Teaching Theory to Your Bassoon Students

We can’t leave it up to the piano teachers and public school teachers anymore. We need to be teaching theory to our bassoon students. When students understand the structure and elements of what they are practicing, their practice becomes much more effective. When they can look at a scale and say “Oh, that’s just a […]

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Reproducible Theory Materials with Tenor Clef!

I’ve been teaching bassoon for over 15 years and have only recently added theory to my curriculum. I am embarrassed to say that I didn’t see teaching theory as my responsibility. I have had a complete change of heart! The following is a review of the theory materials I am using with many of my […]

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Free Intro to Music Theory Course at Coursera.org

Update: Since this post was first written, some of the course offerings have changed. The course described below is still available for free, but you may want to use another platform, such as edX. See this page for the most updated listings. I absolutely love the music theory and history courses offered by The Berklee School […]

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MusicandtheBassoon.org – A Review

Kristen Wolfe Jensen and her team have done the bassoon world a HUGE service by creating the website musicandthebassoon.org. The website serves as a beginning to intermediate level bassoon course, perfect for use by band directors with their students as well as students studying with traditional bassoon teachers. I once used this website with a student […]

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Young Bassoon Students Need Recitals

My studio sponsors four student recitals per year. I think that teaching students to perform is just as important as teaching them to play the bassoon. I remember being surprised when many of my music school friends would say, “Oh, I love to play my instrument, but I don’t like to perform.” I didn’t get […]

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Bassoon Lesson Assignment Sheet – FREE DOWNLOAD

I use a printed assignment sheet with my students. I fill a new one out at each lesson and have the students save the old ones in a binder at home. It serves as a great reference for fingerings, exercises, and pieces they’ve worked on and/or performed. I used to write down weekly assignments in […]

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Innovative Weekly Group Bassoon Lessons – Part 2

In part 1 of this post, I told you about my innovative way to teach more students in a shorter amount of time. Now let me tell you how it went down. Of the four students originally scheduled for the group class, one never showed up and another dropped out after two months. I had to […]

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Why Monthly Tuition is the Way to Go

In 2013 I switched from charging a per lesson fee to charging a monthly tuition fee. I am so glad that I did. Here are my favorite things about the monthly tuition system: I can budget based on a fixed monthly amount I can build in paid holidays and sick days if I want to […]

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Group Reed Finishing Class (and Christmas Party!)

This post is not about leading a group of novice reed makers through the difficult reed finishing process. It is a follow-up to this post where my students formed their own reeds using thin cane* that almost always crows right after you clip the tip. I want my students to have success on their first reed […]

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Group Reed Forming Classes

I like my students to start making reeds as soon as possible. I find that most don’t really take to it right away, but once in a while a student will fall in love with reed making. I currently have a ninth grade student who makes all of her own reeds. I rarely have to […]

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