Last week, I watched an interview with American poet Amanda Gorman. She recounted her experience writing the inaugural poem earlier this year: "I set a really high standard for myself," she said. "Only keep the gold. You're going to create a lot of bronze and a lot of silver in these writing sessions, but only keep the gold so you can say what needs to be said in your six minutes.'"
Here’s how I think that applies to our work as musicians and teachers.
Next week (May 24-28), I’m hosting the 3rd annual Music Education Basics, a free 5-day workshop for music educators.
With 60+ minutes of practical content, Music Education Basics is designed to give you clarity in your teaching and a fresh dose of inspiration and practical teaching ideas you can use right away.
But before you pull a new spiral notebook off the shelf and start mapping out ideas and making plans, let’s take a few minutes to assess where we are right now.
I don’t know about you, but I love taking a look behind the scenes.
Maybe it’s curiosity or intrigue, maybe it’s an interest in learning about other people’s processes, creative approaches, and perspectives on things.
If you’re a church musician or someone who contributes to worship planning, then you’ll love today’s post.
Today, I’m giving you a behind-the-scenes look at how to choose hymns that tie into worship.
Confession: I’ve always struggled with written assignment sheets.
I know they’re important for home practice, but what about when a student doesn’t take their assignment notebook out of their bag all week? I wanted to find a better solution.
Looking for an alternative to handwritten assignment sheets in your studio? Here’s an easy 5-step guide to using Notability.
Last month, we marked one year of the pandemic. For me, this means one year of teaching solely online (an estimated 1,000 Zoom lessons!).
In the beginning, it was an adjustment for all of us.
We learned the ins and outs of Zoom ("Is 'original sound' turned on?"), my students sent me their completed theory pages via text, and we held our first virtual recital.
We figured out how to position our devices next to our instruments, brought in lamps from other rooms for evening lessons, and uploaded recordings back and forth on Google Drive. I learned how to create and send digital assignment sheets (look for a blog post on that next week!) and purchased an entire set of my favorite sight-reading curriculum so I could have copies to reference at home.
We've come a long way.
This year, with the COVID-19 pandemic, churches have relied more on instrumental music in worship than choral music.
There’s been a need for more solo music vs. ensemble music and in some cases, music that can be recorded ahead of time or even recorded from home.
As any church pianist will tell you, having collections that you can pull out and play from over and over again is golden, especially at times like these when you’re providing the majority of the music in the service.
Looking for something new to play this year?
Here are eight solo piano collections to consider adding to your library.
