Justin McKee, piano teacher at MJ Piano Lessons gives students the opportunity to become well-round, brilliant musicians.
It takes a group effort to get the best out of this opportunity:
The teacher's role is to keep the student engaged and motivated.
The student must make an active choice to chase the opportunity by dedicating quality time to practise and learning.
Parents can play an important role of helping their child to make the space and time and stay on track to undertake focused, quality practise and learning.
This article is useful for both adult learners and parents. The information presented will provide parents with insight into how progress is monitored for students up to Year 10 from lesson to lesson by looking at some of the tools that are used to help keep students engaged and motivated to succeed at piano.
For adult learners, this article will provide insight into making the most out of your practise time and the long term benefits you will reap as a result.
To play the piano to even just a 'good' standard, students must acquire practical skills, technical skills and musical knowledge over a reasonably long period of time.
Justin’s philosophy is that achieving incremental progress between lessons is critical; the little rewards are the tangible currency that keep students motivated to persist, to stay with it, to keep learning! It's not a short-term investment.
Each lesson, students take home notes that list what to prepare for their next lesson and where they should focus their efforts.
Justin is a pedagogue and therefore sets practical, technical and musical theory work from lesson to lesson that considers the students’ needs, background and interests and in context with their current learning.
Parents can use the information provided in lesson notes to help keep their child focused on quality practise and other homework.
If the student focuses their efforts where their lesson notes guide them to, they are guaranteed to make some progress. The set work is achievable work.
At the next lesson the students are asked to present their practical, technical and musical theory work, and Justin will provide feedback and younger students will also be awarded a mark out of five (5) on how they fared for each area.
These marks are used for awarding various prizes and trophies throughout the year.
The visual, continual tracking of these points can have a profoundly positive impact on some students. Overall, the approach to monitoring and reporting on progress is designed to help elevate the quality of students’ constructed responses to their work from lesson to lesson.
For parents, progress reports can be extremely useful for identifying patterns of effort, or lack thereof. They can also be a great tool for kick-starting conversations with their child that instil a level of excitement around practising at home.
It is very possible for a student to achieve a 5/5 for their efforts in all three areas, each lesson.
The set work is achievable. Achievable goals are motivating goals.
To play the piano to an excellent standard, students will need to make a choice to hone their skills in all three areas, a choice that will develop them into well-rounded musicians. There aren’t any shortcuts nor any basis for disregarding the value of either the practical, technical or knowledge requirements.
The continual feedback loop between teacher and student is there to help students keep improving, to keep striving.
There is a big difference between a player who can play the right notes and a musician who articulates the style of a piece and expresses themselves, regardless of whether anyone is listening or not.
As Ray Charles famously said "The important thing is to feel your music, really feel your music and believe it". This is most possible when students have accomplished the technical, knowledge and practical requirements for their grade or level, because the learning process is complete, and their minds can relax.
Regardless of the age of your child, they have their own unique personality and this will inevitably come out in the way they present their pieces, once they have mastered them.
Click here to contact Justin about a free introductory piano lesson if you are not already taking lessons at MJ Piano Lessons.
About the author
Justin McKee, Piano Teacher at MJ Piano Lessons has been teaching piano for over 20 years and delivers piano lessons at his home studio in Summer Hill, Inner West of Sydney.
Justin studied a Bachelor of Music Education at the Newcastle Conservatorium of Music from 1994-1996.