Halloween At Its Best!

Halloween At Its Best!

There is a wealth of fun, well-written Halloween music for piano students, but some of my favorite Halloween pieces come from the series titled Halloween at Its Best, published by FJH. I use pieces from this series every year, and my students always love them. 

Here’s my student, Logan, playing Pumpkin Dance by Timothy Brown from Book 2.

If you’re a teacher who enjoys using background accompaniments with your students, you might appreciate the three accompaniment files created by Lori Frazer for pieces from Books 1 and 2. She makes them freely available at the Keys to Imagination website. You can listen to the accompaniments below, but you’ll need to visit Keys to Imagination to download them.

Halloween Boo!

by Melody Bober (Clavinova accompaniment by Lori Frazer.)

Look at the Witches

by Elizabeth W. Greenleaf (Clavinova accompaniment by Lori Frazer.)

Things that Go Bump in the Night

by Melody Bober (Clavinova accompaniment by Lori Frazer.)

Halloween Lessons

Halloween Lessons

Do you teach on Halloween, or do you take the day off, knowing your younger students will want to spend the evening trick-or-treating? I’ve always kept Halloween as a normal teaching day, but I encourage students to wear their costumes to piano lessons.

“What’s your costume gonna be?” a student asked me this year. I have to confess, I just wore my piano teacher costume. 

If a young student’s piano lesson falls during prime trick-or-treating hours, I encourage them to trade times with an older student who comes on another day. Most of the older students don’t participate in trick-or-treating anyway, so that often works to avoid lesson cancellations on Halloween.

This year only one student cancelled her Halloween lesson. Many years, we manage to work out lesson trading so that no one has to cancel. And the fun of having students come to their lesson in costume is a treat I always look forward to.