Originally written for voice and piano by an Icelandic composer (also a doctor!), Sigvaldi Kaldalóns (1881-1946). I first heard this piano solo version arranged by Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson. So sweetly romantic and enchanting this piece is.
Here's my simple arrangement I wrote for my early intermediate students for developing further understanding of chords and harmonisation as well as making their own musical decision to bring what's on the score to come alive (hence all the musical details are not written in). Sheet music is now available from Payhip, Sheet Music Plus and Sheet Music Direct. December 2022 |
My first gift item in my web shop!
I love creating miniatures things, including music. This mini grand piano gift box idea had been in my mind for some years and have finally managed to turn the concept into a physical good. Ideal for wedding favours, party favours, mini gift for piano students, etc. The box is available from here. June 2021 |
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Following the success of Workbook for Piano 1, here comes Workbook for Piano 2 finally published! The book 2 focuses more on developing reading skills via 'following the dots' and 'transcribing'. It also continues to cover the basic music theory necessary for piano playing and includes mini opportunities to 'complete' the tune by inserting pupil's own ideas. Tunes (both solos and duets) are mostly children's songs with some originals I wrote for my pupils.
The purpose of these workbooks are written to help my pupils develop decoding skills required for piano playing and also to help them cultivate creative thinking to be able to make musical decisions in performing. In my studio, I usually pair up the workbook with one of the reading books written by Julia and Kevin Olson to practise reading skills (The Perfect Start for Note Reading / Note Reading Made Fun). March 2021 |
Having been witnessing growing motivation and steady progress in my young pupils in developing hand coordination (combined with ear-eye-voice coordinatiion) through children's songs, I've decided to put together an extented edition of Children's Song for Piano - for developing hand coordination that I've published in May 2020. The extended edition includes traditional songs and some classical pieces. I also included some of my original pieces that are introduced as a tool for improvisation and composition. This ideas was inspired by how my pupils started experimenting with previously learned harmonic tools from the songs to create something of their own - harmonising the melody they've picked up by ear, creating a melody with LH ostinato, etc.
There're now 52 pieces altgether instead of 13! It's now available from my website shop. March 2021 |
Comments from a student and teacher team in the US:
"The colorful design, and the way you've structured the lessons is as fun as it is informative" - Liz "It is a really fun book and fun to learn about. You made playing the piano fun in a whole different way. I just want to say thank you and have a good day." - Madison |
A collection of worksheets that I've created over the past years are now put together as a series of workbooks. Here's the first in the series. The contents cover some fundamentals required in the early stage of piano learning such as:
- keyboard orientation - understanding pulse/beat - cultivating a steady pulse - developing listening ears - gaining ear-eye-hand (and voice!) coordination - grasping various tempi - understanding how rhythm works - understanding how notation works - understanding how reading notation works - understanding how metre works As I run the curriculum without using standard piano tutors books, these are coming in handy! Workbook 2 will be available soon. The book two offers more tunes to play (both children's song and originals in solo & duet formats) and also introduces transcribing and writing musical ideas within selected tunes. August 2020 |
Requested by one of my teenage students some years ago, I wrote a piano solo arrangement of Sail by AWOLNATION. SMP press has finally added this song in their copyrighted song list for the arrangers to be able to publish its arrangements.
I made two versions for this song; one for early intermediate level and the other for intermediate. Although the key signature looks scary, it's a simple black-key pentatonic tune (with occasional C flat and F here and there), so it's relatively easy to learn. A good rhythm workout song, I say! The sheet music is available from SheetMusicPlus.com. July 2020 |
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In my teaching, I often incorporate transposing exercises using very short and simpler tunes (4-bar or less) as soon as my students have learned a major scale in 12 keys. It’s a challenge, but surprisingly none of my students seem reluctant towards it. I suppose the reason being that they already know the tunes from memory; it’s kind of fun to search the right notes to be able to play the tune in 11 other keys; it exercises their thinking brain which helps them focus without getting bored; it works as a finger exercise; it’s much more fun than practising scales from tonic note to tonic note, etc. I'm planning to share these exercises in the future. But for now, I'm going to share here two transposing exercises that I wrote for myself to actually enjoy transposing!
Here's the details about these two tranposing exercises. May 2020 |
A collection of 13 children's songs for young students who have just started playing with both hands together to further develop hand coordination as well as aural skill. Basically, a melody is to be learned by ear and a simple left hand accompaniment (mainly in a form of blocked chord) is taught by rote. There'll be some experiment with other forms of left hand patterns. Empty staves can be used to trasnscribe the melody. Suitable for mid elementary level piano students with limited reading skill. Digitally available from SheetMusicPlus (USA) and Payhip (UK).
Song List: 1. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star 2. Mary Had A Little Lamb 3. Wheels on the Bus 4. Lavender's Blue 5. Polly Wolly Doodle 6. Little John (Hänschen klein) 7. London Bridge 8. Buz, Buz, Buz (Sum, Sum, Sum) 9. Winter Goodbye (Winter Ade) 10. Frère Jacques 11. This Old Man 12. Aura Lee 13. Happy Birthday May 2020 |
After having made a transcription of Peridic Table Song (arr. by AsapScience - www.asapscience.com) for one of my piano studetns, I've decide to write an easy piano solo arrangement (early intermediate level) based on the original version written by Jacques Offenbach. I kept the left hand very simple so that the student can focus on getting the right hand part sorted. I think it works nicely as an etude for the budding pianists!
The sheet music is available from here. April 2020 |
I'm adding a simplified version of Gnossienne No. 1 by Erik Satie to my piano (mid-late) beginner students' library. Less movement in the left hand makes it possible for a student to focus on tone production, phrasing and dynamic shaping in the right hand to create suitable atmosphare that this simple but effective piece requires. Since the pieces is in the public domain, I'm sharing the sheet music here.
December 2019 |
Finger exericses can be very useful to develop finger strength and dexteriy when introduced at the right time in the learning years. The point where I usually introduce such exercises is when the learner can play a simple tune with both hands together with ease, who has developed a sense of steady pulse. Hanon is the first finger exercise that comes to most pianists' minds but can be a little be overwhelming for some. Hence I wrote a preparatory version with a little twist to make it more useful than just the finger exercise.
Available as a digital download from Payhip. May 2018 |
A number of my original pieces (sheet music) are available for digital download from my website shop and also from SheetMusicPlus.com (USA).
________________________________________________________ Stillness in the Morning (will be included in Piano Songs for Young Adults ~ album three) In the Desert (will be included in Piano Songs for Young Adults ~ album three) Swing Deco (will be included in Piano Songs for Young Adults ~ album four) Just Around the Corner (will be included in Piano Songs for Young Adults ~ album four) Three Black-Key Piano Duets for Beginners May 2018 |
In addition to a numerous already existing piano solo versions of Walking in the Air by Howard Blake, I'm adding another one here; a simple yet fulfilling version suited for piano players at their late elementary to early intermediate level. One of my students heard it and she wanted to play a version which sounds like an original but not too tricky. I tried by my best to maintain the flowing effect created by the arpeggio in the background without it being too difficult to play. The sheet music is available from SheetMusicPlus.com.
February 2018 |
Note Reading Drills for piano is aimed for piano students at the late elementary to early intermediate levels, whose music reading is not their forte, who have less interest in doing reading exercises but contradictorily have some desire to improve it.
Exercises in the booklet are based around 5 set of landmarks notes grouped into 5 sections. Some of the exercises have an accompaniment to show how a simple exercise can turn into something more, which I hope gives students some space to explore dynamic shaping and tone control or use it as a motif for composition. The idea of this booklet is to help students learn some notes as a guide note to find other notes around them and also to gain a skill to be able to read a series of notes as a pattern (scalic, chordal or mix), which is an essential skill to be become better at reading music. The booklet is in an A6 landscape format, and is plastic coil-bound. There’re 75 melodic (some chordal) patterns plus 10 little pieces at the end. It's available from my website shop. It's often necessary to go back to the basics to consolidate the foundation to be able to build a new skill upon it. December 2017 |
The final book of my Alphabet Song Book series is finally published! It contains 20 short pieces. This book can be used as a stand alone for adult beginners and also for those whose reading skill is at elementary level but would like to develop playing skill. This book focuses more on developing the coordination skill required for both-hand playing. Various forms of left hand patterns are gradually introduced. Some pieces have an accompaniment part for a teacher to play along as a duet. Players can name a title for each piece after having worked on musical details such as dynamics, articulation and tempo.
The book is available from my website shop. December 2017 |
After the publication of Piano Songs for Young Adults ~album two~ in April 2017, I finally put together the pieces for ~album one~. Having welcome some more young learners aged 8 years old+ to my piano studio over the last years, I've been using the pieces from this album quite a lot. They're turning out to be popular with ambitious learners with limited piano playing experiences and reading skill. Pieces are short and pattern-based, so they're relatively easy to learn once they understand how the music is put together. The idea for this series is to help learners focus on actual playing the piano rather than spending too much time in reading the notes to learn the piece. So, with enough help from a teacher, a player can go through the pieces in the book with a limited reading skill. There're 17 original pieces in the album one written in various styles such as jazz, pop, folk, new age, classical influenced. The book is available from my website shop. Album three and four will be published some time in the future. December 2017 |
My fascination with Morse code rhythm has started ever since I heard Barrington Pheulong's Inspector Morse theme tune. When I discovered that I could use Morse code rhythms to explain some hard-to-explain rhythmic patterns in music to my students in a direct way so that they can get the feel of how the rhythms should go rather than understand them mathematically. Motivated by that fact, I started writing short rhythmic tunes using Morse code style notation, and they became very popular amongst my young students. Because they only need to know two rhythmic syllables (dah and di) to play syncopated rhythm tunes without needing to read standard musical notation. In my piano studio, these Morse code tunes have become a cornerstone of the rhythmic and aural exercises to improve overall piano playing skills. They're turning out to be very useful for working on articulations, effective dynamic shaping, ear-eye-hand coordination, attentive listening, and learning about tonalities and metres, etc.
There’re 27 tunes (plus a bonus tune) and are of varying length from 4 to 14 bars. They are repetitive so that players learn about the usefulness of repeated short musical ideas in music. The ideas in this book can be extended to be used as a tool to set a motif for a composition. The book is available from my website shop and also via Amazon.com and Amazon Europe (UK, France, Germany, Italy, etc.). Septebmer 2017 |
Here's a series of two reading exercise books I've written for piano beginners, aged 7 years old and above. The books explores short melodic patterns based around two words, BAG and FED, using two metres, 2/4 (in Book 1) and 3/8 (in Book 2). Based on my belief that learning to play music should precedes learning how to read, I tend not to use piano tutor books to teach the beginners. Having said that leaving 'learning to read notation' too late can cause difficulties in later years of learning if players decide to lead a musical career where reading skill is essential. Over the years, I've been giving my students worksheets to help them get started with reading, also through lots of interval/pattern reading games. But I've decided to put those separates worksheets and games into compact sized books. Out came two Alphabet Song Book's, keeping my vision for the books to be something simple and repetitive (as based on Japanese Kumon drill system - repetition in a small segment) yet musically pleasing and at times challenging, but also something intuitive and creative. So that players can practise reading notes separately from learning to play music of their choice. For more details, please follow these links: Book 1 & Book 2.
May 2017 |
After having spent some years in creating more materials for the very young beginners than a standard piano tutor book can offer in a couple pages, out came a little booklet for little ones to be able to explore piano playing without learning to read standard notation just yet. But at the same to cultivate necessary coordination skills required for piano playing such as singing, listening, following the rhythmic values, following the direction of the notes on the piano, creative thinking, making musical decision, etc. The booklet contains 40 two-bar musical motifs and I kept the layout of the book very simple, so that teachers and students can add more details and have fun with the contents. I have put together some ideas how I use this book in my teaching in my blog post. Depending on individuality of each student, new ideas often come up, so I'm always prepared to be surprised. The booklet is available from my website shop. April 2017 |
As any creative music teacher would do, I do too write many short (but not too short!) pieces for my students to meet their needs and interests in their piano learning. In my view, the most difficult materials to find are those written for 9 years old and older beginner students, whose interest in piano playing is not through conventional piano tutor books. To help them connected to the music that they can relate to, I started to write pieces in pop & folk song style; some pieces are jazz, classical, fim music influenced. The numbers are incresing over the years, so I've decided to compile them into four books, each of which roughly reflects the following difficulty.
Book 1: mid elementary to late elementary Book 2: late elementary to early intermediate Book 3: early intermediate to mid intermediate Book 4: mid intermediate to late intermediate This is the second book in the series of four. The reson why I decided to publish the second book first is that I happen to use the pieces from this book quite frequently to teach those age group at the moment, so I wanted to make it available first. Please visit my shop for more details. April 2017 |
One of the tunes that I fell in love with at the first hearing. I heard Kathryn Tickell's Northumbrian pipe tune, The Return, when she and her new band came to Cambridge, UK in 2013. The tune since then has haunted me around that I wanted to do something about it. I hope my interpretation of the tune has captured the original content and achieved a sense of what inspired Kathryn Tickell to write this tune to play on Northumbrian pipe. For more details about this arrangement, please visit my blog post in which I wrote about this in details.
The printed sheet music is available from my website shop Digital download is available from my PayHip site & SheetMusicPlus.com (USA) The audio is available from my bandcamp page. October 2016 |
It's still fresh in everyone's memory that this pop song went viral. It was two years go. I thought I wouldn't be surprised if my students would request this song at some point and they did. One of them wanted to sing whilst accompanying herself on piano. After a numerous testing, out came a version that she happily performed in the concert.After a while, I looked for way to share this in public legally. I’d hoped be able to include it in my ongoing piano song book projects for youngsters, so I went through a legal way of requesting for a permission to arrange and publish. It was turned down, of course. But then I discovered SMP Press’ ArrangeMe scheme this year (for more details, please read my blog post explaining about it). So now I’m happy to announce that it’s legally available to the public. I hope there will be more youngsters singing and accompanying themselves this uplifting song!
Sheet music is available from SheetMusicPlus.com. October 2016 |
In addition to writing many teaching materials for my pupils, I regularly write piano solo arrangements of popular songs by their request. But I sometimes come across music myself that I deeply fall in love with and it often haunts me around long enough to urge me to write an arrangement of it, so that I can play it on my piano. One of such songs is Joni Michell’s A Case of you. I spent every minute of writing (and laborious editing!) this arrangement with an outpouring of affection towards this song. I'm pleased to announce that the sheet music for this arrangement is now available for free download from the Joni Mitchell's official website. If you wish to download the recording of the song, please click here. (N.B. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to open the file).
September 2016 |
It’s a regular occurrence that my students ask for pop songs in piano lessons. Some of them are beginners but keen learners. Some are at the intermediate level. Over the years, I’ve written many pop song arrangements aimed at various difficulty levels. Some of them came out better than others. For quite a while, I’ve been searching for a legal way of sharing them publicly. Recently, I came across ArrangeMe with SMP Press (part of SheetMusicPlus.com), who has a contract with Hal Leonard, allowing composers/arrangers to submit legally their arrangements of copyrighted songs. SMP Press offers a list of songs that are permitted to arrange and publish from ArrangeMe and the minimum price of each work is set by the copyright holders. Currently, ArrangeMe arrangers are permitted 30 seconds of music to help showcase their arrangements without seeking for a mechanical licence. Here're two of my piano arrangements published from SMP Press: For more details about how ArrangeMe works, please visit their FAQ page. August 2016 |
In the past, I’ve come across quite a few discussions in various forum sites regarding the violin and piano version of Piazzolla’s Le Grand Tango. It’s originally written in C minor for the cello and piano, and Sofia Gubaidulina did a fabulous virtuosic arrangement for the violin and piano that are well known amongst the violinists who fell for the charm of Piazzolla’s music. Having played the Gubaidulina’s versions with the dynamic violinist Mifune Tsuji on several occasions, my desire to perform this piece in its original form started to grow. Here's my best attempt in bringing the original idea back into the violin and piano version.
I’m happy to announce that Mifune Tusji and I will be giving the premier performance of the piece on 27th September 2014, at the Alumni event at St Edmunds College, Cambridge. I hope that this new arrangement will find its usefulness and deliver the essence of the piece that Piazzolla originally intended. The sheet music is now available from the publisher, Bèrben Edizioni Muscicali, Italy (Catalogue No: 5810) and also from the online shops in UK, USA, Japan (p.7), Italy. July 2014 |
It’s my usual practice to write something for my piano students from time to time when I see that they need a little help to get their motivation level boosted up from different angles. When that happens, I often use a form of etude (study); short but useful with various skill-building contents. Some of my early etudes for that purpose have been published as an article in the EPTA (European Piano Teachers Association)’s own magazine, Piano Professional (issue 34), April 2014. Boogie Woogie Etudes, I call it, are a set of three studies based on Boogie Woogie style (piano-based blues) to cover a wide range of skill-building exercises from the aural, visual, kinaesthetic & intellectual point of view. Across the 7 pages in this article, I covered every detail about what they’re for, how they’re introduced and how they can be explored in the area of improvisation, etc. I hope these etudes find their usefulness in many piano teachers’ studios. The magazine can be purchased via the EPTA. Please click on the picture to visit the EPTA' web site. February, 2014
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Often I write arrangements of existing original works by request from my piano pupils. One such case was one of my pupil's wish was to play Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue as a piano solo piece. Somehow I didn't see that as a wise option for an intermediate player. With this piece in particular, I felt that it needed a rich harmonic support to get closer to what the orchestra & piano version can achieve. I searched for the existing piano duet arrangements which is not as difficult and long as Henry Levin's version. In failing to find one, out came my arrangement. It is now available from the publisher, Goodmusic Publishing, UK and Boosey & Hawkes and also in Germany. Please click on the picture to visit the publisher's site for more details.
April, 2013 |
Some time ago, one of my teenage piano students asked for this classic song when she heard her friend playing it. It's been included in the 2011-2012 ABRSM piano exam syllabus (grade 3) in the UK. Since the ABRSM's version is very short, I decided to arrange a full version with some additional harmonic flavours of my own. As I studied this song in depth, I was completely enchanted by the hidden charm this particular melody has. I simply wanted to explore where it took me.
For those who wish to try it out, please click on the picture to visit the Joni's official web site where you can download the sheet music and the link to its audio recording, free of charge! (N.B. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to read and print the sheet music) If you wish to download the recording of the song, please click here. December, 2012 |