Three Easy Steps to Becoming a Great Practicer

What's the difference between soccer practice and a piano lesson? Let's see, we don't kick things at piano lessons. What else? How many days a week do you have soccer practice (or volleyball, or lacrosse, or basketball, or football)? Several, probably. How many piano lessons do you have each week? ONE.

At soccer practice, you likely practice soccer for the first time since the last practice. But your piano lesson definitely should not be the first time you practiced since your last lesson. There should be four to six piano practices at home between your lessons.

Be honest with yourself. Do you have your assignment book open to the current week between your piano lessons? Do you check off items as you practice them? If you do, great! You're on the right track, and you probably earn lots of practicing stars. If not, it's time to make a new habit. If you do some work with your assignment a little each day, it is pretty much guaranteed that you will progress quickly in piano and earn lots of practicing stars for it.

Your assignment sheet looks like this.
Do you check it at home?

A good way to build a good piano practice habit is to think of piano as part of your daily homework routine. Here are THREE EASY STEPS to help you build this habit:

1. As soon as you get home from piano, put your music books on the piano. Put your assignment book there as well, and make sure it is open to the current week's assignment.
2. Practice everything on the list. It doesn't have to take a lot of time. Just play everything on the list. After a week of doing this, your practice time will add up!
3. Save TV, game, or computer time until AFTER piano practice is done.

Are your books on your piano?
No? Run and get them out of your piano bag!

How to write a great bio.

We have a long traditional at The Piano School of featuring student-written bios in every recital program. Here are a few tips for writing a great bio:

1. Complete all questions. There is a bio form just before Lesson 1 in your assignment book. You will notice that there are a few fill-in-the-blank questions preceding the space for your bio paragraph. Don't leave these blank.
2. Talk about what you really like. These bios will be treasures to you one day as they will provide a glimpse into your mind at several points throughout your growth. One day you will laugh at some of the things you used to be interested in or your career ambitions as a very young child. 
3. Show your personality. Are you a funny person or a serious one? Do you like to speak in foreign languages? Do you like to use certain words that are uniquely yours? Go ahead and showcase these things in your bio. 
4. Don't try to impress anybody. Your bio should be all about you...not about what you think other people want to hear. Do you like bacon more than anything? Do you collect toilet paper rolls? Do you wish you were a monkey? Do you want to be a famous explorer? Tell us about it! (These are things that students have actually written in the past, and they are great!)
5. Don't say "undecided" for your career ambition. Of course, you will not have to actually embark on the career that you list in your bio, so don't worry about choosing one thing now and another 6 months from now. That's part of the fun!
6. Do not restate information from the preliminary questions in your paragraph. The fill-in-the-blank questions that precede your paragraph will include your name, age, school, parents' names, and career ambition, so don't begin your paragraph with that same information. For example, "My name is ___, and I am ___ years old. I go to _____ school, and I want to be a ______ when I grow up." Instead, focus on other aspects of who you are.
7. Hobbies. Special Interests. Recent Experiences. Favorites. These are all perfect things to explore in your bio paragraph. No item is too trivial if it is important to you.
8. If you email or type your bio, remember to answer the preliminary questions! These are: Name, Age, School, Parents' Names, and Career Ambition. The paragraph following these questions should be about 60 words long. The other day when I reminded a student about this, she said, "But you already know how old I am!" I answered, "Yes, but all of my students' ages get lumped into a giant student casserole in my head, and I forget." Actually, I can look up your age, but please save me that time and include it with your bio.
9. Younger students may dictate their bios. If a student is too young to write out his/her own bio independently, an adult may take dictation. Just be sure to capture the child's actual voice and wording!

One more thing to remember. Your bios will be collected during the entire time you study piano with me. If you remain an active student until your high school graduation, I will share highlights from some of your bios at your final spring recital. There's something to look forward to!

The Piano School wins Battle of the Studios, Round 3

Group photo showing students from both
The Boles Studio and The Piano School. 

The team scorekeepers announce the results:
The Boles Studio: 62% turnout; The Piano School 68% turnout

We did it! Thirty-one students from The Piano School came out for Battle of the Studios, Round 3. It was a close contest, and every student counted. If three of you who participated had stayed home instead, we would have lost! Congratulations to all of those who contributed to the victory! It was a fun afternoon. Here are a few highlights:

Our emcees rehearsing before the program

Special sound effects during the Pirates selections 

The Bragging Rights Trophy
belongs to all of us!

Photos from Headquarters

Today is the big day. 3 pm. New Hope Presbyterian Church. Be there.

Here are some pre-recital images from headquarters.

The outfit

The nails

Gaga

The earrings

Some bling

The shoes

The program

My music binder. BINDER. BINDER. BINDER.

Oooh, Aaah

They found a new Beethoven Sonata in Bonn!

Beethoven's piano sonatas are legendary, so it's pretty big news that THEY FOUND ANOTHER ONE that has been hidden away since 1792 in Bonn, Germany. Whoa. So much for all of those "complete" collections of Beethoven sonatas that we have on CDs and in music books. It feels sort of like when they decided Pluto was no longer a planet. There are a few other Beethoven sonatas that have not been included in the "official" 32. It will be interesting to see what happens with this one.

Beethoven's 'lost' sonata to receive world premiere this weekend

Download the score here.

I have no idea whether this sonata will prove to be as respected as the existing ones, but it's a fun discovery nonetheless!

Cool Music Apps for iPad: ForScore

This is one of a series of posts I will be doing on cool music apps for iPad. I'm starting with the first music app I bought when I got my iPad, forScore.

forScore

I'm a piano teacher, so I consider a music app valuable only if it provides ways to reinforce learning, or it makes a task we do easier or more convenient than the conventional way. forScore is primarily helpful to me as a study tool, and I'd like to show you the top five ways I use it.

1.  PORTRAIT OR LANDSCAPE VIEWING. I think it's a huge plus that this program allows you to view your music in vertical and horizontal orientations. Many similar applications do not have that capability. Here are some pictures of both views.

2. ZOOM. I like that you can pull the view in rather closely for focused study of a particular area of the music. Let's say that you want your student to isolate the left hand in the first four measures of the piece. You can zoom in to the point that the measures in question almost fill the screen.

In this view, you may notice that I have drawn a red
box around a four-measure area of the piece.

This view shows how you can zoom in on the desired area
for closer, focused study.

3. EASY TO MAKE ANNOTATIONS. With a tap on the center of the screen, a toolbox of annotation options appears along the top of your music. It's really easy to draw things like the red box above or the blue one below. You just use your finger or a stylus directly on the screen and mark up the music any way you like. If you make a mistake or no longer need your marks, you can undo, erase, or clear all annotations.

The little bar at the bottom of the pop-up window allows you to
make your "pen" thicker or thinner.

4. ADD ACCIDENTALS AND OTHER SYMBOLS. If you should need to add reminders of sharps, flats, dynamic marks, and other symbols, there is a tool for that as well. In the example below, I am adding a flat sign to the A-flat in the left hand of measure 2, beat 2.

5. HIGHLIGHT AREAS OF THE MUSIC. Want your student to repeat a small passage several times? You can highlight the exact spot for her. Highlights can be removed easily if desired.

forScore displays pdf files of music. You can download pdf's galore for free from the Petrucci Music Library at imslp.org, or you can scan your own music into a pdf format. I do both. Most of the scores I use with this app are multi-page documents, and forScore allows for rapid page-turning. I'm not crazy about how the pages turn upward, the way they do on a legal pad, but they do turn quickly.

Here's a quick summary.

Name of app: forScore

Cost: $4.99

Pros: Great for close study of music and making annotations; easy to use.

Cons: Not the best app for performance; pages turn upward; doesn't have automatic page-turning.

Free Metronomes

Metronome by BestMetronome.com

I talk a lot about free metronomes, so I thought I'd show you a few examples today. The embeddable one above is pretty nifty, because it's embeddable! I have no idea why you would want to embed a metronome, but you can do it if you want to. To try it out, click on the wind-up knob, then select a tempo. To stop it (and you will want to stop it), click on the wind-up knob again. 

Here's a screen shot of one you can find online by simply Googling "metronome online." The url is metronomeonline.com.

In the Apple App Store, the Steinway Metronome is my go-to. Here are a few screen shots.

Here's one by MarketWall.com, also in the Apple App store.

So if you ever feel like you deserve a special treat, knock yourself out with these free metronomes! :)

You know you're preparing a concert when...

A tell-tale sign...

I'm gearing up for the big Battle of the Studios concert this coming Sunday between my studio, The Piano School, and my colleague's, The Boles Studio. The "battle" concept began a few years ago as a way to encourage our students to attend our annual duo piano concert which my friend and I prepare just for them. It's important for students to see their teachers perform. I used to play a piece or two at the conclusion of my studio recitals twice a year, but as my enrollment grew, the recital length was in danger of becoming excessive. This annual concert is my students' opportunity to see their teacher play.

Which brings me to the point of today's post.

You can always tell when I'm preparing for a concert or a studio recital. How?

• The house doesn't look right.
• We're running out of clean clothes.
• The mail is piling up.
• There's a guitar on the dining room table.
• Strange things are displayed on the kitchen counters.
• My manicure is chipped.
• Bad-hair days abound.
• The car is filthy.

I'm not good at compartmentalizing. I generally pour my whole life into big projects and catch up with everything else later. But that's okay. I like having big goals from time to time, as long as they are spread out over the year. It's good for me to practice more. I get so caught up in teaching that without performances on the calendar, I might never do it.

The Command Center

Besides, how can a teacher really get into the head of a student if she's not in touch with her inner practicer? It is through practice and performance that I rekindle, reignite, and reset my desire to improve as a pianist.

The big day is this Sunday! (A housekeeper is coming Saturday. I mean, it's getting crazy over here.)

More information on Battle of the Studios

Battle of the Studios Update

A Sneak Peek at What We're Practicing

Mom Keeps Me In Pianos

Today I want to tell you about my mom. I often refer to her as my biggest fan, because she loves following every little thing I do and bragging about it to her friends. She's like this with all of her children, not just me, but I want to tell you about a very special thing she has done for me.

Since the day I was born, I have always had a piano to play. Mom was blessed to inherit a lovely Steinway baby grand from her parents, so even when I was a little baby in a family of modest means, I had a piano.

Fast forward several years. When I married, I moved to Texas so that my husband could go to grad school. Mom went out and bought me a Roland electric piano with a full-size keyboard of weighted keys as well as damper and soft pedals (or the electric equivalent). She would not have me living half a country away with no piano in my little house.

Later, when my husband had finished his masters degree and our family had grown by one, we moved to Florida. Our house was quite a bit larger then, so Mom reasoned that I should have the Steinway her parents had given her. She paid for shipping, and there I was with a Steinway baby grand as well as the Roland electric piano.

Time passed. Our family grew to four, and we moved back to our home state and into a smaller house than we'd had in Florida. I had begun teaching piano from home by then, and Mom decided to give me another piano...this time a Yamaha upright equipped with a Disklavier which she had bought for herself a few years earlier. She thought it was more important that I have it.

So we worked out the one furniture arrangement that would accommodate two pianos in our tiny living room. I passed the Roland down to my younger brother, and my teaching studio became a two-piano enterprise. A few years later, we moved into a bigger house in which we and the pianos could spread out. Then Mom bought me an adjustable artist's bench.

Sometimes I take these instruments for granted, but everyone should know that I have never bought a piano in my life. They've all come from my mom.