When a Student is Nervous About a Challenging Piece…

Author: admin

25 Jun

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If a student seems daunted by a piece that moves around a lot, this is what I do.

I have the student do a “dry practice,” where she simply moves her hands to the new positions. She doesn’t play a note- the goal is to just get her hands where they belong.

Then, to make it really fun, I time the student! The goal being, of course, that she will improve with each “dry run.”

It’s a sneaky way to get my students to drill. They love trying to beat previous times, so they’re willing to do this over and over.

It’s also a very effective self-esteem boost. The second time is generally always faster than the painfully slow first time. And the third much faster than the second. I always point out how much they improved.

Once they feel comfortable moving their hands, we introduce the notes.

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3 Responses for "When a Student is Nervous About a Challenging Piece…"

Mike Saville June 25th, 2009 at 4:47 am 1
Interesting tip, kind of a sideways distraction that is practice related. I like the idea and I think if used sparingly could be a really useful addition to the teachers armoury.

You make no mention of accuracy? Do you take account of this? No point moving really, really quick if the hand position or notes is going to be wrong.

The concept of getting students to ‘drill’ is good. I would question if I would want them aiming to be as fast as they can right from the off . . .. hmm . . . . I’ll mull this one over.

Thanks for the post though – thought provoking.
admin June 25th, 2009 at 7:02 am 2
Mike,
Yes, they must have accuracy when moving, or we don’t introduce the notes.

Having them move fast gives them confidence as well as getting them in the right place. It helps once we introduce the notes because they don’t have to think about where their hands should be. They’ve already mastered that, and now they can just focus on the notes.

-Rebecca
Tammy June 27th, 2009 at 5:09 am 3
I have one or two students who also get the “deer in the headlights” look or say “this piece is too hard for me” (cringe) when they see a potentially challenging piece. So I, too, take a similar path and whisk them to my dining room table along with their music and a few ’silent keyboards’ (those plastic 2-octave things). We sit out there and slowly break the piece down: time signature, potential problem areas, and then (depending on the student), we take it one hand at a time and look for and play all the similarities. At first, we take the rhythm very slowly and focus on getting the notes and potential jumps right. Then we will go back and get the rhythm down if necessary. After playing it “dry” at the dining room table, they feel so good about themselves and every time say, “That’s not so hard after all”…and we go back to the piano to play it on the keys. Happiness!