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.

While I am not a Suzuki-trained teacher, I utilize many elements of the Suzuki philosophy in my teaching. Scores and written lesson books are important and students will learn to read music, but ultimately, my emphasis is on learning songs and pieces primarily by ear through the use of demonstration, singing, and listening to recordings at home. Students are trained to read notation in order to aid their memory of music they should already have in their ears. It is essential that children understand that the symbols on the page are not the origin of the music. The score is simply a reminder.

Developing students’ “inner ear” (i.e. the ability to think in sound) is the primary goal music lessons, as I see it. There are many strategies that help intuitively guide children towards a more fine-tuned ear. One is “movable do” solfège, the system of assigning syllables to pitches (do-ré-mi, etc…), which helps students master the relationships of the pitches to one another.

Singing is also an essential part of our time together. If a student cannot recreate sounds and rhythms using their voice, it is usually true that they do not really understand them and certainly cannot meaningfully produce them on an instrument. I like to tell my students that they have four teachers to help them learn any song on the piano: 1) me, the actual teacher (and often their parents at home), 2) the recordings of the music which function like the teacher when I am not around, 3) their own voices, which after listening to the song, help reveal to them the correct notes/rhythms with minimal effort, and finally, 4) the score, which acts as the ultimate “cheat sheet.”

Once students have been trained to listen, comprehend, and read music, then begins the real process of practicing “speaking” in music—the joy of life, and the greatest gift I know!

Lastly, at the end of the day, studying music is about more than just mastering these very fine-tuned skills. 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.

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 and stay with them their entire lives.