Holistic Piano Lesson Structure - Engaging the Body, Mind, Heart & Soul!

When I first start working with a student, especially a transfer student, I'm checking three things, related to the three limbs we use when playing! Is legato pedaling automatic? How is their hands together coordination? Can I feel their connection to the music they are playing?

In order to engage and improve awareness of these elements I make sure to do the following activities at every lesson:

1. A physical and mental warm up - to exercise the body and mind, I do warm ups related to topics we have been covering in the lessons. If we are working on the key of D major for example, we will play the scale, hands together and perhaps even scale in our RH and harmonize with chords while pedaling. The coordination of all three elements is key. It should feel like a bit of a struggle - not too easy, but not impossible, to get the most physical benefit - like working out! I want the mind engaged as well so I'll keep it unpredictable by asking for different keys, directions, different patterns in each hand, etc. The traditional scale, chord, arpeggios warm up is simply a jumping off point for what I do with my students. I take those structures and stand them on their head, introduce dynamics, articulations, a whole bunch of challenges to keep us growing and to keep it interesting.

2. Play pieces that engage the heart. The emotional and feeling aspect of playing is not to be overlooked. I always want my students playing pieces that they connect to, that they can express themselves with. I use the Piano Adventures series as a backbone of repertoire because I like the progression of concepts as well as the wide variety of musical genres. I also chat with them about their favourite pieces to listen to. I like to use lead sheets and guitar tabs alongside full notated scores so that they are more fully aware of chording and can free up their ears to listen more and focus on reading less. I have my students working on usually 4-6 pieces a week and new ones every week alongside longer term projects. I encourage students to explore both deeply and broadly into any and all genres of music. If they really like the blues, we may learn ten blues pieces. If they want to explore classical music, we will do so in an informed historical context.

3. Creative explorations that are away from scores - this could be listening to music together, improvising, ear challenges like telling me what interval or chords I'm playing, playing a song by ear or working on composing a piece. The creative time is the chance to really dive deeper into our body and our feelings at the piano and cultivate a comfortable happy place at the keyboard. It's a place where their is comfort in structure, in the feel of the keys, there is stability in the sound. Since we don't have a score to follow, we can work on ridding ourselves of fear about sounding bad or about getting the "right" notes. We can be less concerned about being good and just be present with the instrument.

Certain students will gravitate to different elements more so - some love learning lots of pieces! Some will only want to do the creative exploration time. Generally speaking I let the student guide the lesson but if it gets too one sided, I will gently nudge us back to the other elements as they all have a good role to play in becoming successful pianists and life long musicians. Usually if there is a gap in knowledge in the creative exploration time, the lesson leads us back to a concept or warm up for example. I've learned to surrender to the flow as all of these things are connected and that when we need the lesson, it will arrive promptly on time!

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