Teaching Adult Piano Students: A Conversation with Brenda Dillon (Part 1)
Recently, recreational music making (RMM) trailblazer Brenda Dillon generously spoke with me for over two hours. In this first part of our conversation, topics include the distinctions between RMM and traditional piano teaching, the challenges of teaching adults, and...
Seven Things I Wish I’d Known as a Younger Musician
Learn How to Practice There are incredibly useful practice strategies and procedures that few teachers explicitly teach. I learned many of them through reading books and trial and error. (These strategies that can save you hundreds or thousands of hours of practice...
The Right Way to Read Music
Nearly all beginning adult piano students want to learn to read music. I know this because I always ask new students to tell me their Big Goals. Learning to read music is incredibly useful. Reading is the fastest way to learn new music, and lots of it. If you can read...
A Brief History of Keyboard Instruments
Using Scott Joplin's The Entertainer as a yardstick, take a moment to traverse the history of keyboard instruments and learn why the piano became the supreme keyboard instrument. 300 BCE – The first keyboard, a kind of pipe organ, is invented in Ancient Greece. What...
About the Creative Keyboardist Blog
Welcome to the Creative Keyboardist blog. If the following types of posts sound useful to you, add this blog to your bookmarks or your favorite RSS reader like Feedly or The Old Reader. In subsequent posts on this blog you’ll find: Interviews with Experts Tips and...