Interleaved practice is the practice of alternating or randomizing various tasks, assignments, and pieces during a longer practice session. It’s how I, as a professional, practice. And it’s one way that I’m attempting to train my students to practice. While I haven’t done any scientific studies, I can tell you that when my students practice this way, it works. They are far more efficient.

Today we’re talking about how to teach Moment Musicaux No.5 in F Minor by Franz Schubert. This is an impressive late-intermediate piece with a lot of character. Be sure to watch until the end when I discuss two Schubert trademarks found in this piece.

I was honored when Ben Kapilow invited me on his podcast called All Keyed Up. Ben asks the most insightful and thought-provoking questions! I hope you will listen to the episode, as well as many others on the podcast - he has had some fantastic guests.

I wanted to flesh out here my answer to one of the questions he asked, because I realized I had never actually stopped to really consider it.

What fundamentally makes a great teacher of intermediate students?

Today we’re talking about how to teach the Sonatina in A Minor Op.27, No.18 by Dmitri Kabalevsky. This piece comes from the set titled Thirty Pieces for Children, and it is an excellent teaching piece that easily engages a student’s imagination. It’s also a wonderful etude for working on dotted rhythms.

🎄 Merry Christmas, piano teachers! 🎄

To celebrate, I’m giving away a free 30-minute Teacher Consultation to the winner of this contest. If you’re not familiar with my consultation service, click here to learn more.

All entries must be received by 11:59pm central time on Friday, December 17. The winner will be announced the next day via email.

There are two ways you can enter:

Today we’re talking about how to teach the Tarantella Op.100, No.20 by Johann Friedrich Burgmüller. (The German spelling of Tarantella is Tarantelle; they are pronounced similarly.) This is a highly patterned, motivating piece for intermediate students with some good technical challenges. Tarantellas are always good fodder for the imagination, either because you picture someone dancing to avoid a spider or dancing to shake out the spider’s poison!

Today we’re talking about how to teach the Sonatina in F Major Anh.5, No.2 by Ludwig van Beethoven. This is a fast, fun, mid-intermediate sonatina movement that can teach students a lot about Beethoven’s style.

In this post, rather than focus on one particular piece of intermediate repertoire, I’d like to discuss how to teach holiday music. Currently, due to my demographic, 100% of my students celebrate Christmas, at least on a secular level, although that hasn’t always been the case. So, for this post, I’m going to use examples from the massive canon of secular and sacred tunes that Americans associate with the Christmas holiday. Your studio might look different than mine depending on your location, demographic, and personal beliefs, and of course it is appropriate to be sensitive to your students and fine to avoid religious music altogether if that is best for you. While that might mean that the specific repertoire doesn’t apply to you, hopefully there are some principles here that will be helpful when considering any type of music that is familiar to students (pop music, Broadway or movie tunes, other religious music, folk music, etc.).

In my previous post, I gave some suggestions for which concerti might be appropriate for pre-college students to learn, as well as some prerequisites for studying concerti. That post was prompted by my friend Andrea Miller over at Studio Music Startup asking me to come discuss this question in one of her Clubhouse chats. The chat was super fun! And I realized I had a few other thoughts that I could offer in a part 2 of this topic on my blog.

(Concertos? Concerti? According to dictionary.com, either version of the plural is acceptable.)

Today I want to address a common question:

Which piano concerto should I teach to a pre-college student?

Here are some examples of standard historical concerti that I have taught in the past; I have primarily taught the first movement of each:

Today we’re talking about how to teach the Chopin Prelude in E Minor. This is one of the easiest pieces by Chopin to learn, and one that students can personalize with their own expression. To be clear, this video is aimed at helping teachers work with intermediate or recreational students. It is not intended to be a tutorial for advanced professionals tackling Chopin’s Preludes.

In my previous post, I shared my newest resource for piano teachers, my Repertoire Difficulty Worksheet. I wanted to introduce it more fully here. This worksheet asks several questions to help you see everything on a musical score and compare those elements to what your student already knows and has encountered.

When I’m sizing up a piece, the main areas I consider are:

If you’ve read other posts on my blog (like this one about Beethoven Sonatas) or watched many of my YouTube videos (like this one about Für Elise), then you know that I’m passionate about teaching appropriately-leveled repertoire to each student. But why? Why shouldn’t we let our students learn pieces by ear that are above their reading or comprehension level? Pieces that might be motivating because they are standards in the piano repertoire, but that might be too hard for our student to read, understand, or handle technically?

Today we’re talking about how to teach the German Dances Hob.XVI:22 by Franz Joseph Haydn. In the video, I specifically discuss the German Dance No.2 in D Major, but the principles I cover can be applied to any in this set, as well as several similar dances at this level. These are fun, happy pieces at the early intermediate level that are excellent preparation for harder dances and other Classical-era works such as sonatinas.

One of the topics that teachers frequently want to discuss in consultations is how to prepare students for performance. I have many thoughts on this (more posts to come), but one area that we must cover with our students is the body’s response to performing - what our body naturally does when it feels “nervous,” or under pressure.

Student: 15 years old, upper intermediate level

Piece: various selections prior to an exam, including a Bach Invention

Issue: This student noticed in the previous year’s exam that she felt very nervous, and that her tempos in particular felt out of control. (Her dad also noticed through the door, and her judge commented on her very fine performance, but that it was all at a break-neck speed!)

Tactic: Train the student to recognize the body’s normal response to performance

Last week, I was privileged to give my Top Ten Tips for Piano Teachers (David Letterman style) lecture to the Wheaton College piano pedagogy class. It’s a tradition that’s been going on for roughly 15 years!

I decided to take an excerpt from the whole lecture and give you a sneak peak at my first tip - number 10:

Encourage students to perform regularly, and provide them with developmentally appropriate performance opportunities.

Today we’re talking about how to teach the Chopin Nocturne in C-sharp Minor, opus posthumous. This is a difficult piece to navigate because editors have argued over what Chopin actually wrote or intended. However, it is a well-loved favorite for students and a good introduction to Chopin’s Nocturnes.

There's a lot of confusion amongst piano teachers about how to teach ornaments. I'm hopeful that this video can help clear up some of that and provide a basis for teaching the four most common ornaments in intermediate and early advanced repertoire: the mordent, trill, turn and appoggiatura.

On Thursday, I’ll give a presentation to the West Suburban Music Teachers Association titled 20/20 Vision for Piano Teachers: Building a Foundation for Expressive Performance. Anyone can join us over Zoom! Click here for more info. For those of you who can’t join, here’s a tiny taste of what my presentation is all about.

Any good company, organization, church, business, or entrepreneur is going to have thoughts about why they do what they do and what they want to accomplish…

Today we're talking about how to teach Reverie by Claude Debussy. It is a well-loved piece that late intermediate/early advanced piano students love playing, and a good introduction to Debussy. It should go without saying that in an eleven-minute video, I was unable to go into a long discussion of how to teach tone color and nuanced voicing, but I hope that these basic thoughts are helpful to you and your students.