Texas Tech University

Carla Davis Cash

Professor of Piano Pedagogy

Email: carla.d.cash@ttu.edu

Phone: (806) 834-3924

Office: School of Music, Room 236

Carla Cash

Carla Davis Cash is Professor of Piano Pedagogy at Texas Tech University where she teaches graduate courses in music pedagogy and supervises keyboard-area graduate part-time instructors. She served for many years as Chair of the Keyboard Area and as Associate Director for Applied Studies and Faculty Affairs for the School of Music from 2022 to 2025. 

Cash's research primarily centers on the processes through which novice and expert musicians learn and refine motor skills. She has also studied the impact of music learning on various populations. Cash regularly presents her work at state, national, and international conferences of music performance, education, and psychology, and her articles can be found in leading journals and trade magazines of music education and music psychology, including Journal of Research in Music Education, Psychology of Music, American Suzuki Journal, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, and the MTNA e-Journal.

In recognition of her scholarly contributions, Cash has received the Outstanding Service Recognition Award from the Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy (2023), the Texas Tech University Chancellor's Council Distinguished Research Award (2015), and the Outstanding Research Award from the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy (NCKP) (2007, 2009). She has been awarded an Arts in Medicine Grant from the Talkington College of Visual and Performing Arts (2018), several Texas Tech Scholarship Catalyst Program grants, the Schovanec Teaching Development Scholarship (2021), and the inaugural Texas Tech Seed Grant for Interdisciplinary Research (2016), subsequently utilized to investigate the neural basis of skill learning in music using fMRI technology. In 2021, Cash was inducted into the Texas Tech Teaching Academy and she was named a TTU Integrated Scholar in 2025.

Professional activities include serving on the editorial boards of the Journal for Piano Research (2023-) and MTNA e-Journal (2021-2023) as well as on editorial and research committees for Texas Music Educators Association (TMEA) and the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy (NCKP). Carla also continues to perform, when time allows, with colleagues on stages across the U.S. and beyond.

A native of Miami, Florida, she earned a B.M. in Keyboard Performance and M.M. in Keyboard Performance and Pedagogy from the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, and holds a Ph.D. in Music and Human Learning from The University of Texas at Austin.