​Rhythm is the first thing I work with in my students’ early lessons. We improvise (play spontaneously) based on fast and slow rhythms. I teach them the basic musical note shapes for 1 (one) beat and 2 (two) beats.

For young children, movement words are excellent to cue rhythm through speech. I teach my students to move in a walk and say “walk” with each step, while pointing to a quarter note (see above). Or I teach them to clap and with each clap, say “walk.”

For two-beat notes, I teach a child to step and stay to the chanted word “stand-ing”. To clap a half note, we clap on the first beat and squeeze hands together on the second beat.

Make time regularly for a family jam session where you either play along with your favorite songs or make up your own. Any musical instrument can build skills that translate to success at the piano. Rhythm instruments are wonderful and you can even make your own … my favorite trick is to fill old supplement bottles with beans or rice to use as shakers. You can paint them or cover them with collage for extra fun! ​​

The mind-body system needs to repeat a skill thousands of times in order to master it. A common misconception is that if someone has learned how to do something in one situation, they should be able to apply this skill in all other settings or contexts.

Because people have different learning styles, they may take to something presented in one way, but it might take time for them to master it in other situations.

A mistake could tell me to present a concept in a different way, to work with a different part of my student’s personality, or to guide the lesson to a different task–to take a brain break. 

When a student makes a mistake in a session, I celebrate their courage to take a risk doing something that is not yet easy for them and knowing they might make a mistake. I do my best to model positivity and strong esteem for my students. We look at their mistakes as valuable information, rather than as matters of guilt or shame.​

Enough of my students’ parents have their own childhood memories of word practice being used in unkind ways that I stay away from it altogether in the early years of lessons.
This helps my students and their parents develop an understanding of home play as the discovery of music and learning that happens in between lessons. Calling it home play frames it as a choice my students make, rather than a chore.

If students don't do their home play, they still enjoy their lessons. But they do feel excited and motivated when they have done it, because they can see and sense their own progress.​

To teach the most fundamental part of music to yourself, or your kids, find the beat, what we in music call the down beat or the one.

This is the first beat in the rhythmic cycle of a piece or song. Most songs on the radio are in a 4-beat cycle, and so is The Alphabet Song. When you clap along and count, on the down beat, or first beat of each cycle, it will go something like this:

A            B            C            D    
One       Two     Three      Four
(CLAP)

E            F            G            ----    
One       Two      Three      Four
(CLAP)

H            I            J            K    
One       Two     Three      Four
(CLAP)

L    M    N   O     P             ----
One       Two     Three      Four
(CLAP)
​
This song has four beats in its rhythmic cycle. There are songs with two beats, three beats, six beats, eight beats and even five and seven beats. 

Find the Beat is a fun game to play on your own or with your family. While listening to music, try to hear the strongest pulse in the beat. You will notice that it repeats itself regularly. Then count one out loud when you hear that beat. You may tap or clap with your one. Notice how fast the other beats go by in between pulses. Begin to count along with those. Eventually you will find yourself counting to the same number over and over again before you get back to one. That’s the beat … you have found it!

Excerpted from the Amazon exclusive:

I created the song Add it Up to help you find the beat! Click on the button below and then scroll down to the media box for the song Add it Up. The beat changes throughout the song: Can you still find it?

Though I started playing piano at age six, it took me almost two decades to befriend it for good. The piano is big, and its music has its own language of symbols, I was somewhat afraid of it even after having played it for many years. 

As I describe in my short book Piano without Tears, I discovered a simple formula in  graduate school that helped me release my fear of the piano, for good. 

As long as I could count to twelve, I could get the piano. 

The piano has 88 keys (notes) in all. That's a lot of notes. But these can be seen in a simple pattern of 12 notes:

5 black keys + 7 white keys = only 12 different keys! 

There are five black keys on any keyboard. Take a look at the picture above. Notice that the black keys come in groups of three black keys and groups of two black keys. They appear in an alternating pattern: a group of two / a group of three / a group of two / a group of three, etc ... (The lone black key on the far left side is a solo member of an unfinished group of three).

There are seven white keys. They are organized according to their position among the black keys. Notice that there are four white keys directly touching the three black keys. There are also three white keys directly touching the two black keys. 

So you see, all piano notes are organized in a pattern which has, in all, twelve notes with distinct shapes and positions that help us tell them apart. 

It took me more than twenty years to see the simple pattern that is the basis for the piano layout. But I help my students understand this simple formula right away. To find out more about my eight-week Befriend the Piano series, click below to give me a call.