Author: Matova Music
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Mastering Piano as Adult Learner: Tips for Success and Inspiration
When you are learning piano as adult please remember: it took you about 20 years in your filed to become good and to feel accomplished, so do not expect fast results in piano lessons. Goals as one week, one month, whatever fast results they promise online are not reasonable expectation. Remember learning is a process…
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How to tell if you have a bad piano teacher?
I get to see transfer students who exhibit number of problems with their hands, understanding of the music, musicality and behavior. While many of them are not to blame on the teacher, (he can do only so much during the lesson and cannot supervise home practice), others are completely the fault of the teacher. Here…
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Practice tips for Adult Students
Practice is not about how much time you put in it, but how strong is your focus when you practice. The result absolutely depends on the focus. Start the practice with a short warm up, don’t skip it, it prepares your hands, ligaments and tendons become softer and flexible as warmed up. Practice is a…
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Bad conducting technique signs
Elbow pointing down. Where is your sound– down or around you? Surround yourself with sound or don’t conduct at all. Widely spread fingers or conducting with index finger for more than beat or two. (Do you threaten or single people out?) Bending knees with the beat (very common). It is distracting, and unnatural. Bending head…
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Practice secrets
All students want to do well. They want to play as good as it is possible. Some more than others; some know how to practice, others don’t. I advise each one based on the music they learn and the technical level they have. Some listen their teacher, others experiment. Some improve fast, others less. So…
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Adult Students beliefs and expectations; do/don’t
When adult students come to me for lessons, they all are at different level in terms of musical technical development. They also have accumulated some bad habits and some believes. Here I will address some of them. Youtube lessons– often student will take lessons from me, and will continue to use questionable sites on internet…
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The importance of playing scales, chord inversions and arpeggios
The scales, chords and arpegios are fundamental skill for each pianist. The are drilled from early on for years. Most of the students hate them and try to avoid them, not practicing them at home. These fundamental movements are seen as waste of time, or as borring. But, what really they do for the hands…
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Children, focus, and when to start piano lessons
In the past, before the rise of electronic games, internet, smart phones and before the pandemic, it was a standard the children to start piano lessons when they are 5-6 years old. Some would start at 7 years old. What has changed? Children learned passivlely to be entertained. They just stare at a screen and…
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Transform yourself: The power of learning piano
We live in a strange world. Lots of drama, lots of distractions — many of them on social media platforms. Lots of divisions between people based on social, economic, racial, and political achievements and values. Lots of fear, lots of drama…and lots of unhappiness (to use only a mild word). How can learning the piano…
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How can a 15 minute longer lesson can help you to a greater success?
Students and parents are often resistant to the idea of extending their lessons from 30 minutes to 45 minutes. They sometimes believe (wrongly) that this is a waste of their money, and (also wrongly) that they can figure things out at home on their own, and they don’t realize how often these struggles with individual…
