The Piano Education Page

Ask The Teacher

Do you have a question about the piano, piano lessons, or music generally? You can get it answered here by a real live piano teacher! We'll pick some of the best questions and provide the answers here. We'll even show your name and the city you live in so you can tell your friends! Just send us your first name only, age, city, state, and country (if you live outside the U.S.) and we'll do the rest.

I have a question!!

Other Kids' Questions and The Teacher's Answers

A Note for Parents

Because the Internet is in constant flux by nature and standards vary from individual to individual, the content of the sites linked in the Cool Places section cannot be guaranteed to be appropriate for your children. We have examined all these sites and found them to be generally wholesome and educational for most kids. We advise all parents to look at the sites linked if they have any questions. Please let us know by e-mail if you find any of these links to be inappropriate and why you find them so.

Meet the Composer

Time traveling in the TARDIS is a whole lot easier than doing it naked!!

Click on the TARDIS to meet with composer Domenico Scarlatti in 1752, at the palace of Queen Maria Barbara, in Madrid, Spain.

Other cool Meet the Composer interviews

Tip of the Month - Time for practice? Make it count!

Have you noticed lately just how much practise your teacher is setting? And have you also noticed that by the time you practise everything you need to THIS week, the pieces you have learned a month or two ago are practically forgotten? What about scales and arpeggios and all that other technical work—when are you supposed to practise that? Here’s a schedule you can follow. It’s based on a thirty minute practise session. Try it this month and see how you go!
Warm up (2minutes)
Technical Work: scales, arpeggios, sight reading (5 minutes)
Learn: this section is for your very latest pieces you’re working on (10 minutes)
Polish: for the pieces you need to get up to performance standard (8 minutes)
Review: pieces you already know and play well. (5 minutes)
Remember, it’s not the AMOUNT of time you practise, it’s what you DO with the time! Use the time suggestions as a guide only.

Other Great Tips!

Cool Places for Kids

These are places with neat pictures and sounds or they might be just plain weird! Check it out!

Classics for Kids - an interactive, multimedia experience where kids learn about music. The site’s features include four multimedia games, an interactive musical dictionary, composer biographies, an archive of all radio programs and audio files of favorite classical music. All radio shows, past and current, can be accessed here as well. Parent and teacher resources are also available

Play a Piano : An interactive Musical Java Activity - Sound from a piano or any other instrument is actually a series of invisible waves that travel through the air to our ears. With this cool Java program, you can play the piano and actually see what the sound waves look like as you change the notes!

Ask Jeeves for Kids - Wanna find something neat on the Web? Just Ask Jeeves!

KidsCom - Talk to other kids around the world, play games, have fun. Totally gnarly!

Global Children's Art Gallery - Artwork by kids from all over the world. Look at their pictures or even send in your own! It's cool and fun.

Study WEB - all right, you gotta do your homework. Here's another site that can help you get it out of the way faster.

Dinosauria On-line - cool stuff about dinosaurs, including lots of pictures.

The Yuckiest Site on the Internet - This is the only place you can find Cockroach World! It's gross; it's disgusting; it's great!

Cisco Educational Archive - I know it says "educational", but you'll miss out if you don't look at this one. Be there or be square!

The Newton's Apple Page - All kinds of cool science-related stuff for kids. Based on the PBS television series

The Nine Planets - If you like space stuff, this one is totally awesome!

Mike Wilson's WHO SPACE Doctor Who Home Page - All about the Dr.'s adventures with the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimensions in Space).

The Virtual Tourist - Go anywhere, just by clicking on a world map!

Totware - A place to get free kids software

Department of Energy Educational Software - From the friendly folks who make A-bombs, this site has lots of "free" non-exploding downloadable software. Be sure to look at the index document while you're there; it'll save you a lot of time finding stuff.

WWW4Kids - A whole collection of great places already picked out and reviewed for you, plus some neat games and a chance to ask your own questions about the Web

CIA Kids Page - Devise your own spy disguise, look up stuff in the CIA's great World Factbook, and even find about the "spooks" at the CIA.

Kids mysteries: TheCase.com for Kids: mysteries to solve, scary stories, magic tricks, and contests - the title says it all!

BU's Interactive WWW Games - lots of neat games to play online.

Custom Paper Models at PaperToys.com - Lots of free toys that you can print, cut out and build.

The Musical Reference Shelf

Got a report to write on the piano? Want to learn a little more about it? Need to find out who Charles Tomlinson Griffes (or almost any other composer) was? We have a whole shelf full of free articles that should help:

The Musical Reference Shelf - Ever wonder what those funny foreign words on your piano music are and what they mean? Well, they're usually from Italian and they tell you what the piece is supposed to sound like and how you're supposed to play it. You can find out their meanings and a whole lot more by looking at this page.
Listening List and Composer Resource - links to biographies of many composers, along with hundreds of music files to listen to
The "Why" of the Piano - find out about the history of the piano, how it is constructed and how it works
Purchasing and Caring For a Piano - how a piano is fixed and taken care of
Downloadable Musical Graphics - dress up your report with some cool musical graphics!
Piano Tuning - How It Is Done and Who Should Do It - Find out why tuning a piano is a job for a professional. Don't do this at home!
Piano Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) - all about pianos
Music and The Home Computer series - a series of articles which talk about all kinds of ways you can use a computer to play or create music, how the computer actually makes the sound and how to get music software to work right.

Lots of Piano Music and Cool Sounds

Like piano music? Want to hear some? Well, The Audition Room has hundreds and hundreds of files of famous (and not so famous) composers' piano music. Jump over there and take a listen. You'll be glad you did!

Take Your Own Trip with Dr. Who

If you like the sounds of the TARDIS and the Doctor in our Meet the Composer interviews, you can download your own sounds for free and play them on your own computer. These come from the BBC series, Doctor Who, and span many of the Doctor's regenerations. Go get 'em for free!

The Taz Speaks! (Sort of)

From the Warner Bros. cartoon series Taz-mania, Taz grunts it like it is! If your browser doesn't let you play sound directly, you can get the files by turning on your browser's Load to Disk or Save to Disk function and then play them offline later in the Windows Media Player or similar player program. These make fun Windows sounds, too. Just download 'em, go to your Windows Control Panel, Click Sounds and then set these to play. They're way cool!

Greetings from Taz (108K WAV)
Taz takes a piano lesson (37 K WAV)
Taz tells you what he thinks about piano lessons (41K WAV)
Taz does the classics (65K WAV)
Free collection of over 30 great Taz sounds, including all the ones above! (993K self-extracting archive - This file is BIG, so be patient!)

Just for Kids