Hi. Welcome to The Piano Podcast. I'm Mario Ajero.
In this video, I want to show some piano pieces that you could teach to
young preschool children as young as age three to prepare them for
traditional piano lessons.
I'm hoping this video is useful to both professional piano teachers as well as
parents who just want to give their young children a head start on piano lessons.
One of the first activities that you can actually do at the keyboard is to teach
your kids that the piano consists of two black keys and three black keys.
Can you play two black keys like this?
Once children can find the two black keys, you can do
short rhythmic patterns alternating between the two black keys like this one.
i use braced second fingers like this because most kids around the age of
three don't have the individual finger control yet to use multiple fingers.
So don't rush that part in these initial learning stages.
After they can repeat after you, make sure they can play in the different octaves of the keyboard.
This introduces them to transposing and establishes a physical and aural
connection between the other parts of the keyboard.
after that move on to the groups of three Black Keys you might want to start
with just simple up and down patterns but hot cross buns is probably the most
accessible piece on three Black Keys as it has no it's going down and groups of
repeated notes going up
after they've mastered it on three Black Keys challenge them to move it on to
other sets of three keys like B, A, & G right next to it
transposing to other key areas reinforces the intervallic relationships
between notes in music which is probably more important than learning the
individual notes themselves to other easy key areas are the EDC groups and
even the B
excuse me D sharp C sharp B groups
mary had a little lamb is another familiar tune that's a little bit more
complex to teach because it has more changes in direction than hot cross buns
teach it in small phrases that the young student can master first
and then piece it all together
moving students to tunes that span more than just the three Black Keys is
easy with tunes like the first part of Old MacDonald
from there you can move to familiar tunes that have jumps of a fifth in it
like twinkle twinkle little star
let the child use both hands so that he or she can more easily find the jump
like this
as you can tell i like to play little accompaniments along with the young child
this acts as a motivator to have the child feel like he or she is part of a
larger and fuller sounding piece of music
also it helps the child get a stronger sense of pulse and rhythm
they can simply be chordal accompaniments that go back and forth between tonic
dominant and subdominant harmonies
if the child has an older sibling that plays piano then it's a wonderful
opportunity to put them together for duet playing such as this rendition of
happy birthday performed by Olivia
accompanied by her brother Nio
for parents who are interested in introducing these activities for their
young children to start playing piano make it a regular part of your
family everyday activities for example i started all my children with playing the
piano a little bit after dinner
each time and just became a regular occurrence something that was expected
of the children try to always be encouraging and positive with your
comments towards them and the attitude towards playing the piano
however try to resist the temptation to bribe them with external incentives or
rewards anything like that
the music itself should act as the incentive if they actually do well
and succeed at it
that's going to be enough motivation for them to continue and excel at the piano
playing and in future lessons if you have any questions regarding this or any
other matter relating to the piano
feel free to contact me through facebook or twitter or any of the other websites
the contact information is listed at the end of this video
Say keep practicing piano
Say bye-bye