Does this story sound familiar? A student is struggling with technique, they’re clearly not practising enough and for some reason, they keep getting lost looking for middle C…months into lessons! You try everything. You play games, you colour code, you connect what they’re doing to their favourite TV series and, nothing. Then you see a…
practice strategies
Teaching and Practising Practice Strategies with Graham Fitch
How effective is your piano practice? What about your students’ practice? Practising practice during the lesson and teaching our students how to practise is so important. Most of their progress will happen during the week, when we’re not there to correct or guide them. I’m so delighted to be bringing you this interview today with…
Making Scales Stick – 7 Different Ways to Practice Scales
Do your students get bored during scale practice? Do YOU get bored during your students’ scale practice? I know I’ve certainly been both the bored student and the bored teacher in that situation. That’s why I’m always thinking up new ways to practice scales. I think challenging students to play in new ways can keep their minds…
Effective Piano Practice Part 4 – The metronome method
My first teacher was completely against metronomes. She literally never used them in her teaching, and therefore I never used a metronome in my practice…which I think was a big mistake. I don’t love metronomes, and I definitely think they are sometimes over used, but they are definitely a useful tool that every student should…
Effective Piano Practice Part 2 – Memorisation
Many teachers expect memorisation for recitals, exams, or just as a matter of course. For some students this comes naturally, but for most of us (myself included!) it just doesn’t. I think the trick to memorising pieces effectively and reliably, is to build up very slowly over time. Though I can assist students with some…
Beginner’s Piano Practice Feedback Loop
Practice is all about self-assessment. We need to keep asking ourselves questions to get to the route cause of issues we’re having in our pieces. This can be a difficult process for our young students to master, how do we stop them mindlessly repeating their pieces and get them to really focus on making progress?…
5 Elements of Efficient Piano Practice
Let’s start by figuring out what “practice” really means. Practicing the piano is not just playing the piano. There is a difference, and understanding that difference is essential to making great progress. Let’s imagine you’re part of a basketball team. Your team meets once a week for two hours of “practice”. You might begin each…
Piano Practise 101 – A Guide for New Piano Parents
Piano teachers end up talking (or possibly nagging) about practise all the time. However, I don’t think it is explained often enough what we mean by practise. It doesn’t just mean play piano for x amount of time, or play a certain thing X number of times. Practicing is about improving our playing skill in…