Yi Christine C  
Instruments: Piano, Voice
Styles: Classical, Jazz, Pop, R&B, Gospel, Musical Theater, Opera

I  believe the ultimate goal of teaching piano lessons should be to make the student independent of the teacher. This requires years of training, while the student learns how to listen to his or her playing and acquires a musical technique and the requisite skills.Focus on developing musical skills is essential to good piano teaching. Traditional methods immediately teach students to learn to read music, while other methods (such as Suzuki and piano-by-chords approaches) ignore music notation altogether, citing other advantages.

for VOICE Students:

I usually associate singing the song with some kind of activity, usually passing a bouncy ball to the beat, or throwing it back and forth. From there, we progress to tapping the beat or the rhythm while singing. Then we’ll combine the two: student claps the rhythm while I tap the beat, and vice versa. I want my students to be able to clearly distinguish these two elements, and to be able to feel and maintain a steady beat which will set them up with a strong foundation for playing more advanced music. I’ve had mixed success with students singing in tune. Some have no problems. With others, I’m working hard with them at recognising and singing high and low notes as well as pitch matching. From there, I teach them to play each song on the piano through imitation. Through spaced repetition and regular review, I expect them to play these pieces from memory. What I’ve observed is that there seems to be a spectrum: some students have a far easier time of memorising the songs and playing them at the piano. Others have become stuck on the same pieces even after a period of a few weeks, so I move on to other songs, games and fall back to the method book to keep their momentum going and so they don’t get sick of trying to do the same songs every week.

for PIANO Students:

From the first lesson I teach the student to find the C and the F, which are the keys to the left of the group of two and three black keys respectively. I quiz them by asking them to identify the note that I am playing. It takes only a minute. When each one is secure, I add more on, and I do this over the course of several weeks. The G and A, in between the three black keys. Then the D, in between the two black keys. Finally, the E and B, to the right of the group of two and three black keys respectively. I spend a couple of minutes every week quizzing them on their keyboard note identification until this has become a solid foundation for them. For additional practise, I have them colour in worksheets in addition to the quizzing. We also play the keyboard race game which is always a hit with students. A number of my new students in this age category are transfer students who have been learning for some time and are reading music notation in their method books, despite having significant trouble identifying notes on the keyboard quickly. At times, I see students counting up from C to find a G or an A, so will take the time to reinforce the information that G and A is in between the three black keys, and practise finding them quickly. I want these keyboard geography skills well and truly secure in their minds long before starting to associate them with musical notation.