Teaching Counting to Kids in Piano Lesson

Video Transcript

"Hi. Welcome back to expertvillage.com. Today's episode, as I have said, is what to do when they're not getting it. And I want to warn you of two things that they're going to do when they come to you. Often times you'll have students who come to you who will have had piano instruction or music instruction, perhaps at school or with another teacher. And they might be in dire straits and you think to yourself, "There's no possible way that God or any other person in the world can get this child to read music." And that's your job. So I just want to warn you for the two things that they're going to do. Let me play for you what they'll do. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, one, two, three, etc,. You might have noticed that the things that I did wrong in that, in that piece were numerous. But most importantly, is that I didn't count it right. That will happen to you all the time is that your kids will see a whole note and they'll know, "oh. That whole note that means play for four counts". And so they'll play it one, and then start counting to four. This is not cool. So one of the things that you need to do as their teacher, is refrain from hitting them or any sort of physical violence, and see if you can get them to say it with you. To play the note and say one, one, two, three, four, and it takes some repetition. One of the things in music that you need more than anything is simply repetition, which is why it's kind of a hard thing to learn. It's not something you can just get and remember it for the rest of your life. It's like all things. Like learning a language, learning how to dance, learning anything. And I'm going through all my awesome cards to find for you a whole note that tells you to count, to count to four. So if this rhythm problem is an issue for you, and I assure you it probably will be, start with whole notes. Whole notes are the easiest to get to count for because they have the most counts in them. So just, just choose a note on the piano. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, and you're miming, or you're putting together the sound of their voice starting on the one and the sound of that key going down. So that's a good place to start when they come to you with terrible habits."