Best Gifts for Music Lovers
Here’s my holiday compilation of the best gifts for music lovers and great gifts for musicians. To align with my personal values, this collection of gifts for music lovers and gifts for musicians features small businesses when possible and celebrates businesses operated by people often underrepresented in these gift guide collections.
Daily Ritual & Routine
Music Journal
This musical notes journal is the perfect place to capture new songs, ideas, and track your daily practice. I love this journal as a sheet music notebook, but it makes the perfect songwriting notebook or practice journal because of its unique layout. It has three sections, one for musical notation, one for text, and one that alternates text lines and music staffs. This music notebook is unique, and is great for people starting out looking to practice note writing, as well as creators and songwriters. I designed this notebook because there was nothing like this out in the world. Now there is a music notebook to keep track of all of our ideas.
Ritual Candle
I light a candle to mark the beginning of my dedicated practice time, and the end. It helps me to stay present, and brings extra joy and satisfaction to the experience of practicing piano. Adding something like the act of lighting a candle elevates my practice from occasional routine to a creative ritual. I usually have a special candle dedicated for this with my piano sticker stuck on the front!
Holographic Piano Sticker
I put these holographic piano stickers on my water bottles so that everyone everywhere knows that I play piano. Other great places for these piano stickers include the front of your notebook, on a candle, your computer, your car…
Metronome
Okay, sure, there’s an app for that, but nothing beats the simplicity of the real thing. Plus, so many people have replaced metronomes with their phones that there are always beautiful vintage metronomes available in antique shops and estate sales.
Habit Tracker
How beautiful is this tapestry? Can you imagine unfurling a new symbol each day as you begin or end your practice? Other ideas for tracking your practice and time at the piano are bullet journals, apps, and interactive posters.
Method Books & Music Resources
FREE Printable Music Guide
Okay, here’s an idea for a unique gift for musicians. Print this beautiful detailed Music Matrix for free (or the cost of ink) and put in in a binder or have it bound at your local print shop. It’s the perfect guide for everything a beginner musician could want to know, from how to read sheet music on piano, and what do all those Italian words even mean?
Piano Scales Book
Help them build a daily ritual of playing with this gift for pianists: a piano scale book to guide them through intuitive scale practice. This book contains everything you need to know about playing major and minor scales on the piano. With instructional diagrams explaining how to build a scale, illustrations of the scale fingerings, and musical notations of the scales, this guide will give you the resources needed to learn to play in any key. Additionally, this book contains different practice strategies for putting these scales into application, and explains the circle of fifths as a way to navigate through all 12 keys.
Keyboard Caroling Holiday Songs & Lyric Zines
Have you ever participated in traditional Christmas caroling around the holidays? When I was growing up, my family’s church would go old school and sing around a fir tree outside with candles and caroling books. I was channeling these sweet mini books and the feeling of community music making when I arranged these Keyboard Carols and lyric zines. I hope they bring you as much joy as they have brought me. These are not just great gifts for pianists, but perfect gifts for any people who love music.
Mikrokosmos by Bartok
I am on a constant journey of finding music that is inspiring, motivational, and promotes growth for my adult piano students. There is a fine line between too easy to be helpful and too difficult to have any fun. There is an equally fine line between so familiar it’s boring and unique sounds that are kind of zany. As for giving great gifts for pianists, I have always loved music by Bela Bartok, and the Mikrokosmos series is no exception.Designed to guide piano learners through the different modes of music, this series starts off easy and gets progressively more challenging. Bartok’s music has a fresh and contemporary sound, infused with the influence of Hungarian folk music throughout. There are six volumes, and you can buy the first level in this cute pink book or find the full series for free on IMSLP.
Chilly Gonzales
My other favorite book of exercises is Chilly Gonzales’ etude book. This is a great gift for pianists. Chilly Gonzales arranged this book for continuing piano players, finding himself bored with the options available. I discovered this book of etudes when I was buying transcriptions of his albums. This technically belongs in the next category, but if you haven’t read it, Enya is such a cool read from a narcissistic musician about what constitutes “good” taste in music. Spoiler: good music is bad music, and there’s no such thing as bad music… except for when there is?
Music Zines
My Music Zines
I’ve got to give a shout-out to my music zines. My first music zines I created as a guide to reading sheet music for my middle school music students in Chicago Public Schools. They were such a labor of love, and I have so many of these music zines to share with you! Music zines are also a really easy and meaningful gift for musicians and gift for music lovers because they are hand crafted and affordable. I love music zines, and I use music zine creation as a form of creative expression and thought synthesis. I wrote the harmony music zine pictured to the right while learning more about community support systems, mutual aid, and systems of regenerative justice- and also as I was just beginning to build out a music business. I love reading and writing zines of all kinds, they are such a wonderful expressive modality. You can find all of my music zines and custom created work here in my music shop.
Women who Rock! by MuchachaShop
Honestly, this was one of my first music zine purchases ever. What brought me to this little DIY world of zines was the fact that big box companies and major publishers tend to highlight the work of white, cis-het men. This music zine is amazing because it is a collection of powerful women musicians over time, and the creators are Indigenous femmes. This would be my go-to gift for any young rocker in my life.
Creative Retreat in Your Pocket by Hills and Holler
This little zine is full of visions and ideas for escaping creative blocks without leaving home. This shop is owned by a queer artist making beautiful cards and stickers, and I’m going to add their suncatcher to help fill my studio with suncatchers and holographic reflections. (I already have a beautiful piece by Roxy’s Greenhouse)
On Craft and Practice by Lise Silva
This zine is an academic approach to crediting your lineage of art practices, and how to share your art while being transparent about your process.
Affirmation Zines by FemmeFilthPress
I started buying up lots of zines by Karina of FemmeFilthPress a year ago- imagine my surprise when we ended up in the same business class later on! Karina is amazing, and I love their series of affirmation zines to help fuel my creative practice.
Rock and Roll Horror Zines by BenFits666
This one is a little obscure, but I’ve read two of the horror satires by this zine author and they were hilarious and creepy. You can buy the 6 zines in the series in a bundles
She Shreds Magazine
If you’ve got guitar or bass player in your life, you MUST shop this She Shreds collections. This company is all about the magazines, but they have a greater reach now with their music equipment designed by women and their profane and very hip t-shirt collection. See also: their gear distribution program (!)
Women in Sound
This is an equally epic series of magazines by women in the audio industry. If you haven’t engaged with the world of recording engineers and audio producers, take it from me: it is historically male-dominated. It’s very cool to get these zines of gear talk complete with illustrations and descriptive language, not a dry manual that comes with your equipment.
Books
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
I read “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of “Eat Pray Love,” after hearing about it on the By the Book Podcast. This whimsical read is a gift for musicians that can help jumpstart their creative practice.
Yes, And
I’m reading this book right now and it is fascinating! I love getting the behind the scenes peek at Second City as a business and creative institute, and the approach to both things from the prospective of improvisation is fascinating. This would be such a cool gift for musicians.
Twyla Tharp
I read The Creative Habit while on a vacation and found it left my mind buzzing. Twyla Tharp is a choreographer who has worked on major projects and has had her own series of flops. Her daily practice of free improvisation, which she films and later combs through, is mind boggling to me, and I’m excited to dig into The Collaborative Habit, because creative collaboration is one of my major themes in 2022.
Enya by Chilly Gonzales
I mentioned this above, but “Enya” is a story about the pretentious attitudes surrounding music, and ways to stay true to yourself throughout your own music making process. This is not just a great gift for musicians, but is a perfect gift for any music lover with this quirky analysis of Enya’s music and the music of other artists.
Blues People by Corey Harris
There’s nothing quite like this book illustrated by blues musician Corey Harris. With unique portraits of blues musicians (you can get them on t-shirts and mugs in his shop!) and detailed biographies included oral histories of these powerhouses, this book is a starter set about everything blues. Anything from Harris’ shop would be an amazing gift for music lovers or an original gift for musicians.
Lessons & Classes
Private Lessons
If you are looking for a gift for a music lover in your life, or a gift for a musician that wants to take their playing to the next level, buying them private lessons is the perfect option. You can choose private lessons with a local shop, or you can gift private lessons buy finding a remote music teacher. My speciality as a zoom piano teacher is private piano lessons for adults, specifically remote piano lessons. I’m offering single 30 min. or 60 min. private piano lessons and gift packages of a month of remote piano lessons. You can buy a bundle of these zoom piano lessons for someone in your life, and let them schedule the private piano lessons that fit their schedule. There’s even a question form when you check out where you can include when you want to give this gift- so that we can work together to keep it a surprise! This is a great way to support someone’s dream of learning music and help them get started on their way. My partner teaches remote guitar lessons and remote bass lessons, and also offers gifted lessons.
Piano Class
Another great gift for musicians or gift for music lovers is signing them up for a music class. It can be tricky to find piano classes for adults, and that’s where remote offerings are really cool. I will be offering a new piano class, a type of online group piano lessons for adults, in 2022. This unique style of online group piano lessons for adults is designed for continuing piano players who want to deepen their personal practice, or people coming back to piano playing after a very long break. It’s really tricky to figure out how to get back into playing piano. This is also a great way for new piano players to build routines and rituals around their piano practice. Consider gifting these online group piano lessons to someone to get them started and to help them build a routine of music making.
