Ask a Composer Questions

At Compose/Create, a blog I read a lot, the wonderful piano composer Kevin Costely is being  featured.  There is a lot of biographical information about Dr. Costley, an interview with him,  and a review of some of his pieces.

This is a great way for your students to connect with a composer. My students have submitted a lot of questions for Dr. Costley. It has given us a chance to talk a little about composing and to get to know my students better.

One of my students’ favorite is Mighty Eagle. You can actually listen to Mighty Eagle at the FJH Website. Click here and scroll down the page to find Mighty Eagle. There you can see the link to listen to it. It is a dramatic piece that really catches the imagination and makes students sound very impressive! Both boys and girls like it, especially middle school age students.  

You have to get your questions in by Oct. 6, so start asking your students today. There are so many resources available to us as teachers. If Dr. Costley and Wendy are willing to spend some time making this available, lets support their efforts.  All of our composers are so busy, it is hard to find time to feature this kind of direct involvement.

Win a set of Wendy’s new hymn books

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you might have read about my review of Wendy’s new series of traditional hymns. The music is really nice. Hal Leonard put a few selections on the promotional CD they just out to music teachers.

Well, Wendy is running a contest to give away all 3 books, worth almost $30.00.  If you post a comment on her blog you will be entered to win all three books. You can also blog or tweet about it and you will be entered again. Go to her website ComposeCreate to enter. 

If you have a blog, write about it and you will be entered, too. Hurry, the contest ends midnight, Sept. 18th.

If you win, let me know!

Some organizing help

 

If you read this blog often, you know I am a big fan of Wendy Stevens, who composes, teaches, and maintains the website ComposeCreate.com  I have reviewed several of her books and pieces.

Well, Wendy likes to use the material that I post here as well as make her own graphics and worksheets. The  reason I mention them is because Wendy sent me some pictures of how she has organized the fish cards I’ve been posting. She gave me the great idea to put the cards in groups, so we can easily use just the ones we need with each student. That will save me a lot of time sorting through all the cards to pull out the ones I need. The students who might enjoy this game the most are probably too young to know all the notes, anyway. She put them in zip lock baggies and them made nice size labels with instructions. Check out her website if you are looking for more cute games, too. Go to the tab for Wendy’s Piano Studio and there will be a menu of her game ideas with pictures,  flash cards you can print out, and all kinds of teaching things.

Composing articles by Wendy

Rhythm Memory Game

If you want to read about some great ideas and ways to get your students composing, go to Wendy’s site and read up about composing with students.  Not only is she a wonderful composer, but she actually does everything she writes about so you know they are student tested and you can actually use her ideas with your students.  She also writes in a way that is easy to understand, which I don’t always seem to be able to do!

She has many blog posts on how to teach composition to students, including questions from her workshops. If  you are not quite sure about how to incorporate composition into an already busy lesson, use some of the tips she posts.

The picture in my post today is one of my young students learning by playing a game. When you make a game of something, students really learn and remember!

Piano lessons “just for fun” continued

My Practice Incentive

In my last post I wrote about parents who want their children to take piano “just for fun.” While I agree that most parents, including me, want piano to be fun, there are some downfalls in that attitude.

1. Parents may think it is not necessary to make a child practice if piano is just taken for fun.
2. Most children will not practice without parental oversight.
3. When students don’t practice, piano lessons can become unbearable and definitely not fun.
4. If lessons aren’t fun because the child hasn’t practiced, piano isn’t fun and the child begs to quit.

Of course, all potential piano parents aren’t this way. Most parents know the value of practice and will do their best to help the child find practice time. But occasionally I run into a parent who says they don’t really care about making progress, they just want piano to be fun.

Educate the Parents

First, a teacher must educate the parents at the interview in ways that the parents can understand and relate to. From the very beginning we should pleasantly remind parents  they will have the responsibility to make sure their child practices. If they are not ready for that responsibility, then maybe it is not the right time to start piano. The teacher must carefully explain that taking piano will not be fun if the child does not practice.

The teacher needs to explain that children will not practice piano on their own and it is very unrealistic to expect that from anyone under 13 year old for extended periods of time.

You can explain that in school music programs such as band, students are graded on their practice. That is a powerful incentive and will motivate many students to practice on their own. However, private piano is not a school subject and it will be put  behind everything else if the parents do not make it a priority. Parents can relate to this because they can remember the powerful incentive grades hold over students.

Teachers need to remind the parents how uncomfortable unprepared lessons can be in a way the parents understand.

“What if your child is given a part in a movie with her favorite star. She is so excited! This is going to be so much fun. She only has to learn her lines for the day. Of course you will sit down and help her go over her lines. When the big day comes she is ready and does a great job. She loves acting!”

“But what if she doesn’t learn her lines. Things are uncomfortable, she flounders around, and she is terribly embarrassed. The fun day turns out to be miserable. Your child tells you she never wants to be an actor. It’s not fun.”

If you explain it that way, maybe your parents will not want to put their child in an unprepared lesson week after week.  While this seems obvious to us, many parents never think of how the child feels when she can’t do anything in her lesson. There is nothing fun about it.

There are other things you can go over with the parents in an interview. I have read about famous pianists who, to this day, thank their parents for making sure they practiced daily.  Some parents are surprised to find out that many great pianists also played soccer and other activities and didn’t always want to practice. Many say they wanted to do anything but practice until years later when they became serious about music.

I have heard parents say that practicing is between the teacher and the student and they are not going to get involved. Parents need to be told that the piano teacher has no control on getting the child to practice and even short practice sessions are better than none.  

Finally, the teacher should mention  the studies that show the benefits of early musical training. To make the most of these benefits, the child should be making progress and learning new things. If a child does not practice she will not make progress, she will not have fun, and she will be another one of the children who started piano for a while and quit. The benefits of piano study assume that the child is learning new things and new ways of thinking.

Teachers have to be sympathetic with trying to fit practice into a busy schedule, but that is another topic entirely.

Piano teachers can help the parents understand that piano will be fun if the student is prepared and moving along in a progressive fashion. If we can get the message across in a positive, friendly and enthusiastic manner before the first lesson, we will go a long way in keeping more students in piano and bringing more musical joy to the families in our community.

Can a child take piano just for fun…and really learn to read music?

Mouse Notes by Lauren

Sometimes we hear parents say that they don’t mind if their child does not progress much in piano. They just want her to be exposed to music and have fun.

Those are worthy goals. Nowadays, with school districts cutting back or watering down music programs and with a large number of children being home schooled, parents see a real need for a good fundamental music education program for their children so they will learn to enjoy music.

When my own children took piano, if pressed, I would have to agree that I wanted my children to be exposed to music and to have fun.

So what is the hidden negative of that train of thought?

 It is pretty obvious to piano teachers. With that attitude, parents often do not find the time in the day for a quality practice session, no matter how short that session may be. Because practice sometimes is not fun, and if getting the child to the piano is not fun, then piano is not fun, so no practice occurs. Then the child goes to the lesson unprepared and the lesson is painful, embarrassing, and definitely not fun.

The child usually starts off loving piano. From the child’s point of view, beginning lessons ARE  fun. The pieces are easy, there are games, fun improvisation activities, composing, incentive programs, and a loving adult, the piano teacher, who devotes an entire 30 to 45 minutes to you and you alone. What else can a child do with such potential rewards?

This lasts about a month and then reality sets in. There are things to remember, pesky things that the teacher keeps asking.

What are whole notes, what is the different in a whole rest and a half rest, how do I remember the names off all those notes, they all look the same to me. Why do I keep playing finger 2 for 4? Why is the thumb a finger? Do other kids learn all these words? Why can’t I? I must be dumb. Why does the teacher keep asking me to count out load while I play? That is so embarrassing. She wants me to play and sing. I CAN’T do that. I would if I could. It’s hard and I can’t do it, yet she keeps making me. I’m frustrated. This is NOT fun. Why did I think piano would be fun. Mom said it would be fun.

The child has a great ability to put piano out of their mind for a week. Then lesson day comes and the child suddenly realizes how uncomfortable she is going to be, sitting there not being able to play anything and making all kinds of terrible mistakes.

“This is worse than I thought”, the child thinks.

Yet, week after week the same uncomfortable thing occurs because the child is not old enough to have the emotional intelligence to plan ahead for the lesson. If the child would spend a short time a day at the piano, he would gradually learn to do all the hard things. But once he gets behind, just like in Math class, every difficult thing is compounded and soon the child can’t do anything. At least in the child’s mind he can’t do anything. And the teacher keeps turning the page and the pieces keep getting harder and harder. Or else, the page never gets turned and the child is on the same piece for 6 weeks.

“I hate this song“, the child thinks.

And Mom is too busy working, car pooling, taking children to activities, doing homework, and all the other things in life, that piano practice does not happen. Besides, who wants their child to sit at the piano and fuss and cry?

Then lesson day occurs and the child gets THE LECTURE from the teacher to practice, and THE LECTURE from Mom in the car. (I’ve given a few car lectures in my day and I’m not proud of that.)

“This is not fun, this is not fun“,  the child keeps thinking.

 “I want to quit.”

 To be continued.

Designing Printed Material for Piano Studios, Part 3

In a previous post I left you with a poorly designed flyer for group lessons. In this post you can see the same flyer with an extreme make-over. Like the first one,  this was quickly made using Word and  clip art from Microsoft that is freely available from the Internet to use for non-commercial purposes.   While I am blessed to have a Wacom tablet and the full versions of Photoshop and Finale, for the purpose of this blog I  limited my resources to Word and the free art from Microsoft. If all you have on your computer is Word, with a little experience you can design this, too.   

This particular type of handout can be difficult because there is a lot of information you need to present and the it can quickly become too busy, like my bad example below. 

Now I’m going to tell you how I corrected it. See the tiny piano in the upper LH corner? I deleted all the clip art except this piano.  Large clip art, if it is good quality, makes more of a statement so I enlarged the piano and deleted the background.  It looked cleaner, but was still too busy. An old trick in Word is to cover what you don’t want with a white rectangle, so I covered the  extra notes around the piano. I wanted to remind the students to bring their music, but I didn’t want it in a cheesy frame like my bad example, so I chose a font that matched the style of the art and made it part of the art, so to speak.

I used the same font for Group Lessons, made it the same shade of blue as in the piano.  It still looked plain, so I used Word-Art and added a small black shadow to bring out the strong black in the piano.

I wanted to  kept the excitement of refreshments, games, and prizes, so I put it at the bottom using red text to match the red in the piano, and aligned it with the rest of the graphic. You have to use text boxes in Word for this sort of thing. In fact, all the text except for the Word-Art heading are in text boxes.   I organized the dates so parents could see it right away. I added a yellow background and tried to match the yellow in the piano. I did not use the default yellow, but I chose a custom color. Details like that can make a difference.

For the dates and name of the studio I used black as a contrast and a sans serif font that I hope is a contrast to the other font and easy to read.

When I start to align things, another old trick is to draw a line with the line tool and then delete it when you are finished.  Word has a grid you can use if you need it and you can enlarge up to 500% to get a really good look at what you have done.

I was finished, but something didn’t look right. It still needed something so I went back to the Internet and got the little green splat of blue notes. I think it matches the style of the piano, it has some blue, and the green is just a little pop of color.  Note how it hangs over the yellow block?  This adds interest and gives some motion to the graphic. 

Yesterday I told you not to copy art from web sites because it is probably copyrighted. I know people do it all the time, but people copy music, too, and that’s not right. But Microsoft’s website has thousands of graphics free of charge.  http://office.microsoft.com/  Click on clip art in your Word document and  you will be directed to this site.  Type in a search word, save it in your clip board, and paste it into your document.  This site has  well made vector clip art that will look good printed at any size. It will not be pixelated and grainy if you print it on an average home  printer.  But that’s not all. Once you insert the graphic in your document, you can edit it some, mostly by changing colors and deleting parts of the art. Here are some examples. The top left graphic is the original and in the other examples I simply changed the color using the art tool bar in Word or selected something and deleted it.

There are other sources on the web to get  free art, so search around. There is usually a disclaimer, such as you cannot use the art commercially. If you plan to sell what you make, you will not be able to use free clip art in most cases, including Microsoft’s clip art and art from graphic programs you buy. If in doubt, ask permission. Some sites pay hundreds of dollars for their graphics such as a custom drawn piano, and do not take it lightly if they see it on your web site, even if you are giving it away. Photos are copyrighted, too, and professionals buy stock photos to use. If someone else makes your web site, make sure they are using legal art. 

You might decide to buy a graphics program rather than try to make something up from scratch in Word. Other Microsoft programs include Power Point, which can do adequate  graphic presentations and Publisher, which is inexpensive and has a lot of templates. Templates are really good if you have no design experience or inclination. Neither program has much clip art, but you can get it from the Microsoft site I mentioned previously.

Other graphic programs for home use have wonderful templates to help you out. Print Shop is an old favorite that I first started using in the 80’s. I like it  because it is very teacher and child oriented and easy for the beginner to learn.  There are some great, tasteful templates for certificates, business cards, invitations, and just about anything printed you can think of.  The clip art is fun for children,  and you can even copy the graphics and paste them into your Word document. The color of the graphics can be changed, and you can  uncrossed parts of the art like I did with the Microsoft clip art. 

Scrapbook, greeting card programs,  and photography programs also may help you out.  I have a Halmark greeting card program that I really love for quick, pretty cards. It has some nice clip art, too. An added benefit to these hobby programs is that you will get some great fonts!

If you are serious about drawing art and manipulating photos and don’t want to spend about $600.00 for the big Photoshop program, try Photoshop Elements, which is under $80.00. There are no templates and you have to learn how to use it, but if you want to draw things like I do, you need a drawing program, and this is the best one for the price. Sometimes you can get very good deals on an older version. You can also use it to take a few wrinkles out of your photo for your brochure! Plus, there are many free tutorials on the web to learn how to use it.

I hope this three part series, although limited in scope and non-technical, has helped you think of ways to improve the printed material you use or to start making designs of your own.  Give it a try!

Designing Printed Material for Piano Studios, Part 2

How Many Mistakes Do You See?

In my last post I wrote about how to make the text in your printed material look more up to date. Today’s post is going to deal with improving the look of material you create with graphics, such as worksheets, newsletters, and handouts. These are general guidelines for piano teachers who want to spice up their printed material but have no design experience. Sometimes making a few simple changes can greatly improve the look of your worksheet.

1. Alignment is everything. Don’t paste things willy-nilly around the page. Give yourself some white space.
2. Only use blocks around graphics or text sparingly. Many times it looks clunky and homemade. If you want to highlight a paragraph, try using a light color behind it without the dark rectangular outline.
3. Instead of using all capitals in a heading, try enlarging it by 1 point and making it bold.  All caps looks amateurish so avoid using them. How many headlines in a book do you see in all caps? On some teacher-made material I see sentences that are all caps, bold, italicized, and underlined. You never see this in professional material:    ALL PIECES SHOULD BE MEMORIZED.     Be strong and resist.
4. Match your colors and don’t use too many colors. Do use complementary colors or darker shades of the same color. In a worksheet you can try matching your text to a strong color in your art, but when in doubt use black for your text. You have to be able to read it.
5. Clip art can be helpful or terribly wrong. The incorrect use of clip art is probably the biggest mistake I see in the items piano teachers make, not counting improper alignment.
6. Don’t use too much clip art on your page. It can take over your document! The graphics should not get in the way of what you have to say, unless the art is the message like a comic book. One big picture can do more than a lot of little pictures scattered all over the page.
7. A lot of clip art in a variety of illustration styles will make your document look unplanned and wild. You should not have a piano that looks like it was drawn by Picasso on the same page as a romantic landscape. Well, if you are trying to show historical styles it would be fine, but not if you are writing a newsletter. Style is everything in music and art.
8. Even worse than too much clip art in different styles is low-resolution clip art. While a 72 dpi image looks good on a website, it looks bad in print. If the image is poor, it is best not to use it. Even if you have a 600 dpi printer, if your image is grainy and pixelated to start with it is not going to look good in print. But if you’re trying to use an image from the web, read on.
9. Illustrations and clip art on someone else’s website is not free for us to copy and put in our documents or on our websites. Most websites have a copyright at the bottom of the page and even if they don’t, the images they use may be under copyright. If you copy their  art and use it yourself, you are violating the law. I recently read about a woman who is being charged thousands of dollars in fees for using images without permission. Unless the website gives you permission, please do not steal other people’s art. Of course, being piano teachers, we don’t have hundreds of dollars to buy illustrations art so in my next post I will go over some ways to get free images legally.
10. Less is more. Try to keep things clean looking.

I created the graphic at the beginning of this post in Word. It took less than 5 minutes. I humorously tried to make every mistake I’ve seen in home-made handouts. It would have only taken me a few more minutes to make a good one that I could keep on my computer and use for the next group lesson. How many design flaws can you pick out? How would you design a group lesson notice?

Designing Printed Material for Piano Studios, Part 1

Today I am going to post some hints on improving printed material such as your policy sheet and letters for parents.  These are meant to be helpful hints for piano teachers, not professionals in the field of type and graphics, so the suggestions are general in nature.

 When I was in high school I took a secretarial course for a year. Although I was planning on majoring in music, I very practically decided that music might not lead to immediate job opportunities and, if necessary, I could get a job as a secretary. Besides, I could already type and I knew I could get an A in the class. 

 I’ve always been grateful I took that class. Not only did I learn to type beautiful printed material, I was able to type my husband’s dissertation, compete with extensive mathematical footnotes on a non-electric typewriter.

 However, some of the things I learned in that typing class are obsolete with the advent of word processing software.  

1. Do not double space after a period. This rule was for old-fashioned typewriters.  Who uses one of those anymore?  Computer word processing programs adjust space automatically after a period, so when you double space, you leave too much white space and it looks like you are as old as me and learned how to type on a typewriter. Who wants to age themselves?
2. Do not use more than two fonts in your document, and if you do use two fonts, make sure they completely contrast in style. For example, don’t use two script fonts. 
3. Watch out for the center alignment option. This is best used for formal invitations. If you have to center align, make sure each line is drastically different in length. If the lines are of similar length, it looks like it is not aligned at all.
4. Avoid the use of the Comic Sans font unless your document is specifically for children. I know, it is a cute font. But it is extremely overdone and has become so recognizable as a children’s font that it should be avoided. Do not use it for your professional material for adults and try to find another cute font for children.
5. The default font in Word, Times Roman, is very over used. The same goes for Arial (Helvetica). There are other dignified fonts you can use instead. Check them out.
6. Do not underline words in your documents. Nothing looks more amateurish than an email address that is underlined in a letter, policy sheet, or brochure! If your word processing program does it automatically, you should turn off that feature. Ask someone for help if you don’t know how.
7. Don’t underline music book titles. Underlining was done back in typewriter days when we couldn’t italicize words. In fact, don’t underline anything; use italics instead.
8. I have seen so many poor examples of brochures made by piano teachers. Start a collection of good brochures to see how yours measure up. Make friends with a graphic designer and let her look yours over. Please be very careful how you use Word Art. When Word Art first appeared in Word for Windows, I was totally enamored with it and used it all my brochures. When I saw that my 11 year old students were doing the same thing, I had second thoughts. 
9. Unless you are writing for children, don’t use 12-point type. It doesn’t look grown-up. If your document is crowded, try 9.5 or 9. If your document is too short, don’t use a larger font. Instead use more white space.
10. Finally, with the advent of desktop publishing, parents and your future clients expect professional looking documents. Check out some books in the library that have examples of business letters. Notice especially how they are aligned and the importance of white space.

 

My next post will be some tips on using graphics such as clip art.

Picture of Table Top Keyboard

I decided to add a picture of the table top keyboard that my students are using from yesterday’s blog post. This one is sitting on the coffee table in my piano studio (living room). My husband got  a glass top to put on the coffee table so I don’t have to worry about students messing it up.

You can see the chips I bought last year. They are called Counting Chips and came in a package of 75 with 5 different colors. I got them at an office supply store in the “teaching” department. They are about 1 3/8″ in size (about 3.5 cm), so they are quite large for chips. This makes them very good for very young children.  Notice that they come blank, but I’ve written the alphabet on some of them. You can also use, milk carton tops,  checkers, or soda caps. If you want to make your own out of construction paper, find something around the house to draw your circles with, such as a medicine bottle.

Now think of all the games you can play with this table top keyboard!

Cecilly’s Incentive Program with Composer Bucks

Cecilly, who made up the games in the category “Cecilly’s Games” plans to implement an incentive program in her studio this fall. She has given me permission to publish her plans here. The reason I am posting it is because I want to show other teachers an example of a well-thought out program. She has thought out who, where when, and why. While it takes time to think of something in this detail, in the long run it will save you time. Parents appreciate knowing all the details, too.

It is always helpful for teachers to see how other teachers are doing something. My incentive program is different from this one, but I hope I can organize it as well.  If you have an incentive program you would like to share, send it to me and I’ll post it.

Composer Bucks Incentive Program from Cecilly

Participating students: beginner, elementary, and intermediate piano students who are in the Basic and Standard Courses of study.

 Goal: to motivate students to develop more effective practice habits, improve skills, and increase self-discipline related to their piano study.  Also, to recognize and reward consistent efforts made to progress, and to encourage students to move beyond the studio in applying their developing skills at the piano.

 How the program works:

• Students will select a “composer” account from a given list to correspond with a composer statuette that they will be working to “buy”. They will also receive an info sheet with basic facts about their composer.
• Students will receive a pencil pouch for storing their earned composer bucks, their studio bank card, etc. for the program.  This pouch should be kept in the front of their binder for easy access.
• Throughout the teaching year at each lesson, students can earn composer bucks (money) for reaching & exceeding expectations, achieving goals, practicing, etc. (see below for details).
• Also, fees, tickets, and various citations will be given for careless or faulty preparation, execution of skills, etc. for which the student will have to pay a fine from their composer accounts. 
• Monies earned must first be put toward the purchase of their selected composer statuette.  Once this amount has been reached, any remaining monies earned can be used to purchase items from the studio “store” or “chances” for the recital raffle give-away of $20 (real money). Statuettes will be given out at the April recital.

 Monetary rewards: The following is a list of what will be rewarded and for what value:             

             $1 …

• For each practice day beyond the expected 5 days per week (parent’s initials required).
• For each assignment criteria met at a given lesson.
• For each technique skill securely demonstrated as pertains to the student’s level of study.
• For adequately completing any weekly theory assignment.
• For sharing 1 composer fact (limited to 1 per lesson).

$2 …

• For any assigned piece receiving a “Gold Star Pass”

$5 …

• For each 5-day practice week recorded with parent initials.
• For each 16 measure piece or section of a piece securely memorized.
• For each piece recorded successfully on the student’s “Studio Recording Club” disk.

$10…

• For presenting a private home performance concert of 3 learned assignment pieces for family/friends.  Student must list each piece played, date & time of concert and audience members present (with initials from each).

$15…

• For any “out of studio/home” performance before a public audience (church, school, community setting).  Student must record date & place of their performance, and the initials of 1 teacher or 2 other adults who heard the performance.
• For attending a local music concert (church, school, or community.) A program, ticket stub, or note initialed by parent or other verifying adult must be provided.

$20…

• For participation in a studio recital or adjudicated event during the year.

$50…

• For attending a professional Classical music concert performance (Symphony, Choir, Chamber ensemble, etc.).  A program/ticket stub must be signed by parent or other verifying adult.

 $75…

• For having your piano tuned/serviced. Tuner’s business card or invoice receipt must be dated and initialed by the tuner.

$100…

• For subscribing to “Piano Explorer” magazine.

 

Fees, Fines, and Violations:

• Late fee: for arriving late to a lesson without notice. $_____
• Borrower’s fee: for not having all needed materials and having to borrow the teacher’s book(s) for the lesson.  $_____
• Speeding ticket: for rushing practice/performance tempos resulting in avoidable errors.  $_____
• Parking ticket: for careless or faulty execution of rhythm in assigned activities or pieces.  $_____
• Failure to yield ticket: for neglecting to observe expressive markings printed in the music.  $_____

             

Available Composer accounts and cost of statuettes: $_____

              Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Grieg, Handel, Haydn, Liszt, MacDowell, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Schubert, Schumann, Tchaikovsky.

Music Money

Some teachers use  “music money” as a reward system.  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. 

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. It works best for me to use it for a short time period.  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!

This file is not currently posted on the web. If you are interested, I will send you the PDF file  if you will email me at my gmail address.  [Due to the large volume of requests, this will be the only way I can reply for the time being.  I will not be able to honor requests that are left as comments here. ]      susanparadis.wordpress.com/contact/

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.

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.

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.

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!