Embedded Files
Share your expectations with your teachers and your school
At PianoAlpharetta, we thrive to bring quality music education every single day and we know that we can continue accomplishing that by listening to our students and their families. Therefore, several times a year, we send out surveys to hear from them (find the link below). In this week’s tip, we will share comments in response to the expectations our students shared with us regarding music education in the most recent survey.
“Overcome stage fear and be able to sing and play in front of a crowd confidently”
As much as we learn how to sing or play an instrument for ourselves, we cannot deny how fulfilling it is to share our music with others. Therefore, performing in front of people is an important part of music education. At the same time, as we all know, performing anything in front of people is intimidating due to our expectations of doing things ‘perfectly’. This expectation has always potential to turn into fear of performing. In order to overcome a fear, it is best to create opportunities to deal with that emotion as many times as possible so we have enough time to get familiar with those emotions and develop coping skills. At PianoAlpharetta, we make it our goal to present many opportunities to our students throughout the year. Some of the performances from this year are Halloween pop-up recital, fall recital, holiday recital, Disney recital, spring recital and mother’s day recital. Here are a couple of videos from our recitals.
“Be able to play anything my child sees”
Being able to play something at first sight is called ‘sight-reading’ as a music term. Learning to master a piece and sight-reading are two completely different skills and they require different training. At PianoAlpharetta, we incorporate both of the training in our curriculum. However if you would like more emphasis in ‘sight-reading’ during lessons, it is important to bring this up with your teacher.
“Gain confidence”
Confidence is certainly an important aspect with anything we do in life. However the path to gaining confidence has a lot of ups and downs rather than being a straight line. Even a music student who practices and performs regularly goes through gain and loss of confidence as new concepts are introduced. Having experiences with both failure and success, eventually we get used to this pattern and we start seeing the bigger picture. Confidence is not that we will do everything great every time; it is that we believe that we can overcome hurdles when they arise. We encourage our students to embrace their failures, learn from them and see them as parts of the path to building confidence.
“Be able to play and sing at the same time”
We see many popular musicians sing and play at the same time. Knowing these are two different skills, one would need to get to a certain level of competency with both of them separately before being able to bring the two together. If you or your child would like to sing and play at the same time, we would recommend that you/she/he start taking voice/piano combo lessons at PianoAlpharetta. During these lessons, we focus on voice and piano equally and have our students be able to sign and play at the same time confidentially.
“Relaxation”
Once a student has realistic expectations and makes music practice a regular part of daily life, they are more likely to start feeling that they get into the state ‘flow’ during their practice (TIP #10). Being in that state repeatedly certainly creates the sensation of relaxation.
“Independent piano recital”
Our high school students who prepare repertoire lasting more than 30-40 minutes sign up for independent recitals. If you or your child is interested, feel free to reach out to your teacher to discuss the details.
“Grading system to raise their competitiveness”
At PianoAlpharetta, we see the benefits of following a certain curriculum and taking auditions for progressing levels. Understanding that every student has different levels of talent and commitment, we provide multiple options to our students and prepare them for several different programs. Below you can find a list of the current programs (in the following weeks, we will provide specific information for each program). We also would be happy to discuss any other programs you would like to participate.
Music Teachers National Association
“Stronger, well-trained voice and playing capabilities fit for auditions”
At PianoAlpharetta, we understand that every student has different expectations from music lessons.
Some students are driven with the idea of pursuing music performance and/or music education as a collage major and eventually a career. We are proud to have an incredible faculty at PianoAlpharetta with masters and doctorate degrees in music performance and pedagogy and say you are in the right hands to provide the best preparation for competitions and college auditions.
“Help kids compose new songs/tunes on their own”
Same as mastering a piece and sight-reading a piece, composing a piece is a completely different skill.
We love incorporating aspects that highlight our students’ creativity and teach fundamentals of composing to our students. If you would like to have more emphasis on composing, please make sure to bring this up with your teacher. In the past, we organized composition contests at PianoAlpharetta. Although it was a big hit among our students and their parents, we wanted to take a different direction rather than choosing any composers as winners due to the fact that we would like to compliment every child’s attempt for creativity. We are happy to say that we are working on ideas to bring back events to present our students’ compositions. Please stay put and let us know if you have any suggestions.
If you have not filled out our survey or would like to do it again, you can find out about it here.
Next week we will share our comments in response to some of the struggles our students are having regarding music education.
May you know you are making a difference, even if your children never tell you themselves.
We would be more than happy to answer any questions and provide more specific consultancy if needed.
Thank you for being a part of the PianoAlpharetta community!
Page updated
Report abuse