Great Piano Teaching Practices for any Genre

Great piano teaching requires not only skill base and knowledge but also much preparation. Years of seeing what students struggle with and learning how to address these issues. These years of teaching experience allow an instructor to construct an effective and flexible musical curriculum for a great variety of piano students. One of the biggest shortcomings of piano teachers is that they fail to emphasize chord study. This is an area which many students are often very curious about and even frustrated that they haven’t been thoroughly educated in this regard. Both Jazz piano teachers and Classical piano teachers NEED to be discussing chords, inversions/positions, and voicings with every student in one way or another.

Teaching Chords (Quality, Drills, Voicings, Movements)

I suggest starting with visuals and preferably a piano chord picture book such as the image below. (excerpt from my chord book)

This is a great resource for piano students because it allows them to see how to play a variety of chord qualities on any given pitch without having to understand why it is that way (this comes later). Take a student through many different chord types with the root C. Have them drill all inversions of each chord quality in both hands. They will naturally become curious and ask questions about 7ths, flat 5s, half-diminished, fully diminished, augmented chords etc. without you even bringing it up. Picture books allow young aspiring jazz piano students to play more jazz tunes and, most importantly, understand the chord symbols in the lead sheets.

After they have played many jazz lead sheets begin showing how to better voice chord movements. Here is an example of how I have taught students to play the first four chords of “Take the A Train” more smoothly using chord inversions rather than all root based chords.

This voicing of chord-movements usually requires a highly advanced chord vocabulary however constructing the pictures makes it child’s play.

Repertoire with analysis (schemata and melody-harmony relations)

Below are three schemata or musical tropes if you will. One, “The Grand Opening” a typical musical chord pattern which is VERY often found at the beginning of compositions. The opening of many Mozart symphonies and piano concertos can be reduced to this “Grand Opening” model. When students are taught the pattern first and then learn to recognize it in the piano repertoire they say “A-ha! now this I’ve seen before”. Recognizing these schemata allow piano students to see the deep relationship between melody and harmony. This understanding brings many musical benefits for pianists including better memorization, improved sight-reading, improvisation skills, and aural skills (they can hear the chord pattern). Also shown below are two other typical schemata (musical parlance) they are the “Fauxbourdon” usually found in the middle of a musical idea and the “Cadence” usually found at the end of a musical idea or piece. Lastly to demonstrate the three pattern is a composition "Carousel." The patterns are clearly labeled to allow the student to see how the piece is made of of three very simple plans.

Don’t forget the basics (sight-reading, solfeggio, fun repertoire, and listening)

These concepts are so obviously the bread and butter of good piano teaching and music instruction in general that I will not dwell on them here. I do, however, feel compelled to say a few thoughts on the matter. I aim to use sight-reading cards in every piano lesson to give my students musical autonomy. Who would expect someone to give a speech in front of an audience when the person couldn’t first read? Why then should a teacher have a young pianist recite music, which is a language after all, in front of an audience when they might not even have the skills to read it! Sight-reading is a must in every lesson.

Solfeggio is amazing when it comes to ear-training and is a must. I don’t expect every student to be a singer, but I do expect them to at least match pitch with their voice. Finally, every self-respecting piano teacher must inspire the student with awesome, interesting, and fun musical repertoire both for performing and for listening enjoyment. How obvious it is when a student does not listen to a variety of music. Expose students to as much musical culture as possible.

I hope you enjoyed the read and happy practicing!

-Branden Downing

Branden is a pianist, composer, and music educator in the Ft. Collins area.