Memorization at the piano: How to improve your skills

Memorization should be a natural outflow of consistent, thoughtful practicing. Thoughtful is underscored because it's the most important ingredient in the process of playing a studied piece without music. It means having mental assists that relate to mapping out a particular composition without chance reliance on intuition or instinct. So if you suddenly find yourself…

Piano Instruction: Avoiding a Crash and Burn in Fast Tempo (Video)

One of my adult students asked about how to stay in control when playing fast passages on the piano. She had found herself stumbling in brisk tempos, getting anxious, over-crowding the notes, and finally becoming so tangled up that she had to stop. The music essentially came to a grinding halt. My advice to her,…

Piano Lesson: An Adult student practices the Presto agitato mvt. Beethoven “Moonlight” Sonata (Video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxmwAUIu3eY The Chromatic scale to the end of movement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtquw8qNbXg R.K. wished to remain anonymous because of the nature of his work, but, nevertheless, he's a devoted student of the piano. I met him at the American Cancer Discovery Shop, on Bullard and West in Fresno about 5 years ago when I was a regular…

Piano Instruction: Phrasing and singing–A 10 year old beginner plays “Russian Sailor Dance,” Faber Bk. 1 (Video)

Singing is the best model for phrasing. In the learning environment, the student and teacher are on an interactive vocal wavelength experiencing the contour and shape of a musical line. Using syllables of various kinds that reflect the inner density and motion of the music is intrinsic to the activity. The video attached gives an…

Piano Practicing: Re-doing and Refining

Studying piano, playing through the great piano literature, requires revisiting, re-doing and refining our work. This undertaking should not carry a value judgment that what preceded was poor or inadequate. Those adjectives do not belong to the process of learning. After all, we do not fault babies for crawling before walking because we realize it's…

How long should a piano student stay with a piece?

As a teacher, I've often pondered this question, concluding that there are varying answers which depend on the advancement and motivation of individual students. Certainly no fixed formula addresses the length of time a pupil needs to fully realize his potential when practicing a given composition. By way of example, I have an adult student,…

Taking Piano Lessons: Skimming the surface or getting deeply involved?

I often think about a prevailing atmosphere of depersonalization these days fostered by cell phones, text messaging, being on the periphery of things, touching bases, not really getting deeply connected to any one subject. Social networking, video games, compulsive school testing, and a dearth of hands-on learning experiences keep many children at bay, floating from…

The Art of Phrasing at the Piano: Starting the process with Beginners (Videos)

For some unexplained reason, my earliest piano studies never included the art of phrasing. My primer teacher stressed naming notes, finding them, affixing correct fingering and counting out robotic beats. I knew nothing about feeling a melodic landscape; putting the vocal model center stage in my playing, and breathing through contoured musical lines. My pieces…

Appealing piano repertoire for students: Ballade by Burgmuller (Video) and a Lesson-in-Progress

http://youtu.be/JKFxWVFRK4M A piece that's popular among piano students and often steers them back on course, is Burgmuller's "Ballade." In previous blogs, I highlighted "The Chase," "Harmony of the Angels," and "Tarentelle," from this Op. 100 Collection of 25 Progressive Pieces. Burgmuller's tableau in C minor, ("Ballade") seems to capture the spirit of Halloween in its…

To use or not to use a Metronome in the piano studio

There's no doubt that one of the biggest challenges in teaching piano students of all ages is imbuing a rhythmic or metrical consciousness. In my experience, younger students, especially, at the primer level of study, want to race off like there's no tomorrow. They might begin a piece in a steady rhythmic frame but succumb…