Song Ideas for 10-13 year olds

[lark37]

Hello--Long time piano/vocal teacher here. I currently have 30 students with 12 being vocal only and the rest piano only. That brings me to a question--I have several 10-13 years that get bored with their lesson book songs, and are always asking me to supplement the book songs for TV show themes, movie themes, video game songs, etc. I have written a few "easy piano" versions out for them on notation software, but with 30 students and another paying gig on weekends, that is too time consuming. We've used a couple of the Faber Pop songbooks, but kids today tend to want up to date songs, not ones that are 5-10 years old. I found a couple of free sources of video game songs online, but they are advanced piano. Any suggestions-either songbooks or song titles that kids that age might enjoy playing? I can always buy the sheet music for a song. We've played Super Mario, Spongebob Squarepants, Scooby-Doo, Zelda, Minecraft, Star Wars, Pokemon, and Harry Potter already. My girls that age are easier to please as they tend to like playing Disney songs and/or Taylor Swift songs. The boys especially love video game songs or anime songs. I have 8 boys in the above age group, and I am out of ideas for them. Thanks.

[lostinidlewonder]

Invest in a Musescore account and you will have a huge amount of current songs to go through of all different difficulty levels.

[lark37]

Thanks for you reply. I have a Musescore Pro account and have had it for years. Since they got bought out by Hal Leonard, though, most of their "easy piano" songs are copyrighted and must be purchased for $8 or $9 which is higher than Musicnotes.com charges. I guess what I was looking more for were song ideas for boys 10-13. Even if Musescore was the way it used to be, if I don't have any song ideas, it's hard to search for the sheet music. I do appreciate your response though. 

[lostinidlewonder]

Muse Group acquired Hal Leonard. Are you sure that their easy songs have to be purchased even with a membership sub, why is that what you are seeing? There are plenty of user created works of varying levels that are free with membership. In terms of not knowing what to search for, you can always look at the most popular works being downloaded or commented on and also ask your students to tell you what kind of music they like, or what movie/games they are into etc. I always spend an amount of time every week just looking at new music out there.

[killsaved42]

This might be a tad difficult, But the Hollow Knight piano collections book is a good collection of Hollow knight pieces. Unfortunately the fingerings are a tad unintuitive (doesn't seem to have been written by a pianist). If you want something easier, a lot of Undertale and deltarune pieces are free and widespread on Musescore, peices like megalovania and spider dance are always favourites among young kids I find.