I guess I was 68 the day I dusted off the piano I bought when my children were young. I had the random thought I could learn to play. I had dragged that piano around for thirty years and into and out of five houses–long after the kids had moved away. Sitting there, I concluded that I was probably at least half as bright as they were, and if they could learn to play, so could I.
Luckily, because I am an ‘old lady,’ I had no illusions about getting good or playing in front of anyone. So, I happily launched myself into the business of learning. I dug out the first book the kids used and got new sticky stars to mark my progress. I played a bit each day, and I remember when I could play something with both hands that sounded like real music. I got really “into” it then, as the young people say. By the time I was seventy, I had learned about ten easy pieces. At the same time, I began to spend long months with my daughter. Like every good parent, my daughter got her eight-year-old piano lessons from a lovely young man who looked about twelve years old to me, though I’m sure he was older since he has a college degree. One day, after my granddaughter’s lesson, I asked her teacher to play a piece I struggled with. One thing led to another, and I now take lessons every week. He has ‘forced’ me to learn to play the correct rhythm and pay attention to dynamics. In exchange, I ‘force’ him to play extraordinary Bach concertos and Beethoven sonatas for half our time together. In conclusion, this has all worked out well. My granddaughter is determined to stay ahead of me in her lessons, so she practices daily (especially when I want to play.) My daughter is proud of me and enjoys answering my questions and teaching me things. She also has begun playing again. Come to find out, she thought she was too old to get back to playing. I think I am a living example of not giving in to an ordinary way of getting older. It’s easy to get discouraged as we age. Things ache, teeth fall out, and it’s sad to look like warmed-over death when we look in the mirror. Learning to play the piano took me out of my disgruntlement. I now have something to talk about and share with my friends and family. I look forward to picking the next song I will learn. If you'd like to schedule a Trial lesson for 50% off, Piano & More instructors teach right in your home. Save time and skip the traffic! 👉 Click on this link to view teachers near you! Written By Piano Student, Melinda Y.
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Continuation (Part 2 of 2)
Tracking progress. How many of you like to check your “steps for the day” on your apple watch? How great do you feel when you see charts reflect your work and results? We want to know if what we are doing is actually working. Keeping track of progress on paper or an app can be very rewarding. Talk to your music teacher about their recommended ways to keep track of practice & progress. There’s so many resources out there now! Looking forward to goals and events. Students are more likely to practice when they know they have a set of goals to achieve. Goals range from being able to play a favorite song to performing a song at a recital or Open Mic! In addition, parents sharing their children's goals with friends and family can also help motivate students to practice regularly. For example, if there is a concert or recital coming up soon, sharing this information with friends and family could help create excitement within the student (and maybe even their parents too). When you share your students' progress and achievements, it will encourage them to keep practicing. Practicing music requires many different kinds of support. The biggest part of practicing music is the student's motivation. They need to feel like they are making progress in their playing, or they will become frustrated and give up on the instrument. Parents can be great sources of encouragement for their children when it comes to learning an instrument. They should encourage their child every time he/she practices well or successfully completes a piece that he/she had been struggling with beforehand. Another great source of motivation can come from other musicians. Encourage your student to connect with other musicians and students, either online or in person. This helps them understand how to use their skills and see how much bigger music is, when you put several instruments together. It can be very exhilarating! Conclusion If you want to keep your students motivated to practice, it's important to remember that they need more than just the right music and a good teacher. They also need encouragement and support from their parents, friends, and teachers. So if you're struggling with motivation in your own life or with your kids', try implementing the above tips, week by week! Written by Nicole Surovcek Introduction For many young students, practicing piano may be the most challenging part of their musical journey. It's hard to practice when you're tired from school or distracted with other activities. Fortunately, there are ways parents can motivate students to practice piano—and they don't require any special skills or tricks! First, the practice routine. As cliche as it sounds, a reliable routine proves to be one of the best ways to build good habits. If students have a set time that they know when and where they'll be able to practice, then it's easier for them to commit. The best way to make this system work is by creating an environment where practicing piano feels like something that happens naturally rather than something forced through sheer willpower alone. The best way to do this is by setting up a routine where practice is set at specific times every day. Some examples are right before school or right after eating dinner. Next, the practice environment. Learning music theory and reading notes on a staff requires a lot of concentration. Students are learning a new musical language as well as developing new hand eye coordination. Neuron connections are being built! In order to do that, the practice environment needs to be able to facilitate that kind of concentration. First, we want to check that distractions are removed from the room. For example, it wouldn’t be a good idea to have a sibling playing video games in the background. Second, is the room quiet or have a comfortable level of noise? And last is organization! Is the sheet music and/or lesson book easy to locate and use? A messy piano with sheet music scattered about will only add to the list of to-dos, which could discourage the student from jumping into a quick practice session. Show enthusiasm. Parents can motivate their children by showing their own enthusiasm for their child's progress. When a student is playing something, be sure to compliment them on their playing. Make them feel good about what they are doing! This is important when working with younger children who are developing good habits as it helps them attach a positive feeling to a task. Similarly, if you notice your child is struggling with a particular part in the music, do not make it seem like this is a bad thing. Instead, show interest in what they are trying to learn and ask questions about the challenging part being played. Talking about the difficulties will help the student work through it and eventually, build confidence in their music abilities. Like this list so far? Stay tuned for next Monday, for part two! Written by Nicole Surovcek You can. You can absolutely have a student master musical techniques, note-reading, rhythm, and ear training. It’s just like teaching someone how to multiply numbers or drive a car. Eventually, the skill can be learned. But of course, there are always those that are better than others. What makes a musician stand out? Here are my thoughts.
First, mastering a skill takes hours of work. When people discover my occupation, they usually exclaim, “Oh I’ve always wanted to learn piano! Can you teach me?” But do you know what you’re asking for? Are you willing to commit at least several hours a week to piano? Yes, I expect that you will review homework at least 20-30 minutes a day, which adds up to about 3-4 hours of your time throughout the week. To be able to do that, you need to depend on a motivation powerful enough to bring you back day after day. It could be outsourced, or it could come from within. A parent demanding their child to practice 30 minutes before they are able to watch their favorite show for example, is motivation coming from the outside. Recital performances, sibling rivalry, and meeting teacher expectations are other outsourced examples. If music is always “work” for you, then your motivation is most likely outsourced- that kind of musician can only go so far. But my golden students are the ones who are motivated from within. Those are the students I can rely on and know, they will be musicians for life. That inward motivation can come from different sources. It could be a desire to understand music, a new challenge, or a curiosity to know another dimension. For me, it was the discovery of being able to communicate my emotions. It’s a form of therapy if you will. It’s a moment of release, as I like to call it. Being able to express and release emotion through music brings joy to my soul. So what makes a natural musician? It’s a desire fueled by an inward motivation that will always call them back. It’s that inward motivation that makes you stand out from among the rest. So many times parents ask me, “How long should my child practice to get good?” Well…from the age 8-12, I practiced 30 minutes a day for 5 years. Was I pretty good? Yes, the hard work did pay off. I can safely say, I made my parents proud in my piano recitals and church performances. Did I come to enjoy it? Never. My negative feelings for piano never left during those 5 years of piano lessons. Eventually, my mother's will broke and she allowed me to stop taking lessons. I felt victorious. And I stopped playing piano for several years. So maybe, that’s the wrong question to ask. What about, “How can we make piano more fun?” or “How can I get my child to connect to their instrument?”
Sometimes, all you need is a good teacher to fuel that desire. I believe a good teacher makes a student believe that their dreams are not only possible but also, achievable in the very near future. Sometimes, it's a friend, a parent, a community, a society, an admirable musician or celebrity...the list goes on. The point is to find the origin and the, or lack of, and go from there. My problem that needed attention ASAP, was that I had no connection to the music I was playing. It was dull and boring to me and limited my ability to envision what I could actually do with this skill of playing piano. If my piano teachers had stepped in to broaden my view of piano, I could've lit that spark of musical passion much earlier. Once it was lit, I couldn't stop dreaming of where music could take me. It was a new, exciting, and powerful world. After slamming the door shut on piano and all my negative feelings associated with it, I was eventually able to reset my mind and put that resentment to rest. However, the desire to connect to music sought for another way. The fact was, I was musical. Music drew me in and music has always been a powerful force in my life. My mom knew this, she saw my talent and that was why she fought the battle for so long. But she didn't know how to press the "activate" button. Once you activate a musician, the desire to make music is eternal. (Now...can you make a musician or must you be born one? That'll have to be another blog...) My re-introduction to the music world was through the guitar. I chose the guitar because it screamed cool to a teenager. But more importantly, this time, I chose to begin this musical journey. I chose the music I wanted to play. Playing guitar eventually sparked my desire to re-learn piano and experiment with other instruments such as violin and percussion. I began pecking at the piano, trying to play songs by ear that I had heard on the radio. I wanted to be apart of the music that I liked to listen to. I watched YouTube videos, I asked other musicians, I was intrigued- my image of the piano finally changed- and I actually went out of my way to start practicing the piano. But this time, it didn't feel like practicing. The piano didn't equal boring sheet music anymore. Some days I practiced an hour, sometimes more, and some days it was 15 minutes. Except I didn't call it practicing. I saw it as a hobby- it was fun. And there is no set time for fun. I had now found a great way to communicate and create. Some of my music students practice their advised 20-30 minutes as often as they can during the week, but the ones that excel are the ones that never time their practice sessions. They're focused on reaching the goal rather than the time. To recap, check the student’s vision. Is it there? We want to make sure what's fueling the student comes from within. This will be evident when the student subconsciously setts goals for themselves. Next, how strong is their vision? Can the teacher or parent help fuel it? Support, even a little, can take a student a long way. Once my students reach their goals, they feel the work has paid off- they feel like champions. And being a champ, is fun. "Practice hard, not hardly," my childhood piano teacher would remind me at the end of every lesson. But what does "practice hard" actually mean? What does it look like? Time is usually a good way to measure a practice session, especially in terms of accountability. When I first began teaching, I would follow this chart: Practice Chart Beginner: 15-20 minutes 4-5 times a week Intermediate: 30 minutes 5-6 times a week Advanced: 45-60+ minutes 5-6 times a week I still say it’s a good generalized chart to use on almost any developing skill, but it didn’t take long before I realized something was off. I would find my students still stumbling over songs after a week or two of practicing. I began to wonder how much of those 30 minutes were actually used for sharpening the brain. As we all know, quality is better than quantity. There are practicing methods that are better than others. So let’s talk details: 1. Warm up: 5 minutes Beginners: scales, chords, easy pattern exercises Intermediate/Advanced: advanced scales, chord progressions, Hanon and/or Czerny technique exercises Why? Warm-ups feel like a waste of time. I know- I also thought the same. But, warm-ups actually make piano playing easier. They strengthen your finger muscles, improve techniques and build better mind control. With your control and technique grounded, it will be much easier to read and play a song. Save some frustration and do your warm-ups. 2. Note reading: 10-20 minutes All levels should practice their assigned notes ON REPEAT. Before, I’d say “Practice this for 10 minutes”, but I’ve found that saying “Practice this piece 5 times” worked better. If you don’t repeat, your brain can never build on those new connections being formed. Now be sure to pay attention to this, because here’s the trick to learning faster. You’ve got to dissect the song - such as practicing the left and right hand separately, and then breaking the song into sections. Practice section one 3-5 times before moving on to the next section. Then combine section 1 and 2, before learning the third. The smaller the sections, the better- especially if you’re a beginner. This allows the brain to familiarize the finger patterns and notes, so then your muscle memory can kick in, which allows the brain to relax and focus on less. Anytime you overwhelm your brain, you move backwards. Not to mention, you will hate the learning process. Double backwards. 3. Listening Exercises: 10-15 minutes, or even 5 minutes several times a day A favorite of mine is learning songs by ear, which I heavily implement in every student’s lesson. We tend to look forward to this part. Since we depend on our ear and memory, I tell my students it’s important to practice this particular song several times a day (especially in the beginning) so you don’t forget the music. I tell them, “play it after our lesson, before you go to bed, and first thing in the morning- just to check that you haven’t forgotten it.” I come back a week later, and they’ve got it perfected. It works. You will find that this practice session looks very similar to the lessons I give. Yes, I’m glad you noticed. Now you’ll see, you’ve known how to practice all along. One more thing- notice in the Practice Chart, I mentioned how many times in a week one should practice. This is especially important because repetition is gold. You can have the 20-30 minute practice session perfected to every detail, but if you do that just 1-2 times a week, it’ll take us forever to move forward. Just like any hobby, you cannot get better at basketball or mathematical times tables without repeating the practice several times in a week. For example, let's say you're busy all week and only have time on the weekends, so you decide to make up for the time lost and put in several hours into one session. Then you get too busy for the next 5 days, and repeat another cramming session. That method of learning will take much longer and before you know it, discouragement sets in. You see, the brain forgets, and you will waste your time trying to remember the new things you've learned rather than building on them. So yes, 15-20 minutes 5-6 times a week is going to get you farther than 3-4 hours on the weekend. I am a firm believer in practicing- there's no way to reach your goals without it. However, I am also a firm believer in fun. If practicing causes constant emotional struggle, there is something wrong. Something needs to change. If you continue to grind against resistance, soon the brain will begin to flash PIANO = BAD. Once you get to that point, it will be very difficult to reverse, and the changes necessary will need to be more drastic and will involve more time. If you are a parent or a student who struggles with practice, please don’t continue just grinding on. You might’ve skipped an important step. My next blog, “My Child Doesn’t Want to Practice” can help redirect to a better approach.
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