First Impressions of the Private Music Teacher Planner

I recently ordered the Private Music Teacher Planner, created by The Full Voice Studio. Gone are the days of using school teacher planners that don’t quite work or creating my own from scratch (because, really, who has the time?).

I foresee that I will get a lot of use out of this planner and agenda, designed by private music teachers, for music teachers. I do a detailed walk-through on the Studio’s YouTube Channel:

The Private Music Teacher Planner & Agenda is available for $29.99 CAD on Amazon.ca. Click on the Studio’s affiliate link to check it out:

New Site, New Blog

Sometimes, we just need a fresh start. Managing a Wordpress multsite with several blogs while juggling music teaching, freelancing gigs, and trying to get Maestro's Music Tricks off the ground simply wasn't working. 

My webmaster hat and writer's cap have collected quite a bit of dust over these past few months. A bit of website decluttering and reorganizing was well overdue.

When I undertook the project of revamping my dojo's website, my dojo mate in Saskatoon and I settled on using Squarespace. We found the process of building a new site that could be managed by members from our different training locations a relatively smooth process. Web maintenance has been a snap because Squarespace manages all the plugin and framework updates. I can only assume that they are dealing with brute force attacks because we haven't had any issues with our club site.

It's been working so well, that I decided to take the plunge and migrate my site to Squarespace. So, here we are.

The other big decision I made was to consolidate all of my blogs. All six of them. The separation by topic to do different branding only makes sense if one has time to put into branding them individually, which I don't. As for the "new" blog name, as much as I loved the names for all my blogs, The Musical Muse is the only one that could cover all the topics I write about.

It will take some time to tidy up the blog posts to make them fit their new home. It will also take some time to get the Maestro's Music Tricks e-store built. so please be patient. In the meantime, if you would like more information on my gamer-inspired music practice aid, please drop me a line.

Photo credit: Philip Wilson

Christmas 2013 Greetings and Musical Faves

It seems that everyone I have spoken to has had a busy 2013. It is my wish that you all have a wonderful Christmas. May you enjoy some quiet time and some quality time with your family and friends.

As a musician and music teacher, I find it a huge blessing that there are so many arrangements and interpretations to classic Christmas music. Here are five of my favourite Christmas songs. Perhaps, some of these versions are new to you. Enjoy!

"Cry of the Poor" and "What Child is This?" performed by The Notre Dame Group:

Jackie Evancho sings "Silent Night":

Amy Grant’s "Breath of Mary":

"O Come, O Come Emmanuel" performed by The Piano Guys

Carol of the Bells performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir:

Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones. May 2014 bring you good health, happiness and abundance.

Lesson Planning - A Work in Progress

The big decluttering project continues. It's taken years to amass all this paper and stuff so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it will take a while to clean up my mess. It seems though, that no sooner do I get my office tidied up that it becomes a bigger mess as soon as I tackle a new section in my office. Case in point:

Amidst the chaos however, plans are beginning to emerge. As I file handouts and documents from the previous teaching year, ideas for new handouts and teaching strategies are percolating in my mind.

However, I don't want to break the flow of my clean up (I refuse to start another teaching year with a messy office); so, I have three medium-sized coloured sheets, labelled: "Lesson Strategies/Planning", "Handouts to Make" and "To Do" on top of one of the binders in the lower LH corner.My tin of Crayola® markers are also close by.

So far, I've jotted down things like, "How to make technique more fun," "Strategies for helping the Keyboard Geography/Hand-Eye Coordination Challenged Students" and a long list of optional activities.

For the time being, I just grab the appropriate sheet and jot down a phrase. Once I get that tower beside my desk emptied out, then I can hunker down and transform the ideas into something tangible. I imagine that by the time I reach that point, I'll have more than three sheets of ideas. At least, it will be easier to focus as by then, I'll have a less cluttered workspace.

More Online Tools for Studio Management

This past school year, I experimented with Google Docs for my music studio documents. I started by using forms to create sign-up sheets to studio events. Building a form is extremely easy.

In fact, Google Docs has done such a great job, that I created my 2013/14 registration package online. The registration process is done mostly online (I still am collecting post-dated tuition cheques). The registration letter has embedded links to the Studio Timetable, Tuition Schedule, Studio Calendar an Registration Form.

Processing student registrations used to eat up a lot of my time. Now, I just have to monitor the entries and remind families to submit their fees and completed form by the registration deadline.

The forms are sent as private links to my studio families. Only I have access to the data, which I can import into Open Office Calculator if I so desire.

Data collection has never been so easy!

Here's a great demo by Dottotech on the features of Google Docs: