All About Piano Lessons For Children
This is the place where you find free training videos where I show how to play and practice the songs I am teaching to young piano students at the German School Chicago.
I created those specifically for my piano kids at the German International School Chicago, where I am the head of piano studies.
Enjoy!
This beautiful song requires us to play two notes at the same time in the left hand. It is recommended that the pupil first practices measure one and two repeatedly (left hand only), with a little pause between the notes. It takes a lot of finger coordination to separate out two fingers without pressing keys with the non-active fingers at the same time.
Here is a great exercise: lift the active fingers while resting the non active fingers on the keyboard.
This song consists of two parts. It is written in the key of D minor. This means that the most important note is D. D is the first note in the D minor scale, and is therefore also called the tonic of the key. By the way, Many songs, like this one, begins and ends with the tonic.
This is a very famous old German children song that I arranged for my young piano beginning students. It features plenty of dynamics and articulations, and is written in 3/4 time.
In the video I play it at a fast tempo. As always, the pupil should start learning one hand at a time, disregarding the dynamic markings and articulations until he/she plays the correct notes.
The next step would be to play both hands, and finally we add the dynamics, articulations and phrase markings to bring it to performance level.
“Can You Feel The Love Tonight” is a beautiful song (written by Elton John) featured in the Walt Disney movie The Lion King.
As simple as the song sounds, it is actually quite tricky. The melody feels as it was written in 3/4 time, which it is not. The difficulty for the young beginning piano student is therefore not playing the correct notes, but playing them with the correct rhythm.
Still, the pupil should first learn to play the right notes with the correct fingering (see video below). If this is learned, the pupil counts along as he/she plays the music in a comfortable tempo.
I suggest that the pupil watches and listens to my video many times, until the melody sticks.
Gradually the pupil should increase the tempo until finally he/she can play along with the recording.
This little etude by Czerny features eighth notes in the right hand, and octave jumps in the left hand. It also includes thirds in both hands.
Video 1 demonstrates how to play and practice the first 4 bars.
Here is my Variation 1 on the famous and all so beloved Flohwalzer.
The Renaissance Dance is all about playing dynamics.
When playing soft, the fingers should never leave the keys. For loud passages we lift the fingers up before pressing down a key, and also use more of the arm to add weight.
Here is a nice finger warm-up exercise that can be done with one hand or both hands simultaneously, as demonstrated in the video tutorial.
A few tips on how to do those exercises:
Watch the video
This post is about my song “Ein Kleines Lied”, which I composed and arranged specifically for my younger pupils.
This song was arranged for 6 hands. The three different parts are intended to be performed by three players simultaneously.
Ideally each pupil learns how to play all three parts.
The video below explains each part and shows how to perform them.
The video below is a practice guide that also explains the bass clef. You may want to read on before watching this video.
Page 1 features the melody in the right-hand with a species counterpoint accompaniment in the left. I excluded the fingering, because I want the children to learn how to read musical notes. Otherwise all they do is read the numbers that indicate which finger to use for a particular note.
The base clef is also called F clef, because it shows us the position of the pitch F3 on the staff.
It is important that the children associate the location of the note-heads on the staff (Staff Lines) with the pitch name, and the keys.
So far we learned the location of the notes C3, D3, E3, F3 and G3 written in bass clef (as shown above). These are the notes I used in “Ein Kleines Lied”.
Piano music is generally written on a grand staff. A grant staff consists of two staves, the upper one being the treble clef staff, the lower one being the bass clef staff (in most cases).
For this reason pianists have to be able to read treble and bass clef at the same time. To complicate matter even further, each clef may feature chords (Mehrklänge), which consist of several notes being played simultaneously. Consequently, sight-reading requires a lot of brain power. It’s an excellent exercise to increase our visual memory.
The two accompaniments (Begleitung 1, Begleitung 2) from the second page of “Ein Kleines Lied” feature thirds. Playing two notes in one hand at the same time can be very challenging at first.
I created pre-exercises that should prepare the pupil to perform thirds more easily. Please watch the video tutorial below.
It is very important that the child practices these finger exercises slowly and with great focus. It is much better to do these exercises often, and in short intervals (5-10 minutes most), instead of once a week for 2 hours.
Ask your child never to stop practicing when it feels pain or discomfort.
Using proper fingering when playing the piano is essential for developing good technique. That’s why it is so important Continue reading “Fingering and Hand Positioning”
