In the spirit of the recent arrangement of This Is Halloween from the Nightmare Before Christmas, wanted to share a short late elementary version of Making Christmas. Hope you like it and perhaps one of your students will learn the song. Tried to keep the hands the same in a C minor position yet close to the end had a quick change where the left hand moves to Middle C, B and A below it. The song is forte, even though it's not marked. Also watch for the quick tow measures of 3

The past month has been a bit busier with an upcoming Halloween event with our local and online students. Really excited for the students to share some of their favorite Halloween songs. Broomstick Battle by James L. King III Sneaky Staccato Melody Bober This is Halloween Big Note Piano Pumpkin Boogie Russell Olesh I'll be sharing more soon. Thanks for checking these out. Hope these song inspire your students.

Everyday is a learning experience allowing everyone to become who we were created and designed to be. My hope is that everyone becomes who they were intended and destined too become. Please don't miss out on what you called to accomplish. That being said, I'm learning more about how to create YouTube videos with the time allotted each person has. As as business owner, we have many parts of running a business, yet as a musician, the best way for people to learn about your skil

If you know anything about me I'm not a fan of horror movies. I can't watch movies that are supposed to "scare" us on purpose. Over the years people our communities have expressed both extremes of movies. I don't need someone to create more "fear" in our lives. I will also admit that I didn't know much about Disney's and Tim Burton's movie The Nightmare Before Christmas. The music is catchy, yet I just couldn't get into the film over the years, until this year. Our acting and

Over the past 9 1/2 years of teaching piano, it's always a blessing to find games for beginning students learning and understand the staff. One of the games I've had for a while, yet pulled it out during the summer and I'm still using even now is from susanparadis.com. It's called Animal Alphabet Memory Matching Game. It focuses on notes on the Grand Staff of the Bass Clef G (4th space) up the Treble G (2nd line). The game comes with the staff notes, plus it comes with really

When it comes to acting a scene, there are so many factors. Yet the biggest thing is making sure that the student understands the importance of voice inflection. I mean, making sure that student knows what the scene is about and how to make their voice go up or down, based on the emotions of the scenes. Webster defines voice inflection as: a rise or fall in the sound of a person's voice : a change in the pitch or tone of a person's voice. This Fall season our students are wor

Our local school started today and it was big day for every everyone involved. During the day I had a chance to reach out to music teachers I've accompanied in the past to share my prayers for them, especially teachers with upper grades, as they are all online. I want to see them be successful this year. I'm not try to brag, "Oh look. I prayed for them." Please don't think I'm being conceded. Hope it doesn't come off that way. Just want to see the teachers believe with God's

In the last month I've been trying some new curriculums that I believe have been very beneficial for our students. When I first started teaching lessons, I used the materials I had or what was recommended, yet I'm at a place where I'm learning about various piano books that bring that spark back even more. Not that I've lost the spark, yet the new books are showing me various ways to help the students succeed. The first set of books is from Piano Pronto called Roadtrip Volume

In the past month I've obtained some fun card games that have been beneficial for in house and online lessons. The students are really enjoying the playing the games. The first is call Note Nabber, presented by KJOS and Three Cranky Women company, has colorful flash cards that are appealing to the eye. At this point I'm only playing with the staff cards, haven't been able to use the extra composer cards. Each person who plays gets seven cards and the goal is to get A-G on the