As mentioned in the video above, after publishing my first two music books, my music studio more than doubled. Parents and other piano teachers sent their piano students who were not enjoying piano lessons to me hoping I could motivate and inspire them to keep playing the piano. The only problem was, with the majority of these new students not wanting to take piano lessons anymore, more than half of my studio now wanted to quit piano lessons. Some even said they actually hated the piano. Every lesson became drudgery, dread, and despair, and that is just what I was feeling during their piano lesson! I'm sure they felt worse than I did because they thought piano lessons were a waste of their time and felt they had better things to do. They did not see the value in playing the piano because they were not having FUN! Now I want piano students to work hard, push themselves, and learn to do difficult things. It takes persistence to learn to play the piano. It takes effort, practice, dedication, and hard work. But I believe it can and should also be a FUN and enjoyable process.
I had a problem and had to figure out how to motivate and inspire these piano students. If you are a piano teacher or a parent of a piano student, maybe you can relate to what I experienced in trying to motivate my piano students.
As explained in the video above, I began composing a piano solo for each individual piano student during their piano lesson in any style, key signature, time signature, and genre of his or her choosing. Some wanted faster music that sounded like pop, rock, jazz, blues, or boogie-woogie styles. Others wanted slower music that sounded more like new age, contemporary/classical, ballads, or hymns. I composed music my piano students wanted to play! After composing each piece I asked the students what they thought and almost without exception, every student said they thought the music sounded COOL! All of these pieces became known as COOL SONGS.
I have compiled all of the various COOL SONGS I composed for my own piano students into a COOL SONGS Bundle to help motivate other piano students and share my COOL SONGS with piano teachers around the world!