Rockaway Music offers private piano lessons in Morris Plains, NJ. We teach all levels - from beginner to advanced. For your
convenience, our piano school operates every day of the week except
Sunday.
Playing the
piano is a wonderful activity for children because it not only provides hours
of fun for kids, it utilizes all human creative processes. These include Seeing
(visualization), Observing, Forming Analogies, Inverting, and Simplification.
Effective piano lessons apply teaching strategies that utilize these processes
to exercise students' creative abilities and expand their potential. Below are
some examples of how this process occurs.
Visualization -
"What would it look like if I could do it?"
Visualization
is probably the most difficult creative skill to develop. Having a keyboard in
the imagination, however, gives a powerful boost to students' playing ability.
So, it's worth it to work on developing this creative application. Here's a way
a young piano student can begin to literally draw on their mind's
"eye".
The piano has
groups of two and three black keys. There are three white keys around each
group of two black keys. Students close their eyes and pretend to draw, for
example, two very large black keys in the air. Asking questions like the
following helps kids begin to see the keyboard in their mind.
Can you see the
white key on the left of the two black keys? It's a C.
Can you see the
one on the right? It's an E.
Can you see the
white key in the middle of the two black keys? It's a D.
Over time
visualization techniques help students develop a keyboard in their imaginations
and begin to read notes as locations on the piano, interpreting the Grand Staff
as a Map of the keyboard. In addition to this, hearing visualization is an
important part of learning scales, chords, and playing and interpreting music.
Once students
begin to develop their visualization muscles they can apply this creative skill
to see the possibilities and imagine solutions in other areas of their life and
education by asking:
What would a
solution to this challenge look like?
Observation -
"Eureka! I've never noticed that before!"
Observation is
about carefully noticing the little things to find similarities and
differences. For example, the difference between staccato and legato marks, or
accents and tenuto’s, and listening to and observing the differences. Piano
students use their observational skills when they ask questions like these.
Piano students
use the creative process of observation just as scientists do to find surprises
in nature that were always there, waiting to be discovered, and by
experimenting with different techniques and expressive ideas to find what works
best in different styles of music.
For more information about our piano lesson in Morris Plain, NJ or for
scheduling information give us a call at 973-984-8800.
You can also email us at lessons@rockawaymusic.com.
