Lesson & Home Supplies

 

A Really Good Speaker

We’re musicians — sound is our medium. You’ll use this speaker daily for environmental listening, for metronomes, and for practice tracks.

Whatever device you use must be loud enough, and it must have beautiful sound quality. It is so important to bathe our ears in the beautiful resonance of the instrument.

My personal choice for home speakers is a Bose Revolve Soundlink. I’ve tried more inexpensive speakers but haven’t found any I can really recommend. To really crank it up, the ION portable Bluetooth speakers (usually on sale at Costco) are loud enough for a party.

Some families have been happy with larger Alexas or Sony speakers as well.

Streaming to your TV can work in a pinch!

Taking Notes

Parents: If you’re taking notes during our lesson, use whichever means is best for you, though I recommend pen and paper over using a phone’s ‘notes’ app. Yes, you can record the lesson with your phone (and please do!).

Students (middle schoolers/book 3 and above): Please bring in a notebook or binder with scrap paper, as well as your phone or tablet to make video recordings during the lesson.

Tuning and Metronome App

I recommend just one app, TE Tuner (TonalEnergy) because it does everything you need, is hyper customizable, and when paired to a Bluetooth speaker, loud! It also can hold drones (a sustained pitch) for intonation work.

My default settings:

Tuner: Calibrate A to 441Hz
Metronome: 1/4, quarter as beat, sound set, “Ting 2” or “Doctor”

A Good Music Stand

All musicians know the importance of a good stand… one that:

  • is tall enough

  • holds a good number of books

  • is easy to write on

  • won’t knock over easily (with a gust of wind outdoors or from a kick of your stand partner’s foot), and

  • is portable

And affordable is good, too! For all these reasons, I recommend Peak Music Stands. Also popular, but not very portable, is the Manhasset Stands. Both options are available in an extra tall version — if your child is likely to be tall, you might want to just buy the tall version from the beginning.