piano lessons - beginning

One of the many things I do is teach piano. Over the past few weeks, a couple of my students have said I should write a book on the subject. What? Why? Sometimes I barely know what I'm doing myself. Well, that's not true exactly, I have played for over 40 years and took lessons for almost 15 years and have a minor in music. I don't play as well as I used too. My hands and fingers are stiff, but I do know the fundamentals and then some, but there are times when a student will ask me something or do something and I'm totally befuddled. It's those times I come up with my little gems.

This week's gems to add to the book which will be written at some point some time in the future.

I'm working with a woman who is confused about finger numbering.


 this is from pianoscales.org because I was lazy at this point and didn't want to make up my own chart. As you can see, the thumb is one and the fingers are numbered to 5 with the pinkie on both hands being 5.

My student wants to start with the left hand pinkie as 1 and count to 5 and then the right hand thumb being 1 again. So what we came up with is putting the numbers on the back of her fingers. But it's silly for her to walk around with numbers on her hands so I'm going to find band-aids - the spot ones and write the numbers on them and put them on her fingers. Problem solved.