OK, by “studio” I mean the corner of my living room of course, but I have tried to make it a separate defined space. My piano corner needed to do a few things: Be fun and kid friendly, but not turn off my adult students (a tricky balancing act!) Have everything I need during my…
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Pentatonic Scale Improvisation
The pentatonic scale is a great place to start improvising on the piano. My students first introduction to improvisation is the pentatonic scale in F# major, which consists of only black keys. So you can play any black key at all, in any way you wish! I think improvisation is very liberating and also can…
Effective Piano Practice with Clear Sections
Phase 1 – Section by section practice One section can be anything from 1 bar to 4 bars, but always include the first note of the next bar, this way your sections will overlap and when you put it all back together it will flow seamlessly. The way you split your piece up into sections is…
Four Very Simple Chords…(that will sound very familiar!)
This simple C major chord progression is a great way to get adult and teen students making music right away and sounding great from the get-go. Practise playing these one after the other with your right hand. Once your hand is in position on the C major triad, pick it up (without moving your fingers)…
Using Lead Sheets with Your Piano Students
Traditional sheet music is great, but lead sheets (which are mostly for jazz and pop songs) are a great resource that is often overlooked in traditional piano lessons. I’ve been introducing lead sheets to lessons recently as a great break from normal studies and they always go down a treat. It’s such a fun departure for…
Piano Key Name Flashcards
You can print these from your home printer onto card or paper. If you want to just write the note names on the back of the cards then you can just print pages 1 & 2, but I’ve included pages with the note names as well, in case you want to reinsert the paper and…
Scale Lottery – A Way to Gamify Scale Practice
For piano exams, students will often have a long list of scales and arpeggios that they need to review. I try to inject a little fun and gamification into this using popsicle sticks. I created this bag for one of my grade 3 students, simply by writing all the possible scales on lollipop sticks and…