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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Children get so much out of learning a musical instrument, both academically and socially. Having piano lessons is a joy. However, the practice that needs to take place between lessons can often be a stumbling block on the road to success. The following ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ of practice are mainly to do with piano practice, […]
Last Friday I had the immense pleasure of hosting the Winter Piano Seminar (WPS) at the Wesley Conference Centre in Sydney’s CBD. The success of the Summer Piano Seminar (SPS) in January prompted me to organise another conference which would cater to teachers’ needs. My aim was to create a programme that was stimulating and […]
At the Summer Piano Seminar I ran in January of this year, the final session of the afternoon was a panel discussion on general teaching. The panel consisted of myself and the other two presenters of the day, Elissa Milne and Abe Cytyrnowski, as well as Dr Rita Crews, Syllabus Advisor to the AMEB. Teachers […]