A Music Teacher's Blog

My Piano Studio is a Double LOL

Tales from the Field: Our Master Piano Teacher Cathey shares that her piano studio is a Double LOL: Lots of Love and Lots of Laughs.

One of the many things I love about being around children is their unabashed truthfulness at times. When a child starts beginner piano lessons,  method books have them put their hands around a central note, (usually middle C) and leave them in that position for the entire song. This means that the student can look at the page without looking at their hands, and it eliminates the confusion of looking back and forth from the keyboard to the page and losing their place in the music. It takes a lot of discipline for the child to do this, but is important to develop a feel for the distances between notes on the keyboard.

Diana, age five, was trying to read a piece of music for the first time, and after ascertaining that she had all fingers on the correct keys and her hands were in the right place, I asked her to begin. She played a few notes, but then for some reason, began to look at me, and inevitably got lost and stopped. I reminded her of the importance of looking at the music, because “the fingers will do whatever your brain tells them to do, and the brain can only get the right notes by looking at the page.” “Besides,” I continued, “why would you want to look at my face? There aren’t any notes up here on my face to play, are there?” She looked very carefully at my forehead, bare of bangs, and most sincerely said, “Well no, but there are a lot of lines there that we could put some notes on!” After laughing with her mortified mother, I left the music lesson with a smile on my face, lines and all.