Piano Lessons For Beginners - How To Teach Piano

By Samantha Hobart

When teaching beginners, a good piano teacher will be able to tailor lessons to suit every pupil. We all learn things differently. Some people are very visual and find it easy to work with notes and written scores, while others will have a good ear for music or be tone deaf, so a good teacher will identify this quickly and build lessons around these strengths and weaknesses.

Children and adults also need to be treated completely differently. A child has a much shorter attention span to an adult and so if the lesson isn't kept interesting then you will loose their concentration very quickly. When teaching kids I have several tricks that I use to keep them focused one of which is to ask them their age and then get them to play a scale or part the same number of times and asking them to call out the numbers at the same time. I also have a large furry dice that they roll and again this is fun and they have no problem then play a part the same number of times as the number on the dice. Children respond to simple games like this and learn much quicker. I have plenty of tricks up my sleeve that I call on to use with kids.

It's always good to have a structure to the lesson - and I always split the lesson into 3 sections, but I will change the order and vary this week by week.

Here's how I break it up: I'll try and spend 20 minutes per section, so will maybe start with 20 of practicing scales, then spend 20 minutes playing the piece of music that we are learning and then 20 minutes theory. With adults this is quite straight for but again with the youngster I might play 'find the note game' on the keyboard which can be great fun, and the reward is to give them either something new to play or get them to play a song they really like!

Scales are so good to do - find a scale that your pupil likes, and then you can learn these in different keys. Contrary to belief, Motion Scales are always popular with Children. Arpeggios are good because they make you spread your hand out and do the correct fingering. - 32524

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