Webinar Handout (downloadable PDF): File Name: Webinar-Handout-1_19_2022 File Size: 176 kb Download File Did you enjoy this webinar? Please complete our brief survey to help us improve our webinar series and continue to bring you the highest quality resources in piano teaching.

By Craig Sale Q: I've enjoyed your Frances Clark Center webinars on preparation activities. I am unsure of what activities I should do with and without the keyboard and would appreciate some specific ideas and guidance. A: The key element in preparation activities is experience! Before encountering a new musical concept in a piece, the st...

Answers for Successful Online Teaching of Elementary Group Lessons with Craig Sale, Sara Ernst, Amy Glennon, Rebecca Pennington, Allison Shinnick, and Angela Triandafillou  Did you enjoy this webinar? Please complete our brief survey to help us improve our webinar series and continue to bring you the highest quality resources in piano teaching...

Town Hall Discussion: Effective Teaching in Challenging Times and Beyond with Jennifer Snow, Sara Ernst, Andrea McAlister, Pamela Pike, and Craig Sale Did you enjoy this webinar? Please complete our brief survey to help us improve our webinar series and continue to bring you the highest quality resources in piano teaching. 

In 1981, the year I received my graduate degree in piano performance, advanced degrees in piano pedagogy were just beginning to appear. Thanks to the work of the National Conference on Piano Pedagogy, there would be a blossoming of pedagogy degree programs in the coming years, but at this point, performance degrees were the norm. My pedagogy e...

Note from Sam Holland The great psychologist, Abraham Maslow once observed, "In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety." C.S. Lewis noted, "There are far better things ahead than any we leave behind." Changes are coming in the "Questions and Answers" column. As you know, over the past ye...

Did you enjoy this webinar? Please complete our brief survey to help us improve our webinar series and continue to bring you the highest quality resources in piano teaching. Handout 187 kb Download Files

Preparation and Presentation Context: Pieces that are helpful to have experienced or played before approaching this one Kabalevsky, A Little Porcupine, op. 89, No. 8Köhler, Melody, op. 190, no. 27Diabelli, Scherzo in C, Op. 149, No. 6 Get Ready: Creative activities to explore before the first encounter with the score, to prepare a student for deepe...

Did you enjoy this webinar? Please complete our brief survey to help us improve our webinar series and continue to bring you the highest quality resources in piano teaching.

Editor's note: Clavier Companion reviewed these recordings for the May/June 2018 issue. Click here to read it.  It is a delight to uncover lost gems from the last century such as Alexander Borovsky, a great 20th century pianist and teacher, and his paper entitled "The Bach Specialists of the World." Borovsky was born in Mitau, Latvia, March 8,...

Teachers should always strive to provide positive and successful music experiences for their students. Within the walls of the teaching studio, it is much easier to create these experiences—the environment and people involved are familiar, and the teacher has more control of outcomes. However, this is not the case when students leave the studi...

In April, the world of piano pedagogy lost a legend. In the following pages, friends and colleagues of Louise Goss pay tribute with remembrances and recollections.  In the "old days," all senior piano majors at Oberlin were required to take piano pedagogy. I will never forget the excitement our professor exuded when she presented to us the bra...

Road maps and detours by Craig Sale One of my worst nightmares is arriving at the school where I teach to realize I have left that day's lesson plans at home.  On the rare occasions when this has happened, I have managed to conduct a reasonably structured lesson by following the student's last assignment in their notebook. Generally, I remembe...

Meaningful connections Successful teachers always try to make connections for students— creating and demonstrating meaningful relationships among various activities and concepts. They strive to show students how a good technique enables them to play their repertoire with greater ease; how understanding music theory makes reading and memorization ea...

In this issue, we address the teaching of a basic, but often challenging, skill—the dotted-quarter eighth note rhythm. We wanted to take a different approach and survey several teachers to assemble a wider collection of ideas for you, the reader, to consider.  Nine teachers of pre-college students submitted their thoughts on teaching this rhyt...

The idea of reading patterns in music first became important to me when I began teaching young students how to read music. In my formative years I was raised on a note-by-note approach that began at Middle C. It worked for me... at least I thought it did. Today, even though I teach children to read by interval relation...

Earlier in the year, I established a private discussion group on Facebook with four teachers from around the country— Monica Allen, Laura Beauchamp-Williamson, Rebecca Pennington, and Scott Price. Our goal was to have some conversations about music reading which would lead to the sharing of ideas and resources. It is important to know that the...

Experience and research tells us that the more one reads a language the more fluency is gained. This is, of course, true of sight-reading as well. Making this happen with our students in an organized and motivating manner eludes many of us, myself included. This is why I was so intrigued when told of the exciting new sight-reading program implement...

When I think back on the great teachers I have encountered in my life, I find that they all had one thing in common—the ability to boil things down to their essence. These teachers' abilities to reveal the essence of the subject matter made my understanding possible. Perhaps it was an applied teacher communicating the essentials of tone production,...