I have been asked by a few families lately if I have any advice on helping with maintaining practising during the week between lessons. I do have a few suggestions.
I have some young students, around the age of 6, who are just getting started.
When your child is young and just beginning it is really helpful to take part in a small practice routine with them a few days a week. You don’t have to know how to play yourself, just sitting with them and reading through the lesson notes will be a big help. Try to establish a routine, ten minutes around the same time of day so that you can eventually back off and they will expect to continue with the routine. They can show you all the F’s on the piano, all the G’s, etc. You can review finger numbers with them using exercises from their book. Encourage them to sing while they play, whether it’s the finger numbers, the note names or counting the beats, the ability to sing while playing helps tremendously in the years to come.
When the students are working on a short piece like the ones in the Faber Primer level, I like to break it down to two bar sections. I do this in the lesson and call them boxes. I have the student play each box 3 times in a row. Sometimes we begin with the last 2 bars of the piece and work our way back through to the first 2 bars. Each time the student plays the two bar section I ask them to sing. They can sing the note names, the finger numbers, count the beats, or even sing the words of the song. The focus will vary depending on the student’s abilities and strengths.
I also provide the days of the week on the lesson plan and ask the students to indicate the days that they practised by either drawing on a happy face or a star or a heart, etc, or placing a sticker on the sheet. I ask for 5 days of practising.
Some parents of students at this young age will provide a small incentive to keep things rolling, I leave this decision with the parent but I have seen it help to get students out of a rut and feeling better about their accomplishments. It may help to keep a chart on the fridge that marks a certain number of practises that leads to a reward. It usually fades away after a few weeks but by then the pattern is established and the student feels happy and proud of their accomplishments which is the ultimate reward. I have noticed that the students who establish the routine early in their studies tend to maintain a better pattern of practising.
As the student gets older and becomes more advanced in their studies their practice time should increase to 30 minutes and they will undoubtedly prefer to practise on their own. By then they will have technical exercises that they should begin each practise session with. This is the best way to begin. It warms up the fingers, gets their head into what they are doing and settles them into thinking about music before they begin to work on their pieces. As the pieces become longer it is important to learn how to make the most of their time at the piano. During the lesson the pieces are broken down into smaller more workable sections. Sometimes identified by letters as in the “A” section and the “B” section. The student should choose to focus on one or two sections within a practise session. Once the pieces become more than one page long it is extremely important that they learn to identify these sections and to focus on the challenges presented within.
I try to impress upon my students that the goal in each practise session is to notice some improvement. I ask my students to repeat small passages and technical exercises three times in a row. As the student matures it becomes three times in a row, correctly, meaning that if they get it right twice but slip up on the third time, they have to go back and do it all again. There are many elements to develop within the music apart from getting the notes and the rhythms right. The fingering, dynamics and articulation should be taken in from the beginning of the learning process. There are also some tricks to getting past the initial stages of learning a new piece. I used to find that if I learned the ending of the piece first, and I mean really properly learned it, memorized and confident, it would inspire me to learn the rest of it. The student who is able to really concentrate and develop the smaller sections of their music will learn the piece more quickly. It isn’t long before they can begin to enjoy the music and their abilities and then they feel more inspired and motivated to work at it.
Busy children sometimes tell me that they didn’t have time to practise or do their theory homework. This is more about time management and routine. I suggest that these students split their practise time up, 10 or 15 minutes in the morning, and again in the evening. Even sitting at the piano and practising a scale and triad while waiting for someone before going out will make a difference. I try not to go give too much homework, but to maintain a consistent diet of it. It is so important that the students learn how to write music down and to understand the inner workings. It is essential to a deep and meaningful musical education.