Musical Boomwhackers

Bach sounds amazing even with boomwhackers. Fascinating to watch, especially if you're a musician thinking how they thought this out.

Scales and Great Performers

I find great fodder for blogging in the trenches of piano teaching.  Today's subject is entirely ordinary - but it makes for extraordinary musicians.  And instead of just pasting my rather dry links to exercise charts, let me relate the inimitable way my best piano teacher, Dave Clark, describes the world's greatest musicians:

1) they know their scales
2) they know more than one instrument
3) they dress funny.

Now on to the dry stuff: I needed to find printable scales for a student to practice from.  Using a book for this is a sure way to kill the binding, so a few pages printed is worth the effort: 


Major Scales Chart 
(except Ab, go here for that one)

Natural Minor Scales Chart


Go here to view images of keyboards to see which keys to play
in either major or minor scales.

The liberating, terrifying realities of deliberate practice (and the 6 best deliberate practice books)

I highly recommend that older music students read one of these books.  But for starters, just read the  article:



The liberating, terrifying realities of deliberate practice (and the 6 best deliberate practice books)

 Of course honing practice skills would benefit anyone in any field (it's just practical ;)  !