Tag Archives: practice

Oct29

What If I Make A Mistake?

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Mistakes Are GuaranteedWith concerts, recitals, and holiday performances just around the corner both students and teachers are starting to feel a case of the butterflies. I know I am! Teachers wonder if they will have all the students prepared in time. We wonder if the programs will get printed in time, if the sound system at the venue will be working properly, if there will be enough food for the reception. Students wonder if they will mess up on stage. They worry that they might trip on the way to or from the piano bench. They are tortured by a multitude of what ifs – one of the worst ones being what if I forget my song?

It’s been said that there are no guarantees in life, but actually there is one! As I was re-reading the Sept/Oct 2012 issue of Making Music magazine, the words of Glenn DaGrossa- a music teacher in New York – jumped off the page at me:

“As human beings, mistakes are guaranteed”

Well doesn’t that just go against everything we are working towards in rehearsals and practice?

Actually, this fact – and it is a fact – must be at the center of our rehearsals and practice. We must prepare not only to play to the best of our ability, but also prepare to handle the inevitable mistakes we will make. Our goal must  not  be a flawless performance, but a fantastic performance! Flawless performances can be flat and sterile, whereas fantastic performances are those that may or may not have noticeable mistakes but definitely connect the audience and performer to each other.

So, let’s all do ourselves a favor and recognize that mistakes are guaranteed. With this thought in mind, let’s proceed to practice with a greater purpose than perfection in mind.

Let’s practice with the goal of communicating and connecting through the music. That’s the kind of music that brings people together!

Oct15

Mystery Practice Assignments Pt 2

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Since last week’s post about Mystery Practice Assignments got so much attention on Pinterest and since my students seem to be enjoying the suspense involved in having to wait to find out what their practice assignment for each day is, I’ve decided to do a follow-up. Here are some of the mystery assignments I will be using this week. These are some of the tried and true favorites that I have used over the years in students’ notebooks as well as one idea that came from a comment on a post about How To Get Kids To Sing. Also, this week there will only be 4 mystery assignments – one for every other day. (Hmmm…could this be another way to reinforce the concept of skips?)

1.Place a small ball in the palm of your right hand. Wrap tape around the ball and your hand. Play the Treble clef notes of your practice piece without letting the ball slip out!

2. Using a kazoo, sing the first line of your practice piece whenever your brother or sister says your name tonight. (Thanks to Leila of 88pianokeys for this one!) Teachers/parents – for this one you may have to supply your student with a kazoo. This will actually add to the mystery since you will not tell him/her what the kazoo is for! You will only tell them that it is explained  in one of their envelopes!

3. Put on some dark sunglasses and play your piece with your eyes closed like Stevie Wonder. Were you able to play it without a mistake? If not, keep trying until you can!

4. Watch one of your favorite 30 minute TV shows and play your piece during the commercials. How many times were you able to play your piece?

For a printable copy of the assignments click here. There are enough for up to 4 students each. Simply cut strips and place in a sealed envelope for each day.

Oct9

Mystery Practice Assignments

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This post is about the never ending practice war. You carefully write out assignments in your student’s notebook, slowly explain what you wrote, and you wait 7 days. Then you find out your student didn’t even look at the assignment sheet. You give your student a look of shock or disappointment and explain again why practice is so important. Repeat the steps from the previous week. The cycle continues.

I’m sure most piano teachers are familiar with the practice war and some may even have come to accept it as just a normal part of lessons. Well, the rebel in me is standing up today and saying NO! This has got to stop!

So, I have a proposal for any teacher who is ready to accept the challenge to end the war.

This will take a little advanced planning, but I’m betting it will be worth it. This week I’m giving students a different practice task for each of the 7 days in between lessons. My goal is for them to complete at least 5 of these tasks. If they complete all 7, they get to choose something from my treasure box at the end of the lesson. Here is where it gets interesting  - I will assign and explain a really cool practice activity for the first day like one of the ones in Shhh… Your Piano Teacher Thinks This Is Practice by Andrea and Trevor Dow. The other 6 assignments will be given to the student in sealed envelopes with the message – “Do NOT Open Until _________ “! The day of the week will be written on the line. Before giving the student the assignments, I will be making a list of them in my teacher notes so that I can use that in the following lesson.

I can’t wait to see how many of my students will take the mystery challenge!

Will you join me in this quest to end the practice war? Like and / or leave a comment if you’re on board!

May21

Summer Practice Challenge

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Summer is here! The school year is almost over for many kids right now and that means that parents and piano teachers have to have a plan for helping kids continue to play (piano that is) over the summer. So, here is a Summer Practice Chart you can use. The Summer Practice Challenge is to practice playing piano for 100 minutes each week. That’s only 20 minutes a day! Each day they reach their goal they get to color in, check off, or put a sticker on one piano key. If they practice this way for only 5 days they will reach their goal.

On the right side of the chart is a To Do List that takes the guessing out of what to practice. Summer is a great time to focus on scales so that is the first thing in the to do list. A summer of scales will make learning new songs in the fall so much easier and faster!

The second practice step is a new song for the week. If the child is taking lessons over the summer this is the one song that is covered in the lesson. I set a goal of learning one song a week because most people are doing more leisure activities this time of year and so there won’t be as much discipline when it comes to new repertoire. I suggest using a practice prop such as an abacus or dice to help the child do repetitions. For example, they can stop practicing a particular thing once they have played the song the number of times that the dice show.

Finally, a worksheet page reviewing theory concepts tied to the song for the week can finish off the practice session.

And the only thing left to do is color in, check off, or put a sticker on one piano key for the day!

At the end of the summer I have a gift card for ice cream for the student who practiced the most minutes over the summer.

What do you do to keep your students playing piano over the summer?

May8

From Piano Parent To Piano Student – What My Mother Now Knows Pt. 2

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Yesterday I wrote about my mother becoming a piano student after years of raising 2 daughters who both play piano. Today I will share what she has written about her experiences as a piano student so far. She writes:

When I Grow Up I Want To Be…  A Piano Parent?

I always wanted to play the piano but never took lessons.  In grade school I played the plastic flute and did that well.  In Junior High I took music appreciation and could clap to the beat very good.  But I never took piano lessons.

When my daughter Dana was 5, I enrolled her in piano class.  She would cry the first few times I would take her to her teacher’s house.  Each of those times I used my self-fulfilling prophecy and told Dana to try the lessons for 3 months.  Then if she still didn’t like them, I would discontinue them.  One day I dropped Dana off and returned to pick her up.  To my surprise Dana was laughing with the teacher and venturing as she played the piano.  From that day forward I never saw Dana cry about not wanting to take the lessons.

I started Jessica, Dana’s sister, to take piano lessons when she was 7.  At home Jessica had Dana as a mentor.  She would often watch her play.  So that was much encouragement for her.

Yikes! I’m A Piano Student!

Last October I started taking piano lessons from the same teacher who taught my younger daughter many years ago. Once I started lessons I soon realized that I had to discipline myself, to learn theory, and to practice daily.  If I make one mistake, the average time I have to start over again.  Though this is part of the challenge that comes with a person striving to achieve, much time is invested.  Had I realized this when Dana and Jessica were taking piano lessons, I would have signed up for piano lessons myself.  We would have been able to encourage each  other.  I would have enjoyed listening to them and making comments along the way.  Equally, I believe that they would have loved listening to me.

I remember when I first started taking lessons and how there was such a difference from my preparation at home to my lessons in front of my teacher.  My fingers would shake a lot as I struggled to remember the notes, the melody, and the keys.  Long hours of rehearsal enabled me to improve from this madness over time.  I found that as the songs increased, the demands to practice increased.  I even discovered that if I stopped practicing the songs I learned to play, I would forget how to play them and would have to start over again.  I also learned that there are favorite songs and others that I simply put up with.

If I’m dissatisfied with the outcome of my playing during my lessons with my teacher, as soon as I can get back home to the piano, I get back on it.  I keep playing the song to my satisfaction and feel much better.  I’ve learned since I started lessons last October (I’ve progressed to page 112 in my book which goes to page 159) to translate each song.  When I write the alphabet per note, that helps me a lot.  As I continue to play the tune, I improve significantly.  The more I play with concentration, the better for me.  I begin to relax when the melody sounds right and I can hit the key at the right time.

Come Back Tomorrow

In tomorrow’s post you will get to read about my biggest piano obstacle so far – HANON – and how I showed him whose the Mama around here! LOL

May7

From Piano Parent to Piano Student – What My Mother Now Knows Part 1

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 I was very surprised to learn a few months ago that my mother had decided to start taking piano lessons. After years of transporting my sister and I to and from piano lessons with various teachers (sometimes against our own immature wills), the music bug had finally bit her! Since she and I live in different states I am not fortunate enough to be her piano teacher, but this is probably for the better, right? I mean, can you imagine?!

When she told me the news, I had so many questions. Why? What is it like taking piano after having raised two piano players? Do you enjoy practicing? Is it easy to learn to play the piano? How does it feel to sit on the bench under the pressure of playing for someone? Underneath all these questions was the deep desire that maybe, just maybe this piano learning journey would help her to understand a part of me that maybe was inaccessible to her before because she had not sat on that bench as I had, didn’t know how wonderful being able to play music makes you feel after you finally get your hands to do it, and she hadn’t had to turn down social opportunities because she had to practice piano while others played outside. How would she be different as a result of this experience? How would I be different?

At any rate I have relished hearing about her experiences with piano learning and thought that you might enjoy reading about them as well. So, this week there will be a short 3 part series of posts about her piano adventures! If you are a piano parent, perhaps you will gain some ideas about how to support your child’s musical learning. And if you are a long time piano player like me, maybe you will get some satisfaction of knowing that there is a parent out there who can truly appreciate all the things you had to go through to become the player you are today. If you are a teacher, you will gain some insights on how to teach parents to best participate in the child’s music learning. Or if you are a student just learning to play, you will be encouraged to know that someone else is facing similar challenges as you concerning piano learning and yet they think it is worth it.

Apr27

Stickers And Parents Oh My!

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This one is an oldie but a goodie for motivating young students. No surprise here, but it’s worth mentioning just in case it’s slipped your mind. I know I had forgotten about the amazing motivational power of stickers until yesterday when one of my preschool piano players showed up for lessons and her mom said it was difficult to get her to practice last week at home.

Enter the amazing stickers! I took a blank piece of paper, folded it in half and told my preschooler that we were going to see if she could fill up the page with stickers. How were we going to do this? Well for each time she played her piece she’d get to put a sticker on.

But no we didn’t stop there! After she played the trouble spots a couple of times I told her I had a suggestion. Why don’t we get her to see if her mom could play it too? Of course she would have to be her mom’s teacher because afterall, I was busy teaching her! She absolutely loved the idea so her mom joined in the lesson and of course she earned stickers as well. Now we had two sticker sheets going! My student was excited to find out that not only would her mom get a sticker for practicing, she would get one also every time her mom played the piece.

Finally I had another suggestion. Why don’t we get you and mom to play it together? And yes, she loved the idea too. What 4 year old doesn’t want to do something special with their mom? The best part was that we recorded them playing and let them listen and judge their playing. Oh and as a bonus it was a perfect opportunity for a new vocabulary word: duet. Now my preschooler chants “a duet is when you do it together”

So what about home practice? Well the sticker sheet went home with a challenge to fill it up completely with no white spaces showing! When she brings it back she will get a something from my treat box. She couldn’t wait to get home and practice – I mean play!

Teachers, how do you get parents involved in the lesson? Parents, how do you get involved in practice at home? Share your wisdom in a comment below!

 

Apr19

More Fun Practice: Silly 6 Pins

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Ever wondered how to get a kid to play the same passage more than once – let alone 6 times? Of course you have if  you are trying to help a child learn to play piano! Here is a repurposed game that works extremely well for solving this problem. If you’ve downloaded my Weekly Practice Games Printable, you may have seen this game listed as one of the practice assignments. It’s the classic Silly 6 Pins Game. I tell my students to bowl to see how many pins they can knock down. They try really hard to get a strike which usually results in lots of pins getting knocked down. They get to play whatever passage or piece they need to practice one time for each pin they knocked down. I get really silly with it and take the pins they knocked down to the piano. Each time they play the piece, I ask them which pin they want me to throw away. And, yes, I throw the pin across the room (carefully, of course). Depending on the kids’ personality I might even let him or her throw the pin. Of course I only do that if I’m pretty sure the kid won’t tear up my studio with the pin! Warning: This practice game could take up a large portion of the lesson because kids want to play it over and over again. However, this results in songs well learned, and tricky passages terminated! In case you missed it, you can check out Fun Practice for even more sneaky ways to get kids to “Play It Again”.

What tricks do you use to get your piano player to practice?