Joyfulnotes Piano

Our story starts with a neurodivergent student! I created this colour-coded approach to teaching piano when I was preparing to teach a student who is on the autism spectrum.

When his parents and I were discussing having him start learning piano, we knew that the traditional method of learning piano might not be the best for him. He needed something that would immediately give him the confidence that he COULD do this! If it felt really overwhelming at the beginning, he might not want to continue long enough to be able to actually play any songs he knew.

I took this very seriously because I didn’t want him to come away from 1–2 lessons feeling like learning to play the piano was impossible for him. That would be a huge blow to his self-esteem. Instead, even if he chose not to continue because he wasn’t interested, I wanted him to know that he COULD do it, if he wanted to learn. I also knew that when he was younger, he had always been humming a tune while doing other things, so there was definitely an interest in music and an ear for it.

As I considered the best approach for teaching my new neurodivergent student, I thought about when I played my little coloured xylophones as a young child, probably about ages 4–5. Even before knowing how to play the notes on the piano, I would sit and play through the songs on the pages that came with my xylophones. My parents would even take blank recipe cards and pencil crayons and write out more of my favourite songs for me to learn.

Could I take this same approach and assign a colour to each key on the piano? Originally I actually used star-shaped stickers and put one on each key to show him what colour we were assigning to each key! Later on, I came up with the idea of the template which we use now since it’s more easily removable (and doesn’t leave marks on the keys!).

The second part of this challenge was to figure out how to portray the lengths of notes in a tangible way that would be easy to understand without knowing all of the types of notes and their lengths at first. I saw a flute book that used thick, long lines instead of notes to indicate that a whole note filled an entire measure. This was a light bulb moment for me and gave me the inspiration to use the coloured lines instead of the usual notes!

Right from the first lesson my student was so excited to learn to play “Hot Cross Buns” and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”! He couldn’t wait to go home at the end of the lesson and show his parents how he could ALREADY play the piano! Although I didn’t have an entire method ready yet, this gave him the confidence and motivation he needed to continue. I continued to make more songs to print in this way while he started into a regular method book, and within a couple of years he was playing hands together and reading regular music like a pro. He even performed in a couple of student recitals, and his parents were so proud of him!

Seeing him excel at playing piano after he was unsure if it was a skill he could learn was so satisfying! It made me want to share this method with other students who might need that same approach, whether they were neurodivergent or had other special needs, were very young or just needed that initial boost of “wow, this is so cool that I can play the piano so easily—I want to learn more!” I originally thought this would be just one book to start the students on their journey and then they could move on to other methods.

However, some chronic health issues I’d dealt with for several years started becoming more debilitating, and keeping a full-time schedule of private teaching became more taxing than I could handle. Too often, by the time I finished teaching all week, I would simply crash and be really sick all weekend. The next week I’d try to get up and keep going, but over time this drained my body and teaching became very difficult. As much as I loved my students, I knew this was not a long-term solution to supporting myself.

While this time was very difficult, and cutting back on teaching was so disappointing for me, I’m still very thankful for how God used these circumstances to lead me to start my business. If I had been able to continue teaching and adding more students, I’m quite sure I would not be writing books and creating courses today. As I’ve watched God guide me down this path, I’ve realized that while I may not be able to use my talents to actually play at church anymore, instead I’m using my unique gifting to teach so many children to be able to play for their churches someday! I look forward to seeing how God multiplies the fruit of my labour to minister to far more people than I could ever reach personally. My goal is for 100 churches worldwide to have someone ministering in music who started learning piano using my books!

In the summer of 2017, I started trying to come up with business ideas for something I could do from home when I felt well enough. I needed something that would enable me to earn a living without being tied to a full-time job schedule. Since I had a website, I thought there must be something I could do to use my website to make money. At first I started exploring affiliate marketing—I learned about building out my website, creating a blog and social media and then finding products to promote where I would get paid a commission. While this is a great strategy for many people, I quickly discovered that this was not going to be the best use of my strengths.

It was then that I decided that I needed to turn my colour-coded teaching method into a book, maybe a whole series of books! However, due to continual migraines and intense brain fog, I was not able to take the ideas in my head and make them happen yet. In April 2018, I signed up for an online business coaching class for Christian ladies. I thought it would be beneficial for me to meet others who were trying to earn money in similar ways and learn how I could do it better. Little did I know that this class would change my entire life!

During this same time, I started a new treatment to help reduce the intensity of the migraines and brain fog (it was effective for a few months). So, while participating in the class, I was able to map out the concepts for all five levels of my new curriculum. The ladies in the class were so encouraging and helped me see that perhaps I could take this business idea and also turn it into a ministry—a way to teach kids about God using music! Some of them were homeschool moms and suggested that I could also create a video course based on my books. It would be ideal for some large families who perhaps couldn’t afford private piano lessons for several children. Since they were already homeschooling, an online class would be a perfect way to incorporate it into the learning they were already doing at home. With these suggestions, my creative brain went crazy coming up with ideas and putting it all together!

Over the next few months, I created my first book filled with simple hymns, Sunday school songs and well-known folk tunes that I wrote new words for in order to teach biblical truths—all written in the colour-coded style so kids could play them right away. I also found an illustrator to draw Lolly the (Rainbow) Lorikeet and Peggy Piano (thanks, Ed!), worked with my editor to make corrections, registered it for publishing and sent it off to my printer! I picked up my first printing of 25 books in August 2018, and it was an exciting day for me to hold a printed copy in my hands for the first time! Thanks to having friends in many locations across North America as well as many missionary friends, my books were soon in numerous states, provinces and territories across Canada and the USA and in multiple countries around the world! It was so rewarding to get comments, pictures and videos from the parents saying how amazed they were that their children could so quickly play songs they knew!

Over the next year I completed writing the books for Levels 1B and 1C and soon reached the milestone of selling 50 books. With health flares, writing got put on hold at that point, but I still wanted to create the online course. So in 2019, I started recording videos in my living room. I had a tripod set up with my phone to record myself sitting in front of my piano talking to the camera. Then I would also set the tripod up for the phone to be over my piano and show my hands as I played the songs and pointed to various places on the pages. After recording, I would take these videos and edit them into one lesson video for each song. This was the start of my online courses!

A few people registered for the course, but not many at that time. Then in the spring of 2020, I decided that with most of the world shut down and kids being stuck at home with most of their extracurricular activities cancelled, this would be the perfect time to put a push on the course idea. I set up a group class that incorporated the online course with live group calls on Zoom. I advertised and soon had students participating from multiple countries and time zones around the world!

In October 2020, I got married and moved to the Greater Toronto Area, where James was already living. Over the next few months, I tried to keep offering live group classes. But between settling into home responsibilities and ongoing health struggles, I eventually had to take a break starting in the spring/summer of 2021. During the next two years I focused more on my health as well as learning to grow and preserve more of our food to have healthier options. Growing up, I had helped to start seeds for our family garden each spring and had watched/helped my mom water-bath can for as long as I could remember. Building on this foundation, I learned all I could as we greatly expanded our garden and I added a pressure canner and dehydrator to my kitchen.

In January 2023, I completed most of the writing of the Level 1D book, but then it got put on hold again. In September 2023, I was reevaluating what I wanted to do with my business because it was costing money to keep going but I wasn’t growing or even covering my costs. I decided that in order to make it work, I needed a team of people around me to work together. At that point I had one team member—my friend Mary who had been working with me since the beginning and had meticulously edited every one of my books. However, I needed someone to help me get the work done so I could have more for Mary to edit!

In October 2023, I made one of the best decisions I’ve ever made—I hired a virtual assistant for a few hours a week! April has been a wonderful addition to the team and has completed so many of the daily tasks that drained me of the time and energy I needed to actually put into making my ideas reality. She has tackled every one of the tasks I’ve put in front of her with eagerness and willingness to give her best while learning a lot of new concepts and skills. I’m so thankful for her servant’s heart and willingness to do so much work behind the scenes, which makes so much of what you see possible.

As my VA and I started working together each week and my mind was freed from thinking about so many things, the ideas started flowing. I decided to recreate my video course and include animated story videos that had Lolly and Peggy teaching the concept in each lesson to all of the other little animals in the rain forest town of Rainbowville. Evangelist Ben Everson had always been supportive of the colour-coded approach I use in my books, so I approached him about narrating the stories. He readily agreed and joined the Joyfulnotes team!

When I first started the stories, I was using AI to write the initial idea of a story, and then I would rewrite it to include the musical concept for that lesson as well as the biblical truths taught by the songs in that lesson. However, after a few lessons, the stories started to sound a bit repetitive (I guess AI is only so creative!). Then when we moved into Level 1B where the students would start learning to name the notes on the piano, the AI program came up with the exact same story every time and just changed the note name! 

At this point, I asked a friend who liked writing to help me revise a few of them to be more interesting. After just 1–2 stories, I knew there was no point in even trying AI anymore when she wrote stories that were SO much better! With that, Alé also joined the Joyfulnotes team! Her stories have lots of action and such interesting characters who each have their own personalities, instead of a lot of flowery language with big words that I had to constantly simplify. I enjoy how much fun her writing brings to the videos and get my own share of chuckles as I watch them come to life with the sound effects and animations!

The first week I was supposed to start recording the teaching lessons, I wasn’t feeling well and knew there was no way I felt up to getting all dressed up in my music dress and ready to face the camera. So I decided to adjust and do the first few lessons as audio only while showing the digital version of the page in the book. I did this and then tested out pointing to notes as I was talking about them and circling other items as I went. When I passed this file on to April to complete, I was thrilled with the final product and decided to proceed with most lessons this way and just show the overhead shot when I needed to play pieces or explain something at the piano. Using this format helped make recording my parts so much more doable for me because I could do more recording in short amounts, even on days when I didn’t feel as well!

It’s been so much fun to watch all of the aspects of the online course take shape, and I’m so excited that we’re halfway done Level 1! I’ve also started planning the topics and songs for the Level 2A book and hope to start writing it Fall 2024. We’ll be restructuring our payment plans in Aug./Sept. 2024 and will be offering an option for your child to participate in a schedule that will take him or her through the entire Level 1 course and books from September 2024 to May 2025 along with all of the other students enrolled in this option. We’ll have another option for younger kids to move at half the speed and complete half of the course by doing just one song a week instead of a whole lesson.

We look forward to creating an experience for your child through this course where your child feels confident and capable of learning to play, right from the first day. Because of this, practising is a joy instead of a chore. The animated stories will help them want to watch the next lesson and continue learning along with the animals each week. Before they know it, they’ll be learning the foundational skills of music and playing the piano without feeling like it is so hard and overwhelming that they just want to quit. Whether your child goes on to play the piano for church activities, becomes a professional musician, or just knows how to read and understand basic music as they sing praises to God, the skills they learn in this course will serve them well in so many aspects of life as their self-confidence grows from learning music.