New student

Thanks to my sister for writing a post I could comment on and be a total smart aleck and get away with it. I really do love mouthing off. I try not to often because it tends to make me unpopular, but it's so much fun.

I gave Madison her first piano lesson tonight. She doesn't yet have a piano book, so I had to try and teach her from nothing. When she first came, I was really worried she wouldn't let me teach her. I was expecting just her and her mom, but as it happened, no less than five people were standing on my doorstep when I answered the door. And they all sat and watched through the piano lesson. At first, she refused to look at me, she refused to sit down, she refused to touch the keyboard, and all she did was cry that she didn't want to. Finally, I got out my stuffed squirrel, Lord Bartholomew Throckmorton XXVII and told her that if she was really good and listened to me, I would ask the squirrel not to eat her.

She finally consented to learn when I had her dad take my seat beside her. I squatted next to them and taught them both how to play. She didn't want to play unless her dad, Chip, played with her, but he let her count and lead.

I don't know whether Madison is smarter than Kamren or whether there's just an enormous intellectual difference between five year olds and six year olds or whether I'm better at teaching without a book or whether I just learned from some of my mistakes from teaching Kamren, but Madison breezed through probably four lessons worth of material in forty minutes flat.

First I showed her how to find C. I gave her a red washable crayon and had her write a C on every C on the keyboard. Then I showed her how the notes went from A to G, repeating. I gave her a blue crayon to fill in the rest of the notes, and she had a ball, going all the way up the keyboard until Chip finally said "Okay, that's enough," and confiscated the crayon.

Then I got out pen and paper and drew a staff (just treble clef) and drew the note C. I showed her quarter notes, half notes, and whole notes and quizzed her on them until she learned the difference. I drew a few measures for her to play, taught her how to count them, and listened while she played three monotone "songs" that were solely rhythm counting.

Then I showed her how her fingers were numbered 1 through 5. I showed her the base position and called out finger numbers while she played them. After a few random numbers, I started calling out the finger numbers for her to play Mary Had a Little Lamb. She got really excited when she realized she had played a song she knew. She played it over and over.

By then, it had still only been fifteen minutes. So I taught her the notes D and E, showed her how they looked on the staff, drew all the notes on the staff so she could see that how high or low the notes were told her what note it was, then wrote out the first line to Mary Had a Little Lamb to show her what it looked like.

After that, I drew another staff, handed her the pen and paper, and had her draw some notes for me. "Draw me a quarter note C. Now draw a half note E. Now a whole note D. How many counts does that one get?" and so on.

I couldn't believe she had never had music lessons before. In forty minutes, she already nearly caught up to Kamren, who has had three weeks of lessons. Granted, I haven't even started teaching her left hand yet. Also, I guess I'm starting to learn how to teach a little better. I know I bounced around a lot and made a few things unnecessarily confusing. Maybe I'll do better next time.

I have to admit, teaching a new student for the first time with four spectators, all in a room the size of... well, the size of a hotel room... is really nerve-wracking.

Glad we survived. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go feed Lord Bartholomew Throckmorton XXVII.