Do your children take piano lessons, or will they be taking lessons in the future? In this podcast, Jeff Marshall, who has been teaching piano lessons for 25+ years, shares with us his insights into what piano teachers wish parents knew. Find out the best time for children to start lessons, how much kids should practice, and what you should do and not do during your child’s piano lesson.
What Piano Teachers Wish Parents Knew
If you are a piano teacher: comment below if you agree, disagree, or have other suggestions or ideas. Parents: How do you encourage your children to practice piano and other music lessons?
More Podcasts to Come
This is the first in a series of podcasts Jeff and I will be sharing with you. Jeff and I are cousins and life-long friends, and I believe you will enjoy our friendly banter. What other topics would you like to see covered in these podcasts?
Taking 6 minutes to get to the first answer is annoying. The giggling and joking is excessive. I would keep that to a minimum. A 22 minute podcast could have been 10 minutes at the most. I had my computer’s and podcasts volume all the way up and still had problems hearing it.
Thanks for your feedback, Tina. Good to know for future podcasts.
Considering it was the first podcast we ever did, I’m proud. When you get two cousins together who’ve known each other for 40 years, there’s bound to be some giggling and joking – that’s just how we are. Always good to get feedback, though.
First of all – congratulations on your first podcast! Yipee!! Jeff – WHY did you not do an intro & exit of your magnificent piano playing? Next time, that’s a must!! I’ll be calling around in the next week or two to set Kamdyn, my seven year old, up with piano lessons. I had planned on doing that about 7 weeks ago but a broken arm made those plans have to wait. If only you were in FL, I wouldn’t have to “look around” for a piano teacher! But I digress… Another question I thought of while listening is about recitals – yay or nay? When I took lessons – starting in 2nd grade too – we had an annual recital that for me, as the performer, was a MARVELOUS event! But for the audience *might* have been painful to sit through. Do you/have you had recitals for your students? Do you think they are beneficial overall? Other thoughts? As I encourage Kamdyn to start down her musical journey, I am hoping she learns some basics of piano playing and music reading but mostly learns a love of playing/making music. Her brother, Jacob who is 12, as not had any music lessons mainly because he never showed an interest. I’m thinking with his sister starting lessons, his interest may perk up some – at least just to try it out possibly. We’ll see how it all goes!
(You two cousins are super silly & fun!)
PSPS – Jeff – are you available for lessons over Skype? If I don’t find someone, that will have to happen.
Kerri
Awesome comments, Kerri! I’ll be curious how Jeff chimes in. Oh my goodness — I cannot believe we didn’t have Jeff do any piano playing on this! And WHY did I not even think of it?! You are brilliant, Kerri. 🙂 Personally I have heard of some piano teachers doing recitals at nursing homes and I love this idea. The older people will love it no matter how good or bad the kids perform and it’s less pressure for the kids I would imagine…
Kerri, Thank you for the compliments, my dear! Skype lessons is something I’ve never considered, but now that we’re in a technological, computer age of life, who knows?!!? Send me some videos of Kamdyn playing when/if she starts lessons. Sara did that with her son Paul. Always glad to give feedback. I have mixed feelings about the recital thing. My years of piano lessons were a little more intense than most inlcluding annual tests and performance critiques at Millikin University here in Decatur. Actually, Sara took the words right out of my mouth. When I taught, my students did Christmas recitals at a nursing home. The older people ate it up with a spoon – absolutely adored it! And I think the kids had a good time, too. That being said, if I felt the student didn’t particularly want to do it or was being coerced by a parent, I would probably not want them to participate. Thankfully, that never happened. When I was in school, we had annual talent shows, and I played in several of them. A little less pressure than a “RECITAL” and it gives the students an opportunity to share their talent with their peers on a more relaxed level. We could almost do a follow up podcast getting into more detail about the differences between encouragement and dictatorship. There were times my parents “pressured” me to continue taking lessons – but I don’t recall it in a negative context. They were trying to teach me that importance of keeping with something and not being a quitter. Looking back, I’ll never be able to thank them enough for it.