I'm Making Videos!

I'm a month into our fall term with now 4 online students and 11 in person, and thankfully, no students have gotten sick - at least not with Covid. If you've read my previous posts about my cleaning and masking protocols, I'm happy to say that's working out well. I'm thrilled to have 6 beginners this year, the most littles I've had in a while. They're all delightful!

Now that I've grown a little more comfortable seeing my face on a screen thanks to online teaching, I'm starting to branch out and make some videos! I hope to post videos on my youtube channel fairly regularly. I'm finding that with all of my students, but especially my online ones, it's helpful to have some easy resources for them to look at during the days between lessons to refresh their memory. 

So the first video is up! This is an explainer of major chords and the root, third, and fifth, plus a quick, visual method to find major chords on the piano keyboard. 

Some of my  students have been playing this game I found at Heidi's Piano Studio, and we'll branch out from here to play cross-hand arpeggios and learn about inversions. I hope you'll subscribe to my youtube channel and follow along! I'm scared to commit to uploading a video a week, but I'll do my best!

Here are more videos that I like and have shared with my students.

I use MuseScore for notating music, and some of my older students do, too. It's free, open-source software, and is relatively easy to use. I've been meaning to make a tutorial video, then I discovered that Nicola Cantan of Colourful Keys has already made a really good one. Check it out here.

My middle school students have gotten a big kick out of Mrs. Volk's Online Music Classroom. We particularly enjoy her videos on the elements of music!

Pitch, Melody, and Reading Music

Harmony 

Rhythm

Dynamics

Tempo

Timbre