Part 1 of 3 in a Series on Finding Sheet Music for Students Part 2 – Where To Find Easy Sheet Music Arrangements As a music teacher, it sometimes feels like an endless struggle to find sheet music for your voracious roster of students! Obviously there are commercial online stores as well as the library,…
Truly Scrumptious: “Haven’t you noticed? There aren’t any children. Not one.” In the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, based on a novel by Ian Fleming (with a script co-written by Roald Dahl), there is a land where children are banished. They are evil and are meant to be shut away and captured by the Child…
As a music teacher, I’m also on the lookout for new ideas, technologies and techniques to help teach my students. As a guitarist, my hands are rather small, and I love the fact that I can now buy high quality half and 3/4 sized guitars from makers like Martin, Taylor and others. The sound quality…
It’s 2pm and you haven’t finished prepping for your afternoon music lessons! Suddenly you realize you need to get that easy version of the classic Journey Song, “Don’t Stop Believin’. You break out in cold sweats, your heart starts to palpitate as you envision yourself scrambling to transcribe and write out a hand-drawn lead sheet…
This is the second part of an interview with music teacher John Gardner. John is also an avid technologist and able to be a virtual assistant with music arranging/composing and general office skills through his company Virtual Music Office. You can see Part 1 here. Technology for Teaching Music Andrew: Do you use any…
An interview with John Gardner, band teacher, entrepreneur John and I connected on LinkedIN and we got speaking about teaching music, the new technologies available, trends in music education and safety precautions when teaching children, both for the child and the teacher. John also has a business supporting other teachers and musicians called Virtual Music…
I’ve been talking to music teachers all over the world to learn and share what their best practices are. One of my standard questions has been “What would be your best advice for a new music teacher – someone just starting out?” It’s Just Business Music teachers are creative folks and artists, so we are…
Teaching young kids to read music is quite a challenge. I approach through a long process of micro-steps. It’s the reverse of peeling an onion. It’s a layering technique of building up from tiny kernels of understanding, expanding outwards. The first lessons are always performance focused – get them excited about playing a song! It’s…
I’ve been teaching how to count rhythm to most of my students using a fun fruity way* of naming note values with easy and fun to say words. (*Adapted from Music Mind Games) Fruity Words For Rhythm For example, one beat (quarter note) is called LIME. Two eighth notes are called MANGO. An eighth note triplet, where…
