Misty Mountain:
- Level: Early Elementary
- Pages: 4 pages, 2 pages of music, cover included!
- Style: Mysterious, relaxing
- Bonus and Features: mp3 performance track; Black key; Hand positions pictured
- Format:PDF instant download
- Series: Finding Beautiful Places
Ancient Forest:
- Level: Early Elementary
- Pages: 4 pages, 2 pages of music, cover included!
- Style: Mysterious
- Bonus and Features: mp3 performance track; Black key; Hand positions pictured
- Format:PDF instant download
- Series: Finding Beautiful Places
Coastal Reverie:
- Level: Early Elementary
- Pages: 4 pages, 2 pages of music, cover included!
- Style: Laid-back
- Bonus and Features: mp3 performance track; Black key; Hand positions pictured
- Format:PDF instant download
- Series: Finding Beautiful Places
Gathering Storm:
- Level: Early Elementary
- Pages: 4 pages, 2 pages of music, cover included!
- Style: Thunderous, then Mysterious
- Bonus and Features: mp3 performance track; Black key; Hand positions pictured
- Format:PDF instant download
- Series: Finding Beautiful Places
Finding Beautiful Places is a series of beginning piano solos for piano students learning on their own or with a teacher. These pieces feature beautiful, mature music that any age of student will enjoy playing. Each piece shows a picture of where the student’s fingers are placed on the keyboard. Then finger numbers help guide students as to which keys to play.
Finding Beautiful Places is especially suitable for the teen and adult piano student since the music is mature and satisfying to play.
Videos:
Misty Mountain – Early Elementary
Ancient Forest – Early Elementary
Coastal Reverie – Early Elementary
Gathering Storm – Early Elementary
Finding Beautiful Places Bonus Recordings:
This Finding Beautiful Places Bundles includes bonus mp3 recording performed by Wendy Stevens. These bonus recordings are helpful for students during the week to remind them of the rhythm of the music and inspire them to play beautifully. You are permitted to send these example performance tracks to your students to help them learn the pieces.
What is the Studio License?
This Finding Beautiful Places Bundle is delivered digitally (through your email receipt) and is studio licensed. This means that you can print and use this music for any student that you directly teach for your entire lifetime of teaching.
Valerie Alfonso –
I have given this to every kind of student—a winner in ALL categories of student, not just older beginner! 🥰
Jenny –
My four-year-old daughter has already learned Gathering Storm and is working on Coastal Reverie. She is absolutely loving both pieces and feels so proud of herself that she can play such beautiful-sounding music! She begs me to do piano with her every day so she can play her pieces! Thank you so much for these wonderful pieces!
Valerie Alfonso –
I cannot gush enough about Finding Beautiful Places!!! It has brought a special light to my students’ eyes! ✨ I have used this with students who have struggled with note reading for a long time, and it was such a breath of fresh air to learn a piece that sounded gorgeous with less effort. This series also works well for a quick win for mid/late elementary students because it looks and sounds so sophisticated. It is a must-have for me, and I am already hoping that Wendy will plan to write more of this kind, at this same level, because it is such a perfect fit for today’s busy student with sophisticated tastes!
Valerie Ehko –
I am loving the new music that I purchased! Gathering Storm has been a big hit with my young boy students!! 🙂 Summit Reflections has been a big hit with two of my adult students – not difficult, yet relaxing and beautiful!!
Angela –
These latest Beautiful Places pieces have been so successful. I bought the Beautiful Places pieces and took them with me to a new teaching job I have in a primary school – children up to the age of 11years old. They range from complete beginner to Grade 3. So apart from the complete beginners they mostly arrived a little rusty after the long summer holiday, not all of them had remembered to bring their music. But I was able to give each of them a piece with pedal in all the way through and they ALL loved it! Yes the pieces were very easy for some of them but they were so delighted with the sounds they were creating they were really happy to play them. It was great to have something that made everyone feel so enthusiastic and excited to play.
Chris –
I teach 70+ private student and they are all learning/learned your finding beautiful places music. Even the advanced students.
I can’t tell you how your music has changed my studio for the better.
Joyce –
I introduced some of your new pieces to an adult and a teenager and they couldn’t be more enthused about them!
Charlotte –
I’m using these with my adult beginner student (in her 60s) who is LOVING that she can produce such lovely sounding pieces in 2-3 lessons. Also using with an adult returner around grade 2 standard as easy sight reading.
Anna –
Ancient Forest is the 1st piece I introduced to my middle schoolers. They loved the sound of it and right away started playing it with passion. Parents have emailed me telling me the students are practicing at home and they enjoy the music as well!
Gathering Storm was the perfect 2nd song to introduce. With the monsoon season, students could relate as we discussed the images this song paints. Students paired up to share first and then shared with the class which storm elements might be represented with the music. It was inspiring to me to watch them discuss not only physical storms outside but also the internal storms of life.
Coastal Reverie was a great relaxing piece to introduce after the Gathering Storm. Students enjoyed the mature sound, the ease of playing, and the simple instructions. They feel more advanced when they play this piece.
Alisha –
I feel so lucky to have discovered the beautiful places music. I recently started a 40 year old man who had his very first piano lesson last week and we covered the geography of the keyboard and he learned mystic mountain and proudly played this! He sounded great and I received several emails inquiring about lessons from friends and family of his who didn’t realize they could sound like that after one lesson!
He has just learned coastal reverie and couldn’t be more motivated to continue. Several teens of mine also love the beautiful places series and their parents love hearing them practice. I feel that beautiful music (especially on the black keys without a teacher duet) is so hard to find!
But as a teacher this is gold because playing this for their trial lesson pretty much guarantees they will sign up!!!!! Especially because they sound amazing even without a duet or background music. It’s all them playing a beautiful song independently!
I could rave all day about beautiful music from ComposeCreate!
Stephani –
I have loved both of those sets – Finding Beautiful Places and Entering Beautiful Places!
Ginny –
I think it is amazing you can compose pieces that sound gorgeous and are fairly easy, in terms of notes. These Finding Beautiful Places, Entering Beautiful Places, and Color Rote and Reading® pieces are haunting, touching, comforting and beautiful!
Obviously the most difficult thing in these pieces is playing softly and with expression, but you have given us the wonderful blueprint of the melody and harmony!
Joanne –
I bought the 2 bundles, “Finding Beautiful Places”, and “Entering Beautiful Places” and they were exactly what I needed at exactly the right time. Serendipitous indeed!
I currently teach a partner lesson with a young mother and her 11 year old son. The mother is a beginning student, and the boy is one I’ve struggled to teach for a couple years. He has ADHD, and took his lessons after school. He was on medication to calm him down, which made him taciturn, lethargic and non-cooperative at lessons after school. When his mom came to a conference visit, I rashly offered to give them a partner lesson. Wow! Talk about footprints on the tongue!
Well, we now have lessons on Saturday mornings, and my little boy is energized and responsive…probably because he gets to bully his mom into playing the right notes at the right time!!
And the reluctant teacher? Success there too, as I’ve been using this Finding Beautiful Places for mom. She’s an artist and the cover art and evocative music of this series has completely captivated her, especially because the pieces use a wide range, expressive melodies and tons of pedal. They’ve recently purchased a beautiful grand piano for their home, and these lovely pieces let her feel like she’s playing refined adult music. Her son, meanwhile, who was dragging his feet with his methods books, seems delighted with “Entering Beautiful Places.” I assigned him “Evening Rain” for the bass clef only, with the instruction that he teach the piece to his mom in the treble clef as imitation.
Can’t tell you what magic these pieces are doing for these lessons!
Pam –
I gave Finding Beautiful Places to several students, including an older beginner in her 60s. When her husband heard her practicing, he commented, “Wow! You’re playing REAL music!” She was delighted and motivated to learn more.
I have a student who likes big sounds and so Gathering Storm was perfect for him!
I also like using those pieces for students who need rhythmic corrections because it removes the need to process a note name as strongly.
Keera –
I have been absolutely loving The Finding Beautiful Places Collection. I started a group of older beginner students this year and we have been using these songs. They are really enjoying being able to play more advanced sounding music from day one. We are using Gathering Storm as a spooky and mature sounding Halloween song.
I would give both collections 5 stars!
Katherine Hutchinson –
I have been using Beautiful Pieces to supplement my adult beginner students tutor books. They have been hugely successful in motivating students but more to the point have helped them experience success and great satisfaction in playing musically mature and appealing pieces despite their relative beginner status. Sometimes there have been concepts that the tutor book hasn’t yet covered, but a simple explanation and the accompanying recordings have helped them quickly pick these up and will be a great introduction and reminder when we do come to cover those elements later on. I am very pleased to have these pieces as a resource in my music studio. Thank you Wendy for seeing this gap in the market for adult/teen students and filling it!
Dalarna –
The series of four pieces (Finding Beautiful Places) is amongst the most loved beginner series in my piano studio in The Netherlands at this moment.
From these four little gems the Coastal Reverie is the number one choice of my students, Misty Mountain is their second choice, followed by the Ancient Forest and the Gathering Storm.
With a very limited amount of notes Wendy Stevens manages to create four different beautiful and evocative soundscapes, that appeal to the musical imagination of my students.
They love playing them and because of the interesting musical content the songs do not sound or feel like beginner pieces.
I am very happy to have discovered Wendy’s piano music, because by using excellent repertoire the student flourishes.
Barbara –
I want to let you know how much I’ve enjoyed working with your “warm-up review pieces” like Dusty Blue, Evening Rain, all those beautiful pieces that I think of as easy reading but have just the right amount of challenge. I’ve had so many students be willing to work on them a long time – I tell them it’s to practice dynamic differences but really some of these kids need reading practice and it ends up being both. What I’ve noticed is that my students love the sound of the pieces so are really willing to work on them long term to make them sound good!
I also have a student who has cerebral palsy and can only play with one index finger of each hand – these pieces have been invaluable to her so she can play something that sounds good but isn’t too challenging!
Keera –
I have all of the Beautiful Places series, now. All of my students enjoy them. Even my more advanced kids like to play through them as a relaxing warm up. I recently started offering group workshops for beginner adults, and they love that these pieces sound beautiful and elegant.
Louise –
I have an older adult gentleman who is a beginning student. He loves playing the Ancient Forest and plans to play it at our June Recital
I think your collection of black key pieces is great and so very much needed as students really need to get acquainted with the keyboard using the comfortable fingering that black keys require. Besides they produce beautiful sounds which is exciting for students.
Bonnie –
I love the ENTIRE Beautiful Places series! And I am especially grateful for the “Finding Beautiful Places” early elementary set, because it has been an absolute HIT with my beginning students of all ages! My adult beginner can’t stop saying how much the “Finding Beautiful Places” pieces make her sound “LIKE A PRO!” My teenage beginners love them, and my little beginners love them too. My seven-year-old student, who’s only been taking lessons for a few months, said “I love them because they sound like REAL music!” Kids and adults alike love to play things that sound good, and sound impressive. It’s just so wonderful for beginner students to enjoy playing truly beautiful music right from the start. Finding Beautiful Places provides that experience! I only wish there were more of them! Luckily I can tell all my beginners that there are more levels of Beautiful Places that await them!
LJ –
My 9yr old niece came to visit, who had not played before. Within 2 weeks she was sight-reading them for herself. She loved these pieces.
Shannon –
Hah! My beginners LOVE the beautiful places music so so much! One student in particular is falling in love with piano because of the piece “Evening Rain.” He performed it on April 29 and had his parents in tears. I also sent him the mp3s that come with our purchase for “Forbidden Creek” and “Ancient Forest” and his mom text me: “My son says ‘I HAVE TO LEARN THESE ASAP!’” This is a kid who JUST started lessons and his mom told me up front “He has very limited interests … and he doesn’t really like to practice ANYTHING” … so I knew going into lessons would be a challenge. But thanks to your music, he is playing piano daily and so proud of himself!!!!!
Joyce –
I held my end-of-year studio recital this past weekend. Typically, I teach a lot of higher level theory and a wide range of piano levels but the last few years has seen me inundated with ‘littles’. Fully half of the recital pieces were by Wendy Stevens! Students played all of the ‘Finding Beautiful Places’, ‘Entering Beautiful Places’, some short sheets, then ending with ‘Guy Eye’! I want to thank you for such a wide variety of enjoyable, pedagogically sound and pianistic music. One little girl came up to me after the recital and said “I want to learn ALL of them!” She – with confidence, and after only about 6 months of lessons – played ‘Misty Mountains’ to an adoring audience of her parents, 3 grandparents and several siblings. It was great to see very young students at the beginning of their musical journey playing and enjoying ‘real music’! So, thank you! I can’t wait to get my hands on the second set of Finding Beautiful Places and Entering Beautiful Places!
Melinda –
I LOVE this series! I believe that it’s important for students to feel that their playing is enough all by themselves without needing someone else to augment the song. This accomplishes that for them at the very beginning levels. Thank you