Create your own custom theory pages

Are you looking for a new way to practice your music theory?
I have found an amazing little website called musictheory.net. It allows you to create your own theory exercises - you can either let it create a fast activity for you, or you can customize your exercise to meet your exact needs. You can practice everything from note reading to identifying key signatures. Sometimes it's more fun to play a theory game online than it is to sit down and do it with pen and paper.

Customize Your Sheet Music!

I have been searching the internet for a good website for free, blank sheet music, and I think that I have found it!

Blanksheetmusic.net is an amazing site - it lets you customize your blank sheet music so that it suits your needs. You can choose how many staves you want on the page, whether the page is in landscape or portrait orientation, which clefs to include, the time signature, the number of bars....the list goes on and on! In addition, there are basic options (which are a bit easier to use) as well as advanced options, which allow you to further customize your manuscript paper.

This is a good website to keep in mind as we start composing our own music this coming week. I'll post this link on our "Links for the Musically Minded" section, below on the right.

Cataloging Your Music Library

I have an abundance of piano music that I have bought, inherited, and been given. For years I've been looking for a nice way to keep a record of all this music on my computer, and this week I finally found the perfect program: DataCrow. Although it's meant to help you keep track of books and CDs, I've found that it also does a great job or organizing sheet music!

This is my new project for the summer - to slowly (ever so slowly) start cataloging the enormous amount of piano music I have so that it's easier for us all to find a piece that we love!

Hanon Online

At long last, I am finally posting again to our neglected blog! It has been an incredibly crazy four months, and I am glad to be back in my normal routine.

I happened to stumble across a new site called Hanon Online. Both my sister and I used the Hanon technique books, but until I came across this site, I had completely forgotten about them.

The Hanon books are filled with fun exercises; they are a lot like the Dozen a Day books, but geared more towards late beginner/intermediate students. I know that a few of you are ready to tackle this level of technique.

This site is neat because it has all the exercises on it for you to print and play, but it also lets you change the key that you play it in. Is the exercise getting to be easy? Why don't you add some flats or sharps to bring back the challenge? You can do that on this site.

You can visit Hanon Online here: http://www.hanon-online.com/

Happy playing!

Free Online Music Library

There are several sites on the web that house free, accessible music from the public domain. Many of these sites are dedicated to choral music, but I came across this one this past week that also touches on piano works. I haven't fully explored it yet, but what I have seen of it looks very promising!

You can access the Petrucci Music Library here.

Mario Music

For those of you who love your video games, check out this site:

http://www.mariopiano.com/

It contains a ton of transcriptions of themes and sounds from the Mario video games. Though these transcriptions can be tricky, it is nice to know that they are out there, free for the use of pianists everywhere!