Category: Practicing

Thoughts on Student Motivation

8/26/2019

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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Backing Track 101: Part Two

9/22/2018

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In my last post on backing tracks HERE, I discussed the benefits to using backing tracks and the technology you will need to get them up and running in your studio.

In today’s post, I’ll be sharing where to purchase backing tracks and the different formats you will find available.

What kinds of backing tracks are available?

There are a few different formats you will find for backing tracks:

Mp3 tracks: these are what you will find if you use a play-along accompaniment CD. You may also find this option if you purchase and download backing tracks from a website.
MIDI tracks: these are backing tracks designed to be used in high-end digital pianos such as Clavinovas. If you have an acoustic piano, like me, this is probably not the best option for you.
Apps that have built-in backing track technology: many method books now have dedicated apps that allow you to buy digital copies of the music as well as backing track packages that you can play directly in the app. Often these apps have other features, such as built-in metronomes, video demonstrations, or flashcard games.

Where do I go to purchase backing tracks?

There are tons of backing track options out there—however, they can sometimes be difficult to find unless you know where to look. They are often sold separately from method books, and some are available only online or as in-app purchases. Here are some good places to start looking for backing tracks:

First, check your preferred method series and see if it offers optional backing tracks or has an available app with backing track technology. You will find a range of options depending on the method, including digital downloads, physical accompaniment CDs, and online audio players. The popular Piano Maestro app also offers backing tracks for many different method and supplemental books as part of their subscription fee—I have made a note of the ones available at this time next to each method series below.

Here are a few of the most popular methods that I have found that offer backing tracks:

Alfred: backing tracks for Alfred Basic, Alfred Premier, and Music for Little Mozarts are available through the Piano Maestro app.
Bastien New Traditions: Kjos has a dedicated app for many of its products (including band and orchestra books, too). The Kjos Interactive Practice Studio (IPS) app is free, and features backing tracks, video demonstrations, flashcards, and more. You can purchase digital copies of your books in the app, or enter the code found on your hard copy book to access the app’s content.
Faber Piano Adventures: the Piano Adventures Player App has backing tracks and a built-in metronome. The app is free; backing tracks for each level can be purchased for $4.99. Digital sheet music at a variety of levels is also available.
Hal Leonard: backing tracks are available online as audio files or accompaniment CDs. Backing tracks are also available in the Piano Maestro app.
Piano Pronto: mp3 and MIDI backing tracks are available for many of the method books and supplemental books on the website. Backing tracks are also available in the Piano Maestro app.
Supersonics: backing tracks are available for the method books and supplemental material as part of the Supersonics Plus subscription. A dedicated Supersonics app is also in development. Backing tracks are also available in the Piano Maestro app.

Next, look for supplemental books that come with backing tracks and/or accompaniment CDs. (Remember, if you are using a CD, you can upload the tracks to your computer’s music library and then access them from your other devices, as well as change the tempo of the tracks using an app like AudioStretch.)

For example, I recently used Mike Springer’s “Not Just Another Praise Book” series with one of my students who wanted to play contemporary praise music. This series has 3 volumes, and each book comes with a CD that contains both recordings of the songs as well as a praise band-style accompaniment for students to practice along with.

In researching this article, I also found a few other play along series that I was unfamiliar with and wanted to share:

The Alfred Play-Along series (HERE) features music from The Doors, Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and more.
The Alfred "Sitting In" series (HERE) features backing tracks and improv lessons for blues, jazz, and rock styles.
The Hal Leonard Beginning Solo Piano Play Along Series (HERE) features music from Disney, The Beatles, Christmas, and Pop Standards.

Also, don’t forget about the demo recordings that are packaged with many method and supplemental books, too! Although these aren’t orchestrated backing tracks, it can still be helpful for your students to play along with these recordings for practice.

Finally, YouTube can also be a great resource! If you are like me, you probably already use YouTube to find demo videos of pieces your students may be learning. But you can also have students play along with the recordings, backing track-style!

A great tip I recently learned at a piano workshop—you can slow down the playback speed of YouTube videos without changing the pitch. If you are using the YouTube app on your phone or tablet, click on the 3 dots at the top right of your screen, then select “playback speed.” The teacher who shared this tip finds recordings of duets her students are working on and has her students practice their parts at home along with the YouTube video of the full piece. Isn’t that a great idea?

So, you have the technology ready to go in your studio, and you’ve purchased your first set of backing tracks. What next?

In my last blog post, I mentioned several ways I use backing tracks in my studio—for sight-reading practice, to gain ensemble experience, as a reward for mastering a piece. However, I would like to share one caveat I have found while implementing backing tracks in my studio: there may be a learning curve for your students. Since playing along with backing tracks requires listening to not only the beat, but other instruments as well, it might take a bit of time for your students to get the hang of playing along with backing tracks.

Here are a few tips I found helpful when incorporating backing tracks into my studio:

Start with simpler pieces that your students can play really well (with excellent rhythm) for their first backing track experience.
Have students start by first listening to the backing track and clapping along to the beat. If there is a demo of the piano part along with the backing track for students to listen to, that can be very helpful too.
Have students play hands separately with the backing track. This is a great way to ease into the full backing track experience.
Slow down the tempo of the backing track for students that struggle with rhythm. If you are using an app, there should be a way to slow down the tempo under the app settings. If you are using mp3 backing tracks, you can import tracks into an app like AudioStretch (which I mentioned in my previous blog post) or Amazing Slow Downer. If you are on a computer, a program such as Audacity can slow down mp3s without affecting pitch.

At the end of the day, I find that backing tracks are worth the extra effort! I tell my students that if they ever hope to play in a band or accompany other instruments, being able to play along with backing tracks is a great first step.

In my next post, "Backing Track 101: Part Three," I will be sharing some of the backing tracks I have created for my own compositions!

So, what do you think? Any tips or other resources you have found helpful for using backing tracks? I’d love to hear your comments!

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Thoughts on Student Motivation

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