Hello friends, Recently, I have received a handful of email inquiries asking for updates about my 2024 Piano Teacher Retreat. So I thought I should at least send out a quick blog post here now that the details are finally coming together!  (By the way, in case you want to learn more about my past retreats, here’s a recap post about the 2023 Piano Teacher Retreat you can check out!) I’m pleased to announce the dates for my 2024 retreat:  Both retreat offerings will be held here in the Southeast Michigan area – just outside the wonderful town of Ann Arbor and abou ..read more

Hard to believe, but ColorInMyPiano.com just turned 15 years old! Hooray! Let’s celebrate with our annual 20% off sale — details below. I started this blog back when I was a graduate student anticipating my upcoming graduation. My goals were to give back to the piano teacher blog community I benefitted so much from and to become a better teacher, writer, and thinker through blogging. Here we are, 15 years later, and I find myself staying true to those same goals. I love being part of the piano teaching community online, and I find writing and sharing to be a worthwhile pursuit — even when the ..read more

As my friend Amy Chaplin and I prepare for our upcoming online workshop about how to use Notion (a productivity/note-taking app we are both fans of), we’ve been receiving great questions from piano teachers about Notion. Today, I thought I would answer some of those questions and also share more specifics about how I use Notion to manage my piano studio. An aside: I hope I’m not bombarding you with too much info about Notion! I think you’ll find this blog post interesting, but if not, rest assured I have content on other topics coming down the pipeline soon. Q: Is Notion specifically for mus ..read more

Hello friends! I’m so pleased to announce that registration is now open for the online workshop Amy Chaplin and I are hosting next month. Amy and I have been working behind-the-scenes every week to plan a very special event for you and pass along our systems and methodologies for using Notion to make our lives easier as a piano teachers and music professionals. If you like the idea of getting the various areas of YOUR personal and professional life together into a centralized dashboard and digital workspace, please consider joining us! To learn more about our online workshop and register, vie ..read more

Just a brief note from me today — I wanted to point you a Piano Pantry podcast episode that just dropped from my pal, Amy Chaplin. In this episode, Amy goes on a deep-dive comparing the two productivity apps, Evernote and Notion. If you know Amy at all, you know that organization is a strength and passion of hers. She’s been a longtime user of Evernote as a tool to capture notes, ideas, and documents. As she describes in her podcast episode, when Notion came on her radar, however, she moved the majority of her Evernote content over to the Notion. In this episode, she also points out the main ..read more

Do you find yourself using paper LESS and using apps MORE when managing your to-dos and projects? I know I do! Although there are a few areas of life where I prefer paper, most of the time I prefer keeping things digital. In fact, I’ll admit I’m a little bit of a nerd when it comes to following what new apps or platforms are available in the productivity and note-taking space. I find it fun to see what each one has to offer, and if it looks interesting enough I might even take it for a test drive. In 2021, I revisited a platform called Notion and was blown away with its capabilities. I downlo ..read more

Hello friends, Just wanted to let you know about an online workshop by pal Amy Chaplin of PianoPantry.com and I are offering in a couple of months. We’ve both really gotten into using a program/app called Notion as a digital workspace to organize our lives and get things done. And we’re really excited to share all about it and help YOU get started with Notion, too! We’ll have more details for you soon, but for now we wanted you to save these dates in your calendar. The online workshop will take place over two days, Friday, March 8 and Saturday, March 9, 2024, from 10:30am to 1:30pm Eastern ea ..read more

In a couple of my recent posts about silent film recitals for piano students, I mentioned my latest publication — a set of easy pieces for young silent-film pianists. But I didn’t give it the full announcement it deserved. So, here it is! Today, I’m pleased to tell you more about this collection of pieces I composed during the second half of 2023. I was prompted to start composing these pieces as I began planning for my students’ Silent Film Recital last summer. As I was gathering possible music for my students, I soon discovered it is easy to find incidental music for intermediate and advanc ..read more

As promised in my recent blog post about organizing a Silent Film Recital for your piano students, today I’m sharing a few printables/templates I created for my Silent Film Recital. Here’s what I’ll share: A silent film recital program AND a multiple choice quiz featuring facts about Buster Keaton and silent films The “welcome” image I showed on the TV/projector screen before the recital started The recital invitation I created for students to invite their friends and family to the event. Before I get into it, I should let you know that these templates were all created using Canva.com — my ..read more

As mentioned previously, my students and I successfully presented a Silent Film Recital a couple of months ago. (Highlights and photos here!) As promised, I’d like to share the details of how we did it and give you a guide on how to plan your own Silent Film Recital. The process was so much fun from beginning to end, and I definitely recommend it to other piano teachers looking to spice things up with a unique recital format that is memorable and fun. In this article, I’ll first share how I became interested in organizing a silent film recital. Then, we’ll discuss the following steps for orga ..read more