Issue #3 Notes from The Music Hub March 23, 2025 Beginning Pianist Mistake #2 This week, I'm continuing my series on mistakes beginner pianists often make. The picture above is a snapshot from the song demonstration video from Lesson 21, in which I demonstrate both the proper way to tuck the thumb under other fingers and the improper way. Do you know if the picture above is the correct way or the incorrect way? What gives the answer away? The answer is: the above picture demonstrates...
8 days ago • 1 min read
Wow, what a month! March was an absolutely crazy month! In the four full weekends in March, I attended conferences during 3 of them and turned 50 during the other! March 5-7, I was at the International Festival of Music by Women. Two of my pieces were performed: Who Has Seen the Wind, an art song setting Christina Rosetti's poem of the same name and Three Short Pieces (originally written for saxophone but rearranged for clarinet.) Rebecca Coberly beautifully sang and Jonathan Levin...
15 days ago • 5 min read
Issue #3 Notes from The Music Hub March 23, 2025 Beginning Pianist Mistake #1 "Tell me you haven't taken piano lessons without telling me you haven't taken piano lessons." That's what I think when I see photos like the one above (or when I watch TV shows and movies where an actor is "playing" an instrument obviously wrong.) If you have had some piano lessons, even just a few, you can recognize right away some of the problems that this woman is demonstrating. Today's email is the start of a...
15 days ago • 2 min read
Issue #3 Notes from The Music Hub March 23, 2025 Emotional Flexibility & Music I have listened to a LOT of live music this month. The way things work for composers is if you submit a piece to a festival or conference and it is chosen for performance, you must go. Happily, I have had several pieces selected for performance. Which means I've been traveling A LOT. March 6-8 I was at the International Festival of Music by Women. This past weekend I was at the Region 4 Regional Conference for the...
22 days ago • 2 min read
Issue #3 Notes from The Music Hub March 9, 2025 The Importance of Breath You may want to take a tip from this picture and put a post it note with a reminder to breathe at the top of your piano music! Since piano is not a wind instrument, we often don't hear as much talk about breathing. Singers and woodwind and brass players have to think about their breathing all the time. When to take a breath during the piece, how long to hold their breath, how to support their breath to ensure good tone...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Issue #3 Notes from The Music Hub March 2, 2025 All the Ways of Learning Do you remember learning math in elementary school? I do. I remember that some kids could do math in their heads quickly and other kids counted their fingers to complete addition problems. It always seemed that the teachers frowned on counting with your fingers and that the "right" way to do math was to memorize all the facts in your head. And if you didn't do something the "right" way, you were somehow dumb or "less...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Issue #3 Notes from The Music Hub February 16, 2025 How Music Helps with Problem-Solving, Part 4 Playing an instrument changes your brain. There are numerous studies that show how music affects brain health, including the way the two hemispheres communicate. Among other benefits, musicians have a thicker corpus callosum, which helps with cognitive processing and motor control. What I want to talk about today is the way learning to play music helps with problem-solving. It does so in several...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Issue #3 Notes from The Music Hub January 19, 2025 How Music Helps with Problem-Solving, Part 2 Playing an instrument changes your brain. There are numerous studies that show how music affects brain health, including the way the two hemispheres communicate. Among other benefits, musicians have a thicker corpus callosum, which helps with cognitive processing and motor control. What I want to talk about today is the way learning to play music helps with problem-solving. It does so in several...
2 months ago • 3 min read
The break between the end of Fall semester and the beginning of Spring semester was a couple days shy of one month! Not long enough!!! In that time, I had four performances, Christmas, a trip to Florida to see my in-laws, writing 2 syllabi, continuing to work on my app, finishing a piece, and - most of all - a trip to South Bend Indiana to see the South Bend Symphony perform my piece Daughter of the Stars. That kind of schedule is a bit crazy; I have to be honest. And there were points where...
3 months ago • 6 min read