The Best Of: Food For Thought Edition

Welcome to a new weekly series of posts, "The Best Of:" where I am delighted to be able to share some of my favorite reads from around the web with you - all musically related, of course! Here's what I've enjoyed reading this week:


When Unwillingness in Practice is a Good Thing - What? Unwillingness is good? Read the post. :)

Piano Books as Gifts - Great thoughts!

Do You Have to Have a Degree to be a Good Piano Teacher? - Consequently, having a degree doesn't necessarily make you a good teacher, either. But I digress.

Teaching the Congregation a New Song - Especially for song leaders, but equally important for their pianists, too!

Joy-oh-joy! The traditional Wedding March is getting a makeover! Can't wait for that to come out!

And a free arrangement of It Is Well With My Soul - one of my favorite songs!

Happy Weekend Everyone! What have you enjoyed reading this week?

 

Christmas Music

Well, it may be a little late for most of you piano teachers, but just in case you were still looking for some last minute Christmas songs, I will go ahead and post where I found some great (translate: free) Christmas songs for my students.

Before I go on, let me give you my philosophy on Christmas music for my piano students. Number one: I let them play non-hymn Christmas carols. (Gasp!) Ok, ok, calm down and let me explain. I do NOT let them play these songs in church....thank you captain obvious. I let them play them just for fun. C'mon, who doesn't like to play all 12 verses of "The 12 Days of Christmas"???

Number Two: I don't assign these songs like normal songs they practice every week. I lighten their load of songs from their lesson books, and give them the Christmas songs to practice and play just for fun. I mean seriously, Christmas only comes once a year, why waste it trying to cram practice time down their throat?? Besides, a lot of times they actually learn more this way, especially if its songs they like. (But don't tell them that.)

Okay, now on to the links:

The Church Pianist (Jenifer Cook) has some great "in church" arrangements. This time great doesn't just translate free, it also translates into "I love her arrangements."

Koerts Music (James Koerts) has a few of those "great" arrangements and also a Christmas book available for purchase.

pdfpiano.com is having a sale right now on Christmas and Thanksgiving music. Also, if you have not already, sign up for their free monthly newletter. Each month they include a piano arrangement. December's will be here shortly, I'm excited to see what Christmas song it might be!

Music Matters Blog - Natalie posted on where she gets her Christmas music

Susan Paradis has some pre-reading and beginner songs that she has adapted. I used several of these for my beginning students that were just dying to play Christmas music. These are those "non-church" songs I was talking about. My students loved them! Especially without the pressure of having to have it all practiced up in a weeks time. For some, I even let them just play it like they heard it in their heads, even if it wasn't exactly what was written. Gasp, I'm a horrible teacher. :)

I also have some books from Soundforth and the like that I am playing out of this Christmas season. I just may let you in on some of those one of these days.

How about you? Where do you find good Christmas Music for your students?? What is your "Christmas Music Philosophy?"

Book Review and Giveaway!

No, I am not giving away a book. Sorry. :) But someone I know is!!! So although I do not have my blogroll up yet, nor have I talked about any of my favorite blogs, I wanted to share this one with you so that you could enter it as well. Natalie, over at Music Matters Blog is the one sponsoring the giveaway, and the book is the newest one by Jenifer Cook over at The Church Pianist website. I personally love playing any of the arrangements that Jenifer Cook has written, and am excited about this book because it is for intermediate students. I have a couple of those!

Both of these blogs rank in my top five favorite piano blogs, so I hope that not only will you participate in the giveaway, you will also check out all the amazing resources these ladies have to offer. If you don't have time to do that now, I will be talking about both of these sites more in the future, so stay tuned for that!

And by all means, if you win the book because I told you about it, let me know!! :)