piano lesson activities

045 - The Blues Composition Project

045 - The Blues Composition Project

Do you incorporate composition into your teaching?

If you didn't grow up improvising or composing, you may feel intimidated by the prospect of nurturing these skills in your students. But it's never too late to stretch those creative muscles!

Today, I'm sharing a behind-the-scenes look at how I organized a blues composition project in my studio, how I structured and guided the composition process each week, some blues examples we studied from the repertoire, and a few of my students' final compositions.

044 - What Do You See? The Power of Observation in Music Lessons

044 - What Do You See? The Power of Observation in Music Lessons

I was in grad school at the time.

I remember the warm, wood-paneled walls of the recital hall where we gathered; the blue theater chairs and parquet floors; the tall windows along one wall and narrow stage at the front, large enough for only a Steinway grand piano and a few chairs and music stands.

I liked to sit toward the back because, since the hall was small, it gave me a good visual perspective. I pulled out my wooden notebook with the leather spine, flipped to the next clean page, and began to write.

043 - Rediscovering the Joy of Scavenger Hunts

043 - Rediscovering the Joy of Scavenger Hunts

It all started when I was writing a lesson plan for a 2nd-grade student. She’s in her second month of lessons.

I was planning to introduce a new piece and I thought we'd start by exploring the rhythm since three of the four patterns were the same in this particular piece. Let me preface this by saying these were rhythm patterns the student had experienced aurally in previous weeks through imitation and clapbacks. I was looking for a way this week to introduce the written notation.