“The new approach I’ve adopted is about mindfulness, physical awareness and an ironclad unwillingness to accept a passage feeling difficult.”

Isn’t that a marvelous philosophy for practicing the piano, or any instrument? Not only have I underlined it and taken it to heart in my own practicing, I’ve also shared it with several students this week and used it as a launching pad for what we worked on during their lessons. The last characteristic has been the primary motivation, “an ironclad unwillingness to accept a passage feeling difficult.” Now that’s an unwillingness I’d be happy to see in all of my students!

I’ve just started using the books, so I can’t say much yet about their effectiveness, but I really love the approach of focusing on one key at a time, building an understanding of patterns within that key, doing a little bit of ear-training and improvisation, and playing a few simple duets with the student. The layout is so attractive and organized to make it easy to establish specific habits as you work with the student to learn and implement effective sight-reading approaches.

Even though (or maybe because!) sight-reading has always come easily to me, it seems like many of my students are challenged in this area. (I always posit that God gave me a studio full of play-it-by-ear students that I can’t relate to at all!) I’ve tried a few other approaches over the years that haven’t been especially successful, so I’m hoping this relatively new series is the magic cure. Haha. Actually, I think consistency is probably the biggest factor in becoming a better sight-reader, so I’m hoping to stay focused on it with these books and a few students and then re-evaluate after several months to see how it’s going.

Has anyone else used these books? Or have you used another series that you think works really well? I’m definitely open to ideas!

In addition, I have had numerous students come back after participating in our big annual Christmas Recital and be extra driven to learn new music and become more skilled in their playing. There’s nothing quite like watching other students perform really cool-sounding pieces well to make you want to work harder and play better the next time. And perhaps one of the most memorable expressions of this came after our 2010 Christmas Recital when my long-time student, Isabella, exclaimed to me during the reception, “Wow. I really need to kick-it-up-a-notch!” Her comment sparked an idea and last summer we launched our first-ever Kick-It-Up-a-Notch! summer piano intensive. Just last week at her lesson she was talking about the incredible progress she made from the 2010 Christmas recital to the 2011 Christmas recital and remarked that Kick-It-Up-a-Notch! was a huge turning point for her.

As I think back on the whole process for Isabella, it’s really neat to see how one thing spurs on another, all contributing to a student’s motivation and development as a musician. You never know what great experience or event will spark the drive to do better in your child or student, so make the most of whatever opportunities you have! And, as Jason points out in another of his tips, “if you stick with it, they will get something out of it and almost surely begin to truly enjoy what they have learned.”

I really appreciate the list of 5 C’s of Learning Piano Technique that Christ Foley of the Collaborative Piano Blog put together. The latest newsletter from Mid-America Piano re-printed the article, and it was a great reminder to me of how to think and talk about technique in an effective and organized manner. Here are his 5 C’s:

1. Command
2. Clarity
3. Comfort
4. Creativity
5. Confidence

Check out the original post for insights into each of these 5 C’s that you can use with your students!

It was one of my students who first gave me the idea of designing keyboard scale fingering diagrams and many of my students have used them since. A special book for each of them with a complete set of major, natural minor, and harmonic minor musical scales and keys on the staff with keyboard fingering diagrams below seemed like a perfect next step!

[Special thanks to Am Y for the use of her beautiful piano photo for the cover!]

As a way of wishing everyone a Happy New Year, I am giving away 3 copies of The Pianists’ Book of Musical Scales and Keys! Just leave a comment below for your chance to win a copy. The winner will be chosen using a random number generator on Thursday, January 12, at noon (CST). Enjoy!

At lessons this week I’ve found myself asking most students these two questions:

1. On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being completely performance-ready, what number would you say this piece is right now? (It’s kind of funny how many of them insert a .5 into their numeric evaluation – I’ve had a 6.5, an 8.5, etc…)
2. What does the remaining [3.5; 1.5; etc.] represent? In other words, what still needs to improve on the piece to bring it to a level 10?

This has proved much more effective than just asking the student what they need to do to get their piece ready by the designated date. Because invariably I get the not-so-helpful answer, “practice.” I resist the urge to say, “Wow, how perceptive. I wish I had thought of that.” But I digress. Sarcasm aside, I realize more and more how important it is to have meaningful, musical discussions with students to gauge how well they understand their music and whether or not they have a clear idea of where they are headed with each piece and how to get there. This kind of interaction with students spurs me on like nothing else to become the best teacher I can be for each of them!

What a familiar scenario! Not only have I taken on numerous students that fit this description…I was one of them. I have learned so much from my own teacher and from experience as I’ve worked with gifted students who just didn’t have the benefit of a comprehensive music education when they were first starting out. Here are my suggestions:

1. Accept the student for where they are at. It’s easy to get frustrated when a student doesn’t know even the most basic music concepts, but maintain a positive attitude toward the student and envision the two of you working as a team to learn and grow musically.
2. Be open and honest with the student. I often say things like, “You play with beautiful expressive sound, but it’s obvious that you aren’t familiar with a lot of the symbols and terms on the page. I think you’ll be able to learn them really quickly if we work together to come up with a plan so that you can increase your knowledge in this area.” If you include praise for what they do well, clearly identify the area that needs work, and express belief in their potential for growth, the student will usually jump on board eager to learn! In the case of the 6/8 time, I might say something like, “Thanks for working so hard to understand this new time signature! Most people have a really difficult time when they first encounter 6/8 because we’re so used to play with the quarter not getting the beat. 6/8 is a compound time signature [then I usually do a little illustration using a white board and marker to explain what a compound time signature is as opposed to a simple time signature], so it can be confusing, but once you get the feel of it, it’s really fun to play!”
3. You are your best teaching resource. That may sound odd at first, but rather than relying on a particular method or workbook, especially in cases like this, it’s important for you to have a very clear idea of where you want the student to end up in terms of theory knowledge. You can do this via making a checklist of sorts or just by maintaining a conscious awareness of what the student knows and where they are headed. Then, you can use every piece of music, every technical exercise, every tune learned by ear, etc. to integrate a comprehensive understanding of music theory.
4. Aim for comprehensive understanding not just reiteration of facts. This is one of the main reasons I don’t use theory books, at least until students are quite a bit older and already have a good grasp of the relationship between theory concepts and the music they are playing. Talk about theory concepts as they relate to everything that the student plays. Also, aim for meaningful discussion to help gauge a student’s level of understanding. Ask questions like, “Do you know what it means to say that a piece is written in a particular key?” “How can you tell whether this piece is in G Major or e minor?” “Can you explain how to figure out if this chord is a major or minor chord just by looking at it and not playing it?” And so on. When a student can confidently identify and explain concepts to you, that’s when real learning has taken place.
5. Use supplemental resources to reinforce theory concepts and transfer head knowledge to applied knowledge. This is one of the reasons I put together the 5 for Fun! booklet of games and activities for the lesson. It’s a fun way to test students and see how well they really understand the theory. It’s also really helpful for each student to have a manuscript book that they can use for notating compositions, writing scales and chords, etc. For older students who are ready for a more systematic approach to written theory, I love the Just the Facts series written by Regina Roper and Ann Lawry. And of course there are tons of printable worksheets and resources available on-line to address various theory concepts!

These are more along the lines of underlying principles rather than specific suggestions, but hopefully it will help give a framework for working with transfer students with varying levels of theory knowledge. It’s very exciting to work with these students and watch their eyes light up as they discover a world of musical understanding that they never knew existed before!

Remember, if you have a question you’d like to contribute to next week’s Monday Mailbag, leave it in the comments below or send me an e-mail sometime this week with Monday Mailbag in the subject line!

When I asked her recently, one of my students who has struggled with this for at least a year affirmed the above statement. She didn’t, in fact, think that fingering was important – contrary to what I’ve been telling her every week. So, it was time to come up with a creative and memorable (i.e. sticky) way to convince her that this reluctance would be her undoing in several years if she didn’t put in the effort to fix it now. We discussed it briefly and she was anxiously anticipating what I would come up with to convince her.

After considerable thought and prayer, I finally settled on an object lesson of sorts that I thought would do the trick. Enter: Dot-to-dot drawing sheets!

I printed off two of each of the following free dot-to-dot worksheets:

Smiling Flower

Underwater Seahorse

Since this student comes with her brother, I gave each of them a pencil and clipboard with the smiling flower dot-to-dot affixed. I instructed them to complete it as quickly as they could and that the winner would receive a complication coin (part of our An Italian Intrigue practice incentive theme this year!). The only hitch was that on my fingering-challenged student’s worksheet, I erased (via a computer program) all of the numbers.

Her brother finished a split second before her, but she didn’t seem to notice the lack of numbers and it didn’t faze her too much. On the second one however, it was a different story altogether! When I gave the signal to begin her brother was rapidly connecting dots while she sat in confusion connecting a few random dots, then erasing, then trying to figure out where to draw next. Eventually she got them all connected, but it didn’t look like a seahorse, and it took her almost a whole minute longer than her brother.

As I handed him his second coin, I explained that doing a dot-to-dot without the numbers is like trying to play a piece of music without using the correct fingers. At an early level you may be able to get by okay and play the piece how the composer intended it to be played, but at higher levels, it will take much longer to learn a piece and you may or may not be able to perform it as the composer intended it to be played. Using the correct fingering can make all the difference in the continuity, accuracy, and musicality of a piece.

When I finished the brief analogy my student was smiling (in spite of the fact that she lost out on two coins!). Only time will tell if it works, but I think she finally gets the importance of fingering now. She asked if she could keep the dot-to-dot coloring sheets and take them home with her. Of course I readily agreed. And added that she should display them prominently on the keyboard rack of her piano so that she is reminded to use good fingering every time she practices.

[Update: There were a lot of requests for the numberless version of the connect-the-dots pictures I used with my students, so I've uploaded my file and made it available for easy download and printing. It's just a simple Word doc with both the numbered and numberless version of each picture embedded. Click here to download and use with your students!]

In this video clip introducing his new app Music Theory Pro, developer Dr. Joel Clifft makes the poignant observation that you wouldn’t ask a student to memorize a speech in a foreign language, having no idea what it means. Likewise, he calls music theory “the grammar of music” and encourages the use of fun games to teach and reinforce important concepts.

I haven’t downloaded the app yet, but it is next on my list. I’m excited to check it out and give it a try with my students!

HT: Megan’s Piano Lessons