How Many Piano Lessons Per Week Should You Have?

Sometimes, after seeing their child super-enthused about their lessons, parents ask me if we should do more than one lesson during the week.  My answer: It depends.

Here is my quick answer:

1) If the student practices correctly throughout the week on a daily basis and does not master the material within a few days of the lesson, one lesson is enough per week.

However,

1) If your student is very young and tends to forget everything the next day (especially if there is no parent to work with them on a daily basis and practice together),
2) If you have difficulty enforcing regular practice,
3) If the student practices so much that they finish their assignment and get bored after 2 days,
4) If the lessons are not long enough to cover theory, duets, etc. because the student's attention span doesn't last past 30 minutes
5) If the student does not pay attention to correct technique and practices incorrectly all week
6) If you're in a rush to learn quickly

then a second lesson would greatly benefit the student.

From my observation in my daily teaching, these are the general reasons for my recommendations:

1) In the ideal situation, enough material can be covered during the lesson to challenge the student for the whole week with daily practice of 30 minutes to 1 hr.  But given that piano lessons tend to be shorter these days (30 minutes), we often don't cover enough for the students that really practice that much.  Also, in the ideal situation the student heeds the teachers pointers and advice on how to practice correctly with correct technique. I would rather a student not practice at all rather than practice the wrong way!

2) Some students just have a hard time absorbing everything in one 30 minute lesson. The younger students especially seem to wipe their memory clean the moment they get out of a lesson and on to the next activity. It helps if a parent is knowledgeable about the piano and can sit with the student every day and remind them of what was covered during the lesson and help them practice.

3) Many parents have a lot of difficulty enforcing daily practice of 20 minutes or more. If your student doesn't practice during the week, they completely make no progress by the next lesson and we end up using another lesson reviewing the same material.  It almost makes more sense to just schedule an extra lesson or two during the week that you may consider as "supervised practice".  Otherwise the parents rarely get to enjoy any return on the tuition they have paid for the weekly lessons.

4)  With young students, 3 days practice can mean quite a lot of progress and having lessons twice a week really keep things moving along. I find it works really well with a highly motivated child that practices so much that they finish everything I assign within a couple of days and are at risk of getting bored and losing motivation. 

5)  Often, we limit lessons to 30 minutes because the student's productive attention span doesn't last that long.  Unfortunately this does not give us enough time to go over technique, finger exercises, theory, duets, rhythm study, etc. I feel like many times my students are getting half the education I received because I can't possibly fit everything into 30 minutes. For this reason, I really do wish my 30 minutes students had lessons twice a week.  Students with 1 hour lessons don't encounter this problem.

6) Many students don't really pay attention to HOW they should practice and are often a bit on the lazy side when it comes to correct technique which is the utter backbone of playing an instrument. I don't have this problem with adult students because the understand the importance of moving their fingers and wrist and all that the way I tell them too. Kids, on the other hand, don't really understand or care and often don't want to suffer through training their hands physically to play correctly. In this case, extra lessons can prevent bad habits or incorrect playing. Imagine if the student is playing something incorrectly. It would be better if the mistake was pointed out after half a week instead of after one full week.

7) Some students are in a rush to learn quickly, for whatever reason. Since I have observed that more lessons almost always equal faster progress, in this case I would also recommend extra lessons. However, if no one is in a rush and just enjoying the experience of learning piano, there is no need for extra lessons.

Traditional Piano Books Too Fast for Modern Students

As I have taught over the years, I noticed a troubling trend with my students in their progress with piano lessons. We would start out with a beginners book and they would do fine for the first 10 pages or so and then the curriculum would jump and my students are stuck and frustrated. There is no slow gradual build up of concepts and there is not enough repetition to master every concept introduced.

Here are some tips for piano teachers facing the same problem:

1. Don't stick to the book.

Consider the book as your guide but supplement with a lot of printouts or other books to encourage mastery of a concept before moving on to the next one. If you have to, draw your own music. For example, start with writing letters for notes on lined music paper. Once the student masters the ability to follow the letters and match them to piano keys, substitute the letter C with the musical notation for middle C. Keep the rest of the song looking the same. Do a few different examples of songs with this. When they have mastered C, substitute an additional letter with notation, such as D. Continue in this manner to ensure mastery of notes. I would suggest one letter substitution each with for young students (3-7) and two letter substitutions for older students (8-11). In this case you will see that the slow method results in faster learning and mastery. This method is especially recommended for students with autism.

2. Provide many additional songs that demonstrate the concept you are working on.

Whether you are teaching new notes, rythm or technique, stick to that concept and provide a lot of material to practice on until you see that the student has mastered it and is comfortable moving on to a new concept. The importance of providing copious amounts of additional material is that students will get bored if they practice the same song over an over. Keep it interesting with different songs illustrating the same concept.

3. Use bigger notes and lined sheets.

I cannot tell you how many students jumped in their progress when I bought them piano sheet note books with extra large spaced lines and drew big fat notes. Some kids have eyesight issues that no one knows about yet. Others are so small that it's hard to see small notes so far away from them. You want to be able to show the difference between each note and in order to do that they have to be big.

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Yeva is a Los Angeles piano teacher that teaches in student's homes and specializes in piano lessons for autistic students.

"I Call This One 'Single Lady' "

It's amazing how much we sometimes underestimate and suppress kids.

Who ever said that you had to be named Mozart to compose as a little kid? And were his compositions that brilliant at that age? I beg to differ. All he did was mash together pieces of songs that he had been exposed to from an early age....there's nothing brilliant about that at all. In fact, all of my young students have done the same thing when GIVEN A CHANCE. Most teachers, I think, don't believe that little ones are capable of creating any coherent music. But they actually are, especially when they've been exposed to basic structure in songs they've played. It's just like when they learn how to speak.

I usually start out by letting the student (even as early as 3 years old) experiment with sounds for about 5 minutes during the lesson. If the banging really bothers you, bring ear plugs. But I would rather you listen how they slowly discover cause and effect and patterns.

Next, I usually get blank sheets of paper and ask them to press notes they want and I write the letters (or colors or numbers) for them. Then I let them decide on a name. It's amazing how much ownership over a piece encourages them to participate and do more composition and be more active and aware during lessons.

If the student is learning to write letters already, I then allow them to write their own letters. If you're still just using colors to denote notes, give them markers or crayons and let them draw circles of colors in the order that they make up a song.

Once they are learning how to read real music notation, I first write the notes for them but when they are comfortable I encourage them to write notes themselves.

The best part of this process is that the piano student has ownership of the activity and feels like they are directing something themselves. And of course, the titles they come up with can leave you giggling for days. One little five year old made up a song and played it for me. When I asked her what it was called, she turned her big eyes to me and disclosed: "I call this one 'Single Lady' " I was practically crying from laughter!

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If you're looking for piano lessons in West Los Angeles or more music resources in the area, check out my site Brentwood Piano.

If you are looking for tutors & music or art instructors in Los Angeles, especially those trained and experienced in working with special needs students, check out Able Scholar.

Teaching the Littlest Ones...

Perhaps my favorite part of teaching piano is the time when I teach the littlest ones...mostly under five years old. They are so positive, curious and fearless...and not to mention so cute!! One of my little students can't even pronounce my name correctly but he memorizes a little song by heart almost every week "just for teacher." And he just turned four.

Another little one, also four, pushes on relentlessly to new materials. When I suggest that we stop for the day, he pouts and begs to try one more harder new song. How different from all of us adults!

One really amazing thing to watch as a teacher of that age group is how quickly their brains evolve from month to month, even week to week! When they are very young, their brain is developing at a fantastic speed so, as a teacher, I can see amazing leaps in skill and ability to comprehend concepts that are being taught.

One tip for teachers that are just beginning to venture into the "under 5" age group is not to pressure the students to absorb every concept like notes, rythm, technique, fingering, etc. Take one thing to concentrate on and let the kid enjoy the learning process. Make it easy for a while and be patient because soon you will be amazed when the child lets you know that he is ready for something more challenging. Let the individual development of each child guide you, rather than you trying to keep the kid "on track." There is time...a lot of time actually...for them to learn. It's important not to spoil that initial introduction by giving too much challenge and too many demands. For example, I had one little student whose parents thought I was being too leniant, but trusting my instinct and experience, I allowed the little one to move at snail's pace, repeating the same songs over and over for months. Then one day I noticed he was speaking in more intelligent sentences and so I had the idea to give him a little challenge. He immediately

comprehended what I was trying to teach because he had such a solid base in the material we have been using for months and his brain had developed enough to understand more complicated concepts. And more importantly, the rather long easy-going beginning allowed him to become attached to the piano without the negativity of failure and so for him piano continued to be a fun activity, even as I raised the difficulty level bit by bit.

In my opinion it is very important to prime the child's brain correctly from the beginning so that the activity doesn't become a dreaded chore. I truly recommend this approach if you are hoping for your child/student will continue with piano playing joyfully...