Working with One Hand when a piano student has an injury to the other

I recall my piano teaching years in California's Central Valley where I easily counted 10 or more students (usually boys) who had sports injuries. Most often a mom would call about her son's fractured arm or wrist that was incurred on the playing field--soccer, baseball, or during any number of childhood activities. As a consequence,…

Small hand challenges playing Gershwin’s Prelude No. 2

As teachers, we're in a position to advise our students about navigating big stretches that may not comfortably fit hands that are small or even moderate in size. George Gershwin's Prelude No. 2, a bluesy lullaby, is exemplary in requiring artful phrasing of relentless measures that have these wide interval spans beyond the reach of…

Arpeggios filled up a week of wildfires!

With unhealthy air quality alerts and record breaking temps keeping many Californians indoors, my own piano practicing was strategically planned to offset unexpected environmental changes. (Unlike those residing in the hills who received a RED FLAG evacuation warning, I could, in the flats, cling to my Steinway in a closed door, sealed window space--Ugh!) An…

Don’t Think! Play, Listen, Feel, Breathe

Recently, I sprang upon a schemata that was an immediate turnoff. It amplified all the nitpicky processes that the brain performs while an individual plays the piano. Almost without thinking, I copied the colorful map, sending it to my crop of adult students, many in their senior years. As expected, the first reply was a…

Online Piano Lessons: Patience and Planning Amidst the Unexpected

Bundled into the universe of teaching piano Online, is the necessity to prepare for the unexpected. This means knowing what resources to dip into when there's a substantial video or audio freeze. Face Time and Skype, for example, might occasionally not deliver, and when it becomes apparent that lesson continuity is at a virtual standstill,…

Online lessons are coming into their own in the age of Corona virus

For years I felt like a duck out of water, barely floating outside the mainstream as an Online piano teacher. My isolation was intensified by boomer generation colleagues who insisted on face-to-face mentoring as the gold pedagogical standard. I could empathize before 2010, when I'd journeyed for years through traditional teaching circles without a second…

Learning how to Learn

It's always valuable to revisit a process of growing a composition to full potential, keeping in mind that self-imposed progress deadlines are in opposition to a non-judgmental, self-accepting learning environment. In this regard, it's not how long it takes to gain control of technical/expressive dimensions of a piece, but rather, the quality of the steps…

Teaching approaches: Seymour Bernstein, Marianna Prjevalskaya and Karen Magruder

With gratitude to our mentors who light a path of learning with love, inspiration, knowledge, commitment and enduring patience. *** SEYMOUR BERNSTEIN http://seymourbernstein.com/ https://youtu.be/k-XngqDcJdg My intent in teaching is to make the pupil better than they are by leading them through musical and technical obstacles and helping them find solutions right there at the lesson.…

Burgmuller’s Arabesque and Inquietude are teaching treasures

I'm always gratified to have a repository of progressive pieces that roll out smoothly from scale and arpeggio study to a universe of colorful, musical expression. Burgmuller's Op. 100 is such a learner rich album of 25 short works with infused choreographies that advance a musical/technical synthesis. "Arabesque," the second offering, is permeated by ascending…

Repeated groups of notes, metrical framing, and phrase contouring

With one big eyeful of Friedrich Burgmuller's "La Candeur" (Frankness), one observes repetitious strands of melody that can be stultified by a rigid 4/4 framing. The erroneous "study" or etude effect, furthered by a beat-hammering mentor, can thrust a struggling player into an inescapable auto-pilot zone Yet, the opening measures, with twin note groupings, can…