Last month I changed my job description. I'm now officially a Happiness Teacher . I teach happiness in the form of playing the piano. Happy people learn more easily, are more resilient, are able to deal with adversity better, and, in general are more fun to be around. Who doesn't want to be happier? Arthur Brooks, a professor at the Harvard Business School and happiness researcher has a podcast, Office Hours (check it out on youtube here ) I have been listening to it for a w

How are you with transposition? I wasn't good before I started with the chord and scale cards. Now I'm a lot better. I can play a lot of things in different keys, but, I couldn't take a piece of music and transpose it on the fly. . . until now. 3 years ago, I created piano key finder cards. One of the cards is a key name card. Align the black keys with the black strips on the cards, and they keys practically name themselves. Key names moved up, so when I play in "C" I'm actua

Happiness, I am moving my company in the direction of happiness. Care to join me? Happiness is playing music, teaching music, playing with others, and helping my students find the same sense of delight I get when I play. Over the holidays my reading list was filled with Brené Brown (Strong Ground), Arthur Brooks (The Happiness Files), Simon Sinek (Start with Why), Donella H. Meadows (Thinking in Systems), Charles Mackesy (Always Remember), and Robin Ha (Cook Korean!). These b

This is how I start all my new students before a single note is played. It's useful to understand the learning process when learning anything, so these can be tailored to teaching and learning anything. I say this at the beginning of a relationship with a student, and they hear it over and over through the course of their lessons. I hope it's useful for you both as a teacher and as a student. I'm grateful you're here Happy Playing!

Have you watched any Korean romantic dramadies? I'm a fan. Some of my students are fans, some of my friends are fans. I use them to quiet my mind in the evenings, while knitting. They take my mind off of current events and I find them weirdly calming. Are you wondering what this has to do with piano? Well. . . one I watched recently, Dodosolsollalasol, is about a young woman who took piano lessons from the age of 4 to 20. And, wait for it, she ends up opening a piano studio,

Have you ever done something or created something and forgot that you did it? Then something triggers the memory and you get excited by it. That happened to me this year a couple weeks ago with a student who loves stories. His love of stories reminded me that I rewrote the lyrics to Turkey in the Straw, and my mother, Beatrice Powell, had illustrated it. When I started looking for the originals, I found many other paintings tied to different stories. My mom passed away in 202

November's circle of 5ths is a warm drink. As the year comes to a close, I am wondering if having the circle of 5ths with a different theme has had an impact on students other than my own. Last month the theme was a minor circle with skulls. When students entered the piano room they recited the order of sharps, and when they left, they recited the order of flats. Each was rewarded with a piece of Halloween candy. It was pretty effective. Most, though not all, students now hav

It's October 2025 and I've been working on an Advent, or Christmas project for the last several months. Today I am sharing with you the first part of the project which includes the documentation, the music, a series of videos to go along with this. You can get a taste of what this project encompasses from this first week. The rest of the videos and music for weeks two, three, and four will be posted by the beginning of November. You can download the instructions and summary h

Every year around this time (autumn), I pull out the Halloween and Fall themed materials. The originals were illustrated by my mom (...

Fantastic Fall from 2006! I can't believe that this was from 2006! It's still popular with my students. I have more up to date versions...

Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus Species. When I was in 10th grade biology Mr. Engle had his whole class learn the order of...

JUST ADDED BONUS TO SPIDER SEASON If you want to make spider season a little more spooky, learn the endings in all keys and tag it at the...

Everyone starts with C. Why not start with a different key? What if you started with C sharp instead? What about A flat? When I started...

Stars! I was going to do fireworks, but then I had a student who wanted to learn Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, so I'll save the fireworks...

My summer project with students is improvising over the 6-2-5-1 chord combination. You can find the card here, shown here on c major. The...

Did you know that there are only 8 basic rhythms that can be made with quarter notes, half notes, dotted half notes, and whole notes?...

Summertime fun! It's almost June 2025 and time for the next circle of 5ths. This month it's baseball! Not all of my students are sports...

Have you ever had the experience when you're learning something and the teacher tells explains it to you and you completely understand...

It's one thing to see a card with vertical lines and notes, but what does it sound like? Do you know what an affordance is? It's the...

Do you remember your first lessons? I guess there are two potentially different first lessons, the first ones you took, and the first...