Ask The Teacher
 Do you have a question about the piano,
piano lessons, or music generally? You can get it answered here by a real live piano
teacher! We'll pick some of the best questions and provide the answers here. We'll even
show your name and the city you live in so you can tell your friends! Just
send us your
first name only, age, city, state, and country (if you live outside the U.S.) and
we'll do the rest.
|
A Note for Parents
 Because the Internet is in constant flux by nature and standards vary from
individual to individual, the content of the sites linked in the
Cool Places section cannot be guaranteed to be
appropriate for your children. We have examined all these sites and found them to be
generally wholesome and educational for most kids. We advise all parents to look at the
sites linked if they have any questions. Please
let
us know by e-mail if you find any of these links to be inappropriate and why you find
them so. |
|
Tip of the Month - Pull out the Props for Proper Piano Practice!
Your teacher has said again, ‘you have to do more practise’. Well, you
already play all your scales, arpeggios and assigned pieces once through every day, what
more could she possibly want? How ‘bout five times through each day?! Yep. That might
satisfy your teacher. Here’s how to do it so that you don’t lose count. First,
you need to grab some props. Five props to be exact. It’s more interesting if
they’re different colours. What to use … how about plastic pegs, or game
counters/tokens, or those coloured plastic paper clips? You can even use coloured pencils
or pens. Now, we’re going to put these coloured ‘props’ in order. Least
favourite colour, to most favourite. If you’re using pegs or paper clips, attach
these to the top of your music page. Make sure they’re all together on one side of
the page. If you’re using something else, lay these on top of one side of the piano.
Okay. We’re set. Each time you play the piece, you move one of your coloured objects
to the opposite side of the page, or piano. Keep doing this until each prop is on the
opposite side. Then, do the same with your next piece. You can do this for scales too!
You can give each colour a special purpose. Have you got your five different colours
ready? My five colours are orange, yellow, green, purple and blue.
Orange: The first time we play the piece is going to be SLOW
and steady. We’re going to make sure we take our time thinking about what note is on
the page, where it is on the piano, and how many counts it takes. We’re going to make
sure we don’t make any mistakes, even if this takes a long time. You can look at your
hands if you need to.
Yellow. The second time, we’re going to do the same
thing, only this time, you’re not allowed to look at your hands! Concentrate.
You’ll be able to do it.
Green. We’re still playing slow. This time, we have to
include any expression marks, like soft and loud, and make sure we bring these out in our
playing.
Purple. Now we have to look carefully at the touch and phrasing. Do you have to play
legato, or staccato? Concentrate on this.
Blue is the last one. (Make sure you use your favourite
colour last because it represents your best performance.) We have to make sure we’re
concentrating on all of the above!
Tomorrow, do the same thing. Use different colours, or different props to keep things
interesting.
 These
are places with neat pictures and sounds or they might be just plain weird! Check it out!
Got a report to write on the piano? Want to learn a little more about it? Need to find
out who Charles Tomlinson Griffes (or almost any other composer) was? We have a whole
shelf full of free articles that should help:
Lots of Piano Music and Cool Sounds
Like piano music? Want to hear some? Well,
The Audition Room has
hundreds and hundreds of files of famous (and not so famous)
composers' piano music. Jump over there and take a listen. You'll be
glad you did!
Take Your Own Trip with Dr. Who
If you like the sounds of the TARDIS and the Doctor in our
Meet the Composer interviews, you
can download your own sounds for free and play them on your own
computer. These come from the
BBC series, Doctor Who, and span many
of the Doctor's regenerations.
Go get 'em for free!
The Taz Speaks! (Sort of)
 From the Warner Bros. cartoon series
Taz-mania,
Taz grunts it like it is! If your browser doesn't let you play sound
directly, you can get the files by turning on your browser's Load to Disk or Save to Disk
function and then play them offline later in the Windows Media Player or similar player
program. These make fun Windows sounds, too. Just download 'em, go to
your Windows Control Panel, Click Sounds and then set these
to play. They're way cool!
Greetings from Taz (108K WAV)
Taz takes a piano lesson (37 K WAV)
Taz tells you what he thinks about piano lessons (41K WAV)
Taz does the classics (65K WAV)
Free collection of over 30 great Taz sounds, including all the ones above! (993K self-extracting archive - This file is BIG, so be patient!)
|
|
Meet the Composer |
Tip | Ask the Teacher |
Cool
Places | Finding Stuff | Piano Music |
Italiano! | Outta Here!
The Piano Education Page, Op. 9, No. 1,
http://pianoeducation.org
or
below
