Category Archives: practicing

Dealing with Frustration: Be Okay with Mistakes & Keep it Fun!

By joy (admin) | Published: 19 August 2010

At a piano lesson this week, I observed my student grow increasingly frustrated with herself whenever she made a mistake.  She would “growl” at herself and start back at the beginning of the phrase. After observing this continue for a few moments, I decided to stop her and address the issue. There were three reasons [...]

Also posted in what I'm up to | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Dealing with Performance Anxiety

By joy (admin) | Published: 18 June 2010

Your hands are cold and shaky, your heart is racing, and you find it hard to breath.  Are you sick?  Are you having a nightmare?  No, you’re about to play your instrument in a recital, and the symptoms you are experiencing are due to performance anxiety — better known as stage fright. Performance anxiety affects [...]

Also posted in recitals / performances, settings: | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

My Thoughts on Practice Requirements

By joy (admin) | Published: 11 June 2010

Many of you may remember being required by your piano teachers growing up to practice a certain amount of minutes each day/week.  Perhaps your requirement looked something like this: 15 minutes a day, 140 minutes each week, or 45 minutes, 5 days a week. One of my previous teachers built her incentive program around how [...]

Also posted in improving as a teacher, incentive programs, motivation, private lessons, settings: | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Preparing for Student Recitals: Recording!

By joy (admin) | Published: 16 April 2010

Many of us teachers are probably currently preparing our student for spring recitals, so today I thought it might be beneficial to discuss a way of preparing for performances: recording your students playing their pieces, and then listening to the playback together. Benefits of Recording The student practices performing. Playing for a recording device can [...]

Also posted in advanced level, beginners / elementary Level, by student's level, group classes, improving as a teacher, intermediate level, interpretation, private lessons, recitals / performances, settings:, technology | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

12 Tips for Memorizing Piano Music

By joy (admin) | Published: 2 March 2010

I’ll be the first one to admit: memorizing music does not come easily to me.  I really have to work at it, and it takes a lot of time.  Over the past couple of years, I have been reading and trying out everything I could find about memorizing music, and I’ve come up with a [...]

Also posted in advanced level, beginners / elementary Level, by student's level, improving as a teacher, intermediate level, memorization, recitals / performances, settings: | Tagged , , , | 23 Comments

Practicing Efficiently

By joy (admin) | Published: 11 January 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWf9twoqXAI”>Liszt’s

Hello all!  After a enjoyable and much-needed Christmas break, I’m officially back to blogging.  I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and are enjoying the new year. Over break, I had limited access to a piano (I don’t currently own one – I both teach and practice using the pianos on campus).  It felt [...]

Also posted in improving as a teacher, what I'm up to | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

What Motivates Musicians and Music Students? – Part 2

By joy (admin) | Published: 12 November 2009

This post is Part 2 of the two-part series: What Motivates Musicians and Music Students?  Here’s a quick recap and then the conclusion of the series: This goal [creating students who can convey musical meaning] in itself is an intrinsic motivator, for even the youngest of students can appreciate the value of musical meaning and [...]

Also posted in improving as a teacher, incentive programs, inspiration, motivation, settings: | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

What Motivates Musicians and Music Students? – Part 1

By joy (admin) | Published: 10 November 2009

I found an interesting post over at the Third-Stream Music Education blog.  It includes a link to a fascinating video of Dan Pink’s presentation about motivation in the business world (be sure to watch the whole thing!).  The post at the Third-Stream Music Ed blog makes some interesting connections between ways of motivating employees and ways of [...]

Also posted in improving as a teacher, incentive programs, inspiration, motivation, resources / links, settings: | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Highlights from Michigan Music Teachers Conference 2009

By joy (admin) | Published: 15 October 2009

This past weekend was the Michigan Music Teachers Association 124th State Conference, taking place in Bay City, Michigan.  A couple of my fellow college piano pedagogy majors and I drove over to Bay City on Monday, to hear the conferences of the day.  Conferences are so great because they give you all sorts of new [...]

Also posted in improving as a teacher, inspiration, private lessons, settings: | Tagged , | Leave a comment

3 Ways to Motivate Busy Students

By joy (admin) | Published: 4 September 2009

I believe students today are busier than ever before.  They are involved in everything you can imagine — art, karate, gymnastics, swimming, sports teams, church activities, 4-H, and more.  And this is all on top of their regular homework assignments from school.  Sometimes the student gets stretched too thin, and something needs to go.  Other [...]

Also posted in incentive programs, motivation, settings: | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Music + Imagination

By joy (admin) | Published: 29 May 2009

I often have students’ parents and grandparents tell me that they wish they had kept taking piano lessons.  I use this to encourage my current students, and tell them that it’s a gift to be able to sit down at an instrument and create music — a gift that can provide great pleasure to oneself [...]

Also posted in interpretation, motivation, recitals / performances | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Accuracy vs. Musicality

By joy (admin) | Published: 11 April 2009

There are many performers who I consider to have amazing accuracy of notes, but minimal musicality….others who hit many wrong notes, but have AMAZING musicality.  The greatest performers, I think, are those who manage to do both successfully.  But if I had to choose between one extreme or another, I would choose the musicality over [...]

Also posted in by student's level, interpretation | Leave a comment
Rss Feed Tweeter button Facebook button Technorati button Webonews button Delicious button Digg button Stumbleupon button Newsvine button Youtube button