Using a metronome

Keeping a steady beat is important in music. This week I will be going over a metronome app called Metronome.

What is a metronome? A metronome is a device that produces a sound at regular intervals. You can adjust the speed according to how fast or slow you want the beat. It helps you keep consistent speed (or tempo) for your music.

I don’t usually use a metronome in beginning piano lessons. For beginners, learning to play with the beat can be learned by playing duets and playing along with a recorded accompaniment of the music. As a student progresses, practicing with a metronome can polish a piece as it helps you learn to play at a steady tempo. I like to use it to check my tempo when I am preparing for performing. Sometimes I feel like I am keeping a nice, steady beat but when I play against the metronome, I can find parts of the music where I am speeding up or slowing down.

I have an old metronome from when I took piano lessons as a child. The price tag on the bottom of it says $37.95. They sell for over $100 now if you would buy one today. One nice thing about it, is that besides the BPM (beats per minute), if a song just said Allegro for a tempo marking, there are increments marked within Allegro that you could choose from. It also needs no battery or electricity; you just wind it up.

One of the benefits of having a metronome app, is that it is free, and they can go anywhere you go. With Metronome App, it is straight-forward, you just pick the beats per minute, and you are set to go. Many songs will have the beats-per-minute (BPM) marked at the beginning. That is the speed that you want to aim for as a performance tempo. While practicing, you would want to pick a slower speed that you can play and keep a steady beat.

I think Metronome App is easy to use. I did click on the music note and it brought up some junk that I did not want to be at. Overall, though, I am happy with using the basics on this app and it meets my needs of being convenient and accessible.

The Metronome App

My childhood metronome for piano lessons

How Much Should I Practice Piano?

You only have to practice on the days that you eat.

I love to eat every day. Sometimes I’m not crazy about practicing piano every day. We all know that if we just said we were taking piano lessons and then did nothing – nothing would happen. There must be some application and regular practice before there is any progress. Figuring out what works for us can be tricky.  We all need a break from our daily work occasionally. At the same time, regular practice is a must with piano lessons.

I have come across the 10,000 hour rule in numerous readings, which originated from the book “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell. That it takes 10,000 hours of intensive practice to achieve mastery of complex skills and materials. According to other research, it has been debunked numerous times although still rings true in many ways. Practice is important but the way we practice can make a huge difference.

I have had students who put in their allotted time to practice and still don’t know their music. The reason behind this is because they are ‘playing through’ the same mistakes over and over and practicing their mistakes. They are putting in the time, but they are not being deliberate in learning to play the correct notes. Besides putting in your time practicing piano, being deliberate about how you practice will get you further in mastering the instrument verses putting in lots of time and not making changes as you go.

In my earlier days of teaching, I would give students the option of taking a day off during the week. I would tell them they could pick one day a week for not practicing. The problem with this, is that once they had that day off, they would lose momentum and then one day would turn into almost all week. Then realizing a lesson was coming up, they would do a panic practice. Or, say you missed a day but then the next day was your designated day off, by the third day you would already be on your way to being in the habit of not practicing.

What seems to work better for students (and myself), is to tell a student that they must practice every day. That way, when life happens and it will, you just get back into practicing the very next day because it’s not your day off. Figuring out what works is going to look a little different for everyone, but in the end, it will be regular, consistent, deliberate practice that helps make progress. Doing practice sessions in small increments on a regular basis and correcting mistakes along the way will get you much farther in the long run. For the beginning piano student, it may be 5-10 minutes a day. As a pianist gets more experienced and music gets longer and more complicated, this time will naturally go up.

Maybe you love playing piano or another instrument so much that you will get to 10,000 hours of practice at some point. Putting in meaningful practice on a regular basis will be more helpful than checking off your time spent in front of the piano. Finding a schedule that works for your lifestyle will help you find momentum in your practice. Like eating, making practice part of your everyday schedule is one of the keys to the art of learning piano and the mastery of the instrument.

What to Expect When You Start Beginning Piano Lessons

Sometimes I feel I don’t give enough direction to beginning students. There is a lot going on that first lesson and a lot of information given.  I know when I get a lot of information all at once, I have a hard time remembering much afterwards unless I have written some things down. I feel like much of starting to learn piano is a given and that some things are obvious.  This post will help you get some straight answers as to what to expect when signing up for piano lessons and those first lessons.

One of the first things you will need for beginning piano lessons is an instrument.  I have come across some articles that say this is a myth. I think the myth is that you don’t need a full blown piano. Pianos are big. They are bulky. They are very hard to move. They need tuning regularly. If you have the room and money to spend on one, they are an awesome instrument and that is surely the way you want to go. Learning piano involves learning how to strike the keys with just the right touch so that the hammer inside the piano will strike the string just so.  It is an art.  It is what makes me love piano.

Pianos are a lot of work due to maintenance though. Electronic Keyboards are constantly being improved to have the sound and touch of an actual piano. Keyboards cost a fraction of what pianos do. They can be put in a smaller area, and you can use headphones, so you don’t bother everyone at all hours of the day and night.

So, before you sign up for beginning piano lessons, make sure you have a keyboard or piano.  The size of the keyboard, I will also cover in another post, but basically what you will need is a full size keyboard (88 keys) with weighted keys.

If someone inquires to learn piano and are ready to sign up, I ask if they have an instrument.  If you do not have one, we wait to schedule lessons.  I believe this saves time and money as it can take some doing to track down a decent keyboard, especially if used.

There are some things that will help beginning piano lessons be more successful. When you are all signed up to for lessons, it is not like a sport where you drop your child off and you did your part.  To be successful, learning piano takes an effort on both the teacher, the student, and the parent. Parents do not have to sit with their child during an entire practice, but they should make time in the family's schedule so that there is time to practice and monitor that time like you would for homework.  Setting a regular time that the student is aware of will keep everyone on the same page. Also, if your child is not a self-starter and they cannot get going without direction, you may have to get them started so they learn how to practice. Knowing how to practice needs to be learned just like practicing your music.

Here is an example of what is expected through a week in the life of a piano student on their journey to learn piano. Starting with that first beginning piano lesson, everything that they are to practice should be marked down at the lesson by the teacher so that when they are home, they know what they are to do. I also like to use tabs to mark the music.  That way they can just open their book to the page they are to practice when at home. The best thing to do within a day of lessons is to go through their lesson at home before they forget what happened during the lesson. Waiting a few days can make the student forget what they are supposed to do. 

After practicing most days during the week, when you come back to your lesson, you will play the songs for your teacher that were designated for practicing. It doesn’t matter if they are perfected, but your teacher will know if you have been practicing or not. Practice always makes a piece improved. Playing these pieces isn’t for your teacher to see if you can play them perfect, but to see if you need to go through certain parts so that you understand the concept better. Moving on to the next lesson, you can build on the concepts that you have learned in the previous lesson.

Some of the things I look for when a student starts their weekly lesson is that they open their books up to the lesson page. This tells me they have looked at it more than once! Next, I look for starting notes.  Can they find their starting notes without help? Again, if they have practiced regularly, they will know where to start. After teaching for a while now, I realize I did not pull anything over on my piano teacher when I was in lessons!

When you learn piano, it brings in so much more to the table than just playing piano. Things like discipline and perseverance can also be learned.  Besides the obvious, you are getting so much in return.  Knowing what to expect can help you help your student as a parent, or as an adult student know how you can be successful at beginning piano lessons.

Top 5 Biggest Mistakes When Taking Piano Lessons

Starting piano is an exciting time for a student! It also comes with a lot of responsibilities on the part of the student and the parent (unless the student is an adult). I’ve come up with a list of 5 mistakes in no particular order that can make taking piano lessons harder than it needs to be. Hopefully if you find yourself in any of these examples, you can recognize it and can change your habits.

1. You don’t have an instrument.

I have started screening prospective students before they even sign up for lessons. Early in my teaching years a couple people got through and started taking lessons without having a keyboard or piano. There is no way around this. If you don’t have an instrument, taking a weekly lesson is going to be a waste of time and money. You need to practice what was taught at your lesson regularly. 

Another part of this issue is that people want to sign up and they say they will quick get a keyboard or piano. I have found that this will not be the case. In my experience, when a student is looking for a new/used keyboard or piano, it can take up to a year or more before they find one. If money is no problem, it becomes a lot easier. For those that must budget, which is most families, the process can take some time. Finding a keyboard or piano on marketplace or the like is tedious. I’ve done it and it is a time sucker with a lot of bad equipment out there. A decent instrument will be a bit of an investment unless someone you know is wanting to get rid of theirs and hand it over to you at the perfect time that you need it. 

2. You haven’t thought of when you will practice.

I have had some students that go through the week running from activity to activity all the while saving absolutely no time for practicing piano. If a student is running constantly, the last thing they are going to want to do when they get home is one more thing. People need down-time too. Look at your students’ schedule and make a commitment of when an agreed practice time is. There are going to be some days when it doesn’t work out, but if you have it scheduled, you will know what you are supposed to be doing at that time.

3. You aren’t organized with your lesson books.

This one might be personal for me, but I also think that a lot of musicians can be a little disorganized and that’s O.K. Making good music isn’t about how organized you are, but if you have 10 or 15 minutes to sit down to practice and then can’t find your books or the song you are supposed to practice, that is going to be a major deterrent. I personally like to have my books sitting on the piano ready to play. Not everyone wants books on their piano all the time though, so you at least need to have a place near the piano to put lesson books. I also like to tab pages that I am practicing so I can get to my songs without any distractions of other songs begging me to play them.  I use Post It sticky tabs in lessons to mark students’ pages in their lesson. Many of them love using them and it seems to be a big time saver.

4. You ‘play through’ your lesson.

Practicing your lesson is not the same as ‘playing through’ your lesson. Piano players in the beginning will probably start out this way by ‘playing through’ their lesson several times each day. This can be alright for a little while, but as a student progresses, they should be learning to stop and work on problem areas. Progress comes when our fingers learn to play the music correctly and that doesn’t happen by running through the same mistakes each time.

5. You don’t have an audience.

Sometimes it’s hard for someone that doesn’t know the work that it takes to learn piano themselves to encourage someone who is learning. I LOVE to hear my piano played (not pounded). I love to have a time when everyone in the family listens to my grandkids polished songs. We make a big deal about it. I’ve had my grandkids and students come with me to the nursing home to play for the residents. They love to hear children play. I encourage my students to play in church if they can. Making a big deal about a recital is also another way to hear how all their hard work is paying off. If no one is interested in hearing you play, it’s easy to think it’s not that important and lose motivation to practice.

This is a handful of mistakes you can learn from. I’m sure there are probably more. Showing up for a weekly lesson is a big commitment, but along with that commitment comes all the prep work in between. Making sure you have an instrument, planning when you will practice, having your lesson books ready to go and making the most out of your practice time are sure to put you on the right track. All these, plus having someone to listen to you play will keep your motivation and will help you be successful in learning to play the piano. 

Can you think of any others to add to the list?

3 Tips to Make Practicing Piano a Habit

Practicing piano should just naturally happen, right?  Maybe when you sign up for lessons, that is what you think will happen.  The truth is, anything that takes practice doesn’t normally just happen.  Although I did play piano every day when I was young, I didn’t always practice my lesson.  My parents didn’t really know what I was playing, they just knew I was playing piano.  I practiced piano to get out of the dishes (my mom loved hearing me play), I practiced piano to get out of other chores (it didn’t always work). 

I am always intrigued by students that come well prepared to their lessons.  Many times, I ask them what their practice habits are.  Many of them say ‘I practice right away when I get home, so I don’t forget what we did at lesson’, or ‘I do my homework and then practice piano’ or similar.

Really though, what does practicing piano entail and just how do I make it a habit?  I’ve come up with 3 tips that will help you practice regularly.

1. Give your piano a spot(light).

My favorite spot for a piano is in the hub of everything so that students can practice while other activities are going on.  That way the practicing can be monitored in case the student is playing Jingle Bells every day (that is not their lesson, by the way).  You can ask questions while you are busy doing other things as you listen.  I don’t think kids need to be monitored constantly, but some are more apt to stray if left on their own.  My least favorite spot, although it seems popular with families, is to put your piano downstairs in the basement family room.  My reasoning is that no one wants to be sent to the dungeon to practice piano all by themselves. Same for their bedroom.  They may enjoy doodling around on it in a far away room, but may start counting that as practice time after a while.

My piano is no longer in the hub of things, and it is a bit harder for me to practice unless I schedule it.  When it was in my living area, I could be cooking dinner and sit down to play a song while waiting for dinner to cook.  Having your piano in the middle of activities helps to not forget about it.

2. Schedule it. 

Set aside a time of day to practice.  You can practice any time, but if you don’t have a plan, days will easily slip by and before you know it, it is lesson time again.  Sit down and look at your student’s daily schedule.  You need to have 15 or 20 minutes of time spaced out each day (at least during the week) so you have a plan.  Don’t put it before bed – it will get pushed out of the schedule or used as a stall tactic.  Who wants to do what they have been putting off just before bed?  I’ve done that enough to know I don’t want to do that.

3. Hook piano practice to another daily routine

I do this myself with a lot of things including playing the piano.  Good routines to hook together are homework/piano, make supper/piano, piano/playtime, piano/screen time, eat supper/piano.  When you hook daily routines with another job, it becomes a habit. 

These 3 ideas will go far in helping a establish good practice routine.  It all adds up after awhile and I am still amazed at my improvement when I establish good practice habits.

5 Myths About Piano Lessons

As with many things, there are some myths surrounding piano lessons. In this article, I will go through some of them.

Myth 1 – Age.

Am I too old to start piano lessons? People of all ages may ask this. While starting piano lessons at an early age is the norm when students are around 7 years old and reading, there is no set age for starting piano. You can learn at any age. Having a commitment to learning the instrument will help you learn at any age.

Myth 2 – Do I have to practice every day? 

Regular practice is essential in learning piano.  Life is not perfect though, and everyone needs to take a break from their work occasionally. I used to tell my students that 5 or 6 days of practice was a good practice week, but then found that when they knew they could take a day off it would turn into 5 or 6 days off.  I now tell my students to practice every day, especially during the week.  Then, when life happens, they get right back into practicing again the next day because it’s not their day off. 

Another part of practice is that it doesn’t have to be long lengths of time. For beginning piano students especially, 5, 10 or even 15 minutes of practice each day is all that is needed at first. Consistency of regular practice sessions is what will help in the long run.

Myth 3 – Can I learn piano on my own? 

There are a lot of videos on playing the piano. When you learn from a video, you do not have the benefit of correcting bad hand position or fingering and can form bad habits early on.  Muscle memory is important when learning piano and undoing bad habits takes more work than doing it correctly to start with. While there are some things you can get from videos, the promise of learning piano in a week is a little farfetched. Learning piano also involves learning to read music and the theory behind it all.  It involves practice with feedback for that practice. Taking lessons allows you to build off each skill learned in a way that helps you progress.

Myth 4 – I must play my song perfect for my teacher!

Many parents (or grandparents) that listen in on a lesson expect perfection.  They maybe had a teacher that would not let them go on to the next song until they played the song perfectly. Some of the students that have great practice habits do come back to a lesson playing a song beautifully.  This is not the case for many students.  There are many factors that play into this and working out the problem areas during a lesson is all part of the learning process.  When a student gets the concept and we have been on a song a little too long, I will move on to another so we have a fresh start and can concentrate on that concept on a new song.

Myth 5 – Learning piano should be enjoyable.

Well, this is an oxymoron!  Have you ever enjoyed doing something that you have gotten good at that you didn’t have to work at? Most things like playing a sport, take a lot of work.  You can have fun while you are learning the sport and after that hard work, it is fun because you have learned a skill and have gotten better at it. The same can go for lessons.

Lessons can be fun, but there is still some form of work that needs to be taught that the student will practice.  Sometimes when I introduce certain pieces, I will tell the student that the piece is challenging, but that it is because of the challenge that makes it a lot of fun!  They usually latch on to that because they want to find out about the fun on the other side. In my experience, it is the challenge that makes it fun.

As with any myth, there may be some truth to it, but some are simply just myths.  Learning piano can begin at any age. Perfection is not what it is about and with regular practice piano can be fun. What are you waiting for?

When is a good time to start piano?

Knowing when to start piano lessons is a common question asked. With experience, I have become comfortable in figuring out what age and where to start with any student walking in the door. Different ages have different sets of needs that call for a different set of plans to accommodate those needs.

Below is an infographic that explains briefly about the ages for starting piano. You can start piano at any age, but you do not always want to go about it in the same way. As you see in the infographic, there are different ages that you can start which will determine how you will begin.

Early Beginners aged 5-6 need a bit more time on some concepts. They also have small hands that cannot reach a big span, let alone use all the fingers to play yet. This age is at a pre-reading level and the books used are aimed at this. Early beginner books take all this into consideration.

Ages 7-10 is the prime age to start piano! Around 1st grade, they are reading and their hands are bigger than a younger student. As they learn at this pace, the material will accommodate their growing hands.

When you get to Ages 11 & up, the older beginner is ready to move. Their age makes them quick to catch on and their hands are ready for a lot more than younger students. Using an accelerated method book for learning piano for this age is a must. 

An adult would need to learn at an accelerated speed the same as the 11 & up group.

Starting piano at any age is always an option but taking age into consideration is always important. This will help a student get on the right track to learning piano and move forward at the right speed.  Using this infographic as a guide can help.

Hello!

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! My name is Roxanne Megna, owner and instructor at Attune Creations, LLC. I will be focusing on sharing tips on starting piano lessons, taking piano lessons and instrument essentials. My goal will be to help answer some questions you might have and give insight into the world of piano lessons.

I have been teaching piano for over 15 years, have been a church musician over 40 years and started playing piano at the age of 5.

I have some exciting upcoming posts planned, so stay tuned and hit subscribe to keep updated. I will be publishing new posts regularly so stay tuned!

See you soon!