The other day I read an article called, Pushing Past the O.K. Plateau, and was especially struck by this quote from Joshua Foer: “Amateur musicians, for example, tend to spend their practice time playing music, whereas pros tend to work through tedious exercises or focus on difficult parts of pieces.” Here’s a fascinating paragraph that […]
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Monday Mailbag – Students Leaping into the Unknown
I had a beginning student come to lessons and pull out her lesson book we’ve been working on, except she had jumped ahead 10 or so pages and wanted to play that piece for me. She is still an off-the-staff-black-keys-only player, and this piece was on white keys complete with note names in the note […]
Hanon Makes His Internet Debut
Nowadays you can find just about everything on-line. But really, who would have thought that Charles-Louis Hanon would get his very own website dedicated to his “The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises”? Thus far, the site contains Part I – the first 20 exercises. You can transpose the exercise to any major key, download the […]
A Simple and Fun Note Identification Game
Several of my students seem to need constant reinforcement with understanding the staff and identifying notes on it. And some of them are still in the phase where the “light bulb” hasn’t quite gone on yet. 🙂 So I’m always looking for different approaches to use during lessons. Here’s a simple game that I’ve been […]
Review and Giveaway of Blue and Purple by Dror Perl
To be honest, I wasn’t that thrilled about reviewing these two books because I thought they might be kind of, well…weird. They are written by a contemporary composer and are simply called, “Blue” and “Purple.” The subtitles were even more scary, “Contemporary Music with a Harmonic Twist” and “Jazz and Blues,” respectively. I’m not much […]
Monday Mailbag – Keeping a Steady Pulse
I am a piano teacher to eight students, and also a student myself. Keeping a steady pulse is one thing that I struggle with when I play, so I don’t often put enough emphasis on it when I teach. Could you share some ways that you work on it with your students so I could […]
