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Teaching beginner piano - without the book

When teaching beginner pianists, how often do we assess our strategies versus continuing to teach the way we’ve always taught? Here, Tim Topham explains why you should avoid using a method book for at least the first month – and what you should do instead.
Courtesy Tim Topham

I’m going to explain the importance of improvisation, creativity and curiosity in beginner lessons and why a focus on building a musical vocabulary is one of the most crucial and fundamental aspects of teaching.

One of the biggest mistakes I see piano teachers making is starting beginner students with reading. It’s just the wrong way to go. Consider this: if you had the responsibility of teaching a young child how to understand and use a language, what would you teach first? Would you start with reading and writing, or would you encourage them to listen and copy you as you demonstrate how to pronounce things out loud? Would you force them to comprehend a written text or encourage them to start experimenting with their voice to say something meaningful? Would you stop them for every tiny mistake or see this as part of the learning process? If starting with reading and writing is not the approach we use for language, why use it for music?

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