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...
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 Teach Good Tone to Early-Level Students?
Keyboard Companion Spring 2004; Vol. 15, No. 1
from the series: Let’s Get Physical: Technique I met an old friend while writing my article for this issue of Keyboard Companion. It was great to renew communication after so many years apart – to hear his ideas and be reminded of his wisdom and his...
What Do Students Think About the Technique They Are Practicing?
Kids really do say the darndest things, as they used to say on the Art Linkletter Show, and I knew I was in for a day of darned things as soon as I heard my sister’s voice. “Will you baby-sit Robbie for me on Sunday,” she asked,...
How Do You Teach Your Students to Play Loud in One Hand and Soft in the Other?
One of my earliest experiences as a judge was at a festival held in the Midwest at which the one piece required of all elementary contestants was Kabelevsky’s popular Toccatina. To be frank, the performances were not that great. By lunch time on the first day, I felt that...
What do Beethoven’s piano sonatas reveal about his pianism?
Keyboard Companion Autumn 2008; Vol. 19, No. 3
from the series: Let’s Get Physical: Technique Scott McBride Smith, Editor Hans von Bülow, the nineteenth-century pianist, conductor, and master class teacher won fame for his meticulous musicianship and formidable technique. His sarcastic bon mots to students were legendary. “You have but one qualification for playing this piece,”...
How Does Good Technique Relate to Ear Training?
Keyboard Companion Autumn 2007; Vol. 18, No. 3
Recognize this student? I confess. I’m not sure what to do about my student Roger. He’s a nice boy. Tall (about 3 inches bigger than last year, he’s in middle school now), friendly, talkative, he sometimes reminds me of a large and only partially housebroken dog....
Is there a way to make technical practice fun?
Keyboard Companion Autumn 2004; Vol. 15, No. 3
from the series: Let’s Get Physical: Technique Scott McBride Smith, Editor A child need not be very clever To learn that, ‘Later, dear’, means ‘Never’. Ogden Nash, Grandpa is Ashamed He makes a good point, don’t you think? Is there ever time for “fun” in a...
Let’s Get Physical: Technique
Keyboard Companion Autumn 1995; Vol. 6, No. 3
Scott McBride Smith is Executive Director of the Young Keyboard Artists Association, in which capacity he directs a Summer Piano Institute involving some of the nation’s top artist-teachers and students. He is a well-known private teacher in Southern California. He received his doctorate from the...
How Do You Teach Pedal to Young Students?
Keyboard Companion Autumn 1994; Vol. 5, No. 3
I often begin thinking about topics for Keyboard Companion by doing my own informal survey of currently available literature on subjects I am considering for the Technique Department. After all, what is the point of duplicating information that is already readily available? When I began working on...
What Do We Mean by Technique, Anyway?
Keyboard Companion Autumn 1993; Vol. 4, No. 3
from the series: Let’s Get Physical: Technique There was a time when keyboard technique seemed a comparatively simple affair. There’s nothing remarkable about it, a gruff J. S. Bach told his friend J. F. Kohler. Hit the right notes at the right time and the instrument...
An Interview with Seymour Fink, Master Technician
September 2018; Vol. 10, No. 5
“But that’s the way my professor showed it to me!” Her eyes were open wide, her voice a wail. I was talking to a young teacher whose student had just played—poorly—in an international festival. In a subsequent masterclass I tried to show her a more efficient, better sounding way...
Hélène Grimaud: Reflections in the Water
September 2017; Vol. 9, No. 5
The January 2016 release of Hélène Grimaud’s recording Water (Deutsche Gramophone) was landmark in many ways,perhaps most significantly as a memento of a concert that took place in Wade Thompson Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory in New York in December 2014. tears become…streams become… was its name....
The Art of Practicing: Broad Principles
July 2017; Vol. 9, No. 4
Have you ever thought that, from a young student’s viewpoint, practicing is counterintuitive? Think about other skills you learned as a child: tying your shoes, for example. An adult shows you how to do it (I used the “Bunny Rabbit Ears” method with my nephews), you...
How Do You Introduce Scales?
September 2013; Vol. 5, No. 5
Richard Chronister, the founder of Keyboard Companion, made an astute remark to me one time at lunch. “It may be a scale,” he mused over a Cobb salad, “but is it technic?” We had been talking about the requirements of one of our state assessment programs,...