hand almost as soon as I started teaching 12 years ago, and I have found it to be a very versatile teaching tool that can be played alone, one on one, or in a small group. It can be a great reinforcer of general music knowledge & early theory concepts without making a student feel like they're being drilled. Not to mention, it increases spatial memory, which is so important when playing the pian...