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You are here: Home / Practice / 5 Awesome Practice Strategies to Teach Piano Students

20th April 2017 By Nicola Cantan 6 Comments

5 Awesome Practice Strategies to Teach Piano Students

Are your students in need of some practice strategies to fix specific problems? Do you struggle to get them to practice more effectively – with a practice plan?

This workshop will take you through five fantastic practice strategies for piano students. Watch the video to learn what each of the practice techniques is for, and how to implement them with your piano students.

Practice Problems Targeted

These five practice strategies are designed to work on these common student practice problems. By targeting specific piano practice problems we get to the heart of the issue, and cure them long-term.

  • Students playing too fast
  • Rhythm issues
  • Note reading misunderstandings
  • Playing from the beginning
  • Fluctuating tempo

Each of the strategies detailed in the video will give you a step-by-step process to follow to fix these piano student ailments. Following these gamified practice techniques, you don’t need to keep nagging reminding your piano student to play slower – they’ll actually practice that way.

Why improve practice?

I don’t need to tell you how important piano practice is. But have you thought much about the quality of your students’ practice? Are they wasting some of their precious practice time?

  • Students spend under 1% of their week with you.
  • Their parents may not know anything about music – even if they do, they won’t understand practice the way we do.
  • Students do need to practice, this is when most of the progress happens!
  • But they need to practice well – kids have less time than ever before, we don’t want them to waste a drop of it.
  • We need tofind a way to teach them (during the <1%) what to work on during the other 99% of the time, so that they can move forward in their studies.

More Practice Strategies

If you like the way I approach these practice strategies, you’ll love the full course: The Piano Physician’s Clinic which you can find inside the Vibrant Music Teaching library.

In this course there are sixty four cures just like the five I shared here. There are videos detailing each of the practice techniques, printables, a workbook to follow along, and, best of all, a community.

You’re not alone in the course, you have the opportunity to ask questions and discuss the practice ideas with myself and other teachers in our private Facebook community.

Full Presentation

Want to click back and forth through those slides as you please? Here’s the full slide presentation from the video.

Psst! Do you need more help with teaching practice strategies? Try these practice step stickers to make students stick to the practice plan.

Do you have a favourite practice strategy to share?

Tell us about it in the Vibrant Music Studio Teachers community on Facebook. All music teachers are welcome!

Get the Bonus

Click here to download the bonus mentioned in this training.

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Filed Under: Practice Tagged With: strategies

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Vicki Spooner says

    20th July 2018 at 6:24 pm

    Hi Nicole! I’ve tried to go to piano physician.com/awesome for your wonderful freebie, but once I enter all my information and push send, it says that it is not working. Any thoughts?

    Love your work, and enjoy all that you do!!

    Reply
  2. Nicola Cantan says

    21st July 2018 at 10:42 pm

    Sorry Vicki! This is quite an old link and goes through my old email system. Unfortunately I’m not able to fix this for you right now, but if you email me I can send you a link.

    Reply
    • amber chiang says

      26th July 2018 at 11:09 pm

      Hi Nicole! same problem here. would love the link. Here’s my email:
      amberchiang@yahoo.com
      Thanks!!!

      Reply
      • Nicola Cantan says

        27th July 2018 at 3:48 pm

        I’ve added a link in the post. 🙂

        Reply
  3. Benoit Singer says

    25th August 2018 at 5:50 pm

    The practice problems you have targeted seem to revolve around the timing factor. This is a bit of a pernicious element because beginners are less likely to notice it… especially when they are attempting to sing along with the piano. Often their rhythm of play will adjust to the singing tempo of which they are most comfortable, and the reality is that if you can’t keep a straight 4/4 timing then all of the other punctuated timing elements (that can make or break a song) will be lost.
    Thanks for sharing the article and video.

    Reply
    • Nicola Cantan says

      26th August 2018 at 7:46 am

      3 of them are about tempo/rhythm yes, but 2 cover other areas. The lyrics suggestion is not the original lyrics – it is ones you design together and sing lots together. This makes it more likely that they will get the correct rhythm and retain it. It’s not the only solution to rhythmic issues, just one of many strategies to try.

      Reply

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About Nicola

Nicola Cantan is a piano teacher, author, blogger and creator of imaginative and engaging teaching resources. She loves getting piano students learning through laughter, and helping teachers to teach through games and off-bench activities, so that their students giggle their way through music theory and make faster progress.

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