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The Chronicles of a Piano Teacher

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   Today Khloe is going to learn  Allegro  by Thomas Attwood. This piece is her first, out of four pieces that are required for her to take ABRSM Grade 2 exam. Why did she choose this piece? She likes it! Even though her fingers weren't accustomed to the arpeggios in the piece. I solved this problem by adding arpeggios to her daily warm-up and asking her to play the arpeggios repeatedly during lessons.   The objective for today's lesson was to play the first system with both hands. Her target was to be able to coordinate both hands while playing a simple melody over those athletic arpeggios on the left. After warming up with scales, I asked her to play the arpeggios in the left hand with a slow tempo several times. Khloe has struggled with these arpeggios in previous lessons until today; it felt good to hear her executing the arpeggios quite smoothly. However, she played 'F' sharp instead of 'G' for the second beamed eight notes.  To inject m...
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Three Techniques for Piano lessons

  Piano lessons can either be easy, fun, just okay, difficult; depending on how you approach them. I have a couple of techniques I use to make my piano lessons easier. I learned these techniques during my four-year piano Major Course at the Department of Music Education, University of Education, Winneba. I am writing this article right after teaching two children to play 'A Toy' - an ABRSM Classical Piano piece found in the 2021/2022 syllabus: 1. Small Achievable Tasks Even though the overall aim is for my student to play an entire piece, we only learn a little at a time. My students enjoy a sense of achievement after playing two or three bars only. This good feeling, no matter how little, will prove helpful in sustaining the initial interest of my students. 2. One hand at a Time One of the most challenging tasks at playing the piano is to play with both hands. It is even more challenging when one has to play different rhythms with both hands at the same time. One solution is t...
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