5-Minute Piano Lessons

Adult piano students learn better if they  SEE their sheet music well !

I offer something I call a “Better Progress Checklist” to both live and online students. This action is a full and comprehensive list of questions covering every thing I’ve ever learned that can slow down a student’s progress. Answering these questions and having me evaluate the answers reveals things even the student is not aware are barriers. I bring this up because one of huge barrier sometimes revealed is the simple matter of eyesight. Not being behind the piano student’s eyeballs I have no way to know about this without asking, and, unfortunately, adults are sometimes reluctant to admit they need eyesight correction. This reticence can mean the different between playing well and playing poorly or not at all. (more…)

A solution to language study can help us study the language of music

As I’ve said in many other essays, reading piano music is highly important. Thus, anything that might speed this up and make it more effective for more student pianists is worth considering. This is the story of how I finally realized why “Every Good Boy Does Fine” and such has NOT solved pianists’ reading problems. It is also the story of how I finally understood and learned to apply an actual solution. (more…)

Creativity is sometimes inhibited by reading and obeying sheet music

I had a big and unhappy realization this week during teaching. An adult student had to be encouraged to do something other than what was specified by their sheet music (poorly written sheet music, I would hasten to add) and my sole child student asked me, “Aren’t these pedaling marks sorta an option?” Now my child is a very precocious 10 year old but I would have thought my adult student wouldn’t feel compelled to simply follow orders. Turns out I had it backwards.

My “realization” was:

Many piano student work hard to get good at
“Monkey-See-Monkey-Do” music reading. (more…)

“How to…” essays are critical for piano accomplishment

Most pianists know they will have to learn to read piano music if they wish to accomplish their goals. Playing by ear is fine – IF you don’t mind being musically illiterate. Knowing and reading chords is critical but you will still need to be able to read the treble staff in order to play from a fakebook. Thus, here are my three most successful actions in helping piano students improve their reading. (more…)

The piano world is waking up to CHORDS and their value

Years ago only professional musicians even knew fakebooks (books with just melody lines, lyrics, and chord symbols) existed. The few fakebooks available to such folk were very expensive and highly illegal (as the unknown authors simply ignored copyright and used that new technology of the photocopy machine to produce the things.) The regular pianist or piano student was taught that the supreme virtue was to read every note and every instruction on the piece of printed music. Making it up was, of course, “faking it” and therefore somehow less than capable.

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Predicting the Future is Usually Dicey but I Do See the Trends

I’ve been teaching piano now full-time since October of 1987. I began as most teachers do – traveling to my students’ homes. Later, I found space to teach at a local piano dealership. A few years ago I decided to limit my practice to adult and teen-aged students. This year I’m focusing my attention to the Internet. I give you this history to convince you that I might just be able to see “the handwriting on the wall” regarding piano education. (more…)

A Basic Understanding of Fingering is Necessary to Piano Practice

In piano music, there are directions that do NOT occur in the music written for other instruments. These directions are called THE FINGERING of the piece and are either placed there by the publisher of the piano music or by pianists themselves. For the more advanced pianist, the fingering is often a combination of directions by both publisher and pianist. It’s critical for all piano students to recognize the role these fingering instructions play. (more…)

Two Tried and True Ways to Improve Your Memory at the Piano

Since you are reading this essay you are learning piano lessons online, with a live piano instructor, or perhaps both. Either way, you have regular piano assignments for playing piano, practicing piano, reading piano music, and/or performing piano All of these are utterly dependent on good memory and thus any method of improving memory will make all of these go better. Here are two such methods. (more…)

Piano Lesson Music Books are Different Than Popular Piano “Sheets”

I suspect many, if not most, of you pianists and piano students have had the unpleasant experience of bringing home your brand new popular piano sheet music and then having trouble playing it well. Possibly it made you wonder if you had missed something in your piano lessons. Maybe your teacher missed some part of your instruction – or worse, maybe you are missing some talent. (more…)

Reading Music is the First Step to Playing the Piano Better

All of us would like to read music better.  The first step is to understand what “reading music” really means. (more…)