Making a Keyboard

This is a picture of one of my students putting together the keyboard I made that you can cut out. I printed it out on card-stock and laminated it with “Clear Adhesive Book Cover Roll” that I bought at Office Depot. I asked my student to put it together while I was teaching his sister. He had to run over to the piano several times to see how to do it. He thought he could do it without looking at the piano, but the fact that he couldn’t  proved to me that students often don’t really know their way around a keyboard. No wonder it takes them a while to learn the names of the keys.  We can never assume they know as much as we think they do. You can find this keyboard puzzle on my blog and website.

Spybot

This is another piece that is on my website and I’m just now moving it here. My techie-type family was talking about spybots on the web and I thought it was such a cute name, I just had to write a song about it. That tells you something about the difference in musicians and engineers! I wrote this for one of my boy students who is always enthusiastic about anything written for him. The eyes of the spybot were blank and when he came back the next week he had put in pupils, so I changed my art. I see they are a little crooked! Oh well, it’s so hard being a composer and an artist… OK, I admit I’m not much of either, but it’s free!

 Musically this piece has a very easy first section. The B section is harder and takes some ability to play 8th notes quickly. I know it’s not going to be as much fun without the art. You can download the music to Spybot here. Just click on preview.