Welcome to the MaxMusic Piano eSheet Club 2021 Edition!
2021 eSheets by Level
Click on the titles below to access teaching resources:
- The listing by Level makes it easy to choose the best pieces for your students.
- Quick Links to the eSheet Downloads.
- Watch YouTube videos for examples of the music.
- Get helpful teaching hints.
Primer/Beginner Level
Rainbow | Clown March | Flat Pop Blues | Once Upon a Christmas Star
Early Elementary Prep A
Icing on the Cake (Snow in the Winter)
Late Elementary Level 2
Sneaky Skeleton Pranks | Elegy for a Lost Star | Für Elise
Early Intermediate Level 3
When Puppy has to Stay | When Puppy gets to Play!
Intermediate Level 4
Intermediate Level 5
Late Intermediate Level 6
North Star
Levels: US, Intermediate. AMEB, 3. ABRSM, 3. RCM, 4.
Download
Teaching hints
- North Star is inspired by living in the north where it’s a great comfort to have a bright, guiding light at night.
- Based on Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, the piece features fifths, rhythmic patterns with sixteenth notes, legato pedal and lots of moments for developing long, expressive phrases.
Elegy for a Lost Star
Levels: US, Late Elementary. AMEB, 1. ABRSM, 1. RCM, 2.
Download
Teaching hints
- Written with loss and comfort in mind. When children experience complex emotions like loss, it’s sometimes difficult to know how to help. We can teach them that music can be a great comfort.
- F minor is an unusual key for Late Elementary. Instead of a key signature, accidentals are used. The beautiful, subdued tone offers a new soundscape to students who are usually limited in choices of key.
- The right hand rhythms are limited to rolling eighths and dotted-quarter notes, which makes this an ideal introduction to 6/8 meter.
- The left hand has a highly memorable key pattern of descending harmonic fifths that fall on white or black keys.
Once Upon a Christmas Star
Levels: US, Early Elementary. Primer Level.
Download
Teaching hints
- This beginner piano solo with optional duet invites the child to remember the beauty and light of the Christmas star!
- The YouTube video demonstrates piano only, but please have fun by playing and singing the lyrics to this song!
- The notation to be read centres around middle C with steps and skips.
- The spots to be learned by rote (copying) replicate measures that can be read, or are very simple.
- The tune to the words “Once upon a Christmas star” is actually based on Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, only the 5th has been inverted. Can your students hear the connection?
Icing on the Cake (Snow in the Winter)
Levels: US, Early Elementary. AMEB, Junior/Preparatory. RCM, Preparatory A.
Download
Teaching hints
- Invites the Early Elementary pianist to frolic in the snow! When it snows in the winter, it’s like the icing on the cake! This promises to become a Christmas classic and to be a favourite “snow” song all winter long!
- Features non-legato touch, two- and three-note slurs and hand-over-hand movement that kids love!
- Carefully designed to be a note and rote piece. The notation between the staff space Cs is well within the grasp of your early readers who are familiar with reading steps and skips.
- If your beginners haven’t learned eighth notes or how to read notes high in the treble clef, teach these elements by rote — that is, simply showing your student how to play them and asking them to copy you.
- Though the piece seems long, your student will be delighted that sections repeat. What they learn goes a long way!
- The YouTube video demonstrates piano only, but please have fun by playing and singing the lyrics to this song!
The Way Back Home
Levels: US, Intermediate. AMEB, 4. ABRSM, 4. RCM, 5.
Download
Teaching hints
- Feel the call of home! There’s something unforgettable about home, that feeling of being in a restful, familiar place. When it’s been a while and there’s a long journey ahead, this piece captures the feeling of making your way back home.
- Rondo Form: ABACA, Coda. The main tune is repeated several times and the music is kept fresh with LH variances and contrasting sections.
- Composed in a lyric folk style in Aeolian; begins with a homophonic texture (RH melody, LH accompaniment).
- The melody of flowing eighths has scalar runs with thumb tucks and shaped phrases, similar to an Intermediate sonatina.
- The LH features intervals in various rhythms including syncopations, carries the tune in one section, and in several places, plays over the RH.
- The music turns to a Tierce de Picardie for a long, restful ending.
You Better Run
Levels: US, Intermediate. AMEB, 3. ABRSM, 3. RCM, 4.
Download
Teaching hints
- Feel the thrill of getting away! There’s a chill in the air, a thrill of fight, flight or freeze — and in this music you decide to RUN! There’s something exciting about a chase scene, or the feeling of fear that gets your adrenaline pumping. Play it whether or not you watch spooky shows or celebrate Halloween!
- You Better Run is full of fun pianistic tricks. It features fifths in running eighth notes, descending chromatic scales, and hand-over-hand movement across the keyboard.
- The black and white key pattern makes it easy to learn by note, rote or a combination.
- 3-3-2 measures (unmarked 8/8 time signature, mixed compound and simple time), as well as syncopated rhythms.
- The marked tempo thrums forward like a swiftly beating heart and is quite a challenge. Feel free to lower the speed for some students!
When Puppy gets to Play!
Levels: US, Intermediate. AMEB, 2. ABRSM, 2. RCM, 3.
Download
Teaching hints
- Here’s the happy ending of our story of the puppy who had to stay at home. Now everyone’s back and puppy gets to play! It seems like a party day, a holiday!
- What’s this set of puppy pieces really about? The pandemic, of course! We can all relate to the feeling of a puppy who is told to stay, and how long it feels before we get to see our favourite people again.
- The infectious energy is played out in broken triads in legato and staccato patterns, in root position and inversions.
- The challenge lay in the independent voices, with the right and left hands simultaneously playing broken triads in different patterns.
- In the music, can you guess which part depicts the wagging tail?
Rainbow & Clown March
Levels: US, Early Elementary. Primer Level.
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Teaching hints
Children love playing hand-over-hand between the piano’s space C’s and pretty music with the damper pedal. Rainbow encourages imaginative playing and good technique.
- Non-legato touch encourages tension-free playing.
- The left hand plays all on finger 3 for an expressive, balanced hand.
- As the left hand moves from C to C, kids can pretend it’s the rainbow! This encourages a flowing movement, an arc through the air and gentle touch into the C’s.
Teaching hints
- Clown March gives your earliest readers a cheerful little marching tune!
- Notated in the middle of the staff and played in the middle of the piano keyboard.
- The section where the hands play back and forth is like marching right-left-right-left.
- The section that’s hands together is carefully designed to be easy for beginners to play — with fingers playing in contrary motion with the same finger numbers playing together at the same time. Kids at this level don’t often get to play hands together and love the rich sound!
Flat Pop Blues
Levels: US, Early Elementary. Primer Level.
Download
It seems every young piano student loves the sound of the blues! But they usually have to wait because the swing is so tricky. Flat Pop Blues cleverly gets around this by doing everything but the swing.
- It has ‘blue’ notes! It has the blues scale!
- It has a slow tempo and fun syncopated rhythm!
- The lyrics are all about having the blues!
- The duet part has the groovy barrel house blues bass pattern!
And have you noticed how much fun I had with the title? “Flat Pop” is of course a carbonated beverage that has lost its fizz. But all three words in the title are also music terms: 1) Flat, 2) Pop and 3) Blues. The piece is full of ‘flats’ — that’s how it gets its ‘blue’ sound. And the granddaddy of all ‘pop’ music is the blues.
Teaching hints
- Before introducing the sheet, have fun with the syncopated rhythm. You’ll know it’s the quarter-half-quarter from the piece you’re about to teach, but there’s no need to explain that yet. Just do it!
- Clap the quarter note, slide your right hand down your left arm (from shoulder to hand) to feel the length of the half note, then clap again. Ask, “Can you do this?” [Demonstrate] CLAP-sliiiiiide-clap-CLAP-sliiiiiide-clap. Can you think of other body rhythms to introduce this pattern?
- While your student claps a steady beat, play Flat Pop Blues through so they can hear how the syncopations fit into the beat.
- Teach the blues scale: (LH) G A B-flat B (RH) D E G. Get your student comfortable with this pattern of keys and fingers.
- Notice that all the steps so far have been physical and aural and haven’t involved reading yet. When you eventually give the sheet to your student, marvel that all the little tricks you’ve been trying are in the piece and celebrate that they’re already halfway through learning it!
Sneaky Skeleton Pranks
Levels: US, Late Elementary. AMEB, 1. ABRSM, 1. RCM, 2.
Download
Note: When first released, this piece was called ‘Monkey in the Middle’. The more I played it, the more I felt it needed a spooky title. It’s been re-released as Sneaky Skeleton Pranks.
Teaching hints
- Explores black and white key patterns and hand-over-hand playing.
- The music is very pattern-based and is meant to be taught mostly by showing your student how it goes on the piano — teaching it by rote.
- Why not teach this piece like a game? Explore the piano together. Have the patterns of the piece in mind and play a game of “monkey see monkey do.” Play a pattern from the piece and ask, “Can you do this?” Just find out what your student is capable of learning by watching and listening to you, while having fun!
When Puppy has to Stay
Levels: US, Early Intermediate. AMEB, 2. ABRSM, 2. RCM, 3.
Download
Teaching hints
- Here’s a piece about a puppy who has to stay at home and wait, when the rest of the family is away. Your students may relate to how the puppy feels! Whether we’re separated because of pandemic rules or live a distance from the ones we love, we miss our special people and want to see them again! This music can help kids get in touch with their own feelings and develop empathy for others.
- Available with and without lyrics (both versions included). Younger students will enjoy larger notes and lyrics that will help with the rhythm (3-page edit). Mature students may prefer the streamlined notation without lyrics (2-page edit).
Forever, Ever After
Levels: US, Late Intermediate. AMEB, 5. ABRSM, 5. RCM, 6.
Download
Teaching hints
- Here’s a tender melody with slow trills and long phrases.
- The pattern-based left hand has a harp-like quality. Perfect for your creative, dreamy students!
Baker’s Dozen Bonus – Für Elise
Levels: US, Late Elementary. AMEB, 1. ABRSM, 1. RCM, 2.
Contact for access
Each year the MaxMusic Piano eSheet Clubs rewards the earliest adopters with an extra FREE eSheet!
Easy Für Elise was released as a ‘Baker’s Dozen’ freebie to members who joined before February 7th, 2021. If that’s you and you need to download it again, please Contact Me.
Teaching hints
- Children excited to learn this famous classic don’t have to wait for the real thing!
- Can be taught by note or rote, or with a combined approach.
There’s nothing better than engaging your students with music they love to play, at the MaxMusic Club price!
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Invite your friends! They’ll get the savings, too!
Rebekah Maxner 