Incentives!

I don't know about you but I love incentives. Piano students also thrive on incentives. This website offers several incentive ideas to help motivate the piano student:

http://www.pianodiscoveries.com/html/motivate.html

I'd love to hear your ideas for incentives for piano students!

Parents Can Help Piano Students be Successful

Parents and other family members can be of great support to the piano student. Here is a website with lots of suggestions to parents on helping their child maintain a positive attitude towards playing the piano--and particularly towards practicing the piano:

http://www.pianodiscoveries.com/html/parent_student.html

Musical Symbols Identifying

Here is a great website for quizzing yourself on musical terms, notation, and symbols:

http://www.pianodiscoveries.com/html/dictionary.html#topAnchor

Identifying Music Intervals

This is a good website for learning to identify musical intervals, both by sight and by sound. A good help in learning to identify a specific interval is matching a familiar song in which the interval is played the first few notes.

file:///Users/Marianne/Desktop/The%20Musical%20Intervals%20Tutor%20:%20Listen%20to%20Intervals.webarchive

Free Printable Flashcards

This is a great resource of free printable music theory graphics. If you can't negotiate the link, just type in the url. There's a long listing of various types of flashcards, etc. along the right side of the website.

http://linkwaregraphics.com/

Learning About Composers

I ran across this fun website that helps children learn about the great composers of the past--Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, and the like. Click on Composer Time Machine.
http://www.classicsforkids.com/games/

Rhythm Matters

After a morning of giving piano lessons, I find myself counting rhythms out loud in my head for the rest of the day (1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and). Learning to play the correct rhythm is critical to being able to play the piano well. And thinking the rhythm in your head just doesn't cut it--especially for beginning pianists.

Even experienced pianists resort to counting the rhythm out loud for a tricky section of music.

Counting the rhythm out loud is also important when sight reading or when playing a piece for the first time. By doing so, the pianist can come much closer to what the piece was intended to sound like! He or she will avoid being tripped up by a complicated, or even a simple, rhythm just by counting out loud.

Before playing any piece of music, the wise pianist will always check the key signature (how many flats and sharps?) and the time signature.