Hi. I'm Mario Ajero and welcome to The Piano Podcast.
A lot of parents wonder when is the right time to start piano lessons for their kids
While there's no right
or exact age as every child is different
however as my daughter so eloquently stated in a roundabout way in a previous video
it's never too early to regularly have your children listen to and interact with all types
of music
I used to have a policy that a student had to be at least six years old or older in order to take
piano lessons with me. Mostly this was because I found many students younger than this age
but not all them
didn't have the patience or maturity level to work one-on-one with me for thirty or forty-five
minutes that the lesson takes
however after working with my own son, Nio, I've come to the conclusion that one can start
piano lessons at a significantly earlier age
we of course have seen this in many students who study Suzuki Piano
while I'm not a Suzuki trained or certified teacher
I tried to adopt some of the methods and philosophies with the way the way I introduced
the piano to my son.
I started my son of off with teaching him some songs by rote at the piano when he was
three years old
these were commonly heard folk tunes and songs that he had already been familiar with
from
songs we had played at home and also songs that he's experienced with in his Kindermusik
classes
by the way if you haven't explored some early childhood music programs such as
Kindermusik or Musikgarten
you might want to explore those before starting formal piano lessons
after he had complex experience playing pieces at the piano by rote and ear, it was time to move him into
reading music notation
While a piano method is not required to teach reading music
there's so many out there that present materials in a nice progressive sequence
to get students to become competent musicians
I chose to use the Hal Leonard Student Piano Library to draw materials which my son
could learn from
this is one of the initial pages and initial pieces within the
Hal Leonard Student Piano library
The reason why I chose this method with my son Nio was that the pages are really
clear and not
cluttered with lots of extra information that is
unnecessary at the time here
whenever a new concept is introduced such as notes here
they box that off in this a blue area
at the top of each age where we introduce notes
They explain how the notes with the stems pointing up should be played with the right
hand and the notes
pointing down are...
with the stems point down are played with the left hand
while that's not true with all of music notation here it's a great way for the students to
get
used to
distinguishing one note from the other right hand and left hand in this particular case
here is we're playing with these braced fingers I like the diagrams where that show how they
should be playing with the fingers braced
behind
so then they don't have collapsing knuckles. That establishes some good technique there
and also the way that the notes are represented on the page. You'll notice that the first phrase
over here: climbing climbing up this tree it starts off written lower on the page
and then when the student moves to
another group of two black keys up higher on the page then of course they are written
higher on the page
just like the played higher on the keyboard
One of the most appealing features of the Hal Leonard
Student Library is the
the quality of the music even at
an early on stage of musical development
a lot of that is enhanced by the use of the accompaniments that teachers can play along
with the students here
If you look at the bottom
of this Climbing Up piece. You have the written out accompaniment that the teachers can
play along
and if the parents can't play the accompaniments which can be elaborate at sometimes
there's also the CD and MIDI disks
that students can work on at home
but here's a video of me and Nio playing the climbing up piece along with the
climbing down piece to give you a sense of
of what this piece is like
the next piece that I want to show you is My Dog Spike. Spike the dog is one of
the mascots of the Hal Leonard Student Library
along with
Party Cat
who a lot of students seem to enjoy follow
their progress throughout the books
My Dog Spike is simply
an arrangement of a popular folk tune Hot Cross Buns which many students should
be already aware of
you'll see the new concepts here in the blue boxes we have the quarter note
that is introduced
and then also the quarter rest
I actually take the approach that I actually have students
experience the
the feel of the quarter notes and quarter rests through either clapping or tapping
before I actually introduce the actual symbol and the label of them here. Of course
with Nio my son
he already has experienced hot cross buns and
the quarter notes and quarter rests there so it was really easy to translate it
into actual tangible
music notation
Hot Cross Buns or My Dog Spike falls into this
three note pattern
it's usually best for students to work on the group of black keys here. We're working on the group
of three black keys with the fingers in the left hand: 4-3-2 here
Students seem to grasp
or are able to associate finger numbers with certain keys, the black keys
much more easily than they do on the
white keys here
and then
they learned the piece through
playing it off of the staff
but you'll notice that the notes are written
directionally and that they move up and down according to where they are on the keyboard here
so My Dog Spike goes
My Dog Spike - rest off to school - rest
out to prove that
he's so cool - rest
the best way to approach this piece when introducing the notation
to students so that
they see the bigger picture
I like to point out that there's basically two different patterns going on here
You have the My Dog Spike
here that two three four pattern and then the rest
then simply repeat it here again in
the off to school
And you even see that in the end with the he's so cool part here
it's really important I think for students even at this early age to
start
seeing notes in groups rather than concentrating on the individually here
so that they see that this
piece is merely made of two different patterns the My Dog Spike two three four pattern
and the out to prove that four four three three
pattern as well
this is also accompanied by the sister piece in the right hand
Sorry Spike. And here's a video of
both Nio and myself playing
the accompaniment part
to My Dog Spike and Sorry Spike
As you noticed, most of the initial pieces in this Hal Leonard Student Piano Library Lesson Book
have teacher accompaniments to go along with them
I think this is crucial as it helps students
establish better listening habits and a steadier sense of rhythm
number two that it's also motivational by having students significantly contribute to the
music making process of a larger sounding piece
In Merrily We're Off to School we get another student teacher duet on a familiar tune
based off of
Mary had a little lamb
students are also introduced to the
whole note
and you can see some of the cute illustrations on this page
what's that? Whole Note? How many counts does it get? Four.
right
Merrily We're off to School