Presentation: Clinton Pratt “Practice Makes Perfect?”

Ann Arbor Area Piano Teachers Guild is pleased to present Clinton Pratt from Cincinnati, Ohio.

Teachers know that practicing is important. That’s how we improve! However, we often neglect to ensure our students are actually practicing effectively and efficiently. We might tell them what to do and write it down, but are they actually doing it at home?

Even though teachers may know some good practice techniques, they don’t always convey it in the right way to students, making sure they actually understand what to do.

I believe the main priority of lessons is to teach students how to practice. If they don’t know how to practice, what’s the point? They will continue to come week after week with not much progress, or worse: they are playing it wrong!

This session will show teachers exactly how to ensure students are practicing efficiently and effectively on their own. In addition, we will discuss what efficient and effective practice is. I will demonstrate step-by-step, several practice techniques, showing exactly how to help students develop excellent practice habits.

Examples include “1 plus 1”, “3 in a row”, practicing in bursts, how to decide on sections to practice, finding hand positions and fingering groupings, and more. I will show how to practice tricky rhythms, steady pulse, balance, voicing, phrasing, and difficult technical issues.

Video clips from actual lessons will help give real world examples of these techniques in action, and volunteers from the audience will come to the piano for live demonstrations!

Contact:  Ceren Su Sahin (cerensu@umich.edu)