Hi! Anyone out there want to ask me a question about teaching piano? Anything at all! Honestly, I want to be as helpful as possible for anyone starting out or wanting to improve their teaching skills. Leave a comment, email me or send me a tweet.
Don’t be shy! I’ve drafted about 5 posts in the past month (but haven’t posted a single one). I really just want to know what would be helpful to you.
Does anyone have any students they have a question about? Maybe you’re having a hard time teaching them notes, or rhythm? Do they need reminding to practice? Hand position? Maybe you need to know how to get more students? How to bill parents? Write a contract? How to correct poor technique? Maybe you’re searching for an answer you can’t find, or need a good recommendation for a book? Maybe you want to record your students but don’t know the best way how?
Here, I’ll ask you by VIDEO
A Quick History on Dan
A little background on me, and this blog. My wife and I married and moved to Holden, MA about 4 years ago. I left behind about 35 students in New Hampshire, as well as most of my performing. We were starting a life together, and because of this location change, I was starting over in terms of teaching and earning a living.
Fast forward a few years… now there’s almost 40 students coming to our (small) house a week. Parallel to this, I’ve spent the last 4 years working for my father (he owns two sculpture businesses) and learning all sorts of things; web-design and programming, search engine optimization, photography, marketing. It’s been quite the journey!
Point is, I want to put together all these skills to create something really helpful for piano teachers, and aspiring piano teachers!
The Future Purpose of this Blog
I started this blog for fun in 2010 as an outlet to share my teaching tips with you.
But in this time, the blog has been a little “fly by the seat of your pants” and haphazard in the 10 months since starting it – but I can sense its higher purpose. And that is to serve as a documentation of the process by which I develop some really valuable and helpful teaching resources. You can be a part of it, as in order for me to help teachers, it demands your questions, interaction and feedback.
The Evolving Music Blog will serve as your backstage pass to the inner workings of me putting together these resources. You can participate, and follow me step by step as I create resources to help piano teachers.
You’ll also see an entirely new design soon…
Checklist – Next Steps
1. I’m going to answer your questions.
2. I’m going to finally nail down a template/design I’m happy with for this blog.
3. Together, we’re going to start creating these teaching resources. I can’t be too specific about them now. But these resources will be in various mediums – video, audio and new websites. Think big and think innovative and think exciting and fun. Your questions will help give me direction.
In most of the past 10 years I have taught on average 30-40 students a week. Every day my students and I are coming up with new note reading games, teaching methods, tricks and tips.
So in the coming months and years, I will be producing some really valuable teaching resources and documenting that process here on this blog. But it has to start with your interaction!!
I know together we can create some useful and valuable teaching information, that brings you great results.
Leave a Question!!
I want to seriously hear from you, and what you would like to know about teaching piano. So leave a comment, email me or send me a tweet. I will answer EVERY SINGLE question in a blog post. I will not mention your name if you would like to be anonymous!
EDIT: I am currently hand-moderating all posts, so there may be a delay in seeing your comment. I hope when I switch templates the spam filters will be better, thanks!!




February 11, 2011 at 3:19 pm
K- so here are a few I’ve been pondering on how to better teach….
1-Do you have visual cues that a student can use to help them maintain a good hand position?
2- How do you reach the student who’s parents are the reason they are taking lessons and the child is poorly motivated to practice effectively due to their little to no interest in playing? (They do practice on occasion but not usually effectively.)
3-When do you personally focus on making sure the student’s hand shape/ posture/ etc. is ALWAYS correct? I assume that this is usually goes case to case according to age, learning style/ type, and level?
Is that enough to get you started?
)
February 11, 2011 at 5:09 pm
Awesome questions Tami, thanks! Yes, plenty to get started, and I will be putting together my responses
March 1, 2011 at 5:19 am
I have a few young students who insist on playing with droopy wrists! I constantly remind them to keep their wrists up, but they always lapse back into it both during the lesson and at home. Any tips to correct this? Thanks!
March 1, 2011 at 6:31 am
Ah yes, the droopy wrist syndrome! Great Question! It has been interesting to me so far that all of the questions submitted have been about technique (I received one question via email as well). Thanks so much, and I will be posting answers soon.