The Vibrant Music Teaching Podcast | Proven and practical tips, strategies and ideas for music teachers

Tune in for my list of goals for the first year of lessons, divided into 2 age brackets.

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Joanna Shiel is on the show today and we're chatting about choosing great exam pieces that are motivating and inspiring for students.

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Getting ahead of your students' music theory can have enormous benefits. Here's how you can do it.

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A step-by-step system for the simplest way to keep track of items you loan to students.

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Journaling or note taking after each lesson might seem like a lot, but it can make a big difference to the quality of your music teaching. Tune in to find out how and why.

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Music exams can be wonderful...when they're used with the right student

at the right time. Let's unpack the pros and cons together.

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Piano performance anxiety is a manifestation of certain beliefs that your student holds.

Some of these thoughts might be:

Fear of failure

Fear of judgement or criticism

Messing up in front of their peers

Expectations on how their performance should go

Thinking that the performance must be a perfect rendition

Not trusting in their abilities

There might also be some aspects of the performance or exam itself that might make your student feel nervous, such as:

How prepared your student is

Experience level of performing

How many people will watch the performance?

Length of the performance – if a student has a 20-minute recital, this will be very different from a 1-minute performance.

Context of the performance - for example, performing for an examiner would be very different to playing just for their family.

Getting to the root thoughts of anxiety with your student can be really revealing and a good place to start.

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Piano exams require some thought and balance to get all the components ready for the big day. Here's how I handle it.

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When are piano exams a good idea, what's the long term benefit and risk involved.

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Sometimes, your student is just not feeling the lesson you’ve planned

and you need something fresh inspiration to stop the lesson getting

stale. Learn how to teach the 12 bar blues and you’ll never be stuck for

what to do when a student hasn’t practised or is out-of-sorts.

Being able to teach the 12 bar blues at the drop of a hat is a great trick to have up your sleeve.

There

isn’t just one way to teach the blues, of course. But in this article,

I’ll explain the method I’ve used countless times now to rescue a

lacklustre lesson.

Jump in with this step-by-step process any time you feel like your student needs something fresh and different.

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