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...

My favorite circle yet! I think this is my favorite Circle. The first car I bough myself was a 1976 VW Bug. It was 1989, and I didn't...

Today is the 4th week into my 3 month experiment on tiny experiments. I recorded a video explaining part of what I'm doing. (Credit to...

Another week of Tiny Experiments is over. I have an adult students who is learning Coldplay's Clocks. The tiny experiment we have been...

It's the second week of running Tiny Experiments and this is what's happening so far. My first Tiny Experiment is to write 2-4 bars of...

It's almost April (2025) and time for another trip around the circle. This time it's eggs! The decision to keep the eggs relatively...

Another book review, this time Tiny Experiments Writing about Tiny Experiments This book is about endless curiosity, creating learning...

Am I alone in thinking that students aren't playing enough? In the beginning there is so much to learn, and reading music is hard. How...

Teaching the smallest thing to the greatest number of students. Getting students to repeat things that are more interesting. How easy do...

Words are great, but video and sound can demonstrate a point better. Yesterday I posted the March 2025 Circle of 5ths and included Puck...

It's March 2025 tomorrow. Time for another circle of 5ths. This time, it's Shamrocks. Download the March Circle here: It's interesting...

Here's a checklist I use with students when we get a new piece. You can download it below. A few things to note: Circling the sharps or...

So February's piece around the circle is the theme from Alexander Borodin's Polovetzian Dance from the unfinished opera, Prince Igor....

What's not to love? If you're one who's been checking back occasionally, you'll see that I'm circle obsessed. February (2025) is the...

My students are way smarter than I am. They make great observations and have brilliant ideas. One of them is when we use the key name...