Music in Childhood Survey

Today I would love your input! I am doing a little research on music experiences in childhood. I know that I had a very musical childhood – we always had instruments to play, we listened to music all the time (including lots of classical), my mom sang to us every night, etc. But I’d love to know a little bit about YOUR experiences with music in your home as a child. Please take a few minutes and fill out this brief survey. Thank you!

Summer Teaching Survey Results

Thanks to all who responded to our survey! I loved reading your great ideas for summer lessons. Anyone have other ideas to add?

Tell us about summertime in your music studio – what do you do differently? What fun camps or activities do you have planned? What does your summer look like this year?  

  • This summer I am doing a 6 week course called “A Classical Summer”. Each student will be assigned a classical composer to learn about. 1-2 songs from that composer will be learned. Our weekly 30 minute lesson will be less formal as we work on compiling information on the composer & how to put the “report” together. We’ll be doing more hands on activities as well. On week 6, a group lesson will be held for each student to give a creative “report” on their assigned composer & then play their learned pieces. I have talked with my Piano Technician & scheduled a group lesson for week 4 to have him come & talk to the students about the piano, how it works, what “tuning” is, & also general information for the parents on what to look for when searching for a used piano to buy. I am excited to start summer lessons already!
  • I give students the option of four to eight lessons, paying four lessons in advance. We schedule on an individual basis, and we only do fun pieces of their choice and popular repertoire. If they are beginners, we continue in the lesson books. I always look forward to the break from every day teaching, and I enjoy looking for new music, attending workshops at my local music stores, and organizing my studio.
  • I require each student to pay for eight lessons. That gives me a few off, them a few off, but keeps them fairly consistent in lessons. I also try to be more flexible with scheduling. Students who want more than eight lessons can pay for the extra lessons one at a time. I tend to do more games in lessons and work on fun songs to keep summer exciting!
  • I offer “packages”of either 4, 6, or 8 lessons where families choose to take that many lessons during the summer. Once upon a time when I made my packages larger (8 or 10 lessons), I had so many families that didn’t take lessons because they didn’t want that many. I figure I would rather see students (and get paid for) 4 lessons than nothing. Generally all my students take lessons, with the exception of those that are out of town all summer. Families choose which days they come and request times that work best (mornings, late afternoons or evenings). I don’t promise them the same time each week they come like I would during the school year. I also offer a summer piano session where students without a piano come and take 6 lessons, usually 1 lesson each week. This is like a merger between standard private lessons and a piano camp. Obviously students aren’t excepted to practice on a piano between lessons (I encourage them to practice finger numbers, note names, etc) and if they wish to buy a piano and keep taking lesson in the fall, I essentially start from the beginning again. Currently about half the students that do the trial session continue with lessons so it’s a great way to acquire new students. (it’s essentially a 6 week interview, so I know what to expect come fall!)
  • My summer is the same as usual. In my part of the world, Canada, kids go to school from Labour day until the end of June, so we break for the summer and come back refreshed and ready to go when school starts in September.

Summer in My Studio

Ah, summer! For a piano teacher, summer can mean different things – maybe it’s a not-as-busy time with students taking a little time off; maybe it is busier than ever (but also more fun than ever!) with summer camps and programs! Although we have visited this topic before, I thought that with the summer fast approaching it would be a good topic to revisit!

What kinds of things do you like to do in your studio in the summer?

My summer (as far as piano teaching goes) will be like this:

*teaching as normal, except that I am more flexible with scheduling due to family vacations and the like; students still pay in advance at the beginning of the month, but we sit down and pull out the calendar in advance to decide how many lessons each student will receive.

*a friend and I will be holding the second session of our Early Expressions Piano Preschool Camp! We are super excited. More on planning a summer camp later…

*my baby will arrive at the end of July, so I will be taking off all of August and half of September for a maternity leave of sorts. Before that happens, I plan to come up with plenty of things for each student to work on/practice for that month and a half while I am not teaching! I am thinking memorizing pieces, doing some listening assignments to become more familiar with some great piano literature, theory and ear training practice online, and “checking in” with me periodically via email.

So, tell me, what does your summer look like this year?

Survey Results: Motivating Ourselves to Practice

Thank you to all who participated in our survey! We had some wonderful feedback and I really loved reading your comments. I think there is so much we can all learn from each other, so thanks for participating!

Question #1: Are you able to practice consistently?

Question #2: What inspires or motivates you to practice?

  • Performance assignments
  • Leaving a piece I really want to learn or love on the piano where I can see it. It somehow makes me feel guilty that it’s just sitting there.
  • When I imagine myself with my goal completed. (I am working on my ARCT in piano pedagogy).
  • When I see myself making progress through practicing. -It’s kind of a good cycle if I can just keep it going!!
  • When I hear other pianists, or even my students, how can I tell them to have meaningful practice time if I don’t do it myself?
  • I am a graduate student in music performance. Also, it’s my favorite part of the day!
  • I just started taking lessons again as an adult. I am enjoying it but find it can hard to practice as much as I would like.
  • Singing or playing songs for my children
  • Needing to know a piece by a certain time; Feeling like I’ve actually improved or learned something better
  • A piece I enjoy
  • Setting “Performance Dates” for Church, talent shows, and also playing for the elderly in the Assisted Living Homes around town.
  • I love the effect it has on my children.. when I practice they seem to want to follow my example. Its also fun to watch my little ones move rhythmically or dance to the music I’m playing. But having deadlines – like performing for a group lesson helps too.
Question #3: Do you use any specific tools to help you practice –
like a practice chart, a list, an iPod app, a planner, etc.?
  • Sometimes a list
  • Stickers, pencils and pens, jotting down practice time
  • Nope! But I probably should!
  • Nope. Just rely on the guilt & the over whelming feeling that time is running out before the “date” is here!

Question #4: What have you learned in your own practicing that has made you a better
teacher, or that has helped teach your own students how to practice?

  • how to listen and evaluate
  • It finally occurred to me that I should be taking notes about how I practice. I haven’t yet shared it but it has just made me more conscious of WHAT I am doing and the rationale behind it.
  • Practicing again makes me realize how much discipline it takes. Just because I’m playing advanced repertoire doesn’t mean it gets any easier to practice. It helps remind me to keep motivating my students and to help them realize that it is not always fun, but it is so worth the work. I love seeing the same pleasure in their eyes that I have when I learn a piece well.
  • that practicing takes effort and attention, it is more productive to identify the areas of concern and break the song into smaller sections than to mindlessly play the whole thing from beginning to end over and over.
  • I find that half the time what gets told to me by my teacher when I get frustrated, is usually something I’VE said to one of MY students! :o)
  • Fingering is so important – do that first and the memorization will be much easier.
  • Don’t practice the entire piece every time; don’t practice mistakes over and over – isolate and fix them; don’t “over-practice” a song and become bored with it – let it rest a few days
  • Practice makes perfect. It affirms how much practice is essential to progress.
  • To teach my students how to do everything that I DON’T! I’m definitely a work in progress:)
  • Practicing small sections slowly and plenty of repetition are imperative… even though I still find it tempting to just want to play through a song w/ the stumbles some times. I still love that feeling of accomplishment that comes after putting in the time and patience to conquer a challenge spot. Its always nice to reward yourself when you reach your goal………….. for me that might mean some chocolate or a bowl of ice cream!

Getting Motivated

This week I would like to revisit a topic we have discussed before, because it is something that I, personally, (and I am guessing a lot of you, as well, particularly if you are a parent with young children at home!) need constant work on, and is something that is so important to our success as teachers. I’d like to talk about Motivating OURSELVES to Practice.

This is something I struggle with a lot. I really do miss those days of long, uninterrupted practice hours. My current priority as a stay-at-home mom prevents me from achieving anywhere near that much practice time. In fact, there are so many days when my head hits the pillow at night that I haven’t even touched the piano.

Ahh, the college days of practicing ALL THE TIME – I do admit that I miss it!
Lately I have been really wanting to change this! I love the piano, I love to practice, and I wanted to find some way to motivate myself and practice consistently (even if that meant only 30 minutes a day!). So, I am kind of a nerd but I ended up finding just the motivation needed for a dollar – I bought a new box of colored pencils, and downloaded a free iPod app, and apparently that was all that I needed! Let me explain:

1 – the colored pencils: In order to really sit down and practice and make some progress and find the joy in playing, for me at least, I really have to practice well. As I am learning a new piece, I write in all the fingerings, mark phrases and important voices, circle dynamic markings, etc. Hence the colored pencils 🙂 This approach works great for me and I love it because I see so much progress, and I am truly able to make some measurable progress in a short amount of time (even if a small child is yelling for Mommy in the background!).

2 – the iPod app: I am so grateful to Anne Crosby Gaudet’s post about this amazing free iPod app called Just Practice! It really helped me to organize my practicing and motivate myself to get it done daily. Granted, I am still not perfect and do miss some days, but there is just something about a calendar that says “Today’s progress: 0%” that really makes me want to sit down and get it done. I try to practice at night after my son goes to bed, or I find him a fun activity he can do in the room with me for half an hour or so. If I was really good with technology I would share a sound clip with you (which I recorded on Just Practice! – there is a place where you can record yourself playing different pieces and then listen back to them later) of me practicing Chopin’s Scherzo No. 2, with my son’s little voice in the background, begging me to “turn around and LOOK!!” at something. It kind of makes me smile, and realize the difference between my practicing now and back in college 🙂

Now tell me…..What inspires you to practice? What tools help you? Are you motivated by a practice chart? By a list? By a timer? By a desire to instill the value of hard work in your students? In your children? In your unborn child (who, in my case, is listening to me practice every day!)? What can you take from your own practicing to use in the lessons you teach your students? What do you learn about practicing that helps teach your students to practice?


Stay tuned for more on this topic this week…including a wonderful guest contributor!


Feel free to take this short survey, or leave a comment below. I’d love to hear your input!

Why Ear Training?

Lately as I have been teaching, I have found myself pondering the question, “What is so important about ear training, anyway?” I mean, I know it is important. I have done all sorts of sight singing courses, learned Solfege, taken crazy dictation tests where you have to write down all of the notes of a whole chord progression, learned to recognize how an interval sounds by whether it sounds like “Here comes the bride” or “Bali Hai” from South Pacific…but as I have had students working on ear training over the past couple of months I have found myself wondering…why is it so important?

When a piano student asks why in the world they need to know how a minor sixth or a major seventh sounds, what is your answer? Do you have a good answer for them? Is there a good answer?

This is what I have been thinking about lately. And the main conclusion I have come to is this: in order to become good pianists and musicians, we need to train our ears to recognize the music we play. I think that, too often, pianists especially are much too detached from the SOUND that is actually coming out of the instrument. I find that when I tell my student to play a piece or a section again, but this time to really listen to the sound, so many things are immediately ten times better. Phrases are more musical, dynamics are more contrasting, staccatos are shorter – there is so much more music in the music! Our ears need to be trained just as our fingers do! They need to be trained to have relative pitch, to notice notes and harmonies and sounds and colors in the music. When our ears are trained to be actively involved in the music-making process, that is when we are truly able to become great musicians.

Tell me what you think! Take a minute and take this brief survey about ear training:





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