After a successful Halloween event, our students are learning and working on Christmas music. The theme will be a bit "Nutty", with a "cracker" in the word. Yes we are doing songs from the Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky. I will admit that I know some about the story, the ballet and a couple songs, yet in the past month, I've been immersing myself into the Nutcracker. What a story of heroes, villains, amazing music and ballet. At this point we don't have anyone to do the ballet, ye

Wanted to take a moment to share how quickly you can create backdrops for acting events. Today our students are doing music from The Nightmare Before Christmas and wanted you to see the pics and how simple it was to make these backdrops. First of all the moon and mountain part was created by my wife using poster board, which I found at the Dollar Tree. She did very well. The pumpkins were a template I found online that I printed off with orange paper and laminate. The black t

Tomorrow is our Halloween Studio Event, where students will demonstrate music and acting they have been working on. What a blessing to work with incredible students and parents. Yet I will say that this is the first time we will be doing out of state online students and there is a lot to learn and experience. That includes emailing zoom link, set up projector and screen, communicate with parents and students, seeing up backdrops, working on music and scripts, plan for cleanin

Everyone in the music world knows that even though Halloween hasn't come, we're starting to select Christmas music for our piano students. This year I'm a bit later than usual, as I try to start looking at the beginning of October. LOL. Always wanting to try to figure out the best options for students. Yet wanted to share four options to consider for your students, that I arranged. The first three are fairly easy to play hopefully in a couple settings. The first selection is

In the past couple years I’ve created a fun “mad lib” type of Halloween activity that focuses on reading, writing and composing. That is always fun and great for kids today. When they get a chance to read a story, write and compose they are developing their cognition in new ways. The first one is called Halloween Friends, where you need to print off the cards and story. They will pick a card and write down what the creature or Halloween concept is. With the last one on the li

In the almost 10 years of teaching lessons through the studio, we have always done events at our church or a small amount of times we've done some community event, which is always fun. With the pandemic, we have only done one event in the summer time with voice and acting students with an outside event. The students performed in the car port while our audience sat in the back yard with their lawn chairs. In a couple weeks we're going to do one of our largest outside event eve

Growing up in a small Baptist church here in town, taught me many aspects as a musician. We sang lots of hymns every Sunday and Wednesday or anytime we meet. Over the years many of the older hymns still minister to me: In the Garden, How Great Thou Art, Jesus Loves Me (my favorite). Yet one of my top favorites is a song by John Newton, Amazing Grace, which tells the story of what we were like before Jesus and how amazing grace. can and will always change us. The incredible ba

Here are some more fun Halloween songs to check out. Hope you enjoy them. Want to say what a blessing to have such incredible composers who create music that is fun to teach and the students love. Thanks is just the beginning to these amazing musicians and composers. What are your students learning for Halloween and Fall Time? Are you planning an event this Fall? If so, how are you going to have an event? Online, in person, outside? Would enjoy hearing what you're doing. Than

Just wanted to share a beautiful song by Wendy Stevens from composecreate.com called Rested. The lyrical song is perfect and fitting for where our world is with unrest. We need to play and hear music that will calm our spirits and make us whole. This song does just that. The short one page song from the Feeling Fine short sheets is definitely needed in this world. The melody is so mesmerizing, making you relax with the gentle sounds presented. The rhythms are not complicated