For Parents: Helping your Young Beginner to Practice

Building good practice habits takes time and a lot of guidance. These habits will be easier for some students than others. Students will have good days and bad days. This means we need to have a lot of patience, but at the same time we need to constantly remind them how they need to be practicing. With the young beginners (ages 4 to 7 or 8), this means parents are going to be very "hands on" with practicing. I realize most parents don't need anything else added to their to-do list, but helping them out in these beginning years will help them enjoy playing more and build the practice skills they will need when they are older. 

As much as possible, try to set aside a specific time to practice. This helps students remember to do their practicing. Try to avoid times when their focus will not be great. My kids are crabby and uncooperative if they have not eaten, so I have to make sure that they have had a snack right after school and before they practice. All this said, I know what real life is like. We sometimes have sports practices at 4pm and sometimes the sports practice is at 7pm. So, our piano practice time does float around a bit. The important thing is do your best to play the instrument every day.

Along with trying to have a set time, make sure your instrument is readily accessible. If you are practicing with a keyboard, keep the keyboard set up on a stand. The goal is to have students play their instrument often and eventually without help. If they walk by their instrument often, they will then hopefully be tempted to play their pieces as they walk by. Or maybe just improvise something when they see their instrument. 

In the first lessons, I often have students stand at the instrument rather than having them sit on a bench. Often the students are pretty wiggly (that is ok) so it is safer to have them stand up instead of wiggling themselves off the bench. We also will be moving around the keyboard a LOT, playing low and playing high. They can reach more easily if they are standing. When they start to sit on a bench, it is really important that the bench or chair they use at home is a height that allows their arms to be even with the keys. you can see an ideal position in the picture below. Too high or two low of a bench will make it more difficult for them to develop a relaxed posture at the piano. Also, make sure that the bench is not too close. In lessons, I find students are constantly scooting the bench in too close. I remind them that we don't want T-Rex arms, we want our arms to be out in front of us so we can easily reach high and low keys. In the picture below you can see that this student needs a footstool so that his legs aren't dangling. The footstool helps students to feel like they are not falling off the bench. 

At this age, I usually expect students to practice 5-10 minutes a day. Yes, more is definitely acceptable and encouraged. Playing an instrument is very much like playing a sport. Muscles only remember what to do when we have lots of repetition. Practicing is training our muscles. Young beginners do not have long attention spans so I find that breaking up practicing into small time increments is great. For example, have your pianist play one of their pieces two times. Then let them do something else. Maybe a half an hour later ask them to play a different piece two times. I am not saying this is how you MUST do it, but being creative with breaking things up is sometimes better than making them sit at the piano and practicing everything at the same time. 

And now some thoughts on technique for young beginners. Young students are still developing fine motor control. We start with learning to use large muscles and we gradually work our way to smaller muscles. This means that in the beginning students might only be playing with one finger. And that is ok. When the arm muscles get more coordinated, we move on to playing with our middle three fingers, when those get coordinated, we move on to playing with our thumbs (1 fingers) and pinkies (5 fingers). If you studied piano as a child, you might have had a teacher that drilled in to you that we focus on perfect hand shape at the beginning. Current pedagogues (myself included) have found that using larger muscles first will help create a more relaxed technique which will encourage healthier playing long term. I will communicate where we are in the process in practice notebooks. Please do not push your child to use all five fingers before they are ready. We want to encourage them to have a healthy body position for a life-time of playing the piano. This body positioning takes time and we move forward in small increments.

Now - what to actually do in your practice time. Your pianist will have a practice notebook. In the notebook, we have a list of pieces which your pianist can play. I would like them to choose 2-3 pieces from the list to play every day. This might mean that you hear the same piece over and over. And over and over. And then you might hear it again. This is absolutely normal and as tiring as it can be for a parent, it is healthy for them. You probably had the same thing happen when you read books to them. (and still read to them.) I think my husband still has The Big Red Barn memorized because he read it so many times. And I remember how we at one time hid the book Take Me Out to the Ballgame because we were so sick of it. That is what you should end up having with their piano pieces. I will try in lessons to review all the pieces, but at this stage, just have them play the pieces they know. As they get older I will make more detailed practice instructions. For now just play. 

When you get tired of the pieces, encourage your pianist to mix things up. Sometimes they can sing the words, sometimes they could say the finger numbers or the letter names. Most of the books we use have downloadable audio tracks, they can play along with those. The important thing at this level is to play often and play their pieces many times. Encourage your pianist to make things up at the piano. Let them try out using the pedals. This helps them discover all the different sounds the piano can make.

Hopefully this helps give you an idea of what I expect, happy practicing and always feel free to contact me with questions.

First Lesson with Dr H.

 It's the end of summer! I have been able to start a few new students and as we work our way into fall I know I will have some newbies starting with me at my schools.

I have gradually settled into a set routine which I do with every new student in their First Lesson. 

Usually I have to go pick up my new pianist from their classroom and often this is the first time I have met the student. When we get back to my room, I have them immediately sit down at the piano so we can start our lesson.

First activity: Improvise using only the black keys. 

The only instruction I give to the student is that we are going to play together. I will play on the low part, they will play on the high part. I point to the high half of the piano. I tell them we are only going to play black keys. When I first started doing this I used one of the accompaniments from the "Song of the Day" in the Time to Begin book in the Music Tree series. HERE is a link to a recording I have made when I do this activity with my piano classes. Students all react to my instructions differently. Some students will immediately begin playing. Others will blink as they try to figure out if I seriously am wanting them to play anything. Others will be really timid, but I will just keep playing and eventually they will try it out. Some students will play one key at a time, others go for clusters. I can learn a lot about each student's personality when I watch them with this activity. 

Key items for this activity:

Play long enough that students can settle into the activity. I will usually do this for about 3-4 minutes, which feels like a long time for the student. Some students want to go longer. When I think we have gone long enough, I tell the student it is up to them to decide when we stop. When they stop, I stop.

Any verbal comments are telling the student about the loveliness of their sound and about how I love making music with them. I don't give any instructions, we simply play.

Why do I do this activity?

• We start as we want to continue. The focus of all our lessons is making music. It is absolutely magical when students realize what we are playing sounds wonderful. Many of the "littles" ask me to make videos to send to their parents (which I often do). This is what I want - to create love for the sounds we are making.
• Students see me playing and see what great piano technique looks like. Yes, they are only seeing me from their periphery vision, but if I make them just sit and watch me I will get wiggles because they will want to play themselves. Students will naturally imitate what they see, so playing with me will set them up with a mental picture of what playing the piano should look like.
• Playing on the black keys creates a better hand position for students than playing on the white keys. I have absolutely no scientific evidence for this, just my observations. Students will naturally use their 2, 3 and 4 fingers on the black keys which causes them to use their arm muscles to drop in the keys rather than using finger muscles to play. Note that in the activity at no point did I TELL students how to play with proper technique. Instead the students discover and learn proper posture through experiencing the body motions. Learning through experience is going to stick with students more when they head home. It is incredibly important that students learn what it feels like to play with correct posture and hand position.

Second activity: Keyboard topography

Once we are done with out improvisation, I ask students to tell me what they see on the keyboard and what they heard when we played. I get all kinds of answers! Gradually I guide the discussion into hearing the difference between high and low and seeing that the black keys are grouped into 2s and 3s. 

Key items for this activity:

I avoid TELLING students about the piano and the sounds they are creating. Maybe it is because I teach at a Montessori school, but I want my students to learn through observation and discovery. If needed, I will ask leading questions, but I want students to know that all observations are important. Students WILL notice the difference in sound between high and low. All I do is put a name to the sound. (BTW, it is really fun to notice how students try to describe high and low if they don't know the terms.)

We make sure to PLAY everything. Music=Sound. We are not learning about music, we are creating music. So, when they tell me that they see black keys in 2 groups and 3 groups, we play them. We go up, we go down, we play them as clusters, we play them separated.

Why do I do this activity?

• We need to start learning the vocabulary needed for talking about music. This is a way of introducing the terms high/low and up/down without lecturing.
• We need to identify the 2 and 3 black key groups before we can learn the names of the white keys.

Third activity: Names of white keys CDE

In the previous activity we explore the black key groups and I try to transition as seamlessly as possibly into them learning the names of the white keys. I like to start with D. I ask students to play a group of 2 black keys and I ask them to pretend the two black keys are a dog house. (The age of the student will determine how much we go into this.) Dogs should be the only animal in the dog house and what letter does Dog start with? D! Then we practice finding all the Ds. I actually have little dog erasers that we put on the keys when I am working with younger students, junior high students won't be thrilled with the little erasers. Once we find all the Ds I ask what animals should not be in the doghouse. Many students will say cat right away, Others will make a list before we get to cat. Once we get there, we talk about how the cat does not belong in the doghouse so it has to be on the left side of the doghouse. And we put a cat eraser on the C. And then we discuss other animals which shouldn't be in the doghouse, eventually we get to elephant and put the elephant eraser on the Es. 

Once we have three letters learned, we can start to play some tunes. I like to start with Mary Had a Little Lamb because the rhythm is mostly quarter notes with longer notes at the end of the phrases. I will take their notebook or a piece of scratch paper and write the letters on the paper. I write the letters to show up and down on the page. Like this:

Then we play. And I let them know this is incredible because they are already playing something and we can sing along, isn't that fun!!

Once we have played Mary Had a Little Lamb a few times (we need to do it enough that they can replicate this at home!), we do a composition. I usually put lines on a paper and ask them to write a letter C, D or E on each line. When they have completed writing, we play their composition. Sometimes we make up words to go with it. 

Key items for this activity: 

My role is as a guide. When we put erasers on the keys, I have to sit back and let the student do it themselves. I will not be there when they are doing home practice. 

We need to play the pieces enough so they can play both pieces at home. One of the more difficult things for me to learn as a teacher has been how much repetition needs to happen in a lesson. We underestimate how much is needed for a student to actually feel comfortable with home review. 

Even small achievements deserve praise and recognition. This is our first lesson. Every concept learned needs praise. We want to instill JOY in making music. 

Final Thoughts

Usually what I have outlined above takes our whole lesson. Here is what I will probably write in the student's assignment notebook:

Practice finding 2s and 3s

Practice finding CDE

Play Mary Had a Little Lamb at least 2 times every day (sing along!)

Play your composition at least 2 times every day

Feel free to compose more at home and make up music like we did at the beginning of the lesson

With this lesson plan I hope to instill in my new student what I feel is valuable in lessons:

JOY in making music

Learning to improvise

Learning to compose

Building reading skills

Singing along as we play

Program Notes for "It's About Time" (The Official yet very UN-academic Notes)

 When we were asked to come up with a title for our program, I had a lot of thoughts running through my head. None of them related to a theme or title of a program. I sat and stared at what we had come up for a few of the pieces, I started seeing a common word come up in my thoughts. My thoughts were as follows:

What am I going to have time to practice?

It's been a long time since Alana and I have played together. 

It's finally going to be the time we get to play Rich's piece that we commissioned a few years ago and have not yet performed. 

Wow, this Dring trio has a lot of time signature changes. 

As indicated by my italics, I did start to see a theme. And then I pulled out Rich's piece entitled "The Hour is at Hand" (I had forgotten what the title was until then), and our theme/title fell in place. 

The word time can mean many things. One of my absolutely favorite TV shows is Farscape. In episode 11 of season 4, John Crichton and The Ancient have a back and forth not quite conversation: time...s'up, time...flies, time...is infinite. The discussion is about what time actually is and if time is something simple or is it something complex. Einstein called it the fourth dimension. For music, we usually think of timing - when to place a pitch in relation to other pitches. That seems like a dry definition to me, so instead I suggest that you think of time as a musician's canvas to fill with sounds just as a visual artist fills their canvas with colors. What is magical about our canvas is that it disappears, leaving only memories of the sounds and the emotions they evoked in the listener. As those sounds dissipate, we are left with connections to the composers, the performers and fellow audience members. Truly, it is amazing that God has given us such a gift of time and the sounds to fill that canvas! 

Now, it's about time for me to discuss the pieces we have included on this program.

We first have the percussion pieces. I know absolutely nothing about these composers and the pieces and I used my time to practice rather than doing research. I am sure they will be wonderful to listen to and very different than "normal" chamber music programming. (It's about time that percussionists get highlighted in a program.)

The Hour is at Hand is based off the tune St. Cross, which was #136 in CW93. It was commissioned to fit into a Holy Week program which Alana and I were putting together before the pandemic. We needed something for Maundy Thursday and Rich was happy to oblige. The text is as follows:

'Twas on the dark, that doleful night 

When pow'rs of earth and hell arose

Against the Son, our God's delight, 

And friends betrayed him to his foes.

Before the mournful scene began,

He took the bread and blessed and broke.

What love through all his actions ran! 

What wondrous words of grace he spoke!

"This is my body, slain for sin:

Receive and eat the living food,"

Then took the cup and blessed the wine:

"'Tis the new cov'nant in my blood."

"Do this," he said, "till time shall end, 

In mem'ry of your dying friend;

Meet at my table and record

The love of your departed Lord."

Jesus, your feast we celebrate;

We show your death; we sing your name

Till you return and we shall eat

The marriage supper of the Lamb.

This piece is divided into contrasting sections. It opens with warmth and progresses to a lyrical statement of the hymn tune. This is followed with alternations of section which Freese notates should be "Frozen in time" and a march. The frozen in time sections always make me imagine that I am walking through the display of statues of Narnians created by the White Witch. The entire country is frozen in a never ending winter and waiting for the return of Aslan. (If you do not get this reference, go home now and read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. If you walk out in the middle of the recital we will know why.) Freese has created a brittle sound to give us the feeling of stasis or of icicles. It ends with the warmth of the opening.

Fantasie in c minor, BWV 906 is an addition to the program which does not appear in the printed version. Juanita added this after our program was handed in because we agreed Bach had earned a place on our program. He is kind of a big deal for Lutherans. In relationship to time, I always tell my students that Bach was so important that when he died, the next day everyone woke up and the Baroque time period was over and it was the Classical Era. I usually get blinks in response. And then I clarify that I want them to write in their notes that the Baroque time period ended in 1750, which is also the year Bach died. 

Alana and I always include at least one woman composer on our programs. This time it is the Trio for flute, oboe and piano by Madeline Dring. She was an English composer, pianist and singer who married an oboist. Many of her pieces are songs and influences which I believe you can hear in this work are Rachmaninoff, Poulenc, Gershwin and Cole Porter. Supposedly she had a fantastic sense of humor and once wrote her own bio as follows: "Madeleine Dring was born on the moon and can therefore claim to be a pure-bred lunatic. Arriving on a speck of cosmic dust she came face to face with the human race and has never really recovered." (I am not kidding, I found this information HERE)

Judy suggested including Introduction and Variations on "Ihr Blumlein Alle" so that we would have something representative of a more Classical sound. Schubert is one of the bridge composers who can fall either into Classical or Romantic (just like Beethoven). The piece uses the very classical traditional theme and variation form, but the introduction makes Schubert's forward thinking very clear. The piano part is very difficult so I asked Juanita to play it so that I wouldn't have to practice. She obliged. 

The Ravel Sonatine is originally a piano solo work which has been transcribed for oboe and piano. The composer is often called a Neo-Classicist because he used Classical forms. This piece uses traditional sonata-allegro form although it clearly has the color palate of turn of the century French music. 

The last piece on the program is "Cantique d'amour". This is the last piece in a set of ten pieces collected into Harmonies poetiques. The set is a religious cycle - Liszt actually composed MANY religious works. Throughout the cycle Liszt uses liturgical elements to outline a believer's journey with sin, penitence and the triumph which has been won. The cycle moves through keys which Liszt felt symbolized different aspects of Christianity. E Major is used for many of his sacred pieces, an indicator that he is taking us to spiritual topics. He then uses C Major to symbolize purity, which is God the Creator. The farthest one can get from C, is across the Circle of Fifths with F# Major, this is the key used for symbolizing humanity. We need a mediator between God and Man, this is shown with the key of A-flat Major, used to symbolize Jesus who came to earth for us. Liszt uses this key often when he wants to indicate Love, take for example the very popular third Liebestraum. All of these keys occur during the cycle with complete pieces and with portions of pieces. In this last piece of the cycle, Liszt returns to E Major, but makes it clear with the title that Love is what brings everything to a close and what triumphs over everything. I felt that this piece was a fitting close to our recital.