16 Mar 10 Learning Piano For Beginners – Simple Teaching Techniques

A good piano teacher should always be able to devise lessons to suit any pupil. Because we all learn in very different manners this is very important. Many people are visual so will find that they are able to take in information in written form and will be good with theory and notation, where as others will e good a listening to the sound of the music and have a good ear. Someone else may be completely tone deaf or lack natural rhythm. Lessons should cater for strengths and weaknesses.

Young kids also need to be taught differently to adults too. Children have quite short attention spans so the lesson needs to be more varied. When I teach my younger pupils I use a little trick where I ask them their age and then get them to play a certain part that number of times and I get them to call out the numbers as we go along. Or sometimes I may ask them to roll a large dice that I have and just hope they don’t roll a 1 every time:)! It’s keeping things interesting and fun that works with kids and hopefully they learn with a smile on their faces. I have devised many worksheets and games that I call upon constantly with children and it’s great fun if not a little tiring.

It is important to have lessons running to a structure so I try and break up an hour lesson into 3 parts, but switch the order every week.

Here’s how I break it up: I’ll try and spend 20 minutes per section, so will maybe start with 20 of practicing scales, then spend 20 minutes playing the piece of music that we are learning and then 20 minutes theory. With adults this is quite straight for but again with the youngster I might play ‘find the note game’ on the keyboard which can be great fun, and the reward is to give them either something new to play or get them to play a song they really like!

Scales are really good practice and a teacher should try and find a scale that a pupil likes to play on the piano and then get them to learn it in every key. I find Motion Scales are very popular with kids. Good things to practice for stretching an fingering techniques are arpeggios.

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