All About Piano Lessons For Children
Here is an easy piano arrangement of the famous traditional children song Bruder Jakob.
The arrangements features two different accompaniments for the left hand.
The first one is very simple, the second one echoes the melody, as it was originally intended, since the song is a canon.
This video demonstrates how to play and practice the etude.
I would like to invite you to support my Christmas video production of BALD WIRD ES ENDLICH WIEDER WEIHNACHTEN (Soon It Is Finally Christmas Again), I produce for the German International School Chicago.
To make a secure donation online now, please click .
I hope you are as exited as I am about this project!
The video will feature my original Christmas song BALD IST ES ENDLICH WIEDER WEIHNACHTEN, which I composed specifically for the kids at GISC.
The video will showcase the school’s faculty and children singing and performing the music.
I would like to invite you to send me any cute Christmas photos of your children, and family photos/videos which I could use in the video, e.g. your child opening Christmas presents under the tree, sleigh riding, playing in the snow, meeting Santa, etc.
Please do this ASAP, because I’d like to start editing the following week. You may email me your footage at tg88keys at gmail dot com, or email me a link to any storage website where I can download your files.
I think this video will be a wonderful gift for your family and friends, and will also help promote the school.
The production will also be very educational for the children. They learn hands-on how a song and video are professionally produced, using state of the art equipment.
You can imagine that such a production is very time consuming. The school has no budget for it, so I decided to do the audio and video production for free for the school.
However, It would greatly help if you could chip in a few dollars to compensate me for my time.
I am sure you know that a production like this, which involves composing an original song, recording and mixing the music, and filming and editing the video footage costs usually thousands of dollars.
Simply click the button below to donate a few Dollars (5 to 10 Dollars would be great, I gladly accept more).
Alternatively, you may drop of an envelop with the money addressed to me at the GISC’s office.
Thanks in advance!
Thomas Gunther,
Head of Piano Studies
German International School
I am looking forward to an other great school year at German International School Chicago!
This post is about the Imperial March piano arrangement for the beginning piano student (children that already enjoyed 1 to 2 years of frequent piano lessons).
It includes my three part video training series that shows how to learn and play the Imperial March Theme (Part 1) from Star Wars on the piano.
Imperial March Piano Training Video 1 shows how to play the piece with both hands in different tempi, and is great as a play along.
Imperial March Piano Training Video 2 shows how to learn and perform the melody with the right hand.
Imperial March Piano Training Video 3 shows how to learn and play the accompaniment part with the left hand.
In video 2 I simplified the rhythm in the melody a little bit. Once the pupil masters the melody as taught in video 2, it is time to replace the two consecutive 8th notes with a dotted eighth note followed by a sixteenth note, as shown in the image below. (The top staff shows the new version). It is a little more challenging to play, but it is the original melody after all.
In popular music we use chord symbols to indicate the harmony of a song. One of the most important skills for a contemporary pianist to have is performing from lead sheets (melody + chord symbols) and chord charts.
The following images show two versions of the left hand accompaniment of the Imperial March arrangement.
On the left you see the actual written out arrangement with chord symbols added (click on it to enlarge the image).
On the right you see a chord chart with chord symbols and slashes only.
Tip: The slashes indicate the beats in the measure. (Quarter notes in our example). IMPORTANT: A chord symbol is valet until the next chord symbol appears.
Bald gras ich am Neckar is a beautiful old German folk song.
I arranged it for my beginning piano students. It is suited for children that already took lessons for at least 1 year.
Here is my video tutorial of the songs that shows me playing.
First slowly, then faster with my sheet music and related fingering.
Cancan by Jacques Offenbach is one of the most famous melodies ever written.
I created a very simple piano arrangement that is perfect for the beginning piano student.
With this post I included instructional videos and the sheet music which you can download for free.
Download the sheet music (pdf with two pages)
Watch the video
I am in the process of creating part two to this video in which I will explain how I created the left hand accompaniment from only the chord symbols!
Cut Time (in classical music referred to as alla breve) is a 4/4 time 
signature “cut”in half to create a two beat feel by putting strong emphasize on the first and fourth quater note in the bar.
It is usually used in very fast tempi for the purpose of creating a more relaxed two-beat feel. Cut time can be written as 2/2, or as a c-shaped symbol with a vertical slash (see image).
One of the most common mistakes beginning piano students make is practicing what they already know over and over. I don’t mind them playing songs over and over they know well from top to bottom. That means they are having fun, which is actually great. Let me explain what I mean instead.
When you observe a child practicing you will probably notice that he wants to play those passages that already sound pretty good rather than working on those he doesn’t know well yet. By the way, we adults have the tendency to do the same.
THat’s why the first thing I teach my students is not to always start at the beginning of the piece they are working on. It takes persistency on the teacher’s and the parent’s part to get this into a child’s head, but it is well worth the effort.
Dear Parent: Please remind the child to begin practicing from different measures until she does it on her own.
Children that don’t follow this strategy often get stuck further down in the piece and are not able to perform a piece well in its entirety, which ultimately leads to frustration.
Tip: The reason why they don’t like starting in the middle of a song is often because they don’t know where the fingers go and which finger to use, unless they start from the very beginning and play up to that measure. The teacher or parent can help by indicating the fingering and note names at the beginning of significant starting points in the piece. Eventually the child will be able to write in the fingering and note names for those bars.
Tip: Mark up a new piece by dividing it up into smaller practice segments. Number the different segments randomly and ask the student to follow the order of the number when practicing. When monitor you child remind them not to start practicing from the first bar, but instead working on a different segment every time they start practicing.
HAPPY PRACTICING!
It is much better to practice every day for only 15 minutes, than once a week for 2 hours.
There are many reasons for that. Here are a few:
What do you think about that? Start a discussion below!
This article warns pianists about practicing piano while being in pain. It gives advice how to deal with pain, how to analyze the reasons for that pain, and how to avoid serious injury.
You may have heard the old saying no pain no gain. Unfortunately, many ambitious musicians take this literally, when in reality the exact opposite is true:
With Pain, No Gain!
A women goes to the doctor. The conversation goes like this:
Doctor: So, where does it hurt?
Patient: It hurts when I do this (the woman lifts up her arm)
Doctor: So don’t lift it!
That’s actually really good advice for musicians too. When it hurts, stop doing it.
We must never continue practicing our instrument while experiencing physical pain. Pain is our body’s warning signal that something is wrong. It tells us that we are using our body the wrong way. When we continue ignoring the pain, we may injure our body permanently. At the least, we won’t have fun playing our instrument any more.
Avoiding physical pain must therefore be the prime directive of any practicing!
Here are my recommendation for how to deal with physical pain:
When you experience pain, stop practicing immediately and analyze what most likely causes the pain. There are many possible reasons for why we may feel pain when practicing. To figure out the exact cause, follow this checklist:
By answering all those questions you should have gained a pretty good understanding of what causes your pain, and how you can avoid it.
First, let me tell you what I don’t do:
I don’t ever take painkillers, and I certainly don’t rationalize why I should continue practicing with in pain by saying things like”I’m not a wimp”, or “I will get through this, I’m a big boy”.
I found the most responsible and also most beneficial way to deal with pain is to stop practicing for a while until the pain subsides, before it becomes a serious issue.
Of course, when the pain continues, you must see a doctor immediately. Don’t think it’s okay to get used to the pain. You will possibly insure your body permanently when ignoring the pain. The consequences maybe horrible. I know concert pianists that hat to quit playing the piano because they injured their body irreversibly by not paying attention to the first signs of pain.
Bottom line: avoid practicing with pain at all costs!
HAPPY PRACTICING!
