This Hopscotch song and activity is made specifically for online piano lessons. For the piano Hopscotch warm-up, have your student jump on the spaces with the appropriate fingers. For added fun have the throw a small piece of candy on the board to see show far they should go. It’s best to print out the page but the student can also use an iPad. These finger patterns directly translate to the hopscotch song.
Learning piano for the first time takes a lot of practice and can feel tedious at times. However, there are many ways to make it fun! Here are 3 games for the piano that will be sure to bring some smiles to your practice session!
Objective: Learn the notes on the keyboard and staff
Step 1: Place stickers on pennies with each of the note names (A through G)
Step 2: Put the pennies face down on the notes they belong to (don’t put them in order)
Step 3: Say the note before you turn over the penny, do it until you get them all right!
**Advanced!!!
Draw your own large staff paper with the spaces between the lines big enough for the pennies. Place the pennies on the staff to write your own song!
Objective: Quickly recognize different keys on the piano (in preparation for sight-reading)
Step 1: Buy 2 plastic animals at your local toy store.
Step 2: Start with the two animals placed 5-8 white keys apart from each other.
Step 3: Tell your student which keys the animals need to run to not to get caught by the other one (in this case we will use a rabbit and jaguar) i.e “The rabbit is going to run up to the key Ab to get away, but now the jaguar is going to jump to the key B to try and get him.”
This game can be quite fun and help with quick recognition of the piano keys!
Objective: Recognize different tempos and learn to feel the beat in your body
Step 1: Either at the piano or on a CD player, play very fast music and have your student jump around the room at the beat of the music.
Step 2: Without warning, switch to slow music and have your student quietly tip-toe around the room to the tempo of the music.
Step 3: Vary the tempos and have your student recognize the changes. Fall down at the end!
When I played soccer as a child we used a drill where the team would run laps in a straight line and every time you got to the back of the line you had to sprint to the front of the line. This reminds me a lot of making inversions on the piano. When practicing inversions with triads, the bottom note “runs up the piano” to become the highest note. Remember, with inversions the note names never change- only their order. The graphic I created below represents the steps of creating inversions for a C triad, these same steps can be used for any chord.
Starting piano lessons? Using a keyboard is a fun and effective way to learn piano. Many piano players opt to buy a digital keyboard over an acoustic piano for convenience, space, affordablility, and easy transport. When buying a new keyboard, there are several important factors to consider.
Some keyboards offer 100’s of different sounds such as organ, clavinet, wurlitzer, and even drum grooves to play over. Think carefully whether or not you will actually use these sounds. If you are a classical pianist you will probably only have the need for a very good piano sound.
Action is how the weight of the keys feel when you press them down. Some keyboards have keys that are “weighted” and others do not. If the keyboard does not have weighted keys, the keys will press down with very little resistance, which will not feel like the sensation of playing a real piano. Keyboards that are “touch resitant” are not weighted but will recognize when you are playing in different velocities.
A full size piano has 88 keys. Keyboard typically come with 88 keys, 73 keys, or 61 keys. Any of these sizes are fine for a beginner, once you get smaller than 61 keys it starts to become hard to play with both hands on the keyboard. For more advanced classical music it is helpful to have a full size keyboard.
Polyphony refers to the number of notes a kyeboard can play at the same time. Some low cost toy keybaords can only play one at a time. Greater polyphony allows smoother and more natural transition between notes. Digital pianos usually come with polyphony of 32, 64, 98, and 128.
Some keyboards feature built-in speakers and others can only make sound by plugging into a separate set of speakers. You will get better sounds by plugging your keyboard into high quality speakers but it is more convenient and affordable to use the built-in speakers. Almost all keyboards with built-in speakers have the option of plugging into alternative speakers.
This is a great beginner’s keyboard, featuring 484 instrument sounds. Jammin’ With You is now pleased to offer this models to our students at a discount price.
Size: 61 keys
Polyphony: 32 note
Built-in Speakers: Yes
Action: Touch sensitive
Price: $170-$250
This is a great keyboard to learn piano on while having access to many of the technology featutes of a full-featured digital keyboard. This Casio features 600 sounds to choose from and a 6 track recorder.
Size: 76 keys
Polyphony: 48 note
Built-in Speakers: Yes
Action: Touch-sensitive
Price: $179-$230
This keyboard gives you the most bang for your buck. It is a superior keyboard for it’s price point and is suitable for a performance setting. Many musicians prefer this keybaord over more expensive models because of it’s light weight at just under 25 lbs.
Size: 88 keys
Polyphony: 128 note
Built-in Speakers: Yes
Action: Weighted
Price: $499
This keyboard has excellent action that comes very close to the touch of a real piano. The CP33 has a superb piano sound and is a great choice for someone only looking for great acoustic piano sounds. This product lacks in competitive organ, clavinet, wurlitzer sounds.
Size: 88 keys
Polyphony: 64 note
Built-in Speakers: No
Action: Weighted
Price: $999
The Nord Stage is the Ferrari of performance keyboards. The Nord Stage is well worth the money for anyone looking for a library of excellent sounds. The Nord is ideal for playing funk, soul, R&B, and electronic music with its wealth of very quality instrument sounds such as electric piano, organ, and Wurlitzer. Note that this product comes in smaller sizes.
Size: 88 keys
Polyphony: full
Built-in Speakers: No
Action: weighted
Price: $4,199
Dirty hands, sneezing, and the occasional yogurt spill can take a toll on your sparkly white piano or keyboard keys. The easiest fix is to remember to wash your hands before playing each time- or better yet keep hand wipes beside the piano so you can’t forget. Nonetheless, most pianos need a little tender love and care every once in awhile.
Refrain from using any kinds of chemical sprays or household cleaners, these can destroy the finish on your keys.
If your piano keys are plastic, use a solution of vinegar and warm water. If your piano keys are ivory, use a solution of warm water and gentle soap. White toothpaste can also be used to clean ivory keys!
Dip a soft cloth in your cleaning solution. When you use the cloth on the keys make sure that it is NOT DRIPPING AT ALL. It’s very important to make sure no water drips between the keys. If water gets in between or under the keys it can do yucky things like warp the wood, moisten the felt (making the piano sound weird), and rust the strings.
When cleaning the keys, clean each key individually instead of wiping across the whole keyboard, this will prevent water from getting in between the keys.
Make sure to dry the keys with a dry cloth right after you’ve washed them.
After working hard on a piece of piano music, the last thing you want is to hear the music on an out of tune piano. For beginning and advanced students alike, tuning can make the difference in feeling satisfied with their piano playing. It’s much more encouraging to keep practicing if the work produces a beautiful sound. Having a tuned piano is more than just the right pitches, the overtones add inspiration and beauty to a piece of music. Especially when playing complex chords or transcribing music it is very important to have a well-tuned piano. I once had a student with a very out of tune piano, when we played complex music we would say “it sounds bad right now, but just remember it will sound right once the piano is tuned.” The student was so thrilled when they were finally able to hear all their beautiful playing on a tuned piano.
Piano keys have strings attached to each note. The piano tuner goes through each string and adjusts it’s tightness so that the string resonates at the correct frequency. The piano tuner uses tools such as specialized hammers, screwdrivers, pliers, mutes, and tuning forks to adjust the tuning.
The most common factor that causes pianos to go out of tune is changes in humidity. These changes in the air cause the soundboard to expand with moisture (causing the piano to go sharp), or have moisture drawn out (causing the piano to go flat). A piano will go out of tune even if it is never played.
The general recommendation is that a piano be tuned twice a year. However, pianos in professional recording studios or concert halls are tuned 3-4 times a week. Each piano and it’s set of environmental factors is different, adjust your piano tuning schedule accordingly.
Big Wrench Piano Care, (718) 599-9434
Ethan Janney, (718) 283-4283
PianoLand, (718) 376-2415
“Although education was traditionally seen as a rather serious and solemn undertaking, pedagogical trends in recent decades have shifted toward the promotion of a more relaxed learning environment and an emphasis on ‘making learning fun.’ The current prevailing philosophy of education argues that students are much more likely to be motivated to learn and to retain information if they are happy and amused than if they are feeling anxious and threatened” (The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative Approach, 349-350).
We agree! Music is supposed to be fun and joyful. Especially for younger students, it’s important to mix things up with games and activities relevant to the lesson topics. Here are some of my students’ favorite games. These games don’t take up too much time in a lesson or practice session but can bring a lot of fun and humor to the learning experience. These games can be used in lessons or in practice with the help of a parent.
The student closes their eyes and you tell them a note. The student tries to find the note with their eyes closed. The trick is to locate the groups of black keys, once you find the black keys in groups of 2’s and 3’s you can find any note within! This helps students with sight-reading and performing because they don’t rely on looking at the keyboard to find the notes.
This game can be used to learn rhythms of notated pitches. Make flashcards with either rhythms or notes in treble/clef, leave half the flash card blank so you can fold it in half so it stands up by itself. Hide the cards around the room (make them visible to you don’t spend the whole lesson looking for them). Send your student on a search (i.e “Find me a quarter note” or “I need a C in bass clef.”) This enforces quick identification of notes and rhythms.
Stand at one end of the room with flashcards: for beginners use flashcards that have a picture of a keyboard with one of the notes highlighted, for more advanced students use notes on the ledger lines. Put stickers, candy, or some other small prize on each of the keys. Show your student the card and have them run (or walk quickly!) to get the prize on the correct note (for a challenge you can also use the same note over several octaves). This helps students to become more automatic with identifying notes on the keyboard and the ledger lines.
Make cards with all the different kinds of rhythms your student has learned (don’t forget rests!). Make another set of cards with 3/4 or 4/4 measures that are note complete (i.e a 4/4 bar with only one half note). The student has to then go fishing for the rhythm to complete the bar (i.e for a card in 3/4 with one quarter note they could fish 1 half note or 2 quarter notes to finish the bar). This helps students become crystal clear on the relationship between rhythms.
As well as learning notated music it’s important for students to use their own creativity. In this exercise the teacher plays a groove on the lower part of the piano and gives the student 3-5 keys they can use to solo. The trick is to isolate the keys the student can play so that they are playing within the scale of the groove. A good way to start is to play a groove in B that will fit with the black keys. Students are so pleased when they hear how cool they sound!
The “right” age to begin piano lessons varies from child to child. A good first test is the age when your child can tie their shoes. Many four year olds can achieve great success with piano lessons. It’s important for these early lessons to be based around fun, and plenty of off the piano activities and games. Below are the skills you can expect your 4-year-old to gain in their first few months of lessons.
Begin teaching 4-year-olds with finger numbers. Books like WunderKeys, Faber Piano Adventures, and Alfred 1A Lesson Book, all have great pre-reading pieces. See more fun songs below.
In the early days of piano lesson, 4-year-olds can gradually build finger strength with fun games and stories. Practicing separating each finger from the other will help build grace and confidence at the piano.
Try These Resources: Finger Play Poems, Fun With Frogs: Fingers and Frogs
Start teaching notes by identifying the patterns of black keys on the piano (try using Seeing Black Key Patterns). Then slowly introduce one note at a time.
Try These Resources: Seeing Black Key Patterns, Introducing the Animals
I love using the stick rhythm method to teach young students. This technique uses words for each rhythm instead of numbers. This is particularly helpful for children who haven’t yet learned math.
Try These Resources: Blue Jello Cards, Rhythm Pizza, Miss Frog’s First Rhythms, Rhythm Hunt
I love to start the first lesson with young students by playing an Eb blues scale, and encouraging them to improvise by only playing black keys.
Try These Resources: I’ve Got The Blues Improv Activity, The Snowflake Technique
Four-year-olds can start composing at their first lesson. Encourage your student to start by using only two notes and write the pattern on one of the composing templates below.
