As true as it comes, teaching something is a whole lot demanding than learning the same thing. The subtle techniques of how to teach piano are certainly amongst the greatest.

Pianists are not actually famous for being good teachers, however both teaching and playing may offer tremendous satisfaction.

However, there are schools, were you are actually taught to play but also to teach piano, which becomes your major profession – how to teach piano and make others happy in playing. Once you forget you are the one who knows, and the one sitting in front of you is subject to all your knowledge, you might as well be extremely happy that person chose you and your beloved vocation!

How to Teach Piano

Teaching a person, who possesses enough will and talent, might be as challenging as anything else.

What makes kids so wonderful students is their connection to nature and their natural sense for sounds (psychologists say – all of them). They are not inhibited, simply giving you the way to think about new approaches, new lessons and keep surprising you with the speed they can marvel the techniques.

How to Teach Piano: To Adults

However, it is never late to start learn how to teach piano if an adult is in question. It is harder, much harder than it is with the young ones. Adults are adults with reason and they tend to behave like such – they refuse being taught, imposed or treated like students.

However, if their wish is strong enough, teaching will go its way. It will never be easy, since piano demands tremendously good hearing and ability to distinct variety in tones and reading notes. It is not all about ebony and ivory of the keyboard.

A professional will know to start from scratch and teach their students from memory – the best way to begin. Students will finally learn how to relate a sound with a proper key and bit by bit, with a lot of patience and practice, you will see it’s possible to transfer your musical expertise and learn how to teach piano rather than simply play it. So there you have it, a basic understanding on how to teach piano.

Any teacher who feels inspired to teach and who has had thorough musical training should not hesitate to make herself known in the community. False modesty prevents some teachers from earning an adequate income. They feel that it is not good taste to advertise “art.” The following little verse amuses me.

He who finds he has something to sell,

And goes and buries it down a well,

Is not half so apt to catch the dollars

As he who climbs a tree and hollers.

Always be ethical in your advertising methods, of course. Let pupils come to you voluntarily. Never try to take a pupil away from another teacher. Remember that the Golden Rule will never go out of style. In opening a studio in a new community, a teacher might accept “beginners only,” to avoid trespassing.

I smile to recall that, when I first began to teach, I did not hesitate to have printed on my stationery all of this:

Graduate, College of Fine Arts   Colleague of American Guild

Syracuse University  of Organists

JULIA ETTA BROUGHTON

Teacher of Piano of Pipe Organ of Harmony Organist

First Presbyterian Church Studio: 35 Arthur Street,

Telephone 193-J    Little Falls, New York

How to Teach Piano – Getting Students

When I opened a studio in St. Louis, in 1949, I had a folder printed with a photograph on the cover.

On the inside pages were a resume of my training and experience and a letter to prospective pupils and their parents. I found that professional cards were also useful. I had a dignified brass plate and door knocker put on the studio door. In black letters, it stated simply:

JULIA BROUGHTON

PIANO STUDIO

The first impression of a visitor was favorable, I soon discovered. When one entered the studio, two pianos were observed. I do not see how teachers get along as well as they do with one instrument.

How to Teach Piano: Referrals

Everyone knows that a good pupil is the teacher’s best advertisement. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” I hold one or two public recitals yearly and have attractive programs printed. By ordering more programs than I need for the recitals, I then have additional copies to mail to inquirers in the course of the following year. The programs that have looked best were printed in blue ink on a good quality of white paper in folder style. (See Quotations for Recital Programs in Appendix.) Let us not forget that every child likes to see his name in print. Adults, too.

How to Teach Piano – The Early Days

In my early teaching days I sent notices of my various activities to the Evening Times, in Little Falls, New York, where I was then established. As it was my custom to give concerts for the benefit of various civic organizations, the editor was friendly and printed my announcements and personal programs without charge.

How to Teach Piano – Another Example

If I attended a music festival or an organists* convention, I mailed him a postcard telling about it. My young nephew used to tease me, saying, “Aunt Julia, I saw your ad in the paper.” But it brought me considerable publicity. At the same time, it would have been of no avail if I had not also been conscientious in my work.

How to Teach Piano: Final Thoughts

Dr. Frank Crane once wrote an excellent article, “The Value of a Musical Education,” that was later issued as a small folder. It began: “Music is not a luxury. It is a necessity.” This type of advertising is appropriate, and appeals to parents. If you know how to teach piano the world can be yours.

I hope we can all agree with Charles Laughton, the actor,who says, “All my long years of working at my trade only make me love it more. The longer I work at it, and the harder I work, the stronger I get. I’m younger now than I ever was.”

Here is a sad and true story. I visited a class taught by a very gracious teacher I thought she was rather overdoing the “dearie” and “darling” approach, but I disregarded it. After the last pupil had gone, she turned to me and exclaimed, “The little brats!” I shall never forget my surprise. Her surface attitude had been a sham.

We must have honesty within us when we praise children for their good work because they usually detect insincerity more quickly than adults.

Another teacher was the opposite type. She played very little, but she loved children and had a natural talent for teaching.

How to Teach Piano: The Point of It All

She herself continued to take lessons although her progress was slow. At the end of the season I attended a recital given by her thirty pupils. Many of them played better than their teacher! What she lacked in performance, however, she made up in love for her work.

This, of course, is an exceptional case, although I have known of several accomplished pianists who were unsuccessful in teaching children. One of them gave a Bach invention at the first lesson!

In the book Unseen Harvests, Thomas Wolfe is quoted as follows: “I put the relation of a fine teacher to a student just below the relation of a mother to her son and I don’t think I could say more than this.”

How to Teach Piano: Generating It From The Heart

The teacher must have three “loves”—children, music, and teaching.

I once came across this very helpful statement: “The fundamental rules of architecture have not changed through the centuries.

How to Teach Piano – Style

The style may vary in keeping with human habits and customs, but the need for a solid foundation, sound building materials, and good workmanship is as important today as it was in the past, if one would build a durable structure.”

The fundamental principles of teaching have already been established for us by successful piano teachers. A great love for music must be coupled with an understanding of the best ways to produce it. Art and science cannot be divorced.

How to Teach Piano: Real Secret

Leopold Godowsky once told me that he considered the real secret of good teaching to be the maintaining of the interest of pupils. The teacher chooses the music that will awaken interest in the pupil and can be mastered with a reasonable amount of effort. It is also the teacher’s duty to point out the beauty of the music in order to stimulate the desire to study and learn.

It takes patience and dedication to know how to teach piano.

The piano teacher should be patient, kind, cheerful and enthusiastic. She (or he) should analyze each pupil and teach according to his needs. Please the pupil and he will be apt to please you. Say to him, “If I allow you to study this piece that you like so much, will you learn this other one to please your mother?”

A teacher builds character. She should be qualified to show pupils that the laws of music like the laws of mathematics require obedience. Pupils should be made to understand that they are not required to obey the teacher as a person, but the universal laws of music, which the teacher herself must follow.

The right answer (harmony) can never be attained unless these laws are obeyed.
While teaching at New York University, I said to Clara Sanford, the assistant to Dr. Hollis Dann, “I wish I could appear as calm and serene as the rest of the faculty. I seem to throw my whole self into my work. I am not always well poised.”

How to Teach Piano – Enthusiasm

Her reply encouraged me. “Don’t ever lose your enthusiasm. That is a very important quality in teaching.”

On a television program Jascha Heifetz was asked by a college student what he considered the most important qualities that make for success. Mr. Heifetz replied, “Self respect, integrity, and enthusiasm.”

Sometimes a teacher is pleasant and has considerable poise. These are certainly admirable qualities; however, if the instruction lacks vitality, students may not be awakened to the necessity for diligent work and may possibly fail their tests. Mabel Thomson wrote about how to teach piano:

The faculty of teaching is as rare and as individual as the faculty of acting or of singing. It is the highest art, and demands the same qualities of character as those demanded by all art—sincerity, endurance, moral and physical courage, devotion, and self-abnegation of a high order.

This is a very high goal. Besides the above-mentioned qualities, the teacher herself must be a good “learner.” “He only fails who fails to learn.” It is obvious that one can only help others to learn in the proportion that he himself is teachable. Here are other examples of how to teach piano.

One summer I had a demonstration class of eight pupils whose responsiveness endeared them to me so much that I felt like “adopting” them. The experience assured me that I was in the right profession.

How to Teach Piano: Passion

Lose yourself in your work. So engrossed do I become in preparing lessons at my desk that I place a magazine (The Reader’s Digest, as a rule) in the middle of the floor to remind me of other things that must be done.

Always prepare for the day’s work. Have music, pencils, chairs—everything you may need—ready at hand and thus avoid interruptions.

Do you ever ask yourself do I really know how to teach piano? Self doubt?

Do not be like the teacher who crocheted while she taught. Teaching needs concentration on the part of the teacher as well as the pupil.

Do you waken in the night with ideas that will solve problems for your pupils? I do. I write them on a scratch pad while I have the inspiration—and then go back to sleep

Overworked teachers are not good teachers. Limit the size of your class. Never be casual about your instruction; everything in connection with the lesson is important.

Can a teacher give lessons to a member of her own family? Yes and no. I took my first organ lessons from my sister, but her four-year-old daughter walked a mile across town to take piano lessons with me, her Aunt Julia. So these are some of the qualifications that you need if you want to know how to teach piano really well.