Teaching rests is easy. Sure, students might confuse minim and semibreve (half and whole) rests, but that’s not difficult to fix. What can be difficult is to actually get them to follow through on the rests. When teaching rests, we often need an extra step so they’re not completely ignored by beginning pianists. That’s where…
creative piano teaching
Improvise Your Way to Melodic Minor Scales Success
I think the clue to why I think improvisation is the route to success is in the name…melodic minor scales. Am I right? What are scales for if not for creating melodies? If your answer was for teaching discipline, then you should probably hop off here. Nothing wrong with discipline but that’s not the primary…
4 Awesome Added Benefits of Teaching Composing to Piano Students
Does teaching composing to piano students make you nervous? Are you not sure where to start? Or perhaps you struggle to find the time to fit it in? I hear you. But if you think about composing the way I now do – you’ll have the drive to include it in your piano teaching. Because teaching…
Two Practice Strategies for Fixing the Floppy Finger Predicament
How many times have you seen students with the floppy finger predicament? Do you struggle to get your students to form firm fingertips? Well, I’ve got two cures for just that. Read on to find out how you can fix your students collapsing fingertip joints for GOOD. This post is an excerpt from my new book:…
Spring Themes Composing Project – Fostering Creativity
Composing is a fabulous way to engage piano students, and get them to think about music in a different way. For the past few weeks, almost all of my students have been working on the Spring Themes Composing Project. I designed this project as a very loose template so I could use it with all levels…
Effective Piano Practice Part 3 – Preparing away from the piano
As experienced players, I think we all automatically see patterns in our pieces. Arpeggios, chord progressions, scales and repeats just jump out at us and our mind subconsciously reads them as one item. Piano students however, won’t always see these patterns. They may just be seeing an endless sea of individual notes to concur when…
Piano Exams: To Examine or Not To Examine
Here in Ireland, most piano students take exams as standard. In other parts of the world, such as the USA, taking music exams is much less common. Why is that? Are children’s learning styles different in different countries? I doubt it. I’d say it’s time for all of us to reassess, exams shouldn’t be prescribed…
Blind Bugston – A grand staff note name memory game
These ‘Bugston’ themed cards cover note names on the grand staff from treble G to middle C and bass G to bass C, with matching letter cards for each one. My favourite game to play with these is note name memory but there are also other options too. There are lots of games you can…
The “House of Piano”- 4 Things I was not TAUGHT that I TEACH
Some “traditional” piano lessons, like the ones I had for my first 4 years as a piano student, take a very narrow approach. There are many things I feel were left out of my own piano lessons. A normal lesson goes something like this: Student comes in, teacher request scales and/or technique that the student…