Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Timothy Brown Piano Workshop Notes

I look forward to attending local piano workshops every summer because I always pick up some new ideas and great reminders to help refresh my teaching skills.  Following is a mixture of both the content of Mr. Brown's presentation with a few of my own inspirations added in.
Tips for Teaching Composition
  • Set Parameters. Some examples that came to my mind include 

Monday, August 12, 2013

Extraordinary Gift of Music


I love this inspiring video about a gifted pianist!
One of my favorite parts is the quote at the beginning by Elder Henry B. Eyring
"Every person is different and has a different contribution to make.  No one is destined to fail."

For some reason the video loads fine on my PC but not on my tablet., but this link to youtube should work on both.

Link to Mormon Messages Extraordinary Gift Video site

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Hearing and Seeing Piano Patterns from the Start


Imagination makes piano teaching come to life, especially when you're having fun with a curious 3 year old.  My little girl is lately really liking to be BIG like her siblings, which fortunately for me means she's big enough to "practice piano" just like them.
I loved the reminder from Joy's NCKP notes about the natural teaching sequence of sound, feel, sign, name. Although this wasn't a new concept for me, sometimes its not my first instinct to introduce sounds first..
1-  To start with SOUND I played all of the black keys going up the piano while singing "dog house" (2 black keys) "my gar- age" (3 black keys).  For a fun game