a guided study…

I have come to lean on a few different schools of thought that inform my teaching of music and piano technique. Music is not just one skill, but a vast cohort of seemingly unrelated skills.

When babies learn language, it is because they are constantly exposed to it. Only after listening to a word hundreds of times are they then able to make their own attempt at recreating the sounds. The same approach can be applied with great success in music. This is the approach used in the Suzuki Method, which is a listening-only method. Because Suzuki songs do not use writing, students must listen to recordings of pieces at home. Listening and training one’s ears is a very important part of the student’s practice!

Singing and rhythm training is also a big part of our studies together. Students will learn solfège the system of assigning syllables to pitches (do-ré-mi, etc…) to create a foundation in tonality and the ability to sing (and later, play) melodies at sight. This creates a foundation for later studies in scale and chord theory.

At the end of the day, studying an instrument is about more than just learning music theory the technicalities of an instrument. Part of what students learn when they study piano is how stay focused and intentional—quite an important skill in our distraction-saturated world. While free exploration at the piano should always be encouraged, it should not be confused with intentional practice time at the piano, which is necessary for our lessons together to be successful. (More on practice requirements here.) Together, we will learn how to structure meaningful, rewarding practice at home.

Lastly, I aim to give students the gift of choice, should they wish at some point to pursue another instrument or experiment in different genres. There is a reason why every conservatory requires a basic level of piano proficiency for all students, regardless of their primary instrument, in order to graduate. As a tool for teaching, it is perhaps the most capable of demonstrating the full breadth of musical theoretical concepts in practice. Through steady, gradual instruction, my students are introduced to universal musical concepts that translate across instruments. My hope is that every student acquire a basic proficiency in the language of tonality and be able to: identify its patterns, hear its relationships and develop the technical skills to be able to execute them and hopefully, experiment and have fun with them.

As a teacher, I will do my part to guide each student on their path towards discovering what moves them most about music, as different people will be drawn to different aspects of the craft, be it rhythm, melody, or simply the logic that brings it all together.