Technique Exercises for Beginners

So, we know that technique is important for our beginning piano students. But what technique exercises are good to assign to beginners? 
Here are a few ideas (and I’d love to hear what exercises you use!):
Five-Finger Scales
Five finger scales are basically the first five notes of a scale; I have my students play up and back (for example, C Major is C-D-E-F-G-F-E-D-C). I always have my beginners start playing five-finger scales right away. I think these are great for many reasons: 
  • They are simple and the student can begin practicing them right away
  • They get the student playing in many keys right away
  • You can use a five-finger scale to learn all sorts of techniques, such as legato, staccato, different dynamics, etc.
  • They lay a good foundation for the “real” scales the student will learn down the road
  • They are a great way to practice playing with a good hand shape and to help make that a habit
So many ways to practice five-finger scales:
  • Slow, hands alone to learn correct hand shape (student has time to watch each finger to make sure it is curved and the knuckle does not collapse)
  • Slow, hands alone to learn high loud fingers: have them say, “up, down, relax” while lifting each finger, playing each note and relaxing the wrist. When you speed up this motion you’ll have a nice, relaxed wrist and a lovely legato passage with a nice, strong sound
  • Hands together
  • Legato, staccato, loud, soft – you name it
  • I usually have my students play a four-octave five-finger scale, crossing hand over hand. For example, for a C Major five-finger scale, the left hand will start and play an ascending five-finger scale on a low C, then the right hand plays one on the next C, the left hand crosses over and plays one on the next C, then the right hand plays one on the next C — 4 octaves. Once you get to the top of the last one in the right hand, come back down with descending five-finger scales. Doing this in each white-note key is a great way to familiarize your student with the keyboard and with all different keys.
  • I also have my beginners do four-octave arpeggios (similar to the scales described above, just using notes C-E-G), as well as block chords (play a C chord on each of the four octaves, going up and back).
  • You can also use the metronome to help the student acquire speed and evenness
You can assign a different scale per week (or however long it takes them to learn each one) until they have learned all of them (C, G, F, D, A, E, B).

Technique Books
Most of the piano methods these days come with a Technique Book that coordinates with the concepts being taught and pieces being learned. These are such a wonderful resource. Just make sure to teach and show your student the correct technique in each exercise, so they’re not just playing the notes and passing them off.

Junior Hanon
Good old Hanon. Have you seen this version of it? It is great because it has many of the same exercises, but they only go up half as high (not as many ledger line notes) and are in bigger print (easier to read). Although your beginners may not know every note yet, they should be able to play these because they are repeated patterns, just like the original Hanon book.
What are your favorite exercises to assign to your beginners?

And the winner is…

Megan said…

I love teaching because it gives me some personal development – and I break from my regular routine. I love it when my mildly autistic student gets every song perfect. I love it when my 12 year old female student loves her “contemporary” piece. I love to see my students compose their own pieces!

8/4/10 4:34 PMCongratulations, Megan!! You are the new owner of this great little book which I am sure you will just love! (Please email us your address and we’ll get it right in the mail!)

Thank you to everyone who entered our first giveaway. We so enjoyed reading what you all had to say about why you love teaching!

The Importance of Beginning Technique

I have to be honest: I sometimes cringe when I hear of teachers who say they are “only” qualified to teach beginners. 
Now let me explain – I know there are many wonderful teachers out there who teach only beginners, who feel that they are not advanced enough to teach intermediate and above students. Now it may have something to do with my own beginning piano study, but the reason I cringe at this is because I worry about what kind of technique they are teaching their students. 
I started lessons with a wonderful, dear teacher who lived in my neighborhood. It was a great experience, and she was a good teacher who instilled in me a love for piano and for music. However, when I transferred teachers about six years later, my new teacher had to completely fix my technique! (Has anyone else had this same experience? Feel free to take our poll on this topic!) Talk about an eye-opener. I was suddenly learning things I should have learned long before, and I feel that my playing improved very quickly after that point.
Image from Clavier Companion
I think that sometimes as teachers we underestimate the importance of teaching good, correct technique right from the beginning. Students need a good foundation of technique right from day one in order to become good, proficient pianists.
My piano pedagogy teacher in college taught us that you should never teach anything without technique. There should be a technique reason and a theory reason behind every concept you teach to your students.
I’d like to go over a few basic techniques that are important for your beginners to know and be able to execute correctly. These techniques will provide a good foundation for the developing pianist.

Hand Shape

This is hugely important. Students should play with a nice, rounded hand shape. Fingers should be relaxed and curved, and should strike the piano keys at the fingertips (except, of course, for the thumb, which strikes the keys on its side/corner). The wrist and arm should be level, with the elbow slightly extended from the body.

There are all sorts of analogies to use to teach this curved hand shape – however, if you have the student naturally relax their hand on their lap, it will almost every time result in a nice, relaxed shape that you can just transfer right to the piano keys. (Who knew it was so easy, eh?) Oh and can I just mention the importance of staying relaxed and avoiding overall tension, such as in the shoulders? My college piano teacher once told me I looked like Frankenstein because my shoulders were getting so tense. Nice.


And one other fun idea – try putting little sticker dots on your student’s fingers on the exact place the finger should be striking the key! (Which would be on the fingertips, except for the thumb of course.) You could also put some on the keyboard and have the play by lining up the dots. This works well with the young’uns. 

High Loud Fingers
I feel that it is important for students to learn to play with strong fingers to achieve 1) control over their playing, 2) evenness in their playing, and 3) a nice, deep sound.

(In contrast, think of students who play by keeping all fingers touching the keys at all times and kind of push the finger down into the key with their hand or wrist. This is all fine and good when they’re playing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” or “Oscar the Octopus” but what happens when they start playing scales, etudes, or Liszt pieces of craziness? The required finger movement just won’t be there, and the results will be sloppy.)

You can achieve this technique (while avoiding injury) by lifting the fingers, one at a time, straight up, then bringing them down into the keys while keeping the wrist nice and relaxed. Try having them play a simple five-finger scale while saying, “up, down, relax” to get these movements down.

Really, the goal you’re going for with this technique is for your students to play with control and confidence.


Staccato Touch

I love teaching staccato (nerdy, I know). I think it is one technique that really gives the student control over the character of their piece, and when they achieve that great staccato sound they get so excited!

Here’s how I like to teach staccato. I call it my Basketball Analogy:

image link

Pretend that the keyboard is a basketball, and you are dribbling it. (Hopefully your student has dribbled a basketball before – if not you may have to take them on a little field trip out to your patio or driveway for an object lesson!)

What happens if your hand is touching the basketball the entire time you are trying to dribble it? Will it bounce? Um, no. You need to actually have your hand above the basketball, and then come down with some force and whack it (very technical terms here). The ball then bounces while you lift your hand up again and repeat.

Now obviously you want to do this with nice, curved fingers (but probably NOT with the actual ball – you don’t want to jam those precious piano fingers). But at least it gives them the general idea that it is ok to get away from the keyboard a little. It’s amazing the difference in staccato when you can get those little fingers to strike the keys from a little ways above the keyboard.

If your student feels a little sheepish with their hands up in the air, just whip out a few photos of famous pianists, and that ought inspire them a bit:

This is Lang Lang.
And Martha Argerich.


Oh and p.s., on a side note I want to mention that STACCATO does not necessarily equal FAST, nor does it equal LOUD. Try challenging your students to play a SOFT staccato piece with a SLOW tempo.


Legato Phrases

This is actually two different concepts. It’s one thing to play smooth and legato, and a whole different thing to actually play legato notes within a phrase.

As for legato: I like to illustrate smooth, connected notes by having my student walk across the room. We talk about how one foot cannot lift up until the other one is on the ground. (They can go ahead and try it. It is pretty near impossible, without jumping :)) In order to play a smooth, connected line of notes, one finger should not release its key until the next finger is playing.

Beginning students should learn the basics of playing a phrase. I like to tell my students that a phrase is a musical sentence. (This analogy works very well with all those little bookworms out there.) What would happen if you were reading a book, and there were no punctuation marks between the sentences? Would the book make any sense? Not really. There needs to be something that separates musical phrases (and sentences) in order for them to make sense.

That something is a slight lift of the wrist, like a little breath. A good way to teach this is to begin with two-note phrases, and have the student say, “down, up! down, up!” as they play and move their wrist down and up. Faber and Faber has a great little analogy called a “Wrist Float-Off.” Pretend there is a balloon with a string tied around your wrist, slowly pulling your wrist upward. On a closed piano lid, let your wrist rise slowly (keeping your shoulder relaxed) until only the tip of finger 3 is touching the surface.

So there you have it – my take on beginning technique. I’d love to hear your ideas as well. Let us strive to give our students a wonderful foundation of technique to build on for years to come, even if we choose to “only” teach beginners!

Piano Teaching Q&A: Lesson Plans?

Each week we will be featuring questions about music teaching, and will do our best to answer them and to give some ideas 🙂 We would also love lots of comments to see what you think!



I am right now working on my portfolio to fulfill the requirements to become a Nationally Certified Teacher of Music. (In fact I have been thinking about my post for this week about Teaching Beginning Technique, but have not written it yet because I have been swamped the past few of days with this portfolio! Must. Get. It. Done!! :))

My question is this: What do you think about Lesson Plans? Do you prepare them for each lesson? Do you use them at all? Part of the Certification Portfolio is to write nine representative lesson plans for a semester of piano study for a student of any level. I have never used formal lesson plans before, and after working on these I must say that it is a LOT of work! Although I don’t usually write lesson plans, I usually have an idea of what we will go over in lessons, and have an activity or two planned to help reinforce concepts. I think it is important to be familiar with the method books used by the student and know what units and concepts are coming up, but I wonder about the usefulness of lesson plans – are they useful, or are they just a waste of time? Is it hard to stick to the lesson plan anyway, depending on whether or not the student passed off their assignments? I can definitely see the importance of having a lesson plan when teaching in a group setting, but what do you think about using them for private lessons?

Thoughts? Ideas? Opinions? Experiences?

If you have a question you’d like to ask us, leave it in a comment or submit it here.

Your Favorite Piano Methods, and our Next Topic!

Thanks for all your votes on this week’s poll! Here are the results:

Other responses were:
Music Tree
Alfred’s Premiere Piano Course

I love seeing the results of these polls – they are so interesting! I think it’s safe to say that a lot of piano teachers really love the Faber & Faber series. I am one of them. However, I am now excited to look into some of the methods that I have never used before, such as Music Tree. There really are so many wonderful piano methods out there! There really is so much more we could go into on this topic – but for now…

…onto our next topic:

Teaching Beginning Technique

I am really excited about this topic…this is where it starts getting fun! We know that teaching correct technique right from the beginning is so important…so how do we do this in such a way to help our students internalize and remember the concepts, make them habit, and have fun in the process?

We’d love to hear your great ideas on how to teach technique to beginners. What fun games do you use? How do you teach your students correct technique? What technique exercises do you use with your beginners? We’re looking forward to a great week!

Also, don’t forget to enter our GIVEAWAY!! You have until this Saturday at 11:59 pm. Click here to learn how to enter!

Personality Types & Piano Methods

Practical Piano Pedagogy
I just read a great chapter in Dr. Martha Baker-Jordan’s Practical Piano Pedagogy all about piano methods. In this chapter she has wonderful, in-depth reviews of ten different piano methods, focusing on Reading, Rhythm, Technique and Theory for each method. The ten methods she reviews are:

Bastien Piano Basics
The Music Tree
Faber & Faber Piano Adventures
Beanstalks Basics for Piano
Hal Leonard Student Piano Library
The Robert Pace Keyboard Approach
Alfred’s Basic Piano Library
John W. Schaum Piano Course
John Thompson’s Modern Course for the Piano
Piano Discoveries


I am excited to learn about some of these methods that I am unfamiliar with! Her reviews are so helpful. I also love how she has a section on “Methods and Character Types.” She says,

 “You can’t force the student to fit the program – you’ve got to make the program to fit the student.”

I completely agree with this. Although we may have our favorite piano methods, they may not work equally well for each individual student. Each student you teach has their own personality type, their own strengths and weaknesses. Each student learns in different ways (not to mention that each teacher teaches in different ways!).

Baker-Jordan discusses four different character types: Idealist/Dolphin, Guardian/Bear, Rational/Owl and Artisan/Ape. She includes charts for the most common two character types of piano teachers/students which illustrate the types of approaches, methods, materials and components that are most effective for that character type, as well as which specific piano methods are most effective.

I wanted to share this because it is so interesting, and so helpful! I definitely recommend this book; I am about halfway through it and so far it has been really helpful!

Don’t forget to enter our GIVEAWAY!! You can enter until this Saturday, April 17 at 11:59 pm. Click here to learn how to enter!

Piano Methods for Beginners

Ah, method books. I sure do have fond memories of my own – when I was learning to play the piano I used the John W. Schaum Piano Course:

John W. Schaum Piano Course Leading to Mastery of the Instrument "F" Brown BookJohn W. Schaum Piano Course Leading to the Mastery of the Instrument, D the Orange Book

and the Eckstein Piano Course:

Eckstein: Piano Course, Book 1Eckstein: Piano Course, Book 2Eckstein Piano Course, Book 3Eckstein Piano Course, Book 6

Seriously, good times. And let me tell you, whenever I come across these old books (which seem like old friends in a way!) at my parents’ house, I flip through the old yellowing pages and those great black and white drawings bring back lots of memories. Songs like “Bicycle Bill,” “Riding On a Mule,” “At the Junior Prom” (my FIRST-ever piece with the pedal – boy was I excited!) just pop right back into my head, and I really remember the joy and excitement I felt while learning to play the piano!

Although there is, of course, a place in my heart for these old black-and-white books I learned from, the method books these days are (thankfully) a lot more interesting and fun to look at (thanks in large part to the color illustrations!). I think that is so wonderful, because they have the potential to keep many students much more interested and excited about the piano.

Choosing a good piano method to use for a student is important. I think that a good method can and should do the following:

  • Help motivate the student to practice, and help keep the student interested (particularly when their books are fun and colorful and have fun pieces!)
  • Help them become musically-literate (especially when the method is well-rounded and includes things such as theory, ear training, transposition, music history, technique, etc.)
Having said that, I do believe that the success of the student depends much more on the teacher than on the method book used. I always have people ask me, “What method do you use?” I do not use one particular method on every student. 
For one thing, each student is unique and has different strengths and weaknesses. While I have common standards and a similar curriculum for each student in my studio, I tailor my teaching style to the individual student. One method book may work wonderfully for one student, but may be too advanced and fast-moving for another. 
If you are a good enough teacher and know how to teach correct technique, then you can probably make any method book work. However, there are so many wonderful methods out there that will be a big help in producing well-rounded musicians and music lovers!
Here are some basic things to consider when choosing a method book:
  • Which reading approach is used? Middle C, multi-key, intervallic, or a combination?
  • Does it use a good sequence of concepts? Is it comprehensive (includes technique, sight reading, ear training, etc.)?
  • Does it include all the essential theory concepts, such as intervals, chords, harmony, transposition?
  • Does it make sense to the student?
  • How is it designed/formatted – is it fun and colorful?
  • What kind of supplementary materials are included?  Does it come with supporting technology, such as CD’s?
In conclusion, I would evaluate some method books and decide which one fits best with your student’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as with your teaching style and studio curriculum. Hopefully the one you choose will someday become a dear old “friend” to your student, and will remind them of the joy they felt when they were learning from you how to play the piano!

__________________________________________________________________________

There are still a couple more days to vote on this week’s poll about your favorite method book. So far Faber & Faber’s Piano Adventures is definitely in the lead! We would love to have some comments about what your favorite method is, and something that you love about it – why would you vote for it as your favorite?

Piano Adventures: Lesson Book Primer Level (Piano Adventures Library)Alfred's Basic Piano Library: Lesson Book Level 1AWP200 - Bastien Piano Basics: Piano Primer Level (Primer Level, Wp200)Piano Lessons Book 3 - Book/CD Pack Edition: Hal Leonard Student Piano Library (Hal Leonard Student Piano Library (Songbooks))Lesson and Musicianship 2A: A Comprehensive Piano Method (Celebrate Piano!®)Premier Piano Course Theory 2a (Alfred's Premier Piano Course)The Music Tree: Student's Book, Part 1Piano Town: Primer Level LessonsMusic for Little Mozarts: Music Lesson Book 4

Visit our Helpful Resources page for links to some fabulous articles and charts about methods. I particularly like the article about evaluating new method books, found on ClavierCompanion.com in the September/October 2009 issue.

And don’t forget to enter our GIVEAWAY!! You can enter until this Saturday, April 17 at 11:59 pm. Click here to learn how to enter!

Giveaway, oh giveaway…

Time for our first ever *giveaway* on The Teaching Studio! We’d like to thank all our readers for reading our blog and leaving such great comments!

We will be giving one lucky reader a copy of “A Winter Concert” – a wonderful little book about a mouse who goes to a piano concert and experiences the joy of music. I really love this book, and I think you will too! We featured this book in a previous post on The Teaching Studio. We think it is adorable and would be a great book to share with your students!

HERE’S HOW TO ENTER!

  • Just leave us a comment on this post & tell us something you love about teaching music!

You can also submit extra entries by doing the following:

That’s right, up to THREE entries per person! **Make SURE you leave an additional comment for each of the above items, to let us know that you did them!**
You can enter until Saturday, April 17 at 11:59 pm. The winner will be randomly selected and announced on Monday the 19th. Blog creators (aka Janina and I) are not eligible to enter the giveaway, but contributors are!

First Lesson Poll Results & our new topic

Another week come and gone – I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend, and I hope that some of you are enjoying nice, warm spring weather (because here in Utah it is spring one minute, and a crazy winter blizzard the next!!)

Thanks to all who participated in our poll this week – I think it’s safe to say that nobody feels completely confident when they teach their very first lesson (and about a third of us felt completely clueless!), so you beginning teachers out there, take comfort! And if you are just starting out, be sure to check out this week’s posts on Teaching a First Lesson for some inspiration and ideas. Now to the poll results:

When I taught my VERY first lesson, I was:

Our topic for this next week will be:

Method Books & Repertoire for Beginning Students

Holy cow, what a huge topic! But what an important topic. We are going to need a lot of comments and input on this one. We would LOVE to compile some sort of chart or list of different method books for beginners/elementary students, and the pros and cons of each – it would be an awesome resource for all of us. It will probably be an ongoing project. So, in light of that, here is what we’d like to hear from you:

  • What piano methods do you use for your students, or what methods do you like?
  • Tell us some pros & cons of that method. Some ideas of things to mention:
    • reading approach (middle C vs. multi-key vs. intervallic)
    • theory that is included
    • skills included (such as ear training, transposition, harmonization, form, composition, improvisation, etc.)
    • quality of repertoire
    • included technology (such as listening CD’s)
    • overall look & quality of series
  • What type of student would you assign it to? For example, I would give this method to a student who is 6-8 years old, who has a pretty good attention span and is a great practicer, but plays too much by ear.
Also, don’t forget to take our weekly poll! Can’t wait to hear from you!

Piano Teaching Q&A: Piano Teaching Mama

Each week we will be featuring questions asked by our readers, and will do our best to answer them and to give some ideas 🙂 

One thing that came up the other day while at lunch with some piano friends was the question of whether it works to teach your own children piano lessons. It is an interesting subject, so I thought I’d open it up to our readers!

As a mom who is a piano teacher, this topic has come to my mind quite often, as I am sure it has for many of you readers who are also parents. It is quite the debate in my mind:

On the one hand, I have put in so many hundreds and thousands of hours in my own piano study and have achieved a college degree in piano performance, and I have taught for so many years and gained much experience – why not use all of this education and experience to bless my own family? Since my husband and I are both pianists, and both of our families are full of musicians, chances are that our kids will be quite musical. Think of all the money we could save on piano lessons! Think of the ease in scheduling lessons, the avoided hassle of finding the right teachers and driving children to all those lessons (not to mention the saved time that would be spent driving to all these lessons!), week after week after week. Think about how hard it really could be to find a teacher who I really feel could give my children a wonderful music education, when I, myself, have all the training and requirements I’d be looking for!

But on the other hand, what if my children just don’t respond to me in the role of piano teacher? What if it’s hard to separate between the two roles? What if, by taking lessons from their mother, my children are missing out on a wonderful teacher who could be an amazing mentor in their life? What if we get lazy and put off lessons, and thus lack the structure of normal piano lessons?

So much to think about. I really haven’t come to a conclusion yet. I may not be able to figure it out until my son is older. I do think that a lot of it may have to do with the personality of the child. For example, I used to teach my little sister and little brother. My sister responded fine to my teaching. My brother, on the other hand, would sit on the piano bench with his hands covering his ears, refusing to listen to me (thanks Josh!). (Luckily they both moved on to other teachers and both turned into fine pianists!) 

One of my former piano teachers once told me about teaching her own children. She actually had them walk out the front door and walk around to the studio entrance for their lessons. Once they walked in that door, she was their teacher. After the lesson they would walk back outside and into the front door, where she would greet them as their mother.

Ok, readers: what do you think? Any readers out there who currently are teaching their own children? Any who have children taking from someone else? Ready, discuss!

If you have a question you’d like to ask us, leave it in a comment or submit it here.
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