Monthly Archives: September 2018

Bricks – Following a Melody

Posted on September 23, 2018 by

I’m spending more and more time in lessons with beginners working on identifying ‘steps’ (seconds) and ‘skips’. Reading music becomes much quicker when you don’t go to the trouble of working out the letter name of each note, but merely … Continue reading →

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Questions, questions

Posted on September 23, 2018 by

I was trying to motivate a young pupil to SUCCEED in getting through a line of her piece without being frustrated and over-faced by the size of the task. We were sweating our way through the last line of ‘Train … Continue reading →

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Building Chords with Bricks

Posted on September 21, 2018 by

I’ve been trying to think of an interesting and portable resource to help with uteaching chords and inversions. I never got the hang of these, never ever, until I started learning to harmonise Bach Chorales as part of my teaching … Continue reading →

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Everything in G major – Piano

Posted on September 14, 2018 by

Here you go – increased level of difficulty for the little ‘tune’ bits. The idea is that you pick and choose what your student it ready for, and award points/stickers or ‘well done’s as appropriate. Add your own fingering, write … Continue reading →

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The First Guitar Lesson

Posted on September 13, 2018 by

I did it! I survived! We all did it and survived – it was a magnificent piece of planning and cooperation and teamwork. I’m talking about the first Whole Class Ensemble Session of the year with a cast of the … Continue reading →

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Everything in C major

Posted on September 9, 2018 by

Almost everything. The Music Hub I work for has revised the curriculum for each of the Stages in piano and keyboard teaching. So I now find myself teaching things that I was never taught, rather I ‘acquired’ the knowledge much … Continue reading →

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On-line Learning

Posted on September 2, 2018 by

When I included a jazz standard in the list of pieces to learn for my Active Repertoire challenge (see this post, and Andrew Eales’ blogpost) I was reminded of the online jazz course I started at the end of last … Continue reading →

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Active Repertoire

Posted on September 2, 2018 by

I follow www.pianodao.com, written by Andrew Eales. It is full of interesting ideas, which, although mainly piano focused, are useful for other instrumentalists as well. Here’s a link to a recent post about Active Repertoire where you can also find a … Continue reading →

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