Category: Practicing

Tips for Turning Your Students into Super Sight-Readers

2/20/2020

Today I am sharing this article that I wrote for the blog at Tonara.com.

If you aren't familiar with Tonara, it is a unique app with a variety of features that enable teachers to manage their studio and motivate their students to practice. Visit Tonara's website HERE to learn more!

I have a confession to make. Sight-reading doesn’t come easily for me.

Growing up, I was always a diligent practicer. I worked hard to prepare for my lessons, and I learned how to use my time efficiently to break apart my music and practice it well. However, being able to play a new piece accurately, at first sight, was always difficult for me.

While I don’t think sight-reading will ever be my forte (pun intended!), my sight-reading has improved over the years--thanks especially to doing lots of accompanying. However, my struggles with sight-reading have made me determined to help my students better develop their own sight-reading skills.

Read on for five tips I have found helpful for improving sight-reading, for both me and my students!

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Think Like a Composer: Tips for Teaching Musical Interpretation

1/30/2020

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Today I am sharing this article that I wrote for the blog at Tonara.com.

If you aren't familiar with Tonara, it is a unique app with a variety of features that enable teachers to manage their studio and motivate their students to practice. Visit Tonara's website HERE to learn more!

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then I think it is safe to say that music is in the ear of the beholder. Have you ever noticed that three different people can listen to the same piece of music and experience it in three completely different ways?

One of my favorite things about music is that each performance is truly a three-way collaboration: a merging of the inspiration of the composer, the interpretation of the performer, and the experience of the listener. Each musical performance is different, and each time we listen to a piece of music it has the potential to make us hear it in a new and exciting way.

Many of our students begin piano lessons because they have experienced the emotional connection that listening to a beautiful piece of music can bring. A great musical performance is all about bringing the composer’s “story” to life. So, how can we help our students learn to interpret the stories behind their music and to perform more artistically? Let’s teach them how to think like a composer!

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3 Tips for Taking the Mystery out of Memorization

12/27/2019

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Thoughts on Student Motivation

8/26/2019

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This time of year, I see lots of posts in piano teacher discussion groups about practice incentives and student motivation. How do we get our students excited about the new year of piano ahead? How can we keep them practicing consistently with a host of other activities competing for their time and intention?

The issue of motivation can be tricky. Although extrinsic (or external) motivation, in the form of incentives and rewards, can be helpful in the short-term, ultimately we want the motivation for practice to come from within our students. We want our students to practice because they love music and enjoy playing the piano.

Does this sound like an unrealistic goal? In researching the subject of intrinsic (or internal) motivation, I discovered an interesting article on self-determination theory, the psychological theory that explains the emotional needs that must be fulfilled in order for us to be self-motivated to continue an activity. Psychologists theorize that self-motivation to continue any activity, whether it is following an exercise plan or sticking to a new hobby, boils down to three main emotional needs that must be fulfilled. These three emotional needs are:

1. Autonomy: feeling in control, having choices
2. Competency: feeling successful, making progress
3. Relatedness: feeling a connection to the outside world, having a sense of community

By helping our students to fulfill these three basic psychological needs, we can help them to become self-motivated and increase their enjoyment in practicing piano.

So, how can we help our students to fulfill their needs for autonomy, competency, and relatedness in our piano lessons? Here are my thoughts:

Autonomy:

Give students choices within each lesson. From choosing what piece to play first in the lesson, to creating their own practice plan for the week--choices help students to feel in control of the learning process.
Encourage students to keep a "wish list" of pieces they would like to learn to play. Having a choice in the repertoire that they learn can be extremely motivating for students.
Help students to set their own long-term goals for piano study. Every student's musical journey is different, and every student has different interests. Let students know that their goals are important and that you value their input as you develop their curriculum together.

Competency:

Help students feel successful at every lesson by providing activities that are geared towards each student's strengths--not just those that challenge their weaknesses. This may mean including aural or rote activities for students that struggle with note reading, for example.

Make sure that assignments are clear and easy to follow at home, so that students can see progress at every practice session.
Give students "easy wins"--pieces that they can learn quickly and independently.

Relatedness:

Encourage students to play familiar pieces, such as the theme from a favorite movie or video game, or a parent's favorite classical piece. It can be exciting (and motivating) to play a piece that your friends and family instantly recognize.
Create social opportunities for your students within your studio, such as informal group classes or partnering students to play duets.
Encourage students to make music with their friends. This can include accompanying friends that play other instruments, joining a band at school or church, or just jamming along to a chord chart with a friend who plays guitar.
Finally, arm your students with the musicianship skills they need for a lifetime of music-making with others. Sight-reading, lead sheet and chord chart playing, knowing how to improvise on a familiar tune by ear--these are all practical musicianship skills that will help your students be ready to make music with others anytime, anywhere.

What do you think? How do you motivate your students? What are your thoughts on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation? I'd love to hear from you in the comments!

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My Favorite Teaching Tools: Part One

3/25/2019

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Let’s talk teaching tools!

Is there a game or gadget that you find yourself reaching for again and again to use with your students? Is there a product you always have in stock and on hand for lessons?

I thought it would be fun to do a series of blog posts about my favorite teaching tools. Today’s teaching tool might be a bit surprising, since it is low-tech and something that you probably already have in your home. However, it is one that I find myself using more and more with my students. Today I will be sharing the many ways I use one of my very favorite teaching tools…the post-it note!

Big ones, small ones, the more colorful the better—the post-it note is a tool I find myself reaching for more and more in my lessons. Here are some of the ways I use post-it notes with my students:

1) Marking pages in students’ books.
This may seem like a no-brainer, but several years ago I started using post-it flags to mark the pages of each piece I expected my students to practice during the week. I wanted to make it as easy as possible for my students to find exactly what they should be working on when they sit down to practice at home.

This can be especially helpful for my youngest students. My elementary school-age students can’t always look up their assignments in their practice binders independently, or find pages quickly in their books without help. I have them mark their pages with a colorful post-it and have them practice turning to the correct page in their lessons. This makes me much more confident that they will be able to practice the correct music at home—even if mom or dad isn’t sitting at the piano with them.

2) Covering up extra information in the music.
Do you have students that get overwhelmed when looking at a new piece of music and just don’t know how to get started? Do your students practice the first section of a piece over and over when they really should be practicing page 2?

Enter the post-it note! Hide whatever you don’t want your students to see when they are practicing at home—then move the post-its the following week.

3) Isolating tricky measures for practice.
There are lots of fun ways to use the post-it as a practice tool. Here are a few ideas:

Cover up everything except for one tricky section in the music, and have students put a tally mark on the post-it each time they play it correctly.
Use post-its for “backwards practice.” Put post-its on the last line of a piece to cover everything except the last measure. Once your student has played the last measure correctly 3 times, move the post-it backwards so only the last two measures are showing. Keep working backwards until they can play the whole last section of the piece correctly.
Work on tricky transition spots or places students pause by placing a post-it before and after the trouble spot and practicing between the post-its without stopping or slowing down.
For younger students: a trick I use to get my beginner students to play a piece more than one time (without losing their focus or complaining!) is to cover everything except the first measure with a post-it. Once a student plays the first measure 2 times, they can move the post-it and play measures 1 and 2. We keep moving the post-its measure by measure until students have played the entire piece. Little ones enjoy the thrill of moving the post-its to find out what comes next so much that they don’t realize they have played the piece several times in a row!

4) Practice reminders.
One of the most recent ways I have been using post-its is to help my middle and high school students to start taking more responsibility for their own practice goals for the week. My students have assignment binders where we write detailed practice plans for their pieces; however, I find it helpful for students to write their top 3 goals for the week on a post-it and stick it directly on their music. This helps me to see how well students understand their assignment, since they have to summarize it in their own words. And since the post-it is on the music, they are sure to see it during the week even if they don’t check their assignment binder. (And, let’s face it—many of our students neglect to check their assignment books during the week, right?)

So what do you think? Do you use post-its with your students? Do you have a teaching tool you just can’t live without? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

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Tips for Turning Your Students into Super Sight-Readers

Think Like a Composer: Tips for Teaching Musical Interpretation

3 Tips for Taking the Mystery out of Memorization

Thoughts on Student Motivation

My Favorite Teaching Tools: Part One

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