Music Teaching Resources - A Great Online Resource for Flute Teachers

I was approached by Robert Hylton of http://www.musicteachingresources.com to review the vast assortment of worksheets that he and Ken make available on their website. As a private flute teacher, I have been looking for a cheap resource like this for quite some time so I was very excited to be given this opportunity to review the worksheets.

Many of my students that come to me do not have a good theory background, which is why incorporating music theory instruction into their flute lessons is so important to me. If you know just a little bit of theory, you will waste a lot less time working on technical studies and repertoire. With my older students, I prefer to spend a lot of lesson time analyzing new technical exercises to help the students make sense of them and to allow for greater freedom in playing. I explain the theoretical concept (such as scales or triads), but often the student continues to have trouble identifying those same elements in the next lesson. This is where http://www.musicteachingresources.com comes in.

For example, if I wanted to spend a lesson introducing a student to Taffanel and Gaubert E.J. 1 (from 17 Big Daily Exercises) but I knew the student had a very limited grasp of key signatures, I would use the block of worksheets on major scales and key signatures. Using these worksheets help me to explain the concept in an individualized way while reinforcing the topic by having the student complete a worksheet (or two) during the week. Since the student is already seeing the key signatures every day as they practice E.J. 1, the use of these worksheets will enable faster progress because the student is thinking about scale construction.

Approaching the technical exercise this way also allows the student to begin memorizing the exercise as well since they can start going beyond the notes and start memorizing based on the key signature. I can keep reemphasizing key signatures every week because there are enough worksheets to work on this throughout several lessons. With this study, the student has not only learned a little about music theory, but they're becoming more technically fluent on the instrument and they've improved their memorization skills. Both student and teacher are happy!

Key signatures, major and minor scales, interval identification, and chord and triad constructions are all concepts I work on my students at various stages. Robert and Ken have easy to use worksheets for all of these topics! For my more adventurous students, I especially like the Pentatonic and Blues scales handouts. Robert and Ken have done a great job of organizing the worksheets so that they are easily accessible. Now instead of wasting precious time searching online for worksheets that I can use, these handouts are in PDF format and can be printed instantly. The handouts do a great job of tying together all of what I teach in a lesson.

The resources rate 4 out of 5 stars. The only con is the lack of a handout that provides succinct summaries of the topics being discussed. There also appears to be no logical sequencing to the files themselves, but this is only a minor issue especially if you make a binder of all the handouts. You can go to http://www.musicteachingresources.com and download free pages. It's only $18 to download all the resources currently available with no restrictions on the number of copies you can make. It's well worth the money to be able to provide cheap handouts to your students while saving time!