First Year Piano Lessons - Learning Notes

When teaching the names of lines and spaces, it is helpful for the student to see how notes relate to each other on the entire staff, not just part of it. Note names can be learned by relating all the lines or all the spaces on the staff. The student learns one landmark for each clef and relates the other notes from this point.

For example, G is on the bottom line of the bass clef. A skip up from G on the next line is B (skipping A in the space). Each line note is named by going up a skip. The student will be able to name any line note on the staff by thinking skips up from these notes. Jingles such as "Good Boys Deserve Fudge Always" are not lasting tools. They do not teach students to think and reason. If the jingles are forgotten, so are the notes along with them.

For thorough drill, direct the student to write the line notes four times a day. After the student has worked with line notes for a week or two, he may be given the space notes to write. Teach the space notes in the same way as the line notes.

A lot of drill must be done in the first year of lessons on learning the notes. Aids to learning individual note names include:

• Flash cards
• Singing note names
• Writing note names
• Numbering the lines and spaces of both clefs

The student should name the note on the flash card and play it in the correct location on the keyboard. For first year students a few minutes of each lesson should be devoted to flash card drill. Singing note names establishes good sight reading. The student should name each note aloud thinking directionally up or down, skip or step. Most theory books contain note drills. Note spellers provide additional work on individual note recognition.

For more information about NJ piano lessons, contact Barbara Ehrlich Piano Studio.

Creative Practice

We all know that the results of piano lessons are largely dependent upon the practice done by the student between lessons. Every good piano teacher realizes this fact, and tries to encourage students to give consistent time and energy to home practice. Various plans work with greater or less success. Roughly these plans are

1. parental cooperation;
2. a card system for checking the time which the student has given to practice and some form of rewards; or
   
3. organization of home practice so it can become a creative experience

The third type, creative practice, can be the most effective, especially when combined with the spirit of emulation naturally stimulated by activities such as watching the teacher perform, listening to music, attending concert pianists' recitals, or attending local classical music events such as chamber music or musical ensembles. If a student can develop an interest in his practice, an initiative in going to the piano for pleasure, a desire for regularity in home study, this attitude will be a great step toward successful pianism.

Plan of Creative Practice

Essentially the plan of creative practice consists in presenting a musical problem to students which can be solved in different ways, or which can be worked out by the student from material of his own choosing culled from his previous experience. The music should be able to be worked out at the keyboard. This helps motivate good piano practice. The student then brings his solution to the lesson and has an opportunity to express his own ideas, to consult his own taste, and to have his opinions sympathetically considered by his teacher (and family). He has created something - thereby exercising one of the strongest incentives to playing piano. Of course, the teacher must exercise her own ingenuity and inventiveness in applying this idea.

It's best if lessons are varied, flexible and alive. Truly, home assignment shouldn't degenerate into mechanical drilling or to merely assigned tasks. Intense drilling can come in later years. When a particular composition is to be studied it is approached with the ideal of attaining an expressive result, as nearly as well as the child can make it; and whenever possible, taking a creative practice approach to the piece.

For more information about piano lessons NJ, contact Barbara Ehrlich Piano Studio.