Do your students love Halloween as much as mine do? 🎃

Every week they come to lessons so excited to tell me about their costume plans and the decorations in their classroom or at home.

Several years ago, I started introducing Halloween and fall-themed music and lesson activities during the months of October and November and it has been a big hit.

I choose games and activities for my beginning and elementary students to do throughout the month (or to use in our October studio classes) and I often choose a special piece of sheet music (or a piece to teach by rote) that ties in with the season.

This is a letter to all the parents and guardians and babysitters and older siblings and neighbors and friends who support young musicians: those who encourage the pursuit of music, tote children and books and accessories back and forth to lessons each week, and help with practicing at home.

Dear parents + guardians:

Thank you for supporting your child’s musical pursuits. You play a crucial role in your child’s success in learning to play an instrument. Even if you don't play the piano yourself, your support and guidance at home during the week is extremely important to their music-learning process. 

It's been a while since I've written anything about private teaching here. This is a big part of what I do during the week, even though I don't talk about it much here, and I know many of you teach privately, as well, in addition to the other things you do. 

I teach private lessons four days a week at a private school as part of their extracurricular and after-school programming. At the beginning of this year, I shared eight ways to continue developing your teaching skills this year.

Aural skills (also known as ear-training) is a fundamental facet of musicianship. Learning to listen, identify, discern, and understand music without notation present helps develop the inner listening skills needed to become a well-rounded, well-versed musician.

Finding the steady beat
Recognizing strong and weak beats
Discerning meter and tonality
Understanding rhythm and tonal patterns
Recognizing dynamics
Discerning articulation
Feeling interval distances
Understanding cadences
Recognizing chords

Aural skills "help musicians at all levels to become more discerning in they way they play, sing and listen to music" (source). 

We all remember those 8 a.m. aural skills classes in college - sight-reading, singing intervals, singing bass lines, spelling chords. But what kinds of aural skills experiences are we giving our students before college? How can we incorporate aural skill activities in our weekly studio lessons

On the surface, it might not look like much work, but running a successful private studio means running a small business and there's lots of behind-the-scenes work that happens in between those weekly 30-minute lessons.

Whether you're just getting started, looking to build a studio in a new city, or searching for ways to streamline your process and help the business side of your studio run more efficiently, this post has something for everyone.

Today, I'm sharing ten tips and tricks for building and running a successful piano studio (many of these suggestions are applicable for other music studios, as well!), including ideas and helpful resources, insight into how I run my studio, and a few things I've learned along the way.

Last year, I received an email from a piano teacher asking about initial consultations and interviews. What do you do? What questions do you ask? How long should it be? What materials do you give them? Great questions! Here are some of the reasons I offer consultations to prospective families (and why you should, too!):

Why Are Consultations Important?

1. They give you an opportunity to meet prospective students (and their parents) face-to-face before either of you commit to lessons.

2. For students who are transferring from another teacher, it's important to see what music they're currently working on, assess what they know, and determine where you want to begin in your first lesson.

"To stimulate creativity, one must develop the child-like inclination for play.”- Albert Einstein

As a piano teacher, I love teaching young beginning students. I love their enthusiasm, the questions they ask, their excitement over little successes, and most of all, their creativity.

Young children are naturally curious and inquisitive, with vivid imaginations. I love finding ways to bring that into our piano lessons and their practicing at home. I added a "Creativity Challenge" to the bottom of my assignment sheets a few years ago (available as a free printable here) and each week, I write a short prompt to encourage creative exploration, discovery, and music-making during the week.