Helen's piano studio

This "experiment" is great on an acoustic piano. And the result differ quite a lot when the student has a digital piano at home.

Research has shown that tonal quality depends on observable, measurable fine motor control (e.g. the accelerated speed of contact, the speed of releasing the key, etc).

This sensitivity is best to develop starting a young age. An experienced pianist can adjust quickly to different age or brand of acoustic piano.

I love experimenting piano sounds with my students in class.

The soft toy provides two functions in this lesson. First, the digging motion into the bread teaches the student how to play the quarter note with a nice sound. The weight of it allows her to be more conscious of the weight of her hand, therefore, learning to drop the arm weight to play the legato, eighth notes.

We had such a fun class today!

I call it the "spring test". It sounds silly but it works very well with young kids. They all like toys with spring coil (e.g. spinky).

I let them experience how it feels when my wrist is stiff vs. relaxed, and imagine they have the spring inside their wrist too!

To me, teaching and playing Bach gives me an unique feeling of satisfaction that is hard to explain.

Each note is so dedicated and enjoyable while you are not feeling alone as both of your hands come alive.

They are dancing, singing and talking to each other. They take turns to dominate, while complimenting each other at the same time.

Have you had problem with finger turning and not sure how to move your thumb? In this lesson, I am using a visual to demonstrate steady, relaxed thumb movement before the turn.

Learning to play trill involves multiple fine and gross motor techniques - finger tips dropping, controlling the distance of dropping from the key, rotating motion involving forearm, relaxed wrist etc.

Using good imaginative skill and breaking the motions into separate steps before adding all together is important for mastering this skill.

Having a good bridge is important to piano playing. When I asked my young students to lift up their knuckle joints, they usually had a hard time to do it.

Yet, they all know what it is to build a tent! When summer is here, let's make a tent with our hands! ⛺🥾⛺

Being a piano teacher means you have to be creative to help your student understand the micro-techniques of playing on the piano keys. I am having a lot of fun using this squishy bread teaching various concepts.

In this particular case, the student can visually see how much weight she would put in a particular note and practice making different "depth" in the bread with different fingers, which is usually not visually presented (only auditory) in actual piano playing.

Stimulate a student's different senses is important in piano teaching.