Practice tips for Adult Students
These are all fundamental questions for your practice to be successful and you to enjoy. Ask one question at a time and focus on listening your sound to find the answer. Repeat couple of times if needed to improve the sound. Multiple mechanical repeats are useless, do not do it. Practice one small section at…
Bad conducting technique signs
How to fix all these? You need solid lessons, find a teacher or call me. © Dr. Nelly Matova, Matova Music School 2025
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…
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. © Dr. Nelly Matova, Matova Music School 2025
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…
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…
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…
How can a 15 minute longer lesson help you to 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…
The hassle of make-up lessons explained
It seems that missing lessons cannot be avoided. Overscheduling, sudden schedule conflicts, shopping, cold, forgetting, or unexpected events all contribute to missed lessons. Some students rarely miss a lesson, but unfortunately others do, quite often. Most students feel entitled to ask for make-ups for missed lessons and often get unhappy when teachers refuse or cannot…
The struggles of self-learning students looking for help
There are people out there who learned to play a little using YouTube, through self-instruction and watching videos. This shows great initiative, but most of them start to feel the limitations of this approach soon enough, and instead look for a live teacher to help them over these limitations. They will surely experience them, as…
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