The Scrappy Piano Teacher Podcast

Joy Morin has been part of the online piano teaching world since the early days of teacher blogging. If you have ever searched for a piano teaching activity, worksheet, game, or pedagogical idea, there is a pretty good chance you have landed on her blog, www.colorinmypiano.com.

In this conversation, Joy and I talk about how her teaching has continued to evolve over the years and why reflection has been such an important part of that process.

We also take a pretty deep dive into Music Learning Theory. Joy shares how she first encountered Dr. Edwin E. Gordon while she was still in college, how his work changed the way she thinks about musicianship and learning, and what MLT can look like for piano teachers who are curious but may not be ready to completely overhaul the way they teach.

We also talk about her Keys at Play series, audiation, sight reading, rhythm development, giving students more freedom to explore music, and the way Joy continues to learn and experiment in her own studio.

And we get some exciting composing news! Joy shares about her work with Alfred Music, including The Lumbering Bear and her upcoming collection Starbound, an outer space inspired collection of 11 pieces for early to mid elementary pianists.

Resources mentioned:

Color In My Piano
https://colorinmypiano.com

Music Learning Theory
https://colorinmypiano.com/2018/01/15/music-learning-theory-exactly/

Joy’s First Encounter with Edwin Gordon
https://colorinmypiano.com/2024/07/23/my-first-encounter-with-dr-edwin-e-gordon-and-his-music-learning-theory-mlt/

Audiation
https://colorinmypiano.com/2017/11/30/what-is-audiation-exactly/

Keys at Play
https://keysatplay.com/collections/all

Gordon Institute for Music Learning
https://giml.org

The Lumbering Bear
https://www.alfred.com/products/the-lumbering-bear-00-ps-0017771

Joy Morin at Alfred Music
https://www.alfred.com/collections/joy-morin-sheet-music

Notion for Music Teachers with Joy Morin + Amy Chaplin
https://pianopantry.com/notion

Scrappy Circle with Molly Gebrian
www.scrappypianoteacher.com/scrappycircle

Coda Musical Storybooks
www.scrappypianoteacher.com/coda

Two Opportunities for Better Practice This Fall with Leila Viss

Surprise! I have a bonus episode for you.

Leila Viss recently reached out to me after hearing about my upcoming Scrappy Circle with Molly Gebrian, author of Learn Faster, Perform Better. The timing was perfect because Leila has been incorporating many of Molly’s ideas and research into her own 2026 Practice Streak.

What was supposed to be a quick ten minute conversation turned into a much bigger discussion about effective practice, helping students become more intentional, and why teachers might need a little practice accountability too.

We talk about how Leila’s Practice Streak works, how teachers and students can participate, some of her favorite practice strategies, and how Molly’s research has influenced what she is doing in her studio.

We also talk about the October 23 Scrappy Circle, where Molly Gebrian will join us live on Zoom for a 90 minute session about the brain, learning, and practice, including an open question and answer time.

If practice has been on your mind this fall, come join us for one or both.

ABOUT LEILA

Leila Viss is a pianist, composer, author, and longtime independent piano teacher who helps teachers and students approach music with more curiosity and creativity. Through LeilaViss.com and her Space to Create community, she develops practical resources that make practicing, improvising, and composing more effective and more enjoyable.

LINKS

Leila’s 2026 Practice Streak:
https://www.leilaviss.com/september-2026-practice-streak-signup

How to Practice Piano Effectively:
https://www.leilaviss.com/blog/how-to-practice-piano-effectively

Leila’s practice cards and Guide for Caregivers of Budding Musicians:
https://www.leilaviss.com/store-home/guide-for-caregivers-of-budding-musicians

Leila Viss:
https://www.leilaviss.com

October 23 Scrappy Circle with Molly Gebrian:
https://www.scrappypianoteacher.com/scrappycircle

Learn Faster, Perform Better by Molly Gebrian:
https://amzn.to/3V7m5lu

This is an affiliate link. I may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you.

My Piano Practice Workshop:
https://www.scrappypianoteacher.com/resources/p/practice-workshop

2026 Practice Workshop Blog Post:
https://www.scrappypianoteacher.com/scrappynotes/practiceworkshop2026

Jazz can feel intimidating when it is not the language you grew up playing, but it does not have to stay that way.

Jazz pianist, composer, and educator Quentin Walston is back on the podcast, and this time we are talking about jazz band, improvisation, authentic jazz playing, and how piano teachers can help students without feeling like they need to suddenly become jazz experts themselves.

We start with one of the situations many teachers eventually encounter: a student walks into a lesson with a giant jazz band folder and asks for help. Quentin shares his own experience joining jazz band as a teenager and walks us through how teachers can look at those parts strategically. We talk about what actually needs to be learned, what can sometimes be simplified or left out, how to recognize the most important sections, and how to help students understand what the arranger is really asking the pianist to do.

Then we talk about Quentin’s newest book, Jazz Piano Like a Pro. The collection includes 10 original intermediate piano compositions written using the techniques, textures, styles, and sounds of authentic jazz piano. Each piece also includes an optional solo section where students can experiment with improvisation using approachable guidelines.

If jazz is an area you would love to explore more with your students, this conversation is full of practical places to begin.

Find Quentin and his resources:

Jazz Piano Like a Pro
https://quentinwalston.com/store

How to Teach Jazz & Improvisation
https://quentinwalston.com/teach-jazz

Both books are also available on Amazon.

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/quentinwalston

YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@thisisjazzofficial

COMING UP IN THE SCRAPPY CIRCLE

Scrappy Session with Molly Gebrian

What Musicians Can Learn About Practicing from Current Brain Research

Join Molly Gebrian for a 90 minute live session exploring what current brain research can teach us about more effective practice. We will look at spaced practice, interleaving, mental practice, breaks, and other ways to help students practice more efficiently and meaningfully.

Friday, October 23, 2026
1:00 PM Eastern Time
90 minutes
Live online session plus Q and A
$20 per person

Register at:
www.scrappypianoteacher.com/scrappycircle

What are music teachers changing in their studios, and what do they need most right now?

Brian Shepard, CEO of the Music Teachers National Association, joins me for a conversation about the trends he is seeing throughout the music teaching profession. Teachers are reevaluating their rates, simplifying administrative systems, exploring different tuition models, and looking for ways to create businesses that better support their lives.

Brian also shares his wonderfully simple approach to managing his calendar and email, including the infamous “next week” folder that keeps important projects from disappearing without creating an elaborate organizational system.

We also talk about the importance of community, especially for independent teachers who spend most of their working lives teaching alone. Brian explains how MTNA is working to help every music teacher feel welcome, regardless of educational background, studio size, teaching tradition, experience, or the kinds of students they teach.

Along the way, we discuss MTNA’s business resources, virtual affiliates, certification, grants, professional development, and membership benefits. And, naturally, we end with a very important conversation about Christmas trees.

In this episode:

• Studio and business trends among music teachers• Revisiting rates and accounting for work outside lesson time• Creating simpler systems for email and administration• Building a studio that supports your life• Finding professional community as an independent teacher• Connecting with local and virtual MTNA affiliates• Why every music teacher has something valuable to contribute

FIND A LOCAL OR VIRTUAL MTNA ASSOCIATION

Visit https://www.mtna.org/ and select Connect, followed by Affiliate Websites. Choose your state to explore its local and virtual associations.

If your state does not offer a virtual association, contact MTNA headquarters. Some virtual associations accept teachers from other states, although joining that state and local association may be required.

MTNA contact information:
https://www.mtna.org/Contact_Us.html

RESOURCES

Music Teachers National Association:
https://www.mtna.org/

MTNA membership benefits:
https://www.mtna.org/Membership_Benefits.html

MTNA business resources:
https://www.mtna.org/Business_Resources.html

MTNA Professional Certification:
https://certification.mtna.org/

MakeMusic Studio:
https://www.studio.makemusic.com/

Use code SCRAPPY90 to receive 90% off your first three months of MakeMusic Studio.

Visit The Scrappy Piano Teacher:
https://www.scrappypianoteacher.com/

Questions or thoughts about the episode? Email [email protected]

Your Students Are Overscheduled. Now What?

What do you do when your piano students are too busy to practice?

Between school, sports, theater, jobs, homework, and everything else competing for their time, many music teachers are trying to figure out how to set realistic practice expectations without simply lowering the bar.

In this episode, I am talking about overscheduled students, piano practice motivation, and what the research actually says about kids with increasingly packed schedules. I also share how I handle this in my own studio through our Honors Program, where students look honestly at their schedules and set realistic practice goals for the year.

We also talk about student ownership, Self Determination Theory, involving parents in the conversation, and why sometimes the answer to a student who only has twenty minutes is not telling them to find forty. Sometimes we need to teach them how to use the twenty minutes they already have really well.

The Scrappy Piano Teacher
www.scrappypianoteacher.com

Coda Books
www.scrappypianoteacher.com/coda

Molly Gebrian, Learn Faster, Perform Better: A Musician's Guide to the Neuroscience of Practicing
https://amzn.to/4gdjHjQ

MakeMusic Studio
https://studio.makemusic.com

Use code SCRAPPY90 for 90% off your first three months of MakeMusic Studio. You can also schedule a demo to see how MakeMusic Studio could work for your studio.

2024 MTNA Member Survey

Are Children Spending Too Much Time on Enrichment Activities? by Carolina Caetano, Gregorio Caetano, and Eric Nielsen

Self Determination Theory

Jennifer Breheny Wallace, Never Enough

Molly Gebrian, Learn Faster, Perform Better

Being realistic does not mean getting rid of standards. It means creating expectations that make sense for the actual student sitting in front of us and then helping that student follow through.

If this episode helped you, remember, sharing is caring. Send it to another piano teacher or independent music teacher who might enjoy the conversation.

Does Your Registration Fee Have a Job? How to Calculate Music Studio Fees

How did you decide what to charge for your studio registration fee?

Did you calculate it from real expenses, or did you choose a number that simply sounded about right?

In this episode, Jaci looks at how independent music teachers can calculate a registration fee using real information from their own studios. She shares how her registration fees once became general emergency money, why that approach did not solve the underlying problem, and how teachers can give each fee a clear and specific job.

You will hear practical ideas for reviewing expenses such as:

• Books and student materials
• Recitals and studio events
• Piano tuning and instrument maintenance
• Studio software and payment processing
• Registration and administrative work

Jaci also explains how to separate shared studio expenses from individual student expenses and use that information to calculate a realistic starting point for your fee.

CALCULATE YOUR REGISTRATION FEE

Create three columns:

Column 1: Everything you want your annual fee to cover

Column 2: What you spent on each item last year, or your realistic estimate for this year

Column 3: Whether the expense belongs to one student individually or is shared across the whole studio

Then calculate:

Shared annual expenses ÷ expected number of students = shared cost per student

Shared cost per student + average individual student costs = starting point for your annual fee

That number does not automatically have to become your final fee. You can still decide what belongs in tuition, what you may choose to subsidize, and what makes sense for your families. The important thing is that you are making the decision using real information from your own studio.

The episode also explores two ways to collect registration fees: charging the full amount upfront or spreading it across monthly tuition. Jaci shares the results of her own studio experiment, in which 85 percent of participating families chose to roll the fee into tuition.

Finally, she discusses how Profit First style buckets can help ensure that money intended for books, recitals, maintenance, or other expenses is still available when it is needed.

The goal is not to copy another teacher’s number. Your fee may be higher, lower, included in tuition, or structured completely differently. What matters is that it is accurate, intentional, and connected to the real cost of operating your studio.

RESOURCES

Free Recital Expense Calculator and Profit First Cheat Sheet:
https://www.scrappypianoteacher.com/resources

FREE SCRAPPY CIRCLE

Join Jaci and Eric Branner on August 14 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern for a casual back to school teacher conversation and Q&A. Eric will also share a short look at how Fons has grown into Make Music Studio.

RSVP and submit your question:
https://www.scrappypianoteacher.com/scrappy-circle

Visit The Scrappy Piano Teacher:
https://www.scrappypianoteacher.com

Before fall lessons begin, take a step back and make sure the systems underneath your studio still fit the teacher, business owner, and human you are today.

In this episode, Jaci shares five areas every music teacher should revisit before the new teaching year:

1. Studio policies

2. A calendar built around margin

3. Business bank accounts and Profit First buckets

4. Administrative systems and studio software

5. Your teaching philosophy

Your studio may have worked beautifully last year and still need to change this year. The goal is not to keep adding more. It is to build a studio that supports your students, your income, your energy, and the rest of your life.

Policy workshop replay, policy workbook, editable studio calendars, Profit First resources, and teaching philosophy workbook:

https://www.scrappypianoteacher.com/resources

Explore Make Music Studio:

https://studio.makemusic.com

Use code SCRAPPY90 to receive 90 percent off your first three months of Make Music Studio.

In this episode, I’m joined by Ashley Danyew to talk about musical informances and how they can offer a fresh, educational alternative to the traditional student recital.

Ashley shares what a musical informance is, how the idea developed in her own studio, and how this kind of event can help students share more than just a polished performance. We talk about helping students speak, demonstrate, explain musical ideas, and give the audience a deeper look at the learning process behind the music.

We also discuss the practical side of planning a musical informance, including choosing a theme, preparing students, communicating the idea to parents, pacing the event, and finding a simple first version that feels doable for independent teachers.

If you have ever wished your studio events could show more than the finished piece, this conversation will give you a thoughtful and practical place to start.

In this episode, we talk about:

• What a musical informance is

• How Ashley began using informances in her studio
• The difference between a recital and an informance
• How informances help students share the learning process
• Ways to prepare students to speak, demonstrate, and perform
• How to choose themes and repertoire

• How to introduce the idea to students and families
• How teachers can try a simple first version in their own studios

Resources mentioned:

Free Musical Informances Handout:
https://musician-co.myflodesk.com/musical-informance-handout

Musical Informance Planning Guide for Piano Teachers:
https://learn.ashleydanyew.com/musical-informance-guide

Penelope Roskell’s Essential Piano Technique Level 3, which includes Patchwork Polka:
https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/en/product/essential-piano-technique-level-3-23115113.html

Connect with Ashley Danyew:
https://www.ashleydanyew.com

Listen to Ashley’s podcast, Field Notes on Music Teaching & Learning:www.ashleydanyew.com/fieldnotesLearn more from The Scrappy Piano Teacher:
https://www.scrappypianoteacher.co

Communicating studio changes can feel surprisingly hard.Maybe you are raising tuition, changing your makeup lesson policy, adding flex weeks, switching to autopay, adjusting your lesson model, or simply trying to make the year run a little more smoothly.You know the change needs to happen.But then you open the email to tell your studio families, stare at the blank screen, and wonder, “What exactly am I supposed to say?”In this episode, we are talking about how to communicate studio changes clearly, warmly, and professionally without burying the important information or over explaining your decisions.I share a story from my very short-lived door to door sales era, what it taught me about repetition and clarity, and how that applies to the way we communicate with studio parents.Because parents are busy. They are not living inside our studio teacher brains. They are not thinking about tuition models, flex weeks, makeup policies, and registration deadlines all day long.So if we want families to understand what is changing, why it is changing, and where to find the information later, we need to say it clearly, repeat it with grace, and make the details easy to find.In this episode, we talk about:• Why one email in August is usually not enough• How to announce studio changes without burying the information• Why bullets are your best friend in parent emails• How to explain the reason behind a change without writing a novel• Why you do not need to apologize for running your business• How to use newsletters, waiting areas, policies, registration forms, and portals to reinforce important information• Why repeated reminders are not annoying when they are helpful• How to prepare for follow up questions before they come in• Why you can have clear policies and still offer private grace when it truly fits the situationI also mention the marketing idea often called the Rule of 7. I do not treat it as a proven magic number, but the general idea is useful: people often need to hear or see information more than once before it sticks.As music teachers, we already know this. We do not teach a student one concept one time and expect it to be locked in forever. We come back to it. We explain it another way. We give reminders. Studio communication works the same way.If you want more specific wording examples for tuition changes, autopay, flex weeks, makeup lesson policies, even monthly billing, and newsletter reminders, I have a detailed blog post for you at: www.scrappypianoteacher.com/scrappynotesAnd if you missed the Policy Triangle and Calendar Workshop, the replay and workbook are available at: scrappypianoteacher.com/resourcesNext time, we are taking a little break from the admin heavy conversations and talking about something really fun: student informances with Ashley Danyew from Musician and Company.Thanks for listening, teacher friend. Have a fabulous teaching week!

In this episode, I’m joined by Karen Thickstun, NCTM, MTNA past president and coordinator of MTNA Business Resources and MTNA Business Digest.

We talk through some of the fascinating results from the 2024 MTNA Member Survey and what they reveal about independent music teachers, including lesson rates, rate increases, studio policies, marketing, payment methods, student retention, software, and legal considerations.

This conversation is such a helpful reminder that while many of us teach independently, we are also part of a much bigger profession. The survey gives us a chance to see what other teachers are experiencing, what challenges are rising to the surface, and what we may want to think through more intentionally in our own studios.

Karen and I will also be presenting an MTNA webinar on June 23, 2026, called Communicating Value and Boundaries: Studio Policies That Serve and Protect.

And if you want hands-on help outlining your studio policy and calendar, my final Policy Triangle Workshop is coming up on June 19th at noon Eastern. You can join at scrappypianoteacher.com/scrappysessions.

The workshop includes a policy audit from me, even if you need to watch the replay.

Next episode: In two weeks, we’ll be talking all about communicating changes to your studio families, along with some fun tips and tricks.

Be sure to follow and subscribe! Thanks for supporting this work to help all independent music teachers.