How To Organize A Piano Studio
~~~~~~~~ Happy New Year! ~~~~~~~~~
…and happy time of the year when many of us like to reorganize and resolve to be organized…
I am starting this post with a huge caveat - I DO NOT HAVE ALL OF THE ANSWERS ON THIS TOPIC. I’d love to receive comments from any of you who have additional ideas!
Studio organization for pianists can be tricky for two main reasons. First, our instrument or instruments take up a lot of space and require strategic placement in a living room or studio space. Secondly, we are blessed with one of the largest bodies of repertoire. This applies to our own advanced repertoire, as well as the blessing/curse of so many pedagogical resources available to us. If you are a performer as well as a teacher of a large variety of levels, it’s likely that you own a lot of music books and sheets. Although I try on a regular basis to purge from my collection things that are no longer valuable to me, I have a lot. Much of what I own was passed on to me by my mother, another piano teacher, as well as some other colleagues who have retired.
One obvious problem is that music books are too tall to stand upright on most shelves; they also have soft covers and don’t tend to stand well. I bought this beautiful barrister bookcase on Facebook marketplace for an absolute steal and used one shelf for my Henle urtext editions laying flat in two stacks. Most of those are advanced music for my own use, although my oldest kids are advanced enough now to use some of it, too. (A small part of my husband’s extensive hymnal collection resides on the top shelf!)
So what do we do with smaller books or pedagogical material? For many years, I worked in a studio where I had access to big, sturdy hanging files, and I stored many of my books there. However, I don’t have those anymore with my entire studio residing in my house, so I bit the bullet and bought a few dozen magazine file holders. I limited myself to black and white, but you can certainly be more adventurous with your color choices if you wish! I have these on bookshelves in various rooms of my house to not overwhelm the actual studio space. Since I have organized and labeled, I can usually find things quickly when needed, even if they are a floor away from the piano.
Of course, this begs the question of how to organize the various books and collections. I think you have to find what works for you. First, I arranged all of my historical repertoire books (other than my expensive urtext editions or other large books) in chronological order and figured out how much could go in one file. Therefore, I have things organized by composer or time period like “Bach,” “Mozart and Haydn,” “Sonatinas,” “Romantic A-K,” etc. Other examples of my categories include: theory, historical duets, other duets, sight-reading, Christmas, concerti, pedagogical jazz collections, pedagogical 20th century collections, pedagogical material alphabetized by composer, and more.
Finally, I got this antique cabinet at a resale and it is in the corner behind my piano. It holds a variety of items, including some office supplies, tech equipment when not in use, and a few more books that lay flat. And you can see the extra binders just kind of live down below. I’m sorry to say it’s not usually this neat. However, the good news is that it’s easy to clean up in a matter of minutes now that I know where things go!
For those of you who are using a lot of studio-licensed digital music files, I highly recommend Wendy Steven’s post on her website linked here. She also has a separate post if you are the type who likes to print that type of music to have in a binder. While I don’t do a lot of this myself, I do a bit, and appreciate her encouragement to keep it organized, especially as I have done more than ever before in the pandemic. Her categories are great, and might also be food for thought when organizing print music as well.
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