What Do You Do To Make the Recital a Happy and Successful Experience?
Keyboard Companion Spring 1991; Vol. 2, No. 1
Cathy Albergo, Editor The piano recital. Many of us I remember recitals as once-a-year, tension-filled experiences. How much have piano recitals and/or performance opportunities changed? According to our four guest authors for this issue, recitals, and the teacher’s approach to recitals, have changed quite a...
It is essential that the focus be on how…
Discovery homeSign up for email updatessubmit a question We would like to thank Jane Magrath for this insightful article. Want to learn more about teaching piano technique? Join us on Wednesday, April 17th at 11:00am ET for our latest webinar, Foundations on Technique, with Julie...
What practice methods do you use to help students develop technical fluency?
Keyboard Companion Spring 2006; Vol. 17, No. 1
Scott McBride Smith, Editor Musicianship. It’s a word we hear a lot. It’s not glamorous, or “sexy.” On my own list of workshop topics, I list a session entitled Musicianship: Should This be Part of Piano Lessons? I guess most teachers groups are answering “no,”...
Elementary graduation exercises
Keyboard Companion Winter 2005; Vol. 16, No. 4
Scott McBride Smith, Editor I used to tell Richard Chronister, half-jokingly, “I’m your oldest disciple.” From my vantage point, it was true. I had first heard him speak when I was an 18-year old college freshman, already a three-year veteran in the piano teaching trenches...
Joanne Baker — Memories of one of piano teaching’s great ladies
Keyboard Companion Autumn 2005; Vol. 16, No. 3
Scott McBride Smith, Editor The words “master teacher” have long since been cheapened by marketing hucksters and aggressive salesmen who use them to describe the authors of courses promising musical expertise in 10 easy lessons and 5 minutes a day of practice. If, like me,...
How Do You Teach Students to Play Softly?
Keyboard Companion Autumn 2001; Vol. 12, No. 3
by Scott McBride Smith To an unsophisticated audience, there is nothing more exciting than a pianist who plays fast and loud, throwing his hands up in the air at climaxes as he or she looks upward for divine applause and reassurance. “Wow!” someone said to...
How Do You Work with a Student Who Plays Everything Loudly?
Keyboard Companion Autumn 2000; Vol. 11, No. 2
by Scott McBride Smith The problems of teaching young students to play with an efficient, pain-free, user-friendly technique have not lessened in the years since Keyboard Companion was founded. Probably they never will, for the difficulties of playing the piano are legion, the solutions incomplete,...
Shouldn’t technical study be fun? Liszt, etude practice, and attention to detail…
Keyboard Companion Winter 2007; Vol. 18, No. 4
It rests in a corner of a neo-classical style building from the 1920s – a beautiful temple, faced with Indiana limestone. The central court in which it slumbers is full of beautiful things: several pieces of Chihuly art glass, mounted high on the wall; a seventeenth...
How Do You Teach Weight-Transfer to Early-Level Students?
Keyboard Companion Winter 2004; Vol. 15, No. 4
from the series: Let’s Get Physical: Technique Scott McBride Smith, Editor Who was it that said, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach; those who can’t teach, teach gym”? Not a piano teacher, obviously! And probably not a gym teacher, either. It’s not necessary to...
What are the most important aspects of technique to cover in the first years of piano study?
Every week, it seems, we hear of another case of pianists’ hand and arm problems. Well-known concert performers, up-and- coming young artists, promising students … the list appears endless, and each pianist’s affliction sounds more debilitating than the last. Are these injuries more frequent in today’s...
What About Piano Study in Australia and the People’s Republic of China?
I remember well standing backstage in Kansas City in the 1970s after a recital of the French soprano Régine Crespin and hearing her admonish an over-eager admirer who gushed that her Carmen was the best since the immortal Calve. “Comparisons are odious,” Crespin said with grandeur.”...
Is slow practice always the best way to develop technique?
Keyboard Companion Summer 2008; Vol. 19, No. 2
from the series: Let’s Get Physical: Technique Scott McBride Smith, Editor I had the great good fortune to study, at intervals, with one of the grand ladies of American piano teaching, Adele Marcus. She was quite a character, to say the least, and she put a strong...
How do you teach choreography to young students?
Keyboard Companion Summer 2007; Vol. 18, No. 2
Subscribers to Keyboard Companion know the importance of a good beginning. And this month’s Technique column offers some wonderful tools to help students get started with good technical habits. Marilyn Taggart has made an important contribution to the understanding of teaching piano technique. Her thorough study of...
Do You Have a Favorite Technical Regimen for Early-Level Students?
“Have you ever seen a piano teacher as tall as I am?,” I asked a 4-year old prospective student at her audition last week. I’ve learned the wisdom of saying a few calming words to new students when I answer my front door, knowing that...
How Do You Motivate Your Students to Practice Technique?
Keyboard Companion Summer 1995; Vol. 6, no. 2
I am often touched by the sincere desire of music teachers to improve themselves and the lives of their students. It’s ironic that so many large international corporations have only recently discovered the virtues of continuous improvement (one of the buzzwords of business in the ’90s), for...