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Monthly Archives: September 2018
Bricks – Following a Melody
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
Posted in Learning, Lessons that have happened, Piano, Resources
Tagged fingering, fluency, pitch movements
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Questions, questions
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
Posted in Learning, Lessons that have happened, Piano, Practising, talking to yourself
Tagged Chopin, prep test
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Building Chords with Bricks
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
Everything in G major – Piano
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
The First Guitar Lesson
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
Everything in C major
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
Posted in Piano, Uncategorized
Tagged arpeggios, brokenchords, chords, lead sheets, scales
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On-line Learning
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
Active Repertoire
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