Studio Management

One of my new students is progressing quite well but she says she doesn’t find all the reference clues helpful although I take time to explain them. Some she gets but not others. Tonight when I was teaching Chester Chills Out, she said she needed…

• Last updated 9 years ago
• claiming territory, diagrams, Laurie Richards, reference clues, trusting the process

Does anyone follow a local school calendar as their schedule in their studio? I am thinking of adopting ours and then charging a “summer program” for those who continue in summer. But Im afraid it may open a huge can of worms. My students have…

• Last updated 8 years ago
• holidays, scheduling, school calendar, summers off

I have two sibling students who are 5 and 7 respectively. They are midway through Foundation 1 and love playing and have no problem practicing. However, they rarely check off their playlist even with encouragement and rewards/consequences from their parent. At lessons it is this…

• Last updated 8 years ago
• keeping playlist alive, managing the playlist, Playlist management program, requirements

I am loving using this “Play It Forward” technique with my students. Thank you Mark – it serves to really help my students. I am teaching and utilizing it with my son and it works very well. We are using the original playlist where you…

• Last updated 8 years ago
• arrangements, managing variations, Play it Forward, playlist management

I’m in the first few months of teaching. We’re obviously heading into the holidays and want to teach a few carols, and I have the two simple Christmas books, but it’s ‘music’ and I wasn’t sure about how to go about teaching those..I think as…

• Last updated 10 years ago
• Christmas, events, teaching melody

Using Chester Chills Out as an ongoing warm up exercise is appealing to me. One advantage is keeping the song alive over a long period of time. It can be played fast/slow, white/black notes. After level one, the next step is to take the advancing…

• Last updated 10 years ago
• Chester, transpose, warmup

I have several students in Levels 4 and 5 whose playlist number is high – in the 60-80 song range. They have now outgrown the Playlist Management 1-4 book, and are struggling to adapt to not only keeping all these songs alive but also writing…

• Last updated 8 years ago
• Laurie Richards, number of songs on playlist, reverse engineer, Robin Keehn

My fall recital is quite informal, with fun games and activities to show visitors who don’t attend lessons (dads, grandparents, siblings) what we’re learning. In fact, next year I’ll probably label it a “Family Music Workshop” instead of a recital. Most people love the change…

• Last updated 10 years ago
• Laurie Richards, piano event, recital

Dear Friends, During the past few months, I had people who attended the FIS and decided to take lessons. However, many times I don’t have matching students to from a group. Even if I have matching students, I can’t really start a group deal to…

• Last updated 9 years ago
• group lessons, Laurie Richards, retention, shared lessons, starting groups

Dear Friends, I am spending 1/2 of a class time to introduce all my students who enter level 3 to start splitting their practice time into 2 sessions: Current Project and Playlist Project. With the Playlist Projects, I am introducing the Play It Forward (from…

• Last updated 9 years ago
• managing practice time, Play it Forward, practice ideas