Breaking complex things down into simple segments
Today a student was learning a crowded passage of unbroken eighth notes in a difficult key, E♭ minor. The sightreading was going well enough, but it was plodding and stilted because each new note was a surprise to the student. They hadn’t yet begin to see enough patterns to anticipate the necessary hand positions for each phrase.
Fortunately, the student’s notebook had a ruler attached, and with a pencil at the ready on the piano, it was easy to grab both and add some faint vertical lines between each phrase in the passage.
We left the piano for a moment and leaned over the music on a table. With the pencil lines to guide us, we identified the unique passages that repeat and realized there were actually just a few. Not only did they become recognizable, but larger patterns quickly emerged out of those smaller patterns: They repeat in the same A-B-A-B order. I added a horizontal line over the A pattern, and a horizontal curly brace over the B pattern. Suddenly, the phrasing was clear—and so was the matter of where to move the right hand to prepare for it.
Soon the student was moving through the passage more easily, and we were able to move on to counting the rhythm out loud. That step had felt far off just a few minutes before.
We were both satisfied, but I couldn’t help piling on with a bigger lesson:
You know, you can do this with anything complex in life. Break it down into smaller pieces. Projects, code, creativity, reading, chores, whatever. It can always be broken down into a sequence of manageable steps.
Hope this helps.
Pianos for Young Players
I’m often asked for recommendations of digital pianos for beginner students. Here are a few of my favorites as of August 28, 2025:
~$250
- Ideal for the youngest beginners.
- This version interfaces with Duolingo via Bluetooth for the same price as the original model.
- Built-in rechargeable battery
- Screen free
- Minimalist design = minimal distractions
- MIDI over USB-C allows you to go wild with playing in a DAW if you really want to go next level with it
Yamaha P-45 / P-71 These models are basically interchangeable.
~$500+ with stand. You’ll want a bench as well.
These are my favorite digital pianos for beginner and intermediate students. They feature hammer-action weighted keys, a screen-free interface with a built-in metronome, and a minimal selection of voices.
~$120
- A fresh take on a classic
- Fine for learning
- Lots of buttons to mess with
The original version of this post is from July of 2020. I had been teaching online lessons for years when Covid hit, but many of my students were new to it.
The advice here is as relevant as ever, both for online and in-person lessons. I’ve made some tweaks so it’s less specific to life in quarantine. I hope you find it useful. -c
Making the Most of Lessons
Preparation -> Productivity -> Progress
Lessons always feel short to me because I love playing music and teaching. I wait all week to spend time with each student, and then we get to hang out and do my favorite things.
But sometimes our time is actually eaten up by other stuff, too: Tuning guitars, warming up, finding sheet music and picks… that’s not ideal.
Here are three tips for maximizing our time together.
1. Show up ready to play
- If you play a stringed instrument, tune it before your lesson. Young learners tend to need a hand with this from a grown-up. (If you’re the grown-up and you’re struggling to help with tuning, please let me know so I can give you a refresher and resources to jog your memory during the week.)
- Once you’re in tune, make sure you have picks and a capo at the ready. Even if we don’t normally use them, they should be part of every guitarist’s toolkit.
- Regardless of your instrument, it’s best when you can take a few moments right before our lesson to warm up. Play anything. A scale, a song, a couple random notes. It helps your mindset in a lesson when you’ve already had your hands on your instrument right before we meet.
- If we’re meeting online, find your Zoom link before the lesson and test out your connection. Is your camera on and pointed the right way? How about the sound settings? You can test those in settings. Students should not wait for me to send the link when the lesson starts. If you need help finding the link, let me know ASAP and I’d be glad to help.
2. Take Notes
- Writing what you learn helps you remembering it, so always have a pencil and paper ready. A pencil is best for marking your music lightly so you can erase those markings when you fix mistakes. The paper could be in a notebook you dedicate to music lessons so your notes don’t get mixed up in something else or lost. Pick a notebook you love to use—it’ll make it more fun to write and read your notes.
- You should have all your materials in front of you when the lesson starts, including all your textbooks and a binder or folder containing your sheet music, any relevant tabs for guitarists, plus paper and something to write with so you can take notes.
3. Use the stuff in your Google Drive folder
Your folder is a space we share for organizing lesson materials. It’s also a place where you can upload recordings of your own playing during the week.
A few things I like to use it for:
- I put notes in a doc there after most lessons, summarizing what we covered and what you should practice. You should treat these notes as a supplement to your own notes you take during our lessons.
- I also keep PDF’s of your music in there, complete with the markings I add during our lessons.
- I’ll sometimes upload videos of myself demonstrating passages of music we’re working on.
- I can also make audio recordings for you to practice along with (feel free to ask me to do this whenever it’s helpful). Those go in your folder, too.
Hopefully these tips make your lessons even more valuable. If there’s something you’ve been doing that has helped your practice, let me know! I’d love to add tips here from students.