Piano Teaching: The Skills You Need to Focus on From the Start

This is part of my piano teaching series. It's really important to read each post in order!

Intro: Discusses what the overall goals should be for music lessons

Part 1: Explains the principles of how piano should be taught to achieve those overall goals

Part 2 (this post): Draws upon those principles to list the specific skills that need to be emphasized from the start

Part 3: A compilation of additional insights to make their learning effective and fun

Part 4: Shows how it's all implemented by detailing my lesson structure

Regardless of the method you are using to teach piano, the following specific skills should be a continual focus. They are the core skills that can make or break anyone's effort to become a lifelong proficient pianist. If you haven't read the prior parts in this series, you should do that first--they provide the context for these principles so they make sense.

1. Never look at the keyboard. My very first lesson, I show them how the black keys are grouped into "twins" and "triplets" and help them understand that repeating pattern. I then see if they can find multiple sets of twins or triplets without looking. From this point on, they are pretty much never allowed to look at the keyboard. When they place their hands to start a song, they do it without looking. When they need to jump up an octave or two, they do it without looking. And they get surprisingly fast at it very quickly! Sometimes I'll also show them videos of Stevie Wonder playing, hands flying across the keyboard, to emphasize how unnecessary looking at the keyboard is.

2. Play up among the black keys. This skill goes with the first one. To constantly know where their hands are on the keyboard without looking, they need to constantly feel the black keys. This doesn't mean they have to be playing way up near the fallboard, but at least their index, middle, and ring fingers should be able to feel the black keys.

3. Pre-read routine. How should a student approach a new piece they've never seen before? There is a set process they should be taught to go through every time. First, look at the title and the lyrics to get a feel for the song's emotion. Next, look at the clefs, key signature, time signature, and tempo. Then look through the music itself, especially looking for things like dynamics, harmonic and rhythmic patterns and repeats, potentially tricky notes or rhythms, which kinds of chords are being used, bass patterns--basically all the theory they've learned up to that time so they will be seeing all of it in the music rather than just seeing random notes. Once they've looked through it, they should mental play it once (described more below). After that, they are ready to play the song, so I tell them not to worry about remembering all that stuff they just went through and to trust their brains to remember it for them so they can focus on enjoying the beautiful song they're playing, which will make their playing more musical and their practicing more enjoyable for them.

4. Post-read routine. I usually only have them play a song twice on any given day. After they play it the first time, I have them go through a post-read routine of looking through the song again to see where they made mistakes and to diagnose what went wrong. Then they play it a second time, and the goal is to have fewer mistakes. By that point, they've probably exhausted the majority of the music reading practice they can get from that song that day, so it's time to move on to the next song. I usually only have them practice each song for a couple days, for the reasons described in the prior posts. Fortunately, the piano method I use is designed to give them new songs every practice day.

5. Keep the rhythm. When playing a song, nothing is worse than stutters and pauses for killing the musicality of it. And stutters and pauses are an absolute no-go when you're playing with a band or for vocalists. The student needs to know from the start that, for every song they play, they need to decide their tempo (assuming they can't play it at the recommended tempo) and then keep that rhythm. Even when it's their first time ever playing the song, they need to do this. If they make mistakes, they should play right through them. It's more important to keep the rhythm than it is to get all the notes right. The right tempo is fast enough that it's challenging but slow enough that they can get most notes right, which is often pretty slow for the first few plays through. Determining the right tempo is a skill they'll have to develop. I will often have them use a metronome when I'm seeing them slack on sticking to their chosen tempo, but make sure you don't have them use it any more than how long it takes for them to gain a good understanding of the song's rhythm or it will interfere with them feeling the movement and rhythm of the song.

6. Everything they play should be musical. Even beginners doing scales or reading a brand new song can play musically. The unfortunate typical process of learning songs is to get the notes and rhythms right first, then to focus (if you get to it) on all the other things that actually make it sound like music. The problem with that method is that all they're learning is to hit notes on a piano in the right order for the right length of time rather than learning to make music, and it ingrains in them the habit of playing non-musically. So I remind them often of my expectation that even their scales and their first read-throughs should sound beautiful with dynamics and feeling and all. This is admittedly tough for them early on, but the pre-read routine helps immensely. When they are always playing musically, the process of learning the piano becomes much more enjoyable because they're experiencing beautiful music every time they sit down to practice.

7. Absolute pitch. This is not something that "people are just born with." There's nothing about 440 Hz that is organically connected with our inner ear; rather, some people have just learned to remember what arbitrarily chosen pitch corresponds with what arbitrarily named note. And this means that, for most youngsters especially, it can be learned. I give some details about how I do this in Part 4 of this series. This skill is much more than a party trick! It allows you to mental play any song anywhere. It allows you to compose in your head when the idea strikes you and no piano is around. It allows you to understand the music you're hearing in a more intimate way because you can also hear exactly which chords are being used, which unlocks greater learning potential even just from listening. It allows you to always sing in pitch, and to play a fretless instrument in pitch. That's just a start.

8. Mental play. This is the process of seeing the music in your head and also hearing each note as you play the song in your head. It's a huge skill for practicing memorized pieces in a way that doesn't rely on the oh-so-fallable finger memory, which makes you more reliable during performances. It's also a way to look through music you've never heard before and learn it all in your head quickly before you've even played it, which is incredibly useful whenever you're asked to play something without more than a moment's notice. Even without absolute pitch, everyone can develop relative pitch so they can hear the intervals in their head from their chosen starting note. So, teaching quick interval recognition is part of this. I've heard stories of some of the great pianists who have been known to memorize whole pieces on a single flight and then play it perfectly the first time when they arrive for their concert. If the ability to mental play is combined with absolute pitch, incredible musical potential is unlocked. Integrating mental play into their daily practice is easy when it's part of their pre-read routine.

Check out Part 3 of the series for the other most important things I try to do when I'm teaching.