Lisa Donovan Lukas has been a teacher in the Los Angeles area for 15 years.

Tell us your personal piano story as well as how you chose piano teaching as a career.

I started formal piano lessons when I was about 5 ½, almost 6 years old, and studied classical music with the same teacher until I graduated from high school.  His name was Ed Willumsen and he was an excellent pianist and teacher, and he was also a composer and played popular, contemporary music as well as classical repertoire. As I advanced through classical repertoire, he would also have me play a pop song or a show tune or a standard at the end of the lesson, and he taught me to compose my own original music as well. 

We had a piano in our house when I was really little, because my grandfather (who lived nearby) was a self-taught pianist and lived in an apartment building – and he was getting complaints about the noise…so he moved his piano into my parent’s house.  He would come over and play the piano and he also would make up little ballets that my sister and I would dance around the living room to, all dressed up in my grandmother’s petticoats.  I fell in love with that piano immediately and I remember my mother telling me that when I learned to read books I would have piano lessons as well.My mother was an elementary school teacher and taught 3rd and 4th grade, so she taught me to read before I went to kindergarten, and I remember I just couldn’t wait to learn how to play that piano.  I was very extremely shy and all through my childhood I think I thought of that piano like a best friend.  I just always loved it.I was a music composition major and graduated with a degree in music composition from USC, and I also studied piano while I was there, throughout my college years, and afterward as well.  After college, I continued to study composition and orchestration privately for another 4 years with a film composer and orchestrator named Albert Harris.  And I studied songwriting with Lehman Engel in a workshop called the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop.When I was a teenager, I dreamed of being like Joni Mitchell.  I wanted to sing and write my own songs.  And by the time I got to college, my goal was to be a composer.  During college, I worked as a singing waitress and played the piano and sang in a restaurant, and I also played a lot of piano bar gigs, weddings, restaurants, hotels.After college, I continued studying with my composition teacher, and worked in piano bars and restaurants until I finally got a job in the studios, working as a proofreader and a copyist for film composers.  I loved that work because I had the chance to study musical scores all day long.  I ended up doing that for about 20 years.Even though piano study was such a huge part of my childhood, I never intended to teach piano.  I always wanted to be a composer, and that was my total focus.  Being around music preparation did give me opportunity to write music and have some pieces placed in a film or tv show every so often, so I was always on that path of music composition.But, when my son was about 10, I decided to leave music preparation as my career.  The job could be very intense, lots of deadlines, lots of long days and nights, unpredictable schedules, and I felt I was missing out on my son’s life. So, I thought to myself, well, if I teach piano and work as a piano teacher, I’ll be home more and that will be a better career for me, while my son is young.  I loved music prep so much,

Every tenth episode is a list of ten music-y things

Previous lists of ten music-y things include 10 things to watch for when you sit at the piano, 10 books to read with your piano kid, and 10 ways to encourage a love of music. To see the full list of tenth episodes, click here.

Every year private piano teachers host piano recitals

My studio recital is the cherry on top of the previous school year. I use it to recognize all the accomplishments my students have achieved throughout the year. To learn more of what I value in annual spring recitals, read this blog post.Recitals offer students an opportunity to showcase their newly acquired skills, listen to other students play interesting music, and share their love of music with the most important people in their lives – their parents.That is what our topic is today. You are the most important person in your child’s like. The things you do and say has a profound impact on their self worth. 

Ten Positive Message You Give Your Piano Kid When You Attend Their Piano Recital

* I am smart. My work on the piano is valuable and worthy of attention: attention from the audience and attention of my best effort to learn and polish the piece.* I can do hard things. Yes, piano recitals are difficult tasks. The music you learn for a recital is challenging, a step above your normal music. You are able to face this challenge.* I am not alone. My family will always be there for me. They are my biggest cheerleaders.* I am important to my parents. They will set aside other important things (job, meetings) to be at my piano recital with me.* I am valuable to my family. My mom and dad are in my corner. Even if they don’t live together anymore, my parents are able to put aside their differences to celebrate my accomplishment for one evening.* I make my parents proud.  More than must saying they are proud of me, my parents show their pride by their actions. * I am worth listening to. People want to hear me play. Musicians often battle mind games that tell them the audience is bored and isn’t interested in their music. Parents can offset that negative talk by attentively listening to their child play music.* I can bring joy to people with my music. I can serve others with my music and bring them joy. So many of the audience don’t know how to play the piano, they wish they did.

Here is the link to the Facebook live stream from the 2018 Helen Elbert Chamber Music Festival hosted by East Texas Music Teachers Association.

The bulk of piano study is isolating for piano students. They practice alone and take their lessons alone.  Finding opportunities to collaborate with other musicians can be a big benefit to piano students.

A few ways you can collaborate with other musicians:* Boomwhackers* Duets with other piano players (siblings should proceed with caution LOL)* Piano ensemble* Playing with other instrumentalists: piano/violin, piano/flute, piano/guitar, piano* Even playing the same piano piece with another student takes a great deal of coordination and concentration.

When you play with other musicians….* you must keep a steady beat. Solo pianists often slow down or stop to fix mistakes.* you learn to listen and respond to other players.* you deepen your understanding of music theory by following chord progressions or transposing music.* you learn to focus and concentrate on your part while listening to the other music.

What if you don’t have other musicians to make music with?Consider the use of technology like the app GarageBand or a simple video camera. Solo piano students can learn a lot about music collaboration by recording their solo piano piece and then adding percussion and other band instruments to different tracks on GarageBand. 

Here are my Boomwhacker Arrangements:Eye of the TigerMinuet in G (In the Key of Cool!)

Thank you and welcome to new subscribers to the website, Marilyn and Carrie. I am glad you’re here.Thank you, Wendy, for the encouging review on iTunes. Wendy writes,“Many of us put our kids in piano lessons, but if we aren’t musical ourselves, are limited in our ability to support them. Shelly is a passionate music educator and thanks to this podcast we are all able to take advantage of her wonderful wisdom and tools to ignite a lifelong love of music.”

How could Episode 88 be about anything other than the instrument that brings us together every week? The piano!

Resources on the history of the piano: We first told you about a book explaining the history of the piano in Episode 080: Ten Books to Read with Your Piano Kid“The Music of Life: Bartolomeo Cristofori & the Invention of the Piano” by Elizabeth Rusch.The Metropolitan Museum: The Pianos of Bartolomeo Cristofori 

Resources on the design of the modern piano:Steinway & Sons About Page“Every STEINWAY & SONS grand and upright is a masterpiece of craftsmanship and a consummate work of art. Each STEINWAY piano, consisting of more than 12,000 individual parts, has its own musical character and is as unique as the individual who plays it.”Steinway & Sons Artists Profiles 

I am not a piano expert but I found this interesting video that explains some the specific parts of the piano keys.

This video demonstrates the function of the piano pedals.

This iconic piano piece celebrates its 208th anniversary April 27, 2018There is a lot of speculation and mystery about who the “Elise” was for which Fur Elise was written. Was it Therese Malfatti von Rohrenbach zu Dezza, a friend and former student of Beethoven’s? Could it have been Elisabeth Rockel, a German soprano, also a friend of Beethoven’s?This article from the History Channel offers more information.No matter who it was written for, Fur Elise is one of the most often played and requested pieces for pianists.“Ludwig van Beethoven’s most important achievement was raising instrumental music to the upper echelons of art, when it was previously considered inferior to vocal music, and literature and painting. Through pieces such as “Für Elise”, he showed how a simple piano composition could contain as much emotion as any other art form.”

#PianosinunexpectedplacesSo far I have found pianos at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Crazy Horse Memorial,

A Wise Puritan Proverb

A few weeks ago my pastor shared a quote from John Bunyan, the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress. 

“You can do more than pray, after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.”

Over time that quote has been condensed to “Pray until you have prayed.” How do you know if you’ve prayed enough? Pray until you have prayed.With the idea of piano practice – How do you know if you’ve practiced enough? Practice until you’ve practiced. Practice until there is marked improvement.

One quick side note: Episode 87?? My how time flies!Let’s hear it for the Canton High School Class of 87!! I didn’t mention this on the podcast (so this is a special treat only for show notes readers) but I was voted “Most Likely to Succeed” my Junior and Senior years of high school. Chris Chambless, the male counterpart my junior year, is the co-founder of a major energy company. I’m a piano teacher. By some measures he has far out-succeeded me but every time a piano student masters a new piece or surges with pride after a performance, I count that as a major success and I smile. Chris, if you’re reading this, congratulations on your well-deserved success!

Some practical practice tips

Your practice should be more than a clock watching exercise. There should be improvement after each practice session. Here are two ways I encourage my students to practice.Play and repeat and repeat and repeat – but not more than four timesPlay the piece or small section of a piece once. As you play, actively listen for problem areas. Find places that are difficult for your fingers to get to or where mistakes are happening.Decide on one problem to fix and focus on the notes or measure where the problem occurs.  Play only those notes slowly and intentionally to fix the error. Now that you are playing the correct notes with the correct fingers, repeat that section slowly to train your fingers to play it correctly.Actively listen with each repetition to make sure you are still playing correctly and that your fingers are getting more comfortable moving to the proper piano keys.The trick is not to play/repeat more than four times. If you’ve been carefully focusing, four times will be enough. If you aren’t playing carefully, then you are only ingraining the mistake in your muscle memory.As my student said to me the other day, “Muscle memory works both ways.” 

This year’s recital practice incentive My studio recital is held the first Monday and Tuesday in May. I do this so that students have the remainder of May off and are able to focus on other end of school year activities. All year, my students have been collecting beads. They earn beads when they complete a book or participate in extra piano events,