Piano Lessons: Catching up with Rina, age 5

Rina has reached a turning point in her piano studies, just 10 months into them. She's playing the Reinagle Minuet, coordinating bass and treble lines. This is NOT ROTE playing, or any Suzuki variant. Rina knows the music alphabet forward and in reverse; understands up and down, steps and skips, and plays LEGATO five-finger positions…

Online Piano Lessons by Webcam: Pros and Cons (Videos)

I'm not about to pitch web-cam driven piano instruction like a CD package promoter of Piano Playing in a Flash. Learning piano is not in the espresso lane. It takes time, patience, and practice. The question is, can a student gain as much from Online piano study vs. "live" in-person lessons. For decades I was…

For Intermediate Level students: A joyous way to improve piano technique while savoring the Romantic genre (Videos)

Piano students in the Intermediate range don't need to plod through method books to grow technique. In addition, they shouldn't be subjected to arrangements of the masterworks reduced to painful copies of the original. As example, "Fur Elise" often appears in dumb-down form, with a mid-section excision. What's left is the bare-bones beginning, usually transposed…

Arioso7's Blog (Shirley Kirsten)

I wish I could have waved a magic wand when I was six years old and produced a beginning teacher who would have artfully nursed me through my crawling stage to a graceful, phrase-loving adulthood at the piano. I needed to learn how to produce a singing tone, moving with agility from one note to another under the physical guidance of my mentor, but there was no one with such capability on the horizon.

Instead, I remember seven years of torment and frustration when what I knew as my tonal ideal deep within me never materialized. My tiny, but growing hands betrayed me time and again. I couldn’t put my imagination to work in a practical way without hands-on knowledge.

At the age of 13 or so, when I entered the New York City High School of Performing Arts, which was an easy entrance since I played the violin as…

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Piano Technique: Practicing a C# minor arpeggio, in rolled four-note groupings (Adult student lesson-in-progress)

We start by blocking out the Right Hand with a good fingering, reinforcing depth into the keys, and follow-through motion. The arpeggio is then unraveled with curves of energy assisted by relaxed arms, fluid wrists. The turnaround at the top comes with a rotation. http://youtu.be/Cx3M2aAMbmM Related: Practicing a C# minor scale http://youtu.be/bXKU2qKdaMw

The Right Age for a Child to Start Piano Lessons (Videos)

Is there a right time in a child's life to embark upon piano study? The answer is not clear as I've discovered from years of teaching. With technology creating an environment in which children as young as two or three are propped up at electronic keyboards hooked into big-size computer screens, the whole area of…

When a beginning adult piano student wants to learn popular music….(Video samples)

I have no problem indulging the musical appetites of my adult students, as long as they keep up their technical routines, and balance their intake of popular servings with Classical. Same applies to my younger pupils who are up to the task of reading music well enough so they can tackle music in various genres.…

Piano Practicing: The hands alone/hands together debate (Videos)

A lively Linked-in discussion is percolating about ways to practice piano and develop technique. Ardent defenders of a Hands Together approach insist that hands alone playing fits only elementary level students. (Deprecation is noted) The Hands Together contingent misses the mark. A solid supporter of ground-up/layered learning, I can draw on my interview with George…

Piano Instruction: Gershwin Prelude no. 2 in C# minor (Videos)

About Prelude #2: Published in 1927, the work was first performed by George Gershwin in a concert at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York City. A challenge to play, it doesn’t fit easily under the fingers because of large note spans, and it requires a tasteful amount of tempo rubato of a bluesy, moody character.…