Craig Sale

Craig Sale

A Life-Changing Decision

In 1981, the year I received my graduate degree in piano performance, advanced degrees in piano pedagogy were just beginning to appear. Thanks to the work of the National Conference on Piano Pedagogy, there would be a blossoming of pedagogy degree programs in the coming years, but at this point, performance degrees were the norm. My pedagogy e...
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Questions and Answers: Dotted Quarter Eighth Note Rhythm

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Daniel Tsukamoto
Will there ever be online transmission, where I don't have to worry about 1/8 of a second delay while doing demonstration to my st... Read More
Sunday, 23 February 2020 20:48
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Craig Sale

Autumn 2019: Questions and Answers

Note from Sam Holland The great psychologist, Abraham Maslow once observed, "In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety." C.S. Lewis noted, "There are far better things ahead than any we leave behind." Changes are coming in the "Questions and Answers" column. As you know, over the past ye...
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Craig Sale

Kabalevsky: Running Along, Op. 39, No. 6

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Preparation and Presentation Context: Pieces that are helpful to have experienced or played before approaching this one Kabalevsky, A Little Porcupine, op. 89, No. 8Köhler, Melody, op. 190, no. 27Diabelli, Scherzo in C, Op. 149, No. 6 Get Ready: Creative activities to explore before the first encounter with the score, to prepare a student for deepe...
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Susan Baugh
This was great! Thanks for all your ideas!
Thursday, 22 August 2019 20:42
Janet Kelly
Absolutely wonderful! I meant to give you 5 stars but somehow it only filled up 4.5 stars when I clicked on the last star! So many... Read More
Sunday, 20 October 2019 01:54
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Craig Sale

Concept Preparation: The Missing Link

Did you enjoy this webinar? Please complete our brief survey to help us improve our webinar series and continue to bring you the highest quality resources in piano teaching.
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Linda Gaines
This was wonderful. I absolutely love the idea of the ropes and notes. I have a whiteboard with electrical tape and black magnet... Read More
Tuesday, 11 June 2019 07:58
Isabel Marcheselli
One of the best webinars I have heard yet, thank you!
Thursday, 02 April 2020 02:12
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Craig Sale

Rediscovering the past: Alexander Borovsky

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Editor's note: Clavier Companion reviewed these recordings for the May/June 2018 issue. Click here to read it.  It is a delight to uncover lost gems from the last century such as Alexander Borovsky, a great 20th century pianist and teacher, and his paper entitled "The Bach Specialists of the World." Borovsky was born in Mitau, Latvia, March 8,...
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Craig Sale

To judge and be judged

Teachers should always strive to provide positive and successful music experiences for their students. Within the walls of the teaching studio, it is much easier to create these experiences—the environment and people involved are familiar, and the teacher has more control of outcomes. However, this is not the case when students leave the studi...
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Sam Holland 

Louise Goss: In Memoriam

Louise Goss: In Memoriam
In April, the world of piano pedagogy lost a legend. In the following pages, friends and colleagues of Louise Goss pay tribute with remembrances and recollections.  In the "old days," all senior piano majors at Oberlin were required to take piano pedagogy. I will never forget the excitement our professor exuded when she presented to us the bra...
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Lesson Planning: A Teaching Essential?

Road maps and detours by Craig Sale One of my worst nightmares is arriving at the school where I teach to realize I have left that day's lesson plans at home.  On the rare occasions when this has happened, I have managed to conduct a reasonably structured lesson by following the student's last assignment in their notebook. Generally, I remembe...
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Craig Sale

Interdisciplinary inspirations: Using visual images to enhance your teaching

Meaningful connections Successful teachers always try to make connections for students— creating and demonstrating meaningful relationships among various activities and concepts. They strive to show students how a good technique enables them to play their repertoire with greater ease; how understanding music theory makes reading and memorization ea...
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Craig Sale

How do you teach the dotted-quarter eighth note rhythm?

In this issue, we address the teaching of a basic, but often challenging, skill—the dotted-quarter eighth note rhythm. We wanted to take a different approach and survey several teachers to assemble a wider collection of ideas for you, the reader, to consider.  Nine teachers of pre-college students submitted their thoughts on teaching this rhyt...
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Craig Sale

How Do You Teach Students to Read Patterns Rather Than Note-By-Note?

The idea of reading patterns in music first became important to me when I began teaching young students how to read music. In my formative years I was raised on a note-by-note approach that began at Middle C. It worked for me... at least I thought it did. Today, even though I teach children to read by interval relation...
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Craig Sale

Four teachers and Facebook: Ideas for improving sight-reading

Earlier in the year, I established a private discussion group on Facebook with four teachers from around the country— Monica Allen, Laura Beauchamp-Williamson, Rebecca Pennington, and Scott Price. Our goal was to have some conversations about music reading which would lead to the sharing of ideas and resources. It is important to know that the...
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Craig Sale

Music Reading

Experience and research tells us that the more one reads a language the more fluency is gained. This is, of course, true of sight-reading as well. Making this happen with our students in an organized and motivating manner eludes many of us, myself included. This is why I was so intrigued when told of the exciting new sight-reading program implement...
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Craig Sale

Boiling it down: Recipes for effective teaching

When I think back on the great teachers I have encountered in my life, I find that they all had one thing in common—the ability to boil things down to their essence. These teachers' abilities to reveal the essence of the subject matter made my understanding possible. Perhaps it was an applied teacher communicating the essentials of tone production,...
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Craig Sale

How do you help a college piano major with poor reading skills?

At first glance, the scope of this issue's topic may seem limited. The majority of readers are independent teachers working with students before they leave for college. The percentage of their students who major in piano is small. However, the following articles by Dr. Timothy Shafer and Dr. Sylvia Coats contain valuable information and insights fo...
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Craig Sale

How can colors be used to help students learn to read music?

For centuries, music notation has been a "black and white" subject. To read this music, musicians have decoded black and white print and transferred it into colorful sound. Even when making notations in our printed music we have usually grabbed an ordinary pencil, thus adding a shade of gray to the page. When things get really bad we might actually...
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Introducing students to the music of Schumann

Because of the textural, technical, and interpretive demands of music from the Romantic era, students usually do not encounter it until their early intermediate years. Most likely some of the first Romantic compositions a student will study will be by Robert Schumann, whose bicentennial is being celebrated this year. In this issue Sharon Stosur, El...
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Craig Sale, editor

When using an intervallic approach, how do you develop faster note recognition? - Expanding on the "blueprint"

If were asked to name the most frequent mistake made by teachers, I would cite the belief that a method or set of materials is complete in and of itself. This belief inevitably leads to some frustration with the materials, and teachers may even abandon the materials to try something else. In reality, every method needs supplements provided by the t...
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Craig Sale, editor

How do you integrate composition into your teaching of music reading?

Imagine an elementary school classroom in which students are taught how to read a written language both out loud and to their selves. They have vocabulary drills, spelling tests, reading comprehension tests, etc. Yet these same children are never asked to converse or to write down an original thought. Would they be considered literate? If these stu...
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Piano Magazine is the leading resource for pianists, piano teachers, and piano enthusiasts. We bring you informative, interesting, and inspiring ideas on all aspects of piano teaching, learning, and performing. The official name of Clavier Companion magazine was changed to Piano Magazine in 2019.

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