Today we’re talking about how to teach Spinning Song by Albert Ellmenreich. This is an intermediate student favorite due to the perpetual motion and ostinato left hand.

One of the questions I answered in my May Ask Me Anything YouTube video is the following:

What parts of studio management logistics have had the biggest impact on your studio running smoothly?

This is the type of question that I frequently discuss with Teacher Consultation clients. If you’d like to flesh out any of these ideas and see how they might work best for you, please consider investing in one of these. Every teacher’s context, demographic, and experience is different. These are things that have worked well for me in my context, but I’m happy to help others think through what might work best for them. Of course, experience is the best teacher, and the these “logistics” have all evolved over time for me.

Here goes - a short list of some of the things that are most helpful in my studio:

Today we’re talking about how to teach the first movement of Sonatina in C Major Op.55, No.1 by Friedrich Kuhlau. This is a great example of a standard intermediate level classical sonatina movement and one that students enjoy playing. It is also a frequent exam choice.

When MTNA announced that the 2022 conference was moving online, I was really bummed. I was planning to attend in person for the first time. (Well, I had also planned to attend in person in Chicago 2020, but we all know what happened that year.)

Thankfully, my piano-teacher-friend, Christina Whitlock of the Beyond Measure Podcast, had previously told me about a "retreat” she’d been on for NCKP during the summer of 2021 with some other piano-teacher-friends. While I wasn’t part of that amazingness, I did jump at the chance to join Christina and Joy Morin of the Color In My Piano blog at the home of our gracious host, Amy Chaplin of Piano Pantry. We watched many of the online sessions and chatted and shared teaching resources.

Clair de lune from Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque is, of course, one of the most well-known and beloved pieces in the piano repertoire, and one that students might ask to learn well before they are ready to tackle such a difficult piece. So, how do we teach this to recreational students? I have several ideas in my video here, which is part one of a two-part series.

One of the questions I attempted to answer in my March Ask Me Anything YouTube video is the following:

How can we make practice more fun?

In general, I think it’s important to realize that most students, most of the time, will not consider practicing fun. By definition, practicing is repetitive work to learn how to play an instrument - a task that takes years of discipline to truly master. It’s my opinion that the most important thing

Today we’re talking about how to teach Clowns from The Circus Op.68 by Joaquin Turina. This is an impressive sounding late-intermediate piece with a lot of character. The entire suite is delightful and includes movements titled Fanfare, Jugglers, Equestrians, The Trained Dog, and Aerialists (sometimes translated Trapeze Artists).

Interleaved practice is the practice of alternating or randomizing various tasks, assignments, and pieces during a longer practice session. It’s how I, as a professional, practice. And it’s one way that I’m attempting to train my students to practice. While I haven’t done any scientific studies, I can tell you that when my students practice this way, it works. They are far more efficient.

Today we’re talking about how to teach Moment Musicaux No.5 in F Minor by Franz Schubert. This is an impressive late-intermediate piece with a lot of character. Be sure to watch until the end when I discuss two Schubert trademarks found in this piece.

I was honored when Ben Kapilow invited me on his podcast called All Keyed Up. Ben asks the most insightful and thought-provoking questions! I hope you will listen to the episode, as well as many others on the podcast - he has had some fantastic guests.

I wanted to flesh out here my answer to one of the questions he asked, because I realized I had never actually stopped to really consider it.

What fundamentally makes a great teacher of intermediate students?

Today we’re talking about how to teach the Sonatina in A Minor Op.27, No.18 by Dmitri Kabalevsky. This piece comes from the set titled Thirty Pieces for Children, and it is an excellent teaching piece that easily engages a student’s imagination. It’s also a wonderful etude for working on dotted rhythms.

🎄 Merry Christmas, piano teachers! 🎄

To celebrate, I’m giving away a free 30-minute Teacher Consultation to the winner of this contest. If you’re not familiar with my consultation service, click here to learn more.

All entries must be received by 11:59pm central time on Friday, December 17. The winner will be announced the next day via email.

There are two ways you can enter:

Today we’re talking about how to teach the Tarantella Op.100, No.20 by Johann Friedrich Burgmüller. (The German spelling of Tarantella is Tarantelle; they are pronounced similarly.) This is a highly patterned, motivating piece for intermediate students with some good technical challenges. Tarantellas are always good fodder for the imagination, either because you picture someone dancing to avoid a spider or dancing to shake out the spider’s poison!

Today we’re talking about how to teach the Sonatina in F Major Anh.5, No.2 by Ludwig van Beethoven. This is a fast, fun, mid-intermediate sonatina movement that can teach students a lot about Beethoven’s style.

In this post, rather than focus on one particular piece of intermediate repertoire, I’d like to discuss how to teach holiday music. Currently, due to my demographic, 100% of my students celebrate Christmas, at least on a secular level, although that hasn’t always been the case. So, for this post, I’m going to use examples from the massive canon of secular and sacred tunes that Americans associate with the Christmas holiday. Your studio might look different than mine depending on your location, demographic, and personal beliefs, and of course it is appropriate to be sensitive to your students and fine to avoid religious music altogether if that is best for you. While that might mean that the specific repertoire doesn’t apply to you, hopefully there are some principles here that will be helpful when considering any type of music that is familiar to students (pop music, Broadway or movie tunes, other religious music, folk music, etc.).

In my previous post, I gave some suggestions for which concerti might be appropriate for pre-college students to learn, as well as some prerequisites for studying concerti. That post was prompted by my friend Andrea Miller over at Studio Music Startup asking me to come discuss this question in one of her Clubhouse chats. The chat was super fun! And I realized I had a few other thoughts that I could offer in a part 2 of this topic on my blog.

(Concertos? Concerti? According to dictionary.com, either version of the plural is acceptable.)

Today I want to address a common question:

Which piano concerto should I teach to a pre-college student?

Here are some examples of standard historical concerti that I have taught in the past; I have primarily taught the first movement of each:

Today we’re talking about how to teach the Chopin Prelude in E Minor. This is one of the easiest pieces by Chopin to learn, and one that students can personalize with their own expression. To be clear, this video is aimed at helping teachers work with intermediate or recreational students. It is not intended to be a tutorial for advanced professionals tackling Chopin’s Preludes.

In my previous post, I shared my newest resource for piano teachers, my Repertoire Difficulty Worksheet. I wanted to introduce it more fully here. This worksheet asks several questions to help you see everything on a musical score and compare those elements to what your student already knows and has encountered.

When I’m sizing up a piece, the main areas I consider are:

If you’ve read other posts on my blog (like this one about Beethoven Sonatas) or watched many of my YouTube videos (like this one about Für Elise), then you know that I’m passionate about teaching appropriately-leveled repertoire to each student. But why? Why shouldn’t we let our students learn pieces by ear that are above their reading or comprehension level? Pieces that might be motivating because they are standards in the piano repertoire, but that might be too hard for our student to read, understand, or handle technically?