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Games You Can Play on Online

Written by Kim Kumph on . Posted in Online Lessons.

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  1. Duets: record yourself playing and send over to the student, give them instructions on how to practice with a recording and have them perform for you during lesson

  2. Improvising game: Have a musical conversation with a student, set clear rules for the key, and encourage them to improvise with you

  3. Question and Answer: Play a musical melodic question and have the student improvise a related melodic answer a few times back and forth. Try having the student go first. Encourages the student to get out of their own head and just be creative.

  4. Copy and Change: Similar to Question and Answer, the teacher plays/sings a short melody to the student and they have to repeat the same melody with a single change back to you. Second time, you play their changed melody and add another change, the student repeats the melody from you and adds another change and so on.

  5. Musical Snake: Basically start with a 3 note pattern and have the student repeat. If they get it correct you add another note, and see if the student can repeat it back and so on. I did this with voice students with solfege  and they loved the challenge of this memory game.

  6. Piano Safari – Pick two notes on opposite ends of the piano for two animals to start on. Then tell a story about the animals trying to get eachother – the more animated the story the better. Keep bringing the animals closer together to the middle of the piano until they reach the same note and one gets the other one.

    i.e
    “It’s lunchtime and the tiger is sooo hungry, he sees the rabbit and jumps up one octave to A”
    “The rabbit is very sneaky and sees a cave to hide in on Eb, he jumps down as quick as he can”

  7. Piano in the Dark – 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.

  8. Finger Play Poems – this is a great time to work on hand technique. I love this finger play poems. All finger action demonstrations can be found on video here

  9. Quiz your student on concepts they are struggling with and let them “secretly” type the answer into the chat feature. You can even use a certain emoji to tell them if they are right or wrong. While we don’t want to become distracted by the technology, when controlled it can get kids engaged.

  10. Building Rhythmville – students use legos to build rhythms with this fun worksheet.

  11. Listening Games: this is a great time to play listening games.

    1. Eartraining Superhero – Major and minor chords (tip: this can be played with even very beginners, just be obvious…for example play very legato minor arpeggios and jumpy major chords)

    2. Teen Piano Game – Relative Major and Minor

    3. Interval Escape – 4ths, 5ths, 6ths

    4. Play the first line of a popular song and ask your student to figure out the missing notes on their piano