Category Archives: Lessons that have happened

Pretend you can’t play it

How does that work? And how did I even think of it as a solution to a problem? It’s not what I would usually suggest. Let me explain… I was teaching a young lad the other night. He was trying … Continue reading

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A Step in Time Saves Nine

I was teaching ‘finger-swaps’ today in a piano lesson; something along these lines… It was the last lesson of the day, and the young man at the piano had more or less used up all his brain-power for the day. … Continue reading

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Subdividing the Pulse – Movement

One of my piano teachers, the one that taught me through to my Teaching Diploma, was fanatical in demanding accuracy in subdividing the pulse. So much so, that when I heard a subway busker playing Bach on her flute, it … Continue reading

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Questions, questions, answers, answers

The ‘asking questions‘ method that I was using for teaching children to learn, and trying to improve their practising at home, seems to be working. Now, sometimes, in a lesson, I hear the student asking themselves useful questions as we … Continue reading

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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

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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

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40/60 Is this a Music Lesson?

One of my various employers has a policy of observing all their teachers at work every year. Not a bad idea… except if they were to observe me teaching one of my young piano pupils (eleven years old) I might … Continue reading

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37/60 Finger Puppets and Recorders

My finger puppets have been working hard. I was able to teach a class of thirty year 3 children how to play the note “C” in just a few minutes. This was in the seventh of a series of ten … Continue reading

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