Encore! Listening
Does your student’s playing lack “musicality” or accuracy?
One quick way to improve your student’s playing in both areas is to encourage more listening.
Students who listen to a professional recording of their piece in the learning stages - even only once or twice - are likely to hear mistakes they are making and figure out how to fix them. Perhaps they will fix the A-flats without you needing to mention it!
Students who listen to a professional recording of their piece in the learning stages also notice expressive choices on the part of the performer. Perhaps they didn’t realize how much flexibility they could take with the tempo.
Encourage more listening
I love encouraging my students to listen to as much piano music as possible. Most students do not spend much time listening to a variety of music, and teacher-created playlists can be an easy way to help with this problem.
I recently began using the Encore! books edited by Jane Magrath again. I had used them in the past, but for some reason, hadn’t as much in recent years. Upon returning to them, I was reminded just how much I love the repertoire in these intermediate - upper intermediate books.
However, these books do not come with audio recordings. To that end, I have created 3 Spotify playlists of professional recordings of each of the pieces.
Of course, you could make similar playlists, but I have saved you the time and energy! (Sometimes it’s tricky to track down pro recordings of intermediate pieces!)
Get access to these playlists by entering your email here.
Interested in purchasing these books? Click each of the links below for the three levels:
Looking for other listening resources?
I have two other helpful sets of listening options for students.
This page contains links to several playlists and albums of music performed by several of my favorite pianists, both classical and jazz.
These are free for anyone, no email address required.
“Piano Pieces Every Piano Student Should Know,” is my free curated listening list for piano students of the most famous pieces in the repertoire. It comes in a presentation-style pdf, complete with YouTube links to individual professional performances as well as a Spotify playlist.
On a related note, have you ever wondered about whether or not students should listen to their pieces before they work on them, or during the learning process? I discuss that question in this video:
Some of the above are Amazon affiliate links. If you click on a product link and make a purchase, Janna will receive a small commission at no charge to you.
