All posts by Karen Berger

For Parents, Piano Lessons for Children

Piano Lessons: To Quit or not to Quit?

Year after year, studies come out telling us about the benefits of music education. Music studies are linked to high scores on math tests, to high GPAs and SATs, even to the likelihood of getting into medical school. (One study concluded that percentage wise, music majors who applied to medical school were more likely to get in than biology majors!)

The benefits of piano (and other music) lessons go beyond merely learning to play an instrument. Even students who never truly master their violin, trumpet, guitar, or piano benefit through the process of attending regular lessons, working toward a long-term and often difficult goal, and seeing themselves improve in relation to the effort they put in. In a very real sense, music education is as much about building character as it is about learning an instrument, developing cognitive ability, or gaining brownie points for college applications.

Indeed, some of the most valuable lessons a child learns while studying have nothing to do with music at all, but rather with learning how to break down a difficult project into its component parts and tackle them one at a time. Music students learn how to work consistently at a project that may take weeks or even months to complete, and how to conquer fear of performing in public.

 

Why Students Stop Taking Piano Lessons

As valuable as music lessons are, they always end (unless the student becomes a college music major or a professional musician). Even the best, most enthusiastic music students grow up and go to college!

On the opposite end of the spectrum, some students end music lessons much earlier. They may have no interest in working as hard as it takes to learn an instrument, or may refuse to practice. Sometimes, attrition is in part a parental issue. Parents may be worn down by a child’s incessant complaints about practicing, the inconvenience of a weekly music lesson commitment, the difficulties of coordinating music lessons with sports schedules and sibling activities, and the expense of lessons and instrument maintenance.

The problem is especially acute with piano students, who take private lessons as opposed to group lessons, and are often held more accountable for their practice. Many students also find piano much more difficult than other instruments, because of the multiple lines, and less “fun,” because they aren’t sitting with their friends in a group setting.

There are many reasons students stop taking lessons:

  • A child may have too many other activities to put in the effort to learn an instrument.
  • The student may be equally or more passionate about something else, and may decide to concentrate on that activity.
  • The child may hit puberty, and may care about nothing other than what peers and friends seem to care about.
  • A child may be overwhelmed or struggling with school work, especially in a new grade. Parents should, however, be aware that studies have shown that the grade point averages of music students tend to be higher than grade point averages of non music students.
  • The child may simply be unwilling to work as hard as music lessons require.
  • The child may need, but not be getting, parental encouragement and daily structure.

While many parents would prefer their children to continue with music lessons, many simply buckle under the hassle of it all. And others genuinely feel that forcing a reluctant student to take lessons may do more harm than good.

Encouraging Students to Continue Piano Lessons

Finding out what the problem is is the first step in solving it. Does the child dislike the teacher? The kind of music? Or is the child having difficulties and frustrations? Sometimes a teacher can dial back expectations for a frustrated child for a while, by assigning review pieces, easy pieces, fun popular pieces, or “pattern” pieces that rely on repeated patterns and are easier to learn. With some children, rewards for practice time are effective.

But the teacher has to know there is a problem before she can solve it. Most teachers are perfectly aware that a child is not practicing. They may not, however, know why. Communication with the teacher is key.

 

Issues to Consider When Deciding to Continue or Quit Music Lessons

While children almost universally like music, not all show an active interest in learning or studying it. Some find certain aspects of learning music especially difficult. (being Bone deaf, having difficulty learning to read music, and perceiving rhythms poorly are three common problem areas) .
Most children, even those who beg to quit lessons, have favorite songs to play over and over again just because they like them. But a child who doesn’t ever seem to get any pleasure out of playing anything at all is one who might be better served with another activity. This is especially true if the parents have made a concerted effort over a period of a few years to get the child to practice. A child who can play but never seems to get joy out of it is a child who should be doing something else.
Before deciding that it’s time to quit music lessons, consider the following issues:

  • Has the child attained a level of playing where she can learn songs she likes on her own? If so, the child has achieved some element of musical independence and can enjoyably play the music she wants to. It may indeed be time to simply let her stop lessons and play what she wants.
  • Is there a teacher issue that need to be addressed? Perhaps the child would thrive playing jazz or pop, but the teacher only teaches classical music.
  • Is the child involved in other musical activities?
  • Is the child talented? The ability to play a musical instrument at a high level can lead to lifelong creative satisfaction, and even a possible career path as a music teacher.
  • Is the issue of taking music lessons really about music lessons or is it something else? Some possibilities include a child of divorced parents playing one parent against the other, or a rebellious child making a power play statement.
  • Is the child getting adequate parental support and supervision? If not, we have a parent problem i addition to a student problem.

Most parents understand the benefits of music lessons. But sometimes, it’s time to re-evaluate them, and perhaps even stop for a while. Sometimes, the mere fact that a parent is willing to allow lessons to stop is all it takes for the child to reconsider and want to start again.

Buying a Piano, Digital Pianos

How Classical Pianists Can Benefit From Digital Keyboards

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We’ve talked about this before: For a classical pianist, a digital piano is in no way a substitute for a traditional acoustic piano.

But despite the tendency of piano teachers to faint at the thought of using a digital piano to play Beethoven, the fact is that lots of kids are learning on digital keyboards. So let’s look at the bright side today: Classical pianists who have electronic keyboards can actually find many ways to benefit from their features when practicing.

Benefits of Digital Pianos for Classical Pianists and Students

So yes, we know: A good quality grand piano or baby grand piano is essential for a serious  classical pianist. However, a digital piano has some surprising uses in a classical music studio, including experimenting with voices and evaluating technique.

  • Even Action: The action of a digital keyboard is so even that it reveals any irregularities in the pianist’s technique, especially in fast even passages. This is evident when the pianist records a selection, using the recording function available in most digital keyboards. Very few acoustic pianos have such even action, especially at the lower prices.
  • Precision: It doesn’t take as much pressure for a key to go down on a digital piano, activating the electronics that make a noise. Practicing on such a sensitive keyboard makes pianists more careful and more accurate, because it forces them to avoid sloppily hooking onto and grabbing a second note when making moves, playing chords, or handling fast technical passages. 
  • Playing and Practicing Duet Parts: Using the keyboard’s metronome and recording capability, the pianist can play and record one voice at a time, then play another part over it. .
  • Experimenting with Sound. Try using the keyboard’s many voices. Melodic lines played by different instrument voices will suggest different ways to conceive, shape, and phrase: the phrase. A piece of music sounds very different when played by a trumpet, flute, or harpsichord.
  • Voicings: Play a Bach piece using the organ voicing, the harpsichord voicing, and other piano voicings. Play a Two-part Invention using the digital piano’s split voice function, i.e.: play the piece using one instrument voice in the bass and another instrument voice in the treble.
  • Composing: Keyboards can be used in tandem with computers for composing. Compositions can be played into the keyboard and notated by the computer.
  • Head-phones: For young musicians, city dwellers, and those sharing living quarters with room-mates, a digital keyboard can be used for late-night practice in an apartment.
  • Price and Value: A digital piano suitable for use as a classical instrument runs $1000 – $3000; sometimes more. The cheapest new acoustic uprights start at about $3000; at this price, many pianists feel that the digital keyboard plays better and gives more value.

Limitations of Digital Keyboards for Classical Pianists

The main problems with a digital keyboard are the touch and tone, including the lack of overtones.

  • Action: Digital pianos lack the feel of a “real” piano. The closest most get (even with so called “weighted grand piano hammer action”) is mimicking the feel of an inexpensive upright. This makes them a poor substitute when it comes to dynamic control and voicing.
  • Tone: Closely related is the problem of tones and overtones: Digital piano sounds are recorded. The recordings mimic and copy the overtones of a piano, but the overtones themselves don’t exist. In an acoustic piano, overtones sound in relation to other notes. The sounds a pianist gets on an acoustic instrument, especially when pedaling, are completely different than what is available from a digital keyboard.
  • Pedaling Issues: Subtleties are lost on a digital piano. On a digital, the pedals go on or off. On an acoustic piano, there are several gradations in between.
  • Heft and Weight: It’s a different experience to sit down at an acoustic piano and put true arm weight into a big concert piece. It’s difficult to put the same physicality into a lightweight instrument that moves around when it is played too hard.

The bottom line: A digital piano is not a substitute for an acoustic piano. But while digital pianos are not used in classical performances, they can be a useful addition to the classical pianist’s music room.

For more information: Acoustic Pianos versus Digital Pianos.

Practice and Skills

Instruments and Practice Space for Piano Students

One student came in saying the reason she couldn’t practice was that her two year old brother kept banging on the keys while she played. Another complained that her father wouldn’t turn off the TV, which was in the same room as the piano. Yet a third told me that the piano didn’t sound good because mice had eaten away all the felts. Another couldn’t hear the wrong notes because the piano was so badly out of tune.

I wish I were making these stories up, but I’m not.

For most children, piano lessons take place once a week for perhaps a half an hour. In between is where the important work comes in. And that takes place at home.

Practicing the piano is as difficult a habit to get into as daily exercise. Having a good instrument and a quiet, distraction-free space to practice are two important factors in establishing good piano practice habits. By providing a good instrument and a quiet space for a piano student, parents can help make their children’s piano lesson experience more enjoyable and productive

Choosing an Appropriate Piano for Students

Buying a new piano can be expensive, and parents may be excused for being reluctant to spend thousands of dollars on an instrument their child may not enjoy. On the other hand, the child is practically guaranteed to not enjoy playing on a poor-quality piano that sounds and feels bad. Before buying an acoustic piano (or even a digital keyboard), talk to the teacher about exactly what is required of a student piano. Some teachers come down heavily on one or the other side of the digital piano versus acoustic piano debate.

Here are a few issues that most piano teachers tend to agree about:

  • Parents who own an old acoustic pianos should make sure it is in working order, which means that all the keys work (with no sticking and no clicking noises), the pedals work, and the instrument can stay in tune for several months (assuming a stable environment, without great fluctuations in temperature or humidity).
  • Tune acoustic pianos twice a year. Instruments subject to great variations in temperature and humidity need to be tuned more often.
  • Buying a used acoustic piano can be a good and economical choice, if the instrument is functional. Ask a piano technician or a teacher to check out the piano. Technicians and teachers may charge for this service. Not all piano teachers feel qualified to evaluate a piano, but any piano teacher should be able to recommend a technician.
  • Digital pianos run the gamut from cheap toys to complex and sophisticated synthesizers. If the piano teachers approves of using a digital piano for classical music, be sure the piano meets the teacher’s requirements, which will usually include that the digital keyboard has 88 weighted keys, at least one pedal, and touch control.
  • Don’t be tempted to skimp on a digital piano that’s on sale if it doesn’t meet the teacher’s specifications. There is a reason teachers recommend weighted keys (They provide resistance, which develops correct hand position and finger strength), touch control (which develops a student’s ability to shape phrases using varying dynamics), and 88 keys (the student’s peripheral vision contributes to a sense of keyboard geography. With a piano with different end points, the student’s spatial perception is affected

Create a Distraction-Free Practice Space

  • Even a child who loves piano is not going to love practicing when there is a rousing game of Wii going on in the next room, or when siblings are giggling at a cartoon is blaring on the T.V.
  • The piano or keyboard should be in a quiet place where the child can practice undisturbed.
  • Acoustic pianos take up a lot of space and must be situated so they are not sitting on heating vents or right next to windows in direct sunlight. So there is often only one place in a home an acoustic piano can reasonably go. In that case, the student’s practice time should take priority over other activities in that room.
  • Small siblings are often curious about music and about an older sibling’s lessons, and show it by trying to participate – usually by banging on the upper or lower notes while the student is trying to practice. Siblings should be otherwise occupied during a student’s practice session.
  • The practice area should be well lit, with room for the child to place notes, music books, and a CD players or iPod, if the teacher asks the student to practice with backing tracks.
  • A bedroom is private and quiet, but may not be the best place for a small child to practice. The ideal spot would be in a parent’s earshot or line of sight, so the parent can supervise or encourage when necessary. A child behind closed doors may not be practicing correctly – or at all.

By setting up a special space with a good instrument for piano practice and making sure the practice session is undisturbed, parents are helping to establish how important practicing the piano is and also making the process as productive and pleasant as possible.

Practice and Skills

Piano Practice Quantity and Quality

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The old saying that “practice makes perfect” is not entirely true as far as learning to play piano, or any other musical instrument, is concerned. What practice actually does is “make permanent.” Only perfect practice makes perfect. How to practice piano well, it turns out, is an art in itself.

Piano Practice Quality Versus Practice Quantity

Practice reinforces the activity being practiced. A music student who repeats the same mistake over and over learns to play a piece with that mistake firmly learned. A student with good practice habits learns to correct mistakes before they become ingrained, which makes practice more effective and less frustrating. And those practice habits, once learned, can be effectively applied to learning other academic subjects, as well as other activities such as sports, drama, or dance.

Therefore, while the amount of time spent practicing is important, it is equally important that the quality of mindful practice be at the highest possible level. Students need to learn to identify mistakes, isolate them, and practice small sections of music until those sections are learned and the mistakes eradicated. Then they can stitch together the pieces and play the work as a whole.

At the early levels, parents can help their children practice by supervising them to make sure they are focusing on goals and following the teacher’s practice instructions. Intermediate and advanced students must learn to practice on their own, and, with their teacher’s guidance, develop ways to identify and correct mistakes before they become habits.

Learning Good Piano Practice Habits

As students become more advanced, they learn to take an active role in structuring their piano practice, and then restructuring it to meet the challenges that come up in each practice session.

Practice sessions should begin with a clear goal: Many students begin with warm-up exercises, scales, and technique drills, followed by repertoire. It’s a good idea to work on pieces in various stages of the learning process, for example: one new piece in which the student is learning notes, one mid-level piece that is being brought up to speed, and an advanced piece that is being polished for possible performance. This means that the student is thinking differently with each piece, which makes practice more interesting, less rote, and more effective.

With each piece, the student needs to note what the problems are and then develop a strategy for working on them. Generally, this involves applying one or more standard practice techniques such as working in small chunks, learning one hand at a time, playing with a metronome, or varying the tempo.

Perhaps the most important admonishment is that the student should not simply repeat a piece, or a large section of a piece, hoping that the next time, the mistakes will magically disappear. Unfortunately, mistakes are more stubborn than that.

Repeating mistakes means learning mistakes. Most musicians are at least occasionally tempted to ignore mistakes and play through them (and indeed, this is what they should do when practicing performing). But when practicing to learn a piece, barging through mistakes simply reinforces errors and delays the inevitable corrections that must take place. It truly is possible for an advanced player to play a short intermediate-level piece badly 50 times in a row, and still not be able to play it. Whereas 15 minutes of targeted practice could yield a well-learned solid performance of the same piece of music.

In the end, quality of practice is as important as quantity, and perhaps more so: No amount of poor practice will teach a pianist to play well, whereas a small amount of high quality practice will yield big improvements.

For Parents, Music Musings, Piano Lessons for Children

News Flash: Musical Achievement is Not About Talent

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Musical Talent, Nature Versus Nurture, and the 10,000 Hours Rule

Meet my sister. She started piano lessons at age 7, and practiced a half an hour a day pretty much for the next 11 years, sometimes doing a little more, rarely less.  

She didn’t especially love practicing, and indeed, it was hard for her because she doesn’t have a good ear: She can’t sing on key, could never learn to tune a guitar by ear, can’t pick out a tune by matching pitches. Most of the time, she had to be told that she was playing a wrong note, which my father vociferously did, shouting out from the back of the apartment whenever she hit a clunker.

My sister was smart in school, but she wasn’t what most music teachers would identify as “talented” in music: She never sat down and tried to pluck out a favorite song; she didn’t fish out chords and harmonies; she has trouble identifying the difference between major and minor. But she practiced that half an hour a day. 11 years: Do the math: That’s a total of nearly 2000 hours. And she became skilled.

Here’s a partial list of some of the (original) repertoire she played in junior high school: Chopin’s Military Polonaise. Debussy’s  Clare de Lune. Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances (actually, we performed those together when she was still in elementary school). Janacek’s “On an Overgrown Path.” Some Haydn sonatas. A few Chopin waltzes, polonaises, and preludes. She didn’t ever get to the big concert repertoire: Chopin ballades and etudes, the big Beethoven sonatas, Liszt, Brahms, Rachmaninoff. But she got farther than 95 percent of the piano students I’ve encountered.  

I think about my sister a lot as my students come in and out the door, with their practice logs marked “10 minutes,” “7 minutes,”  “3 minutes,” and a lot of “zeros.” I think about her when I’ve had a kid for four or five years who isn’t yet fluent in note reading, who has to be coached to figure out where a method book piece even starts. Four years of lessons, and “Fur Elise” is still an impossible dream for most of my students…. I admit, I still have trouble wrapping my mind around that.

Comparing students is fruitless of course, but people do it all the time. And one of the ways they do it is by bringing in a destructive little word: “Talent.” Joey has talent. Suzie doesn’t. THAT’S why Suzie can’t find Middle C after 100 piano lessons. THAT’S why Joey is playing the Fantasie Impromptu at the age of 12.  

Talent, Shmalent

In the early 1990s, K. Anders Ericsson did a study at West Berlin’s prestigious Music Academy. He interviewed teachers, asking them to put their conservatory-aged young adult violin and piano students into categories:  Those who had the potential to become professional performing artists. Those who had the ability to play in working professional orchestras. And those who were destined to teach in elementary schools.

An interjection here: I don’t like that last designation. Many fine musicians teach in elementary (and other) schools. But to argue about the classification is to miss the point: The teachers were ranking the students based on their professional potential as performing artists.

And then, in a blind study, the researchers interviewed all those students about how much practice time they had put into their music from the very beginnings of their introduction to music. 

The results were consistent across the board, with so little variation that it challenges our very notions about “talent.” As it turned out, the “talent” it took to become what the professors considered a potential concert artist had nothing to do with anything except how many hours the student had practiced. 

  • 10,000 hours: Master of the instrument; concert artist potential.
  • 8,000 hours: Professional orchestral musicians.
  • 4,000 hours: Teachers 
  • 2,000 hours: Amateurs

Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell explores the phenomena of people who live and work outside the bell curve: the geniuses, the achievers, the exceptions. He looks at questions like “Why do Asian children seem to do so well at music?” and asks “What is going on here?” He looks at the 10,000 hour study and then he looks at the Beatles and Mozart — and he concludes that just as important as any “talent” was the fact that they had those 10,000 hours. The Beatles played day in and day out in Hamburg, racking up hundreds, then thousands of hours of performance and rehearsal time before their “overnight success.” Mozart played music all day everyday, carefully supervised, starting as a toddler; he probably had his 10,000 hours in well before he was a teenager. 

No one is saying the Beatles or Mozart didn’t have talent: But would they have achieved what they did without those hours? Ericsson’s study says “no.” 

Talent and Practice: The Chicken and the Egg

To conclude that talent has nothing to do with anything may be a little facile, and it contradicts the evidence every music teacher has of students coming in and “getting” it” or not. Some people are better at certain musical tasks than others. And indeed, talent may have been one of the factors that made people practice more to begin with. Would Leopold have sat with little Wolfgang day in and day out if Wolfie had been a distracted little kid who couldn’t remember “Middle C”?  Maybe not. But talent without practice can be nothing more than an empty, unfulfilled promise.

Where talent may factor in is that people like doing the things they are good at. There is a virtuous cycle: They practice, they get results, they enjoy the results, they practice more. A child who simply can’t wrap her mind around how to figure out that “D” is one step up from “C” may not be having as much fun as the kid who sits down, grabs some notes, and starts playings something that sounds good. Kid number 1 practices less, Kid number 2 practices more. 

The Role of Will, Drive, and Character in Musical Achievement

The type of practice also matters: Good practice is a whole lot more than butt-on-bench time.  It can be active, engaged, critical, creative, and problem-solving. It can also be frustrating and boring. It’s not just the time; it’s also about intent and energy and efficiency.

Finally, there is the issue of personal will. Some kids simply have minds that like to wrestle.  

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: If I put a Beethoven Sonata full of 16th notes and 32nd notes on the piano music stand, most of my students will treat it as adult garbage that has nothing to do with them (and, they seem to hope, never will). Their initial reaction to it is that it looks “HARD” and “CONFUSING” and that is all they want to know about it.

But I have a couple of 9 and 10 year-olds who would IMMEDIATELY pick up that music and start trying to work it out. They would look at the threes against fours and ask how to play them, or ask how you play a chord with six notes with only five fingers, and what is that “x”  doing in front of a note where a sharp or a flat usually would go? They are curious — and they see no reason why they shouldn’t be able to try it. That’s not musical TALENT, folks: That’s character. Personality. Drive. Will. Curiosity. Interest. And I’m pretty sure it shows up on the soccer field and in school and in art projects, too.

And that, I think, is the bottom line here: Music is a great equalizer. In a world filled with technology designed to make everything we encounter as effortless as possible, music still requires, and rewards, work.

The Myth of Musical Genius

We have a myth about talent: We like to believe it exists, maybe in part because it lets us off the hook. We think of Paganini, or Robert Johnson, both supposedly possessed by the devil to play as they did. We hear about Uncle George who just sat down at the piano one day and started playing, and we shake our heads in wonder at George’s talent, and say that we wish we had it, conveniently ignoring that when George was a kid he banged away at the old clunker piano in the school lunchroom and tried to learn songs by sneaking into the local music store and looking at chord sheets to see if what he figured out by himself was right, and he listened to the radio when he was supposed to be sleeping.

I’m not sure we’ll ever figure out all the mysteries of talent and genius: The kids who can read music upside down, the prodigies who, at age six, start playing Mozart sonatas, the children with perfect pitch or an intuitive understanding of harmony. Such things certainly exist out at the far edges of the bell curve.

But professional musicians don’t all live out there in the land of freak outliers. Indeed, as the Berlin study showed, even prodigies need to practice to make good on their gifts, and the vast majority of professional musicians inhabit the more prosaic world of “practice makes perfect” and good old slogging.

The conclusion we can draw is an encouraging one: If we practice like they practice, we too may achieve remarkable things.

Just like my sister.

Practice and Skills

Guidelines for Piano Practice

No surprise here: Inadequate practice is the number one complaint piano teachers (and other music teachers) have about students.

Lack of practice is one of the key reasons children don’t move ahead in their music education. Lack of success leads to frustration. And frustration, coupled with arguments about and resistance to practice lead to children quitting music lessons.

But how much practice is enough? Each instrument has different practice requirements because of the physical demands of playing it. Practice recommendations also depend on age, level, and ambition. The following recommendations are for students learning to play piano.

How Much Should a Child Practice Piano?

Many piano teachers suggest that the student’s lesson length be a preliminary rule of thumb for a daily practice goal. For example, a common recommendation is that a piano student taking half-hour lessons should practice half an hour a day; a student taking hour lessons should practice an hour a day.

This rule of thumb is most appropriate for the intermediate levels. At the very beginning, there may not be enough material to keep a small child fully engaged for a whole half hour, and at more advanced levels, piano practice requirements can be much higher, depending on the student’s ambitions. For instance, an advanced high school student who intends to major in music at the college level might take an hour lesson a week, but may well practice two or three hours a day, or even more, depending on the level of commitment and the school to which the student is applying.

But these students are exceptional, and well into the self-motivated stage. For average students, matching the lesson time five days a week will give consistent and rewarding progress.

Piano Practice Times Based on Level and Age

Other piano teachers base practice recommendations on age, on level, on motivation, or a combination of those three factors.

For four-and- five year old beginners, 10 minutes of practice time is a common recommendation, unless the child is a prodigy or unusually self-motivated. The important goal for these very young piano students is to establish practice as a routine, daily responsibility and to make it fun. If these ideas can be intertwined, the child is less likely to resist practice later, when the time requirements are greater.

For seven-to- ten year old beginners, a half an hour a day is a good starting point. More motivated and talented children may practice more, but in general, a half an hour of daily mindful practice will yield good results.

Once students reach the intermediate level, satisfying progress requires closer to 45 minutes a day, because the material is more complex and more difficult to master. Without that commitment, intermediate-level piano pieces may take weeks to learn, students may get frustrated, and forward progress will be minimal. At this stage, piano students also need to make time in their practice schedules for more technical drills, including etudes, scales, and arpeggios, which at the intermediate level might require 15 minutes or so a day.

More advanced students’ progress will very much depend on their goals. With 45 minutes of daily practice, an advanced student can continue to learn new repertoire, although not at a fast rate. An hour a day will yield more satisfying results. Recreational high-school and adult pianists who have achieved an intermediate-to-advanced fluency in playing classical music, popular songs, and hymns, will find that a practice routine of 45 minutes to an hour a day is more than enough to maintain technique, learn new material, and develop skills.

More ambitious high-school students who enroll in adjudications and competitions often find themselves practicing two or more hours a day. Those planning to audition for elite musical college programs may practice three hours a day.

Advanced Piano Students and Practice

At the college performance level, where students are majoring in music and practicing to be professional musicians, many piano majors practice between three and six hours a day, depending on the school.

Pianists practicing more than two or three hours a day should divide their practice time into smaller units, perhaps an hour or two in the morning, at mid-day, and in the evening. Or they should take frequent breaks. Breaking up practice helps prevent carpal tunnel syndrome and tendinitis, which are repetitive stress injuries that can occur with over-use or incorrect technique. Discuss any cramping, stiffness, or hand tremors with a teacher, who should be able to recommend relaxation techniques and other ways of preventing the problem.

For all students, from beginners to virtuosi, it’s also important to note that a smaller amount of mindful, attentive, and creative piano practice is far more effective than many hours of repetitive, mindless drills that simply reinforce bad habits and mistakes. Small children may need the help of their parents to practice effectively and correctly.

For Parents, Piano Lessons for Children

How to Help a Child with Piano Practice

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Clearly my last post about parents and their responsibilities to their children’s music education, particularly piano lessons, hit a nerve. This blog is only a couple of weeks old, and that post has received hundreds of views from some 20 countries, including Russia, Bulgaria, Singapore, Thailand, Portugal, Australia, and Estonia. The issue, it seems, is universal.

In that article, I talked about the realities of learning to play the piano, including the requirements for practice, responsible parental support, and some of the rewards and benefits. Today, I’m going to get a bit more specific and helpful and give parents some ideas on how you can help a small child with practice. If you’re a teacher, please feel free to link to this article.

The key takeaway here is that by communicating with teachers and listening, even parents who know nothing about music can help their children learn piano and develop good practice habits.

Practice Makes … Permanent

We all know that practicing is key to learning to play the piano. But here’s what most of us don’t know: there are good ways to practice and bad ways to practice, and if you aren’t practicing correctly, you may as well not be practicing at all. If you practice incorrectly, you will learn incorrectly. But learning effective practice techniques is a difficult task, especially for young children who haven’t yet learned to identify mistakes, let alone find effective ways to fix them.

The main point parents and music students need to understand is that effective practice does not mean doing the same thing over and over again. In fact, mindless repetition can be detrimental if the student simply repeats (and hence learns) mistakes.

How to Help a Child Practice the Piano

The quality of practice is so important that some teachers abandon time-based minimums for daily practice, and instead advocate setting practice goals that are centered around achieving certain technical or musical results.

Ironically, while the basics of good practice seem difficult for children (and sometimes, for their parents, as well), good practice habits actually make learning piano much easier, much less frustrating, and much more fun. By helping children establish good practice habits as early in their musical education as possible, parents will be putting a music student on the road to learning an instrument the most effective way possible. Bad practice habits leading to frustration and, often, quitting lessons.

Parents of young beginners should be sure that they understand the teacher’s practice instructions, because most second and third graders will forget what they are supposed to do between the end of the lesson and the beginning of the next practice. Most teachers write practice instructions in an assignment book. Even so, young children will need help to remember which tasks need to be be practiced. it also helps if they practice as soon as possible after the lesson: This helps them remember what they (supposedly) learned.

Goal-Centered Practice Strategies

Goal-centered practice instructions give more guidance than a simple mandate to “practice for a half an hour every day.” However, for parents to help, they have to be attentive not only to the fact that the child is sitting at the piano, but to what, exactly, is being practiced and how. Often, children will simply bang away happily for a few minutes on a song they “made up” or a chord progression their best friend taught them. Parents need to practice “mindful listening” as much as their children need to do engage in “mindful practice.”

Some samples of goal-centered practice instructions might include:

  • “Practice this scale until you can play it with your eyes closed.”
  • “Play each line of the song until you can play it with no mistakes.”
  • “Practice the right hand until you can play it with no mistakes. Then practice the left hand. then put them together.”
  • “Practice the song until you can play it with the metronome ticking at 100 bears per minute.”
  • “Count out loud.”

A parent who listens in on lessons should be aware of what the teacher is stressing. I have probably said the words “Count out loud” one million times, and I’ve written it in assignment books close to that many times, too. Even a non-musical parent can help a child enormously by going over the practice instructions point by point and saying: “Your teacher wrote that you should be counting out loud, but I didn’t hear any counting. Can you show me?” Or: Didn’t you play that scale with your eyes closed in your lesson? Show me.” Or: “Did you practice that line of the song so you can play it with no mistakes? Show me.”

One sure give-away that poor practice is taking place is easy to spot. Most children will start at the beginning of a song and play through to the end, with intermittent stops and starts, occasionally correcting mistakes. They then go back to the beginning and repeat the process, generally with the exact same mistakes. Any reputable piano teacher teaches children to break a piece of music into small parts, and to correct mistakes before moving on. A child who is playing a mistake-ridden piece from beginning to end over and over again either has a poor teacher or is not following instructions.

Finally, parents should be sure that any written homework is completed before the next lesson.

Communicating with Music Teachers About Practice Issues

A parent can also help by communicating with the teacher. If the teacher does not include practice suggestions or goals in the assignment book, a parent shouldn’t be afraid to ask for suggestions. Similarly, the parent should also discuss any practice issues with the teacher. For example:

  • “Johnny seem to just rush through each piece and then he wants to turn the page and do something else.”
  • “Suzie thinks she is playing the piece correctly, but I can hear that something’s not right with the rhythm. She never counts. I don’t know how to help her.”
  • “I know you told her to use the metronome, but she says she doesn’t understand how to use it.”

A good teacher will have some strategies to deal with such problems, and can address these issues in lessons.

As a parent, you are part of the triangle of your child’s music education: The other sides of the triangle are the teacher and the student. As your child gets older and independent, they may not need or want your help with their lessons. But in the first year or two, children who have active parental involvement typically learn more than those who are left to flounder on their own.

Acoustic Pianos, Buying a Piano

Buying an Acoustic Piano: A Grand Piano versus an Upright Piano?

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It used to be that every middle class home (and a lot of working class homes, too) had a piano. The grander the home the grander the piano. But the black beast has lost ground to the popular, folky, easier-to-play, easier-to-buy and easier-to-transport guitar.  Guitars outsell pianos. And for that matter, digital pianos outsell acoustics, seducing parents and kids with their flashy “teaching ” features, not to mention hundreds of sounds and settings.

Even so, there is something iconic about having a real, old-fashioned, wood, acoustic piano in the living room of your home. A real piano, by which we mean an acoustic instrument — the kind you don’t plug in!

In choosing a piano, size and budget are two of the biggest concerns. And they tend to be related: In  pianos, bigger is better, and it’s also more expensive.

Grand Pianos

The shiny, usually black, monster instrument standing alone in full glory on a concert stage is the gold standard for pianists. Grand pianos have their strings strung horizontally across a soundboard. All other things being equal, the bigger the soundboard, the richer the sound — and the richer the price tag.

A grand piano is certainly the most musically attractive choice — if, that is, someone can actually play, or is very serious about learning. According to the 2011 Blue Book of Pianos the cheapest class of new grand pianos starts at around $6000. Depending on make and size, mid-range grand pianos run between $10,0000 and $20,0000. New premium brand-name pianos such as Steinway start at around $45,000 and top out at well above $100,000.

Grand pianos are very loosely described by size, and each manufacturer has slight differences in the precise measurements. But there is no fundamental difference in piano action among grand pianos: The main difference is in the size of the soundboard, which affects the sound. Of course, there are massive differences in workmanship and materials among the various brands.

For example, Steinway’s grand pianos fall into the following categories:

  • The Model S. This 5’1″ long piano (measured from from edge of the keyboard to the end of the piano) is what is usually called a small baby grand. While some S-sized baby grands have a lovely tone, the sound is often thinner. Indeed, large large vertical upright pianos actually have a larger soundboard. If you are in the market for an S-sized model, check out full-sized uprights by premium makers, as well.
  • Model M: The 5’7″ Model M is usually referred to as a baby grand. This is a common piano size for smaller private homes.
  • Model L (also Model O, which is almost the same, and which is no longer made): These 5″11″ models are usually called parlor grands. This is a common size for homes, high school recital halls, and practice rooms at conservatories.
  • Model A: At 6’2″, this is the premium size for a home piano and for conservatory pianos.
  • Model B: The 7′ small concert grand is appropriate for smaller concert halls, and may be found in very large homes.
  • Model C: Almost 7.5 feet long, this is sometimes called the semi-concert grand.
  • Model D: The 9-foot concert grand is the piano that you find in symphony halls

Upright (or Vertical) Pianos

Upright pianos are more convenient if for no other reason than they don’t take up nearly as much space as their grand and portentous cousins. And they are considerably cheaper. But convenience comes at another cost: The sound and feel of an upright piano is very different than that of a grand. (However, the best uprights can compete favorably against smaller, cheaper grands).

One of the differences is the action. The hammers hit the strings vertically, not horizontally, so the feel of the action is very different. Piano actions on uprights tend to be much lighter, and, unless it’s a full-sized upright, the sound can be both small and tinny.

  • Spinets: Spinets are the smallest of the upright pianos. They are usually under 40 inches tall, and as a result, the action is located below the keyboard, making it harder for a technician to make repairs. Spinets have gone out of fashion and are no longer made or sold new, but you can find them on the used market. Expect to pay between $500 and $800 for a piano in good condition.
  • Consoles. At 40 – 43 inches tall, a console may be only a few inches taller than its little sibling, but those few inches make a difference. These are the most popular upright pianos, mostly because of their price. (Plus they don’t visually overwhelm small rooms.) New entry-level consoles start at around $3000, but better models can go as high as $10,000.
  • Studio pianos: At 44 – 48 inches, these would be the pianos most likely to be found in small practice rooms and school music studios. Starting prices on mid-range models are $8,0000 – $15,0000
  • Upright Pianos: Think about the old honky-tonk piano in a silent movie: That’s what we’re talking about here. At 48 inches and above, these pianos take up a lot of wall space. They can sometimes compete with smaller grands, especially if they are by premium manufacturers. Expect to pay $10,000 – $20,000, depending on the make.

At these prices, who can afford to learn to play the piano? That’s a good question, and it’s one reason why continual piano maintenance is so important. Beyond that, parents of prospective students have a few other options: renting, buying a used piano, or considering an electronic keyboard, at least for the first couple of years.

The important thing is that the piano be a pleasure to play: A good instrument helps a pianist develop sensitivity and touch, and helps a student become a better musician.

Edited to add: As per Annie’s comments below a used piano is a viable alternative. Check out these tips on buying or selling a used piano.

Music Musings, Practice and Skills

Piano Lessons, Life Lessons

I spend a few hours a day fairly predictably: Reminding children with reluctant fingers that finger number 1 is their thumb, and that Middle is C is in the middle of the piano. Like many home-studio teachers in rural areas, my studio is mostly made up of beginning and intermediate players. I rarely have the need to talk abut how  Mozart intended a appoggiatura to be played, or whether a trill should begin on the main note or the upper auxiliary.

What I DO find myself talking about — day after day, week after week — is the learning process. And the more I do, the more it becomes clear to me that learning piano is only partly about learning piano. It is also about learning, period.  And while we all learn in our own unique way, some patterns DO apply to all of us. Not only that, but we can all, always, learn to learn… better.

So, in no particular order, some thoughts on learning.

1) Showing up is important. A study done by psychologist Anders Ericsson at the Berlin Academy of Music concluded that practice time, not talent, determines success as a musician.  All those myths about Cousin Bob the musical genius with perfect pitch? Perfect pitch, maybe. Talent certainly affects achievement. But in order for it to all come together takes time spent working, pure and simple. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell posits that Mozart’s prodigial years were spent practicing for hours a day under the watchful eye of Papa Leopold. He also points out that with their non-stop Hamburg performances, the Beatles easily logged 10,000 hours before becoming an “overnight success.” Whether you believe the 10,000 figure or not is up to you…. It could be more, or less, and it undoubtedly depends on talent, the pursuit, and the quality of practice. But the bottom lie is this: Deliberate, consistent practice is a hallmark of achievement in anything, from computers to chess to piano.

2) If a job looks too big, make it smaller. Don’t try to learn 20 pages of a sonata: Learn one page. Or one line. One measure. I’ll often pull out the scariest looking piece of music by a major composer and show beginners that they can identify a note in it, and then another one. As Annie Lamott writes:”Bird by Bird.”   Or how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

3) If at first you don’t succeed…. try something different. Doing the same thing wrong over and over is a really powerful way to learn to do the same thing….. wrong. Having trouble with two hands? Slow down. Or do one hand at a time. Play one hand as fast as you can, really loud. Now play is as beautifully and musically as you can. Fell where your fingers are and how they have to move. Don’t just mindlessly repeat it and “try again.” Remember Einstein’s definition of insanity? Doing the same thing and expecting a different result. If it’s not working — change it up!

4) Have patience. You need to do YOUR job, which is showing up and trying to create an artistic vision of a piece by learning the notes, the rhythm, the technique.  You do your part, and in between practice sessions, the back of your brain will do the rest: Putting things together, processing information, synthesizing it all. Trust the process. It works. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy.

5) Be honest. Don’t look at your teacher when you made a mistake to see if she noticed. OF COURSE she noticed. But more important than that — YOU noticed. It should matter to YOU.  Care about what you’re doing. Care about your art.

And then bring that caring to the rest of your life.

It is the most important lesson of all.

For Parents, Piano Lessons for Children

What Instrument Should Your Child Play?

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School is starting up, and depending on your school and district, your child may be given the choice of playing an instrument, usually in third, fourth, or fifth grade.

I well remember when the band director at my elementary school came in to our classrooms with a demonstration of all the marvelous instruments that would be available for us to play. I remember the boys’ eyes lighting up at the drum sets (and the attendant let-down a few days later when they were all given little book-sized woodblocks to beat on). I remember the shiny wind instruments and the gleaming strings. I even remember Mr. Richmond’s name, even though this was $%^# years ago and I never took a single class with him.

Because, very unfortunately, my parents said no (one of the few academic mistakes I think they made): They thought piano was enough, and I already had other extracurricular activities on my schedule. But of course, hindsight is 20-20.

The fact is that in the early years, participation in band and orchestra is a pretty low-impact involvement on family schedules and finances. In the very early stages, school music directors giving group lessons don’t expect a whole lot of practice from students. Of course, the virtuous cycle of practice and reward kicks in immediately — students get out of it what they put in — but it’s still a low impact introduction.The students get their rental instruments, and squeak and squawk their way through a few ear-splitting recitals. Those who take to it eventually move on to private lessons, start practicing for real, and audition for all-district and all-state ensembles. Some switch to another instrument, or join a rock band. Some major in music. 

And those who don’t continue turn their rental instruments, sit back in the audience, and watch their friends continue. So there’s no downside to having your child try an instrument: The instrument cost is minimal (rentals), the teaching is done at school, and the time commitment, at first, is negligible. If you are at all conflicted about taking on another activity or trying out music, school group lessons are a great way to go. 

The upsides are numerous. I won’t belabor that point here (because I’m pulling together an article with links to formal studies about the benefits of music education: participation in a team creative activity, commitment, developing practice and learning habits, and side benefits like, oh, less drug abuse, greater math scores, and better overall academic achievement). 

So for now, suffice it to say: no downsides, lots of upsides. So the question: Which instrument?

Instruments are so wonderfully different from each other. My partner is writing a book on ukulele right now, and while I don’t mind listening to the uke, the thing feels like an alien monstrosity in my hands (even a so called baritone uke). I have to squeeze my big self into its little frets, and it feels all cramped over and high pitched. Give me a cello, a bass: Something that sends an expanding sound outwards and speaks from the gut. I have the same response to piccolos versus tenor saxes.

Other people are exactly the opposite: My just-post-college room-mate, for example, has become a leading piccolo recording artist. Lucky her, because it’s a heck of a lot easier (and cheaper) to travel with a piccolo (or a uke) than a tuba (or a double bass)! Not to mention a piano.

Instruments speak to people: They use the  body differently, and they speak in different voices, they speak from the gut or the heartstrings or the voice box. I can imagine myself playing a cello or viola but not the violin, and the idea of having to hold my breath and control it to put the voice in a wind instrument feels uncomfortable to me. Yet I can understand the appeal of that: What a blessing to use the breath that fueled your body to fuel the voice of an instrument!

And how about drums: The endless, amazing  varied sounds of the world’s thousands of percussion instruments: hand-drums, claves, marimbas, thumb pianos, cymbals, tambourines (and yes, we’re talking about little kids here, so the appeal of BANG BANG BANG).

We ALL respond to instruments differently.

I’d try to stay away from gender stereotypes (Some of my five year old piano students are quite convinced that no boy ever plays the violin). It is, however, important to note that kids have different talents, skills, and physical abilities. The smallest kid in the class may not be able to reach the end note on a trombone, and a little boy who desperately wants to fit in with  bigger tougher peers may find more success and satisfaction with a trumpet or sax than with a violin or a piccolo. Some kids have trouble holding down strings on instruments or the fine motor motion of moving their fingers on small instruments.

Musical taste is another issue: When kids are small, this is a difficult factor to weigh, but the fact is that there are more jazz saxophone players than jazz violists, that it’s easier to score a position playing in an orchestra as a violist than as a flutist, and a clarinetist can not only play both sides of the jazz classical divide; she can play saxophone, too. A violist doesn’t have that many chances to solo because of the limitations of the repertoire; a violinist may or may not — depending on the competition. A string bass player doesn’t get to play in the football marching band (which keeps a lot of kids in music through their high school years) and a bassoonist and an oboist are going to have trouble finding a place in a rock and roll group.

At the same time, the decision you make today isn’t written in stone: Many musical children try several instruments. If your child is simply assigned one (because the school needs a bassoon player), they can always change later. In fact, the exposure to multiple instruments is a good thing, and can be a real asset down the road if you child becomes serious about music, either as a session musician or a music teacher.

And this point is also worth making: if your child hates music lesson, try to find out if it’s because of the instrument. Some kids just aren’t meant to play some instruments. It’s like choosing friends: The fact that your child and the neighbor’s kid don’t get along doesn’t mean that your kid doesn’t like to make friends; it simply might mean he doesn’t like that kid. Same may be true for the bassoon. 

So talk with the school music teacher about demands — physical, coordination, practice-related — of each instrument. Let your kid experiment. PLAY some music for them: If they think they want to play violin, play them a violin sonata or a bluegrass tune; if they are leaning toward clarinet, play a clarinet quintet or a great jazz player. And then let your child be your guide.  

Coming up next:  Should your kid play more than one instrument? (With a focus on piano. Well, I admit it, I do have a bit of a bias on this blog.)