dawn's piano

Last week was our first week of the school year session here in the studio. And it was great to see so many students back and ready to jump right into their music. I found myself asking variations of this question several times throughout the week. "If there was one song you could learn this year, what would it be?" Or "Do you have a favorite song that you think would be fun to try and learn on the piano?" And depending on the student and their goals, I got a lot of fun answers. Some asked to start learning music to play for their church, some asked for a favorite theme from a movie or video game, some chose music by popular artists, and of course I had at least one ask to learn the Wellerman (thanks TikTok for bringing that one back on trend! Fortunately, I've always loved a good sea shanty).  These conversations with students about music they love and want to learn is one of the things that gets me really energized as a teacher. Because connecting my students ...

One thing a lot of people imagine being able to do when they take piano lessons, or sign their child up for piano lessons, is to just sit down and play at family gatherings or parties. Perhaps we even think of eventually being able to take requests of everything from classical or contemporary solo selections, to popular music that other musicians could jam along with or the crowd could sing along to.  And this can sometimes be a tricky area of expectation vs reality because classical playing and 'jamming' can feel like two separate musicianship skills until we mature as musicians enough to see the overlap.   Chord charts and lead sheets are tools that a lot of modern bands, worship teams, etc, use to pick up a song together quickly. They serve as a guide without prescribing every single note.  I've talked on the blog in the past about lead sheets . So in today's blog post, I'm sharing 3 reasons why I choose to introduce chord charts to my older students' piano s...

Before I jump right in to some of the reasons why I like rote teaching, let me give a little definition of what that actually means here. In the music teaching world, Rote Teaching means we teach the music without a sheet for the student to follow. Typically this is done by demonstration and repetition. I decided to try including some rote teaching about 6 years ago after learning about some of the possible benefits, and today I'm sharing some of the big positives I've seen in my own students since then! 5 Benefits of Rote Teaching for Beginners Building Technique I use a lot of the Piano Safari pattern pieces and animal techniques for beginning students. These are short pattern pieces that often focus on a specific skill or technique for striking the keys. Teaching these skills without having the added work of reading sheet music and translating that into notes means young students can really focus on how it feels  in their hands and fingers to play the given technique. Thes...

Our studio got an exciting upgrade in July with the addition of this beautiful Kawai RX-2 Grand Piano!  I knew going to the Sounds Great Retail Retirement Sale unsupervised could get me into trouble (the good kind!) because the action on our main studio piano had been deteriorating pretty rapidly, and I had already started thinking about how to get a newer instrument in the next year or two. . . So off I went. I played several different pianos while I was there, and there were a lot of great options. Some old Steinways, a couple excellent Baldwins, and I did spend some time with a Chickering concert grand which would have been much too large for our studio, but was a lovely instrument.  (I grew up playing a Chickering, so they will always have a special place in my heart.) But the one really spoke to me as a good studio instrument and a real investment in my students' growth for many years was this Kawai professional grand, and I ended up signing the purchase agreement before ...

I want to introduce everyone to our composer timeline! Each week on the Studio Facebook page I've been sharing a 'hand-washing song' chosen by one of our students. And today's post is a closer look at what that means, and how that plays into our lessons and musical study. I have a cup full of composer cards (from Vibrant Music Teaching ) and when it is a student's turn, they draw a card, and we search up that composer on Youtube. The student gets to pick a piece from the list of selections available, and that becomes the week's hand-washing song! That music then plays for the next week while students are coming into the studio, I am sanitizing pianos, they are washing their hands, and getting their books prepped for lessons, etc. With the few extra minutes of cleaning procedures that come with operating our studio in a pandemic, this has added a sense of musical purpose and routine to our slightly longer transition time. After we are settled and ready for lesson...

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:  ...

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 ...