My daughter recently came home from her flute lesson with a great little system for correcting mistakes, which she called ‘IRC’. IRC stands for Isolate, Rhythms, Connect. Her flute teacher, Emma Sholl (of SSO fame), discussed with her that ‘Isolate’ means to figure out exactly where the mistake is. ‘Rhythms’ means to go over and […]
For all those of you who have embraced even the idea of offering the 50-piece challenge to your students, I’m here to tell you that it’s the best thing I have ever done with my students. Each week they come along to lessons eager to get more ticks on the chart, or at least more […]
With the May written exam series fast approaching, here is a series of tips that will help students and parents prepare for the big day… 1. Avoid cramming We all know that knowledge quickly gained is knowledge quickly lost. Take these last two weeks to do steady revision each day – don’t leave it all […]
This term I started the 50-piece challenge with my private students. That’s right, let’s see who can learn fifty pieces in one year! At first all of their eyes popped out of their heads. Fifty pieces? In a year? Most of them couldn’t fathom learning fifty pieces in a lifetime, let alone 12 months! So […]
In Part 1 of How Much Practice is Enough? I attempted to calculate, in real numerical terms, the amount of practice required to get through a certain AMEB exam. In this follow up article, I will explore some of the other issues surrounding exam preparation. Preventing boredom Boredom would have to be the no.1 reason for […]
Sight reading and aural skills are essential components of being a good musician. It is so important to develop these skills, and not to concentrate solely on performance skills. Good sight reading and good aural gives you access to any music, any time, for life. Good sight reading is a skill that eludes many a […]
Studies show that if you invest 10,000 hours of practice into pretty much any field, you will be a master in that field. This applies to musicians, sportsmen, chess players, computer geeks, anyone. This comes from a book called ‘Outliers – The Story of Success’ by the economist Malcolm Gladwell. It’s a fascinating book that […]
EDIT: This is an old blog post, but recently I hosted an extremely informative webinar on this topic! Click here to watch it. In my recent workshop tour I presented a session with the above title, which seems to be rather a ‘hot topic’ amongst piano teachers I have mentioned this to! The idea […]
Four weeks ago, my Harry Potter-obsessed 11-year-old daughter suggested I implement a ‘house’ system with my students. She said she thought they would all practice more if they were earning points for their house and competing for the ‘house cup’ (something which happens in Harry Potter, in case you didn’t know that). Even though it […]
Well, piano lessons aren’t exactly like swimming lessons, I realise that. But in my quest to discover the best answer to the Most Commonly Asked Question of piano teachers, which is ‘When Should My Child Start Piano Lessons?’, I stumbled across an excellent analogy . My answer is simply: ‘Well it’s just the same question […]