Starting a new piece/ Goal Setting＆Planning

I am always learning and sharing my knowledge with my dear students.

Among the few students who presented what they had learned in December Concert, there was a particular person who had taken a big piece and struggled for the last years and finally performed on stage

There was a time she almost quit piano, but she recovered, and how happy I was about her accomplishment.

Now, she is ready to pick a new song

A well-known Japanese music publisher " ZENON music publishing," has a list of music pieces, and they divided them into five levels according to their judgment on the difficulty of each piece.

The piece this student performed was level B, and now, she feels she wants to try the next level.

I did not know at all that she cared about the ZENON publishing levels so much.

When I told her about this the other student, she also looked at the back page( photo attached) and found her piece at a certain level and raising some feelings of competition.( seemed so)

Actually, I do not care or paid much attention to the list but whatever gives motivation to students are welcome!

So now, How to start a new piece..

How we start a new piece

１、Put measure numbers

２、Check the key( tonality) and Time signature

３、Review or learn the scale of the tonality. check the tetra chord, fingering, and scale degrees.

４、check the musical term( Italian) about the character of the piece at the beginning

５、Find musical forms and patterns.

Finding patterns is the most important part of reading music

　　　If there are repeated segments, we do not need to practice twice! Hooray!!

６、Recently, I learned the word" Audiate" 、It is

"Solfe" and singing in DOREMI ( ABC) combined. ( will write about this another time.) We recite the melody lines with DOREMI together.

　　 Check melodic phrase lines、

７、Check where the goal of each phrase 、where the high points are, which one should sound louder than others, etc. by singing and audiating, then decide and write down fingering( numbers)

８、Practice several times until students understand and are able to retain

９、Often these works are done only in the Right-hand part

　　　 Find Patterns that are the same

１０、Now, find slight or some differences in similar patterns and spot how they are different.

　If the differences are not too complicated, practice together differences too so that students can work on them by him/ her self.

１１、 Now take a look at the Left-hand side, especially a baseline

　　　　Tonic, Subdominant, Dominant, Leading Note, or Super Tonic, check the scale degree of each bass note, Find cadences

I always want my students to learn to play the piano pieces they are learning but teach them how to learn and how music is made, etc.... so that in the future they could teach their students.

My analogy is "not just being able to drive a car, but also know the mechanism of driving, road safety, and know the signs and know why they are there.

All the students are Gem. Parents are investing in my piano lessons; I would like to answer to the parents' trust by providing knowledge of music and the art of playing piano which students in the future hand down to their students to either earn some pocket money or fee for teaching

This is my way of letting students learn new pieces. Unless they are preparing for competitions and need to learn a huge amount of music, I prefer my students to learn a few pieces at a lenient pace, and they would be able to remember those pieces they learned for their whole life and enjoy them. Of course, not to mention it would be wonderful if they could acquire the skills of reading music fast and learning faster.