No shortcuts in teaching beginning piano students

Watching a colleague teaching a child in Madrid (on video) brought home the complexity of playing just two notes with beauty. What might be construed as an innately "natural" approach to piano playing, must in reality be learned by beginning students with meticulous attention to vocal modeling, touch sensitivity, and an infusion of imagination.

Irina Gorin is a remarkable example of mentoring at its highest level as she guides a young student to attain all the ingredients of a singing tone legato, by pairing two "sighing" notes with an activation of relaxed arms and supple wrist forward movements. But the right "mechanics" of motion are not enough. The student must absorb the "feeling" of weight transfer and fluidity of motion, as she ties it to the imagined/internalized tonal ideal. And tone is tied to the way we phrase notes that have a pervasive musical relationship to each other. (Words and music partnered together are particularly effective in furthering what should be imagined before playing)

https://www.facebook.com/yanira.soria.1/videos/10103342673133385/

(Those who cannot access Facebook posted videos can check Gorin's comparable videos at her you tube site) This particular lesson sample below ties in nicely to the one generated from Madrid.)

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Irina Mints, another inspiring mentor who's based in Germany, lays down a thorough foundation for her primary level piano students as revealed in this exemplary lesson. Working with just three notes, she "sings" beside her pupil, "liebes kind" while physically modeling a set of sequences.

https://www.facebook.com/irina.mints.3/videos/1869818886622848/

Another lesson sample in the public domain:

Both Mints and Gorin use props to help students "feel" the keyboard as soft and and pliant as opposed to being a hard turf. Gorin will often use silly putty in which pupils can dip their fingers to experiment with density, while Mints will use a toy with soft consistency to aid in a mental transfer to the piano.

Here, Mints plays a Gliere Prelude with a student, showing a dual collaboration of supple wrist movements to produce lyrical phrases.

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Irina Morozova, an accomplished pianist and teacher, patiently mentors a 6-year old at the Special School/Kaufman Center (NYC) with her focus on relaxed arms, supple wrists, and weight application in order to produce well-voiced, singing tone chords. (Left hand)

During the same lesson she works on legato/staccato groupings for the Right Hand, demonstrating a centered impetus needed to launch a pleasing group of well-shaped notes.

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My only young piano student (who began studies with me at age 8) has benefitted from a careful embedding of a supple wrist, relaxed "weeping willow" arms approach to the piano–always being ear-attentive, and centered on the singing tone and phrasing. Our "singing" back and forth during lessons reinforces an internalized ideal of mood, tone, and rhythm, while differentiating between vowel sounds and consonants, has a relationship to phrasing. Words and music are a particularly valuable pairing in early mentoring efforts.

In summary, there are no shortcuts in learning to play the piano. A teacher must have a patient commitment to developing sensitivity to tone production and phrasing right at the outset of lessons by working with a student in well-planned baby steps.

Original Content: No shortcuts in teaching beginning piano students