Music Money

Music Money

I am posting some “music money” for those of you who want to try a reward system to give play money as a reward. At the end of a specified period, students can exchange the music money for various items. You can set the price of each item at whatever you think is best. This kind of reward system works best with young children. By the time they get to middle school they lose interest except for large size candy bars, which they seem to always like.

You can give music money for filling out assignment sheets, playing with a steady beat, sitting up straight, having a good hand position, weekly improvement, learning a scale, playing with good dynamics,  having a great attitude, and many other things. I like to give out rewards generously.

Remember, this is not real money, so when students buy items, they don’t need to be realistically priced. The price will depend on how generous you are with giving out the money and how long your contest runs.

Teachers differ in how they store the money students earn. Some keep it an envelop in their assignment book and some save it for the students in the music studio.

Before you start something like this, plan it out to the smallest detail.  Check on prices and items you will use in your store. If you plan early, you can find items children like on sale or at a dollar store.  You might find a business or even a parent who will donate items. One time I had a mother donate inexpensive nail polish that she had stocked up on and a Dad in marketing donated some fun items from his business.  You can find unused items at garage sales or a friend my have some new things she would like to get rid of. One time a store was selling pencil cases for 5 cents each so I picked some up.

Plan how you will announce it to your families and how long you will run the reward system. Plan on how you will store the music money and what you will do if it is lost or a student or parent gets upset.

Don’t just start passing out music money without a good plan! This is how we get in trouble!  By planning,  you will come up with creative ideas that work best in your studio. What works with one teacher may not work for you. You have to be comfortable with it. If you are a traveling teacher or have no storage space, this contest may not work for you.

I have used this kind of reward system off and on for at least 25 years. I tend to only do it every so often because it can tire me out. Other teachers find it very satisfying to do all year long, every year.

If the idea of giving a reward for something a student should be doing anyway rubs you the wrong way, then don’t get started with music money. You will feel put upon and resentful and the whole thing will be an ordeal and not a fun thing that adds a little interest in your studio. Don’t apologize or get defensive about the way you feel one way or the other.   All teachers are different and that is a good thing!

Right Hand, Left Hand

Right Hand, Left Hand

I tend to write things in a series, because as I’ve said before, I make this material for actual students. My new student loves the things I make for him and always looks forward to what I’ve made each week.

This “piece” is very practical. It is his first piece with both hands and it was so rewarding to see the look in his eyes when he realized he was going to use both hands!  I made Right Hand, Left Hand so he would be very successful on the first try, and the color coding did just that. I had prepared him well for stems going up and down. He uses My First Piano Adventures, and so he has done a lot of preparation in both the lesson and the writing book.

If you have a very young student or one with some learning differences, try this color method and I think you will find it to be very successful. I want to mention that the more we can do to help students be successful in piano, the more educated musicians we will have in the future. No, it’s not “dumbing down” teaching piano. It is opening the door to more students. Of course, we could teach the old way where most students drop out of piano, and only the most naturally gifted or extremely dedicated students take, but is that really our goal as teachers?

I am attending the National Piano Teachers Institute at SMU this week. I met one teacher from another state who knew me from my web site. She was a teacher who had suggested one of the ideas I posted. That was so cool!  I hope to post more about the workshop when I have some free time.  Let me just say that if you ever have a chance to see Dennis Alexander in person, please go!

What the Robin Said for beginners

What the Robin Said to the Worm

If your little student never mixes up his 2nd and 4th fingers on at least one hand, you have a very special preschooler. I find that about 100% of my preschoolers have trouble with the 2nd and 4th finger, but most of them eventually get it right. I also get my 2nd and 4th fingers mixed up so I certainly can understand the problems a pre-school child might have. In fact, when I first printed this I noticed that I had reversed those fingers on the little keyboard and I had to do it over again. Because of this reversal problem, I added little blocks to write in finger numbers. If your student is old enough, she can write it in herself. If will also be fine and save some time to discuss it and play various finger games, but you write it in for the student. It depends on the student.

If this is the first time you have seen this kind of music notation, take a look at my Fourth of July blog posting from  a few days ago. There I explain how to teach this kind of graphic. One other thing, be sure to encourage students to drop into the keys. They often have trouble doing that on the black keys, but don’t dwell on it.

I have posted several quick worksheets to help students with finger numbers if they continue to have trouble, even after all the activities in their method book.  Take a look at Colorful Fingers and Writing Finger Numbers if they need extra help.

To print this sheet, click on the title below the picture above. Do not click on the picture because there is no link there.  This will take you to my website where you click “preview” to print out a color PDF copy. Be sure to set your printer on landscape.

Fourth of July for beginners

Fourth of July

I have a preschool beginning student who is very enthused about taking piano. He’s only had a couple of lessons,  but each week I write  an easy little piece for him to play and he really likes them. We put them in a 3-ring binder that has a cute cover with his name on it that I made and printed out for him.  I print these  on 32 pound paper so they will hold up well.

This week I’m giving him this Fourth of July chant. It’s kind of hard to sing since the melody note is just a repeating E flat. If you are familiar with the beginning of the newer method books, this is the same kind of thing.  Teach your student to chant or sing the words in the correct rhythm keeping a steady beat.  Have your student “play” and chant on his lap until he memorizes the words before he tries to play it.  I hope the American flags will help the students’ eyes  track the finger numbers getting higher on the page.

If you don’t understand this page, here is how it works. The student plays right hand fingers 2 and 3 together on the black keys starting on D flat and E flat going up 3 octaves. The rhythm is 3 quarter notes and a dotted half note and repeats. At the end the student can improvise on the black keys while you play some sort of ostinato in the bass.

Triple meter can be challenging for young students. The more they beat these rhythms out on their knees or the fall board, the better they will be down the road. For those of you who may wonder why teach young children, the answer for me is that when they get older they have no rhythm problems, among other benefits.

One thing I wanted to do was encourage my student to improvise at the end. I don’t know if he’s ever seen fireworks, but I hope he has so we can play some shimmery sounds on the black keys. Of course, being a boy he might want to go down to the bass keys and play booms and crashes, and that’s ok, too. You never know who will turn out to be a composer!

Photo Bookmarks

   Photo Music Bookmarks

This post is for those of us who love crafts!

At a camp once we made bookmarks and added pictures of the children. Now days everyone can take a picture and print it out almost instantly on their computer. Students love to have pictures taken and this might be a fun item to send home at the end of camp.

Print the PDF on card stock. Do not laminate at this point.  Cut out inside the frame along the straight red border with an Exacto knife. It works better to start at each edge of each side and cut to the middle. If it looks a little rough, you can clean it up with small scissors. In fact, you might be able to cut the inside with scissors.

After the inside is cut, you might  see some  white of the card stock,  so take a red Sharpie and color the white edges. Mine matched the red ink almost perfectly. Then put your photo behind the opening and move it around until you get the best view. Trim the photo larger than the opening and glue. Sign and date the back. Now you are ready to laminate or cover it with clear adhesive paper. Remember, most home printers use ink that will run when wet, so it is important to laminate them in some way. In the summer, perspiration on your student’s hands are enough to smear the ink,  and you don’t want them messed up before they get home!

If you want to get fancy, before you laminate make a backing for your bookmark with another piece of white paper and glue it to the back.  Punch a hole at the top and tie a ribbon at the top. A tassel would be nice, but they are hard to find unless you order them on the internet.

Review: American Popular Piano

Once upon a time about 250 years ago there was a young boy named Wolfgang who took music lessons with his father. To keep the young squirmy boy interested, his papa tempted him with a steady diet of inspiring music by such top-notch composers as Monterverdi, Palistrina, Byrd, and Gibbons. To make it a little more educational he threw in some 500-year-old plain chant. Little Mozart resisted and begged to play some popular music. Like a lot of young people of his time, he was especially fond of minuets. And his father, wanting to be up to date, obliged the little boy and said he could play some popular music, but only in the summer and only if he learned his other, real music, first.

Of course I just made this up. Leopold Mozart wrote pieces in the contemporary style of the time for his young son. So why do some musicians today only regard music by long dead composers as the only valid music to teach piano students?

Why not have a carefully sequenced method series that uses the music styles of today? Why not seriously teach these styles with a series that starts at the beginning and moves gradually up to the early advanced level? Why not offer this in addition to classical music?

Christopher Norton and Scott McBride Smith, very well known in the field of piano pedagogy, have written a series that does just that. Recently I had an opportunity to hear this series presented in depth. I bought the books and played through all the pieces. I was very impressed with the quality of the music. Christopher Norton has a long history of writing well-composed music in popular styles.  The music is carefully graded to progress gradually. It is meticulously edited by Scott McBride Smith with all the musical elements we want our students to learn. All popular styles are represented. I love the covers, which will work for any age. There are no “popular” hits in these books. All of the music is specifically composed for the piano in popular styles students are used to hearing.

There are 9 levels complete with Repertoire, Etude, Technic, and Skills books. The books can be also be used as a supplement to your regular method. Inside the Repertoire books, there is a CD of backing tracks for the Repertoire and Improvisation Edude books. There is a practice and performance tempo track and all the tracks are carefully listed on the back cover.  I have really playing along with the CDs! This summer I hope to work on improving my improvisation skills. I improvise a lot, but always on my own. These CDs will allow me to improvise within a group. I also like the Glossary at the end of the Repertoire book. You might need to study up on all the different popular styles so you can have more fun teaching them.  

I would like to point out this is not a beginning method book in the traditional sense. Students should be reading notes around middle C before starting the Primer book. If you’re one of those teachers who just has to use a specific primer book or you’ll fall off the bench, your piano will burst into flames, and your students will never get to the conservatory, you can start the students the way you usually do and then move into this series.

Let’s make it our goal to give students quality music in today’s styles as well as the great classics. Check out the web site at http://nvmusicgroup.com/NVWeb/Home.htmlwhere you can view a discussion of these books. The videos will probably answer all your questions. American Popular Piano is published by Novus Via Music Group and distributed by Hal Leonard.

Fourth of July Composing Activity

Fourth of July Composing Activity

If you have summer students or a summer music camp, you might be interested in this Fourth of July composing activity. This activity may take too long to do in a lesson, so students can do some at home, or you can work on it for several weeks in the lesson. 

As an introduction ask the students what instrument they would like to play in a marching band. Ask what is the difference in a band and an orchestra? Often children have never thought of that.

First learn the rhythm by saying and tapping the words. Find the syncopation and circle it if necessary. For younger students you may want to cross through the tied notes. Ask if they know why there are two notes over the word “band”.

Students can write their music in any key; this does not have to be in middle C position.  Beginning composers can write just a melody and alternate using the right and left hand on each staff system. Older students will want to write a melody with harmony. If they know tonic and dominate chords, even the 2- note variety, they will want to use them. Encourage all students to play a drum pattern in 5ths as an introduction. They can also improvise a coda using the same rhythm with the drum getting softer as the band marches away in the distance. It might be old hat to us, but not to the student. Elementary children think very concretely.

Remember good composing techniques such as repetition or sequence.  I have already built in rhythm repetition. There is nothing wrong with some lines being the same.  It is usually safe to use some sort of question and answer form. Often I will tell them to repeat one line and we decide that before we start to compose. This piece has the same rhythm in the first and last line. Show students how the melody can be the same except for the last few notes. The first line can end on the dominant and the last line on the tonic.  It is OK to set some limits, like only use steps and repeats, or steps, skips and repeats.  This actually helps the students.

Rhythm Memory Game

Rhythm Memory Game

I am back from the TMTA convention and I have a lot of new ideas and music reviews to post. I’ll try to do that as I have time, but let me just say that I am very excited about some of new music I heard as well as new ideas for composing and improvising with our students. The Texas convention is 4 days long and it is huge because we are such a big state. 

I went to as many sessions as possible and one I went to was on teaching group lessons. Our presenter was Dr. Lesley Sisterhen McAllister and she had some great ideas for group lessons. Even if we teach private lessons, most of the teachers who read this blog also have groups at some point. One game she mentioned seemed like something my students would enjoy.  It is a memory game and she kindly gave me permission to post it here. I don’t know if I made it exactly like she makes hers, but here is my version for beginning students who have at least learned the basic notes and rests. There are no 8th notes so it can be played with young students.  

I made a PDF with 2 pages. You need to have Adobe Reader installed on your computer to print it.  Using sturdy card stock, print one side; turn your paper over and print the other side.  The program will allow you to specify which page you want to print. To print, click here on Rhythm Memory Game and when it opens, click “preview” and you can print it to enjoy with your students. Laminate it and cut on the dotted lines.

In case you do not know how to play Memory, here are the directions. Arrange the cards with the notes and numbers face down in a 4 X 4 grid. The object of the game is to match a note to its rhythm value in 4-4 meter. The first player turns over two cards. If the note and rhythm match he keeps the cards and plays again. If not, it is the other person’s turn. Play continues until all the cards are gone. The winner is the player with the most cards.

I think this will work in a private lesson, too, with the student either playing the game with you or alone. Personally I’m not very good with this type of  game but I think it is good to help with visual memory. I think I’ll practice before I play it with my students!

I always have teachers ask me how I make the graphics.  I drew these in PhotoShop using 3 layers. The hard part was getting the back and front pages lined up correctly.

Fathers Day Song

Father’s Day is almost here so I’m posting this Father’s Day Song again in case you would like to use it with your summer students and didn’t see it the first time around. This is a good activity to do at a lesson this time of the year,  depending on the age of the student and the time you have. Your student might be able to think of some words to go with the rhythm. I wonder how many students can figure out that quarter, quarter, half is the rhythm to I Love You. To speed things up, you can play some ideas, let the student decide, and you write it in for your student. To print, click on Father’s Day Song and when you get to my web site, click preview. If you have Adobe Reader on your computer you will be able to print it out.

Complementary Sheet Music Offer

Rebecca over at Piano Teachers Retreat recently posted that Elijah Brossenbroek is offering a copy of his piece A Song of Simplicity if we go to his web site and send him an email requesting it. Rebecca always has interesting things on her blog, which is why she is a link on my blog roll. I don’t know how she keeps up with everything!

I always love to hear piano music by new composers so I went to Elijah’s site. You can read about him and listen to his piano music here.  He sent me a copy of his piece almost immediately and gave his permission to blog about it. It’s a lovely 5 page piece at about the late intermediate level with quick broken chords, lots of pedal, rubato,  and needs attention to  dynamic expression. The boys and young men in your studio will be interested to learn Elijah spent 5 years in the Marine Corp. I can guarantee that your teen students will love working on it this summer! Be sure to show them his web site and let them listen to some of his other music they can download to their m3 players. You can also show them several YouTube sites to watch and listen to it.

 Point out the hidden melody in the broken chords. Let them follow the music on the web and notice how the dynamic changes really make this piece.  You can also sneak in some theory as you work out some of the chord inversions, but I wouldn’t do much of that, just enough to show the reason we learn theory!  If you have potential young composers, this might encourage them to sit down at the piano and try their hand at it. If you would like to download A Song of Simplicity, go to his web site and email him.

My father was in the Marine Corp in WW 2 and was injured on Iwo Jima, the island with the famous picture of the Marines raising the flag. He loved music and was always very encouraging of my musical efforts. He would be thrilled to listen to Elijah’s music if he was here. With Father’s Day just around the corner, I thought I’d mention that.

Labels With Treble and Bass Staves

It has taken me a while to post these labels with bass and treble staves because of the size problem. They had to be big enough for students to read, yet small enough to print out on the same size label paper that I made for the keyboard labels. This is the final result. They are made for Avery Address Label #8160 and are 1″ x  2 5/8″. That’s not very space to put a staff!  

 Before you print them on your label paper, print them on regular paper and hold them up  under the label at a window with  strong sunlight to see if they line up correctly. When you get to my web site, click *preview* to print them out. If you print these out and they don’t fit, let me know and enough teachers have trouble, I’ll tweak them.

Standard Size Staff Paper

This is the size staff paper I use when I compose at the piano. Your older students will prefer it to the 8 stave paper I posted yesterday. The left margin is wider so students can put it in a binder.

Staff Paper with 8 Staves

I’ve posted some  staff paper for my younger students that is big enough for their small hands but not too big for a grand staff. I left a little extra room at the top for a title.  As with all of my material, click preview to print.

Keyboard Labels to Write a Full One Octave Scale

Two Octave Keyboard Labels

I really have enjoyed using the keyboard pentascale labels I made a a few weeks ago. However, some of my readers  asked if I had thought about making two octave labels so they  could write out full scales. Click here to get to my website and then click preview to print.

At first I was afraid they would be too small for the size label I have, but after trying it out,  I think they are big enough to at least put dots on the keys. You might not be able to write in finger numbers. If you don’t want to buy 1″ X 2 5/8″ address labels, you can cut them out and tape them on your student’s assignment books. That is what I did when I first tried them out.

There is a wonderful 3M Scotch™ brand tape that is removable. It’s rather hard to find, and more expensive than regular tape, but I always keep some on hand. You can tape one of these little keyboards on their assignment book and the next week remove it and place it on a new page. If you do this, you won’t have to buy labels, and the tape is a lot less expesive than buying adress labels. The tape works like those little yellow sticky notes that teachers love so much. It is sold in either a roll that you have to put in your own dispenser, or sometimes I find it in a plastic dispenser like regular Scotch™ tape. I think I usually buy it at craft stores, and when I do I stock up. It lasts me a long time, because after all, you can move things around and use them over and over!

I made the octave labels in brighter colors than the pentascale labels to help from getting mixed up.  The pentascale labels can be found here.  If you have any questions about how to print out these lables, contact me!

One Minute Club

One Minute Club Cards

I’ve mentioned before that I owe the esteemed pedagogue Jane Bastien a big favor, because she is the teacher who gave me the idea for the One Minute Club that I have been doing in my studio for years. If my students can say and play grand staff flash cards  in one minute or less, they become a “member”. The student who is the fastest is the overall winner and I give some sort of prize. This year it was a gift card to an ice cream parlor. To allow more winners, once a student has won, he or she never has to do it again, so someone else gets to win. The winner is always a high school student because at this age their motor skills are highly developed.  This year a student was able to say and play all the notes on the grand staff in 17 seconds. That’s pretty fast! I only spend about 6 weeks of the year on this activity because otherwise it becomes predictable drudgery and isn’t fun.

Elementary children have to really work to be able to get their time under a minute. I keep a yearly record and sometimes it takes several years, so once they can do it they are very proud of themselves. I make a business size card that I give to the elementary students and in the little star-burst on the right side of the card I put in the number of years they have received it. No one seems to mind that it is always a high school student who wins. It gives the young students something to look forward to, and adds a little hero worship to my studio. 

 One year a very young student was able to be a member and a few weeks later he told me he got a wallet just so he could put his card in it. I make a different card each year and I think they enjoy seeing what the card will look like each year. I tell them the cards are “collectible”. This year I used a drawing of a piano that my daughter painted for me. 

My cards are made to be printed on Avery Business Cards #5371, or a template that size.  However, if you have one of the easy to use graphic programs such as Print Shop or Publisher you can make your own cards. You can even make them in Word because there is a business card template built into the program.  You can download cute clip art from the web. If you don’t have a color printer, you can make it in black and white and use colored card stock to print the card. Write me if you need some help making your own.

I don’t have time here to go into how I prepare students to learn their notes, but this activity is not the only thing I do, especially with young students and beginners. I use all kinds of activities to get students to this point, including the games and activities I’ve posted as well as a lot of other activities. That is one reason we wait to do the One Minute Club at the end of the spring semester. What I have found over the years is that if students know the names of the notes and where they are located on the keyboard, they do better in piano lessons. While I teach by intervals and I think that is very important,  students who know their notes quickly learn their music faster and enjoy piano more, especially when they are no longer in 5-finger positions.

By the time they are teens they don’t really care about getting this card, so don’t bother to make one for this age group. They do, however, enjoy trying to beat the other high school students in how fast they can play the notes!

Increasing Tuition

 Every teacher has to increase tuition at some point. If not, we would still be charging $2.50 a lesson like I did when I first started teaching. If you are a new teacher, have you given any thought to how you plan to raise your tuition when the time comes? Here is an example of what not to write:

 Parents, as you know my husband lost his second job when he fell off the bull at the rodeo last month. With the economy like it is, this has caused a hardship to our family, especially since Grandpa is missing again and not sending checks for Judy’s kick boxing lessons. Plus, Johnny has been selected for the select polo team and while we’re excited, it’s not cheap!!! So please, if you don’t mind, be sure to give me $5.00 extra in lesson money starting next week. I know it’s going to be a hardship for you, but my husband said if I don’t bring in some extra money soon, I’ll have to give up my iphone and go back to greeting at Walmart. Thanks!!!    –Suzie

The above letter is a humorous attempt to break  every rule of professional business communication. If you want to be taken seriously as a professional piano instructor, get in the habit of using the word “tuition”. When it is time to raise your rates, do it in a business-like manner. Even with the cost of postage going up, send your letter through the mail.  Don’t hand it to the student or the big sister because it will probably never reach its destination. Email is fine for notices and reminders, but a tuition increase is one of the few things that  should be snail mailed.

Here are some more pointers.

Keep your letter short and to the point.  You should not give a reason to raise your rates, even “the current economy”.  Keep your personal life out of your business.  Don’t be apologetic; this is your business.  Give parents plenty of notice and do not make a sudden decision to raise rates at the last minute. Never give more information than is needed. If you teach by semesters, then it is best to inform parents that tuition will raise the next semester, or the next fall.

This is an example of a professional letter to increase piano tuition. 

Dear Parents,

 Effective September 1, 20– monthly tuition will be $xx.00 or $xx.00 per semester for 45-minute lessons.

 Monthly tuition for 30 minute lessons will be $xx.00 or $xx.00 per semester.

 Sincerely,

Piano Teacher

ComposeCreate-Wendy’s site

Lately there has been a lot of talk on the web by piano teachers  about teaching our students how to compose. I have  posted a lot of activities for beginning students to compose, and I hope this has helped to get  the ball rolling.  But often teachers need more than just an activity. Wendy Stevens  is a very accomplished composer who has a blog to help with music composition. I’ve had a link to her site for quite a while over in my blog roll,  and recently she has been posting some great ideas about how to encourage our students to compose. If you click here, you will go to her post “10 ways to encourage composition in your studio”.

Please let me know how your composition efforts have turned out. I would love to post some student compositions here on my blog. If you have  student composition your student would like to share, send it along or even part of it along. I think a lot of teachers would feel better about teaching composition if they could see some examples of at least parts of some compositions! I can use or not use the name of your student, depending on your preferences. Even just a few measure would be helpful.

Keyboard Labels

 

The other day I was drawing a tiny keyboard on my younger student’s assignment book and I had her draw  dots on the correct keys. As we worked together looking for whole and half steps,  I casually said that my drawing was kind of sloppy, and it would be a lot easier to read and more fun if I had some keyboard stickers. So I sat down at my computer and designed some!  Actually they were easy to make because I’ve been designing my own labels for years and I drew the keyboard about 10 years ago.  You probably recognize it from my pre-reading solos and my picture scales! However, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this, so for your whole and half step pleasure, I’m offering  Keyboard Labels.  Please let me know what you think!

Now all I have to do is peal one off and stick it in my student’s assignment book. This will give students a  handy reference,  plus it will encourage them to look in their assignment book.  

I used Avery White Address labels, product number 8160. I printed my labels directly from the PDF I’m posting here and my graphic fitted on the labels  perfectly, so I hope you have the same luck. In case you can’t find this particular Avery product, the label  size is 1″  x  2  5/8″ and there are 30 labels on each page. Before you print on your label sheet, try printing on a regular sheet of paper and hold it up to light to see if it aligns with your particular labels. I’m posting a picture of one of the sample ones I made.   Your copy will not have the green border because it didn’t seem necessary.

Father’s Day Composing Activity

I didn’t want to leave off Dad, so I wrote a Father’s Day composing activity.  Unless you have real young students, by this time of the year students are now reading notes. However, this piece is a little challenging to students who have just started reading music.  There are several skips which you will need to circle and practice in the air. You will notice that I put the RH thumb on D and not middle C.  That is because I like to use other positions besides  middle C. I think it is easier on the bridge of the hand, and in the long run, helps music reading by intervals.  

This piece is written in the C pentatonic scale. Here is a suggested way to teach this activity. Step one is for beginning  or  problem readers. Skip this step if your student can sight read this section. 

1. Learn the 8 measures that are already composed by tapping the rhythm on the fall board while singing the words. Alternate between singing the words and your favorite way to count the rhythm. Find and circle the skips with a marker. Point out and draw a square around the leap of a 4th in measure 5 with another marker color.  If they haven’t learned about 4ths, call it a leap.  Play measure 6  in the air.  Have the student play one hand while you play the other. Switch sides.  On the fall board tap the rhythm using the correct hands for each staff.  When the student is ready, play both hands.

2. Tap the rhythm of the composing section. Discuss some possible words that will go with the rhythm. If your student has some ideas, write them in. If the student comes up with a different rhythm, change the rhythm notes I wrote above the staff.  

3. On another staff such as a white board or a large staff , show the 5 notes in this piece. Have your student play these notes and only use them in their composition.  Unless they change hand positions, the last note should be  bass clef middle C.

4. Going measure by measure, write in the notes on the staff. The student should play the previous measure before writing a new one so it makes musical sense. When finished, play the new section several times and adjust if necessary.

Sometimes students don’t like to follow suggestions and want to write notes that make no musical sense. There are several reasons for this such as a power play, silliness, a contrary nature, or  genuine musical curiosity.  I stay flexible and if I see a battle coming, I let them write whatever they want, as long as they can play it. Don’t engage your student in an attention seeking power play.  You know what kind of student I am talking about!

Music Notation Resources

When your students start to compose music on their own, they will need a reference book to answer  tricky questions such as in a 3/4 meter measure with one quarter note, do you use 2 quarter rests or one half rest.   Students need to learn the importance of notating music in the conventional way so that it is easy for the music reader. The book I recommend is Essential Dictionary of Music Notation by Tom Gerou and Linda Lusk, published by Alfred in 1996. It  is a very tiny paperback, about 4″ by 5″ in size, full of illustrations and examples. It also has a very tiny price, $6.95,  making it  affordable for students.  This is really an excellent book, as good or better than some of the more expensive textbooks I have seen, especially for writing piano music.

 

 

 However there is a new book on the block,  Essentials of Music Notation. This book has a similar title and is by the same authors, Tom Gerou and Linda Lusk, and is also published by Alfred. I expect there is going to be some confusion when I suggest one of these books to students and teachers. Essentials of Music Notation is very new, published in March 2009. It is a larger 80 page paperback, 9″ by 12″, and is more comprehensive. Everything you need to know about music notation is in the book and it is still a very affordable $11.95. This new book has an interesting format, two columns on a page, and is also full of  excellent illustrations and examples.  It is quite easy to understand and easy to look up questions, even for a beginning composer. I highly recommend this book to teachers and students who want or need a book with more depth than the Dictionary of Music Notation above.  You really can’t go wrong with either of them. If you want to look inside the book,  do a search in Amazon and you can see that it will answer all your music notation questions.  As soon as I saw it was available, I added it to my collection. Also, since it is larger, maybe it won’t get lost on my desk!

 

Thanks to Alfred Publishing for making these books  available at such a reasonable price!