Teaching adults to play the piano: how to keep motivated?
For students who start learning piano in childhood, the question of motivation is not worth it: parents, teachers and annual exams do not allow you to relax and throw classes. Adults have to constantly look for an incentive to find time, energy and money for regular rehearsals.
Here we have collected 5 tips that will help you stay motivated at all stages of training.
Play what you like
Before you decide on your repertoire, list your favorite genres, groups, and performers to the teacher. The teacher will help you choose a piece that matches your level, and it will not cause nausea after dozens of plays. And don’t worry, no one will force you to play “Dog waltz”. Unless, of course, you want to.
Don’t be afraid of mistakes
If you’ve been practicing for a month or two and your fingers still don’t work, don’t panic. The muscles just need a little time to remember the movements, and the brain-to learn how to give the right signals in time. Just keep practicing and you will be surprised how automatically these processes will begin to occur.
Set yourself deadlines
Since childhood, our brain gets used to working under deadlines: tests at school, exams at University. So it will be useful to keep in mind a specific date by which you should show a certain result. In practice, working with hundreds of students, we found that the period for which a person can achieve the first results when learning from scratch is four months. That’s why each stage lasts exactly as long as we do, at the end of which students pass the test to the curator of the course.
Don’t focus on difficult parts of the work
While children avoid difficult pieces in their independent practice, adults, on the contrary, focus on those places that do not turn out. Remember that you do this primarily for yourself. Sometimes you can play those bars that just bring you pleasure.
Play in a group
The pieces played in the ensemble sound pretty cool. Even if your party is not yet solo, you will still feel how much you contribute to the common cause. In addition, the group has a competition factor. When you watch the progress of your friends, your motivation to grow yourself increases significantly.