Sunny Saturday?

This year my students voted to have a Barbecue Recital to celebrate the end of the year. It's scheduled for this Saturday and I have been watching the weather all week with fingers crossed for sun. The last thing I need is 100 hotdogs in my fridge and a rainy recital day. All week the forecast has been rain and I told my students I would be making a final decision on Thursday morning. This morning I checked the weather and much to my surprise and delight...we have SUN for Saturday! Wish me luck!

Crafty Composers

I have a board on Pinterest called Crafty. It's where I have been collecting ideas that I might like to turn into piano crafts. A few weeks ago I found this cute project from Flip Chick Designs and I thought, "ah-ha, composer puzzles!"

So here is my twist on this quick little craft. I did it with a group of girls at our piano party last week.

So far I have only done Beethoven and Mozart, but when things wind down I'll find some time to do more.

Feel free to download this page with Beethoven and Mozart to give it a try. I sent mine off to be printed on photo paper, but I also did a test run with my ink jet printer and that worked too.

Print images of your favourite composers on photo paper

Measure and mark the width of your Popsicle sticks

Cut into strips

Apply a light layer of Mod Podge glue and press the pieces into place.

Apply a final coat of Mod Podge and let it dry.

Mix up the sticks

Voila!

Dessert Recital Fundraiser

I feel very fortunate to belong to a wonderful piano teachers' group within the Registered Music Teachers' Association.  Every two years we host a Dessert Recital, which serves as a fundraiser allowing us to help the various groups and festivals that ask for our financial assistance.

Each teacher was given a 30-minute block of time for her students to perform. Most of us had 20 or so children come to play. For an admission fee the families  enjoyed the musical performances and helped themselves to an impressive display of treats and goodies that were provided by the teachers.

With approximately 200 performers, this was a huge and successful event for us! It was amazing to watch our small group of teachers working together and quietly doing the tasks that needed to be done. A big thank-you to Doctor Piano for donating the beautiful baby grand for our students to play.

The RMT Dessert Recital at the Alderney Landing Theatre in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia

The dessert table...delicious!

My contribution...thank you Pinterest! Yummy and easy!

What can I say, I love to decorate cookies! These are actually upside down snowmen.

A Best Birthday

Now this was fun! About three weeks ago I told my level 2, 3 and 4 students that my birthday was coming up and that I was having a special piano party for them. The hitch was that they had to earn their invitation by competing six tricky tasks, which included:

1. Play three songs off by heart
2. Play three different kinds of scales
3. Know 44 musical terms and signs
4. Clap and count dotted quarter note rhythms
5. Know the order of sharps and flats
6. Learn how to play Happy Birthday

Everybody worked hard to complete the tasks and the party was today...my birthday!

We started off with a game of Music Charades, where the students had to act out different musical terms and signs. It was close, but the Flats team won.

Then we got our fingers nice and gluey with a Mod Podge craft. I'll do another little post for this fun project later this week.

We headed outside to play the Sharp Stacking Race (thanks to Heidi and her "More Minute to Win it Ideas"). Each team selected their runners and builders. The runners delivered scale blocks to the builders one spoon at a time. The builders had to stack the blocks in the order or sharps: Fluffy Cat Goes Down And Eats Breakfast. We played again with the order of flats: Breakfast Ends and Dogs Get Cat Food.

Then time for cake and entertainment. The girls each played two of their pieces while we ate birthday cake.

And we finished off with the Mystery Egg Activities. I have filled my eggs with all kinds of weird little activities, like tapping rhythms on your nose and clapping the  rhythm of Jingle Bells with jingle gloves. The highlight was (and I wish I had it on video), was the eight of us hopping dotted quarter note rhythms.

Ready...set...go!

The runners delivered the blocks to the builders in spoons.

The builders raced to make a tower in the order of sharps.

Yum...cake!

Thanks for sharing my birthday with me. That was fun!

Blue Snowball with the iPad

I've been experimenting again with recording...the quick kind...the kind you need to be able to do in a lesson and email to a student. But you have probably noticed that when you record with a device the sound is often distorted or at best 'roomy'. We can do better right?

I have had my Blue Snowball mic for awhile now. It's a great little USB microphone that is usually set up with my computer. I don't know why it hasn't occurred to me to use it with my iPad. All you need is the USB adapter from the Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit, which is about $30. The Blue Snowball mic is readily available at stores like Best Buy for roughly $100.

So here is my super easy set-up:

Blue Snowball mic with the iPad2

The Blue Snowball has three record settings (I used position 1):

• Position 1 – For single user voice/instrument recording
• Position 2 – For extra loud voices/instruments that may cause distortion
• Position 3 – For group of voices or instruments 

Three record settings on the Blue Snowball mic

I did my recording with the Voice Memos for iPad app ($.99), which is really simple to use. I can easily keep track of the files and share them by email or with itunes. You can get a little fancier if you want to by using the Garageband app.

Well this is a perfect time to share my harp playing progress. I have had my Dusty Strings for three months now and I haven't missed a day of playing. This piece is called "Boulavogue", it is an Irish tune dating back to the late 1800s. I recorded it today using Blue Snowball and my iPad2. The music is from the following collection of celtic tune lead sheets (my students love playing these on piano too):

Celtic Music for Flute, Volume 2 By Jessica Walsh. For Flute. Saddle stitch. Celtic/Flute Instruction. Beginner/Intermediate. Book & Play Along CD. 52 pages. Duration 60 minutes. Published by ADG Productions (AD.ADG087-CD) (4) ...more info

This is a Flash mp3 player (or just empty space for ipad users)

My husband's artistic "through the strings" shot.
Can you even imagine how nice it is to play the harp outside on a sunny day!

Make your own piano bag

I have a smart, young student who has his own website and he decided to promote it by making a t-shirt using an iron-on transfer. Brilliant, let's see if I can make some Pianoanne swag.

So I went off to Michael's and picked up a canvas bag and a sample pack of iron-on transfer sheets. I figured a canvas bag would last longer than a t-shirt because you don't need to wash it.

Using Adobe Illustrator I took my Pianoanne logo, made it larger and flipped it. It must print as a mirror image of what you want the final result to be. I printed using my basic little inkjet printer.

Well that was fun and it turned out better than I expected.

Mirror image printed in iron-on transfer paper

Follow the instructions to iron the transfer to your bag

Voila! My own Pianoanne bag!