A busy summer blended into the fullest fall of my life. The summer music program climaxed while my family was carting all our belongings to a new house and cleaning up the old one. As soon as that was done…

This summer was more about recreating old music than creating new music, and for very good reason. 

Many piano students are victims of the silo effect. The student takes solo lessons, practices in a corner, learns music that he doesn’t…

Piano literature is a many-splendored thing. 

Sonatas, nocturnes, variations, etudes, lyric pieces, humoresques, waltzes, songs without words, sonatinas, fantasies, rhapsodies, orchestral reductions, minuets, preludes, fugues — 

But I had to learn to love it. Growing up, I was inspired by…

A few weeks ago I suggested some ways to encourage a music-making culture in the family. Around that time, daughter and I were in search of a new book to read out loud. I resorted to this grade-by-grade reading list…

“I’ve heard that kids learn music faster than adults,” said one of my adult students. My own observations from teaching piano are the contrary.* Adults quickly catch on to concepts that grade schoolers take years to mount. 

But the kids…

One way or another, it's back to school month. And one way or another, it's back to music studies for many families. So you'll see a couple posts this month with thoughts on music education. Here's the first serving, something…

Routine is magic. When daughter first started piano lessons, practice happened when Mama said so, and when Mama said so, daughter’s shoulders slumped and her inward being released a plaintive groan to heaven. 

But when practice happened after schoolwork and…

When J. I. Packer was a child, his head was smashed in a traffic accident. Because of this injury, his parents did not get him a bicycle for his eleventh birthday, even though he wanted one.

Instead, he got a…

Sometimes certain songs become a kind of study. Here are a few that have my attention either because of the composition, mix, or instrumentation. 

“Siren” by Samuel Sim was the theme music to the British Home Fires series. A female…

This summer a little dream came true. 

A handful of acquaintances got together in someone's house and learned an a cappella song together. We were college girls, working mothers, empty nesters, and due this fall (well, one of us). Some…

I aspire to bring more live music back into the home. Strategically this means bringing music to our kids. Here are four ways that has happened in the Hall house.

1. Singing

Singing belongs to you. Some people are knock-out…

We tried another piano rig this week that involved lining one mic to the interface with a 1/4" patch cable. I warned the others the cable might give us issues cause I've had it since I was thirteen.

Then I…

Hmmmm....who is this person?

He's a birthday buddy with my sister-in-law and niece (June 15), for one thing. He became a composer. When I was a kid, I first heard his music in an extended TV commercial for a classical…