"Ms. Paula, I promise this sounded so much better at home!!"

Do you ever hear “I played this so much better at home!”  from your piano students?  This statement often comes after they stumble through the piece they supposedly practiced all week and sigh with despair.

Most times I believe my students when they say this; after all, it’s a true statement!  We all play the piano better at home in our PJ’s.  


THE “FINGER BUG” SOLUTION FOR PIANO STUDENTS

I’ve adopted the “bugs in your fingers” description to help ease my piano students’ frustration when this happens (putting a funny label to a frustrating problem works well with kids).  And I’ve come up with 4 strategies to ensure those finger bugs don’t make it through my studio doors:

 Always begin with fun warm-ups.  It’s not uncommon for your piano student to arrive at their piano lesson after a good solid 7 or more hours of physical and mental activity.  School is exhausting!  Their head is full of everything but piano and that mental switch takes time.  Jumping right in to have them play their pieces or their technical work for you is the ideal environment for finger bugs.  Instead, begin your lessons with some warm ups that require very little thought but that help them to transition to piano lessons.  You can practice rhythm on bongo drums,practice legato on play doh, use a floor piano mat for interval practice, etc. These activities are often saved for the end of a piano lesson but they work really well as starting activities too!

2.  Avoid asking for a start-to-finish play through until you have asked for small sections first.  Without having time to settle into piano lessons a start-to-finish performance will never be the best it can be.  Give your student the chance to get “back into the piece” by working on smaller sections initially.

3.  Zero in on the ‘buggy bits’.  I bet you twenty bucks you would always be able to point to exactly the part of your piano student’s piece that will attract “buggy fingers”.  Apply some serious insecticide by employing 3 different teaching strategies to work on that area before your student plays the piece.  Even if they’ve been playing it for weeks, nothing but good can come from extra practice where it counts… and you’ll be curing the finger bugs at the same time!

4.  Laugh about it.  The problem can compound if we don’t stop and let our students know that we empathize with them.  We’ve all been there… ignoring the problem just makes it worse.  Have a good laugh about how uncooperative fingers can be sometimes and let your student know that you understand and that it’s okay.  Finger bugs hate empathy…