Piano Lessons Tulsa | Personalized Approach to Lessons

 

This content was created for Curtis Music Academy

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Curtis Music Academy podcast. I hope you’re all doing well. Today I wanted to talk about how individualized our piano lessons Tulsa are here at Curtis Music academy for each of our students, and why that is a great thing that helps them learn their instrument better and have a more enjoyable time doing so. Firstly, our ability to customize lesson time, length, and frequency means that all of our students are able to learn at a pace that is as rapid or as relaxed as they want, depending on their eventual goals for learning their instrument. The majority of our students take one thirty-minute lesson with their instructor weekly. However, we very commonly offer forty five-minute lessons or even hour-long lessons to students who wish to learn at an accelerated rate.

We also have a few students who choose to take multiple thirty-minute piano lessons Tulsa every week to reduce the amount of time they go without a lesson with their instructor so they can retain more information and progress faster. We recommend this both as a method for students who wish to learn at a faster pace, and for many students who are complete beginners to their instruments. When first starting the study of an instrument there is so much information to take in that is important for building the basic fundamentals of the instrument that it is important to make sure that these habits are being formed correctly. However, for super young students (the earliest we generally take students is about three years old) who have a hard time sitting still and focusing for an entire thirty-minute block, we do offer shortened fifteen-minute lessons.

But as a general rule, most students have one thirty-minute lesson with their instructor weekly, either in person here at the studio, or we have a couple of students who have chosen to be permanently online for their lessons. But outside of the time and scheduling of our students’ lessons, we go even further in personalizing the piano lessons Tulsa for each student’s goals, abilities, and even their individual interests. One of the first things we ask new students is what their goal is with their instrument. Because obviously, we don’t want to give the same type of instruction to someone who wants to become a professional concert pianist as we would to someone who just wants to learn to play the guitar for themselves as a fun hobby in their free time.

We are more than willing to provide piano lessons Tulsa that cater to both of those goals and learning styles, and just about anything in between. Sometimes, a student will even come in with a super specific goal, such as to be able to play one piece of music for someone’s upcoming birthday party or something. In those cases, we of course focus only on that piece of music and the necessary fundamentals and skills to be able to perform that piece perfectly. We also want students to have an input into their piano lessons Tulsa, as we believe that makes them more enjoyable. And even on those things that are unanimous across all students learning an instrument, such as scales, we have a variety of ways to teach and explain them so that they are presented in the way that is most productive and enjoyable for that student.

As an illustration of this, for fingering on the piano we have a small colored dial and pages of colored rows of dots like a miniature game of Twister, and we use this to help teach students finger movements and how to move fingers to different locations individually. It’s a really fun way to help younger students focus on the idea, but it can also help make learning it more enjoyable for our older students, because board games are more fun than reading a book. And if we are teaching a student a method for learning something and they appear to not be enjoying it, we will do our best to teach that in another format. That is something that often comes up for discussion at staff meetings, where our instructors are able to bounce ideas off each other to share new ways to teach things to students who may not be enjoying something.

We do our very best to never make a student trudge through something if we can clearly see they are not enjoying learning it and/or it just isn’t an effective way of learning for them and it isn’t making sense. And to make lessons even more customized, going beyond teaching to the needs and knowledge of each student, we like to get individual student input on what they would like to learn in their piano lessons Tulsa. The most common outlet of that is asking students for individual pieces they would like to learn to play. So, a favorite song of theirs or their parents, or a song they feel would be more fun to learn.

Sometimes, there isn’t existing sheet music for that student’s instrument for the particular song (we have had piano students who want to play modern rap songs), so our instructors actually go look up the existing music for the song and are able to make an adaptation to that students instrument based on the chords of the song. This way, students are both getting to spend time with music they already enjoy, and they will feel better about their musical progression. Being able to see oneself improving at the ability to play a song they already knew by heart helps the student have a very clear image of their improving skill on the instrument, which can make their lessons a more rewarding experience and get them excited to continue learning and progressing.

So basically, at Curtis Music Academy, we have the opposite of a one size fits all approach. If a student brings in a classical piano book from another music school and says they want to continue working through that we would be thrilled to do that. And if they come in and say they want to learn to play the musical score to The Lord of the Rings in their piano lessons Tulsa, that is also great, and we will get some sheet music printed. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Curtis Music Academy podcast.