Build Your Custom Method Book with MakeMusic

You already know what your students need. That’s not the hard part. 

You’ve watched your 7th grade tenor boys struggle through that soli interval at measure 23. 

You’ve mentally cataloged exactly which exercise will help your viola section nail their high 2s. 

You know the slur pattern that’s going to unlock everything for your horn players. 

Diagnosing what’s holding students back and knowing what comes next: that’s your superpower as a music educator. 

The frustrating part is finding the time and resources to act on all that knowledge. You end up scribbling out a custom exercise on the whiteboard, walking students through something by rote, or just hoping the three repetitions your method book offers will somehow be enough. (Spoiler: they never are.)

Here’s the good news: MakeMusic is quietly sitting there with a treasure trove of resources ready for you to mix, match, and compile exactly the way you’d want, and once you build it, you can use it again and again, year after year.

Customize Your Method Book Your Way

There are hundreds of method books available in MakeMusic, and that variety is your secret weapon. 

Say your beginning clarinets are ready to cross the break, but you know your primary method only hits that skill a couple of times before moving on. Instead of writing out new exercises from scratch, you can pull register exercises from several other methods already in the catalog and compile them into a single custom playlist. Your students suddenly have six, eight, ten varied repetitions of exactly the concept they need, without you spending your Sunday afternoon writing out exercises. 

This works for rhythmic elements just as well. Looking for dotted quarter note exercises? You’ll find them across dozens of methods in MakeMusic. Whatever your method covers, comparable exercises exist in other methods, and you can bring them all together in one place. 

This idea scales beautifully for your more advanced students, too. When you pull from intermediate and advanced technique methods (scales, arpeggios, shifting, articulation studies, and more), you can build a playlist that’s genuinely tailored to where your ensemble is right now, not just where a publisher assumed a generic group of students would be.

Think Like a Curriculum Designer (Because You Already Are One)

Here’s a reframe that might be useful: you’re not just pulling together exercises. You’re building a living curriculum document for your program. 

When you approach your playlist-building with intention, you’re essentially writing a custom method book: one that reflects your teaching philosophies, your students’ actual needs, in addition to your program’s needs. That’s something no off-the-shelf method can fully do for you. 

A few practical ideas to get you started: 

• Group by concept, not by book. Instead of working through method A, then method B, create playlists around skills: one for tone production, one for specific rhythmic elements, one for technique, etc.
• Build playlists by ensemble section. Your woodwinds and brass have different needs. A clarinet-specific playlist for register slurs sits separately from a brass-specific lip slur sequence.
• Layer difficulty intentionally. Start with simpler versions of a concept from beginner methods, then pull in more challenging variations from intermediate books: a natural, built-in progression your students can climb.

Once you’ve built these playlists, they are yours to reuse every year. Tweak them as your teaching evolves, but the foundation is already done. 

Sprinkle In Some Extra Fun

Here’s where you get to be the cool director for a minute. 

While you’re building out your resource library, make sure to drop in some Foundations Series or Pop Warm-Ups content alongside your more traditional method material. These are pedagogically sound exercises: we’re talking real scales, technique work, and fundamentals, set to pop hits and movie soundtracks. Students don’t even realize how hard they’re working because they’re too busy loving the music. 

A few highlights worth exploring: 

• Foundations: Habits Edition correlates directly with the popular Habits Series methods, making it an easy companion from day one.
• Foundations: Essential Edition follows a typical method sequence and supplements whatever you are currently using.
• Marvel Foundations and Harry Potter Foundations bring some serious student buy-in (and let’s be honest, you’ll enjoy them too).
• Harry Potter Foundations: Daily Routines is especially valuable for more experienced players. It’s packed with technique exercises that advancing students will genuinely benefit from.

A playlist that mixes solid method work with a Harry Potter exercise or two? That’s a playlist students will actually look forward to opening when practice time comes.

Sharing Your Playlist with Students

Once your playlist is built, sharing it is simple. You can keep it saved for your own reference, share it with students via a direct link, or pin it right to their class page for easy access. You can even mix content from the Music catalog with pieces or exercises that you’ve created or uploaded yourself through Compose: it all lives in one place. 

Build it once. Use it for years. 

You already know what your students need. MakeMusic helps you give it to them: without starting from scratch every time. Start a free trial of MakeMusic today and begin building the custom resource library your program deserves. 

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