How to Teach Fur Elise on the Piano
Learning to play Fur Elise on the piano, like learning to excel at anything else, requires a great deal of practice. As a piano teacher, the lion's share of the workload will be on your students because they are the ones who will need to work diligently to master Beethoven's beautiful, yet challenging opus. You, too, will need to practice Fur Elise so that you can help your students learn to play it.
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Instructions
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Select an appropriate version for your student's piano level. Fur Elise is one of Beethoven's most popular piano pieces and has been arranged by many different composers. Each arrangement varies in the skill level required to play it. The Fur Elise arrangement you select should be appropriate for your piano student if you intend for them to learn to play it successfully. A piece that is too difficult will discourage your students, and they may give up, while a piece that is too easy will not engage your students enough.
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Play through the piece. As the instructor, you will need to know how to play your version of Fur Elise if you intend to teach it properly. Play it several times until you get a sense of which areas will be easier to teach and which ones will cause your students to struggle more. You also need to know how to play it so that you can demonstrate it for your students as well as anticipate and answer any questions they have.
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Divide the song into sections. Since the arrangement you selected is tailored to your students' piano levels, the difficulty is proportional no matter what arrangement you chose. For example, a simple arrangement for a beginning player and a complex arrangement for an advanced player are both equally challenging for their respective players. Dividing Fur Elise into sections allows your student to concentrate on one part at a time and not be overwhelmed by the piece's difficulties. You can segment Fur Elise into natural stopping points or by every few measures.
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Assign the most difficult section first. You should not require your student to master this section at this stage; however, it is important that the student spends the longest time practicing on the hardest section. Assigning the hardest section first means that your students will practice it from the very beginning.
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Add other sections gradually. You should not expect your students to learn a challenging song like Fur Elise instantly. Give them incremental sections to practice for each time you meet with them. Make sure that they practice in a cumulative way. For example, if the student works on two sections the first week and you assign two the next week, the student should practice all four sections that week, not just the latest two. Continue adding sections until your student has learned the entire piece.
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Tips & Warnings
Have your student play what he has worked on each time you meet. Correct and guide him as needed.
Only demonstrate sections if necessary. You want your students to learn, and trust that they know how to read music enough to learn it without your example. You should guide instead of lead.
References
- Photo Credit piano image by Sergey Goruppa from Fotolia.com
