UPDATE: As of the summer of 2018, I have switched to using MyMusicStaff’s Student Portal for keeping track of assignments. Admittedly, it is not quite as flexible or robust as Trello. However, it is simple for students to use and offers a lot of other useful features for overall studio management. I still use Trello […]
Starting the week of September 12th, I will be announcing our third and final topic of the year, “Playing Music”. Students will be introduced to the instruments they will be playing with their cluster. Red & Silver clusters will be playing beginner level mallet percussion instruments (xylophones, glockenspiels, and metallophones). Indigo & Orange clusters will […]
This year at Open School, our 2nd and 3rd grade clusters will be learning to play the recorder! At our school, the students are given recorders to use in the classroom and keep at the end of the year. However, it is up to the parents whether they wish to purchase the instruments for their […]
Starting the week of September 12th, I will be announcing our third and final topic of the year, “Playing Music”. Students will be introduced to the instruments they will be playing with their cluster. Red & Silver clusters will be playing beginner level mallet percussion instruments (xylophones, glockenspiels, and metallophones). Indigo & Orange clusters will […]
Practice is an essential part of learning anything. And, having a piano or keyboard at home for students to practice is a key to their success with music lessons. Below are a range of decent and extremely affordable keyboard options, starting with one that is just the cost of a single lesson. If you or […]
This week, my students are being introduced to the second of three themes we will cover this year: “Music is Connected“. The specific lesson topic is “Thinking Outside the ‘Music’ Box”. Students will be encouraged to think differently about music. Our lesson will connect music to science. And, we discover the idea of inventing new […]
The first week of school, students were introduced to the first theme of the year “Great Musicians“. We discussed traits that make a music great. We played a game to help us learn the rules for the music class. We learned that this year students will have an opportunity to earn musicianship awards (more on […]
This week in my music classes at Open School, I will be teaching the students about the great musician Arturo Sandoval. He has had quite a life and his music is absolutely incredible. In particular, we will be discussing diversity in music. We will hear music from Arturo spanning across many genres. And, we will […]
I recently came across a video of a piano piece composed based on the Fibonacci sequence. I totally geeked out and decided to share it with a few of my private piano students. Turns out, some of them are as geeky as me and not only love math, but get fired up about seeing it […]
Last week, I introduced the first of a series of custom music exercises I will be building from the tools over at musictheory.net. These exercises are all free and should work in any web browser on any computer or mobile device. The following exercises are Note Names exercises specifically for my students needs. I hope […]