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What if I told you...
1) Students can make progress whether they practice or not.
2) The best time to teach the letter names of the notes (EGBDF/FACE) is more than a year into their studies.
3) A six-year old child can improvise a bass line and a blues solo at the same time.
Would you think I'm crazy?
What if I told you...
1) Students can make progress whether they practice or not.
2) The best time to teach the letter names of the notes (EGBDF/FACE) is more than a year into their studies.
3) A six-year old child can improvise a bass line and a blues solo at the same time.
Would you think I'm crazy?
If you've ever tried to teach a beginner the piano, you know it's hard just keeping them going long enough to make progress. How do you bridge the gap between them not knowing anything, and them knowing enough to have fun? Teaching Beginning Piano covers everything you need to know to teach reading, scales and even improvisation to students from 4 to 94 so that they'll feel good about themselves, make progress, and keep coming back.
How do you get students to practice? How do you keep them honest about how much they've practiced? How do you get the parents on your side so that they'll support your efforts and encourage their child to practice?
This course covers the goals of piano education, and the means to reach those goals. Most importantly, the solutions it outlines work for children AND adult students. It focuses on the following:
- Enjoyment of playing and practicing
- Observing improvement
- Knowing what to teach and when
In addition, this course covers strategies on how to teach students to read music from the very beginning. Learning to read music can be done in a way that minimizes stress and maximizes effectiveness. Students can read, instead of pretending to read, and they can get good at it early while still learning to be musical, happy and healthy musicians.
Do you teach scales? Teaching Beginning Piano explains why teaching scales is important, and it offers a number of strategies for introducing and supporting students as they learn this invaluable skill.
Would you like to teach your students to improvise? Teaching Beginning Piano uses a blues-based methodology to introduce simple and effective improvisation to students. They'll sound good, and be able to perform what they know, almost from the beginning.
If you're a piano teacher, you're going to want to take Teaching Beginning Piano. It make your life easier and your students' learning more fun and effective. It will also enable you to keep more of your students so your turnover rate is smaller.
Ready? Let's go.
How exactly should a piano teacher focus on enjoyment while still pushing the student to improve?
This introduction will tell you all you need to know about the Teaching Beginning Piano course!
What are the three goals you as a teacher should keep in mind for your students?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of insisting on complete obedience?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of letting your students do whatever they want?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of prioritizing practice goals rather than time spent practicing?
What does a good practice log look like?
What unexpected benefits does logging provide?
What is a teacher's first job in piano instruction?
There are three possible scenarios in which the student may find themselves regarding practicing. What should you do in each one?
What is the second goal towards which a teacher should be working with a student (Job #2?). What do you do with a "normal" student versus a "troubled" student?
What do you do with a "brilliant" student, and why is brilliant not always better?
To what extent is it the student's responsibility to keep up with your expectations? Should you let them fail and weed out the ones who aren't going to make it?
Isn't having fun the most important thing of all? Shouldn't a teacher make this the very top priority? Is any stress at all really good for a student?
What would the rationale be for learning only one piano skill at a time? Would that make for good piano instruction?
What are the three fundamental skills every piano student should have after having studied for one year?
What is the third job a teacher must do for the student in piano instruction?
What are the challenges and benefits of teaching reading to beginners?
How do we teach the fundamental concept of meter to a beginner?
Here is an effective method for introducing meter and basic rhythmic notation to beginners.
How do we add eighth-notes to the boxes in the Four Box Method?
How do we add quarter rests to the boxes in the Four Box Method?
What are the surprising benefits of counting out loud while playing?
Here's an example of how a student would count to a rhythm with quarter-notes, eighth-notes and a quarter rest.
What is "start-stop," and what are the benefits to beginners?
When should steady tempo be expected or introduced?
When is it time to insist on the highest level of accuracy?
Once students understand the boxes, we can use them to begin to identify note-names.
How do we get from boxes to reading music on the staff?
How do we begin the process of reading music from a book?
A review of the benefits of counting while playing.
Should we teach note-names on the staff from the beginning, or is there a better time to do it?
What do we tell our students about the directions of the stems? Why is this important?
Can discrete boxes really be used to teach fluid music reading?
Because the box method only covers quarter-notes and eighth-notes, how do we teach half-notes and whole-notes?
Why teach scales to beginners?
How do scales help students learn actual music?
Which scale should we start with and why?
A description of the C-major fingering in detail.
A discussion of the relationship between the 1 major and 3 minor scales.
How do we transition to playing scales over two octaves?
We're counting again, and this time it's even more important!
How can we break up the task of learning scales into different parts?
A review of the five steps to scale mastery.
What comes next?
What about scales that are neither major nor minor?
A brief overview of the subject of musical improvisation.
Why teach improvisation to beginners through the blues?
Students will only keep improvising if they like what they hear. How can we guarantee that?
What are some of the immediate benefits of learning to improvise the blues?
Why do we start our study of blues in the key of E-flat?
What characteristics does the pentatonic scale have that make it ideal for the study of improvisation?
What does the student do with their left hand in their first improvisation assignment?
How can we make the students' blues sound even more authentic?
How can we expand the repertoire of the left hand in blues improvisation?
How do we teach a beginner to improvise a bass line?
How do we teach the blues in multiple keys?
How do we introduce the idea of playing the blues in any key?
Where can you go to learn the TruerMU Method of Blues Instruction?
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