Category: Piano
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September is National Piano Month!
As a piano teacher, I felt I would be remiss to not do something to celebrate national piano month. So I thought I’d share some interesting piano facts with you. The piano has many precursors and relatives, such as the harpsichord, the clavichord, the organ, and the celesta, just to name a few. But the…
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Challenges with Adult Students
After teaching music for 22 years, I have learned that teaching adult students is very different from teaching children in a lot of ways. Adults have more responsibilities and obligations, more distractions, and not as much structure in place for practice time. I recently came across a great article about the challenges many adult students…
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I got rhythm; how ’bout you?
Rhythm, rhythm, fascinating rhythm. Rhythm in music is super important. It’s a big part of what gives music interest. If all the notes were the same, it would get kind of boring real quick. A good, driving rhythm, pushes the music forward with excitement. A solid but laid back rhythm makes the music seem more…
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Online Lessons
Most of you may know that I teach my music lessons online and have been doing so since the start of covid-19. It seems that even in this day of technology, there are many people that are still hesitant about online lessons. They may be uncomfortable being on camera or are unfamiliar with the technology,…
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Keyboard Charts
I love my laminator! Its one of the best investments I’ve made for my teaching! Its fun to do, it preserves my manipulatives and visual aids, and anything you laminate instantly becomes a white board surface! Since I have now starting teaching all my private lessons virutally, I knew I would need more visual aids…
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Piano Hand Positions
Sometime when we first begin to play piano, we learn a few basic hand positions so we can know where our hands go on the piano. And usually we learn one hand position at a time and stay there for several pages or units in your book. Sometimes it can get a little confusing when…
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How to remember the letters on the staff
One of the first and most important things we need to learn when playing any instrument is how to read the music. Reading music is like learning another language. It takes time and lots of practice and use before you can read and understand it fluently. There are lots of components to learning to read…
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Ms. Donna’s Piano Room
To go along with my last post about virtual classrooms, I hope you’ve been able to check out my general music classroom and have had some fun. Now it’s time for more fun in the Piano Room! If you’re interested in some of the books I use for my students or if you already are…
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Tips for Piano Practice at Home
Whether you’re doing online lessons right now or just taking a break from lessons during this current lockdown we find ourselves in, keeping up with your practice is super important. Probably now more than ever. Hopefully you’re taking advantage of your extra free time while stuck at home to take more opportunities to practice. I’ve…
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Adult’s First Piano Lesson
If you’re an adult and it’s your first piano lesson, you may not have any books or materials yet. So, what do you learn in your first lesson? What do you practice after your first lesson? I use a couple different books for adults (either Bastien Adult or Alfred’s Adult) and will bring them into…
Miss Donna 4 Music 