Want To Teach Piano?

Want to teach piano? Teaching is a wonderful way to learn more about music and earn money at the same time. As a part time job the pay is very good at $30 or more per hour.

If you know the basics, you can teach. Since most students are beginners, you don't need to be Horowitz to teach. If you're starting with beginners here's what to do:

#1 Start with finger numbers: 1 for thumb, 2 for index finger, etc. Ask them to point to their left hand. Show them how to put both thumbs on middle C.

Start with Mary Had a Little Lamb. If they are fifth grade or so start with Yankee Doodle. Older kids will catch on quicker. Don't teach kids younger than 5. There might be a 4 year old that works, but it's rare. Even five year olds are a mixed bunch. Some have the attention span, others don't.

Pay attention to finger coordination. This is the most important thing first. Sometimes younger kids will have a hard time with this. You can put stickers on keys or fingers to help them. They really need to master finger coordination. Pay attention if they're always looking at their fingers. They should be able to internalize 1 for thumb, 5 for pinky, etc. Try putting a towel over their hands and making a game of not being able to look at their hands.

As soon as finger coordination is starting to gel, introduce rhythm. Start by telling them that a quarter note is short and a half note is long. Later introduce a dotted half note as 'longer' and a whole note as 'longest'.

Often kids hate to wait on long notes. They'd rather play every note as fast as they can figure them out! This leads to some songs being all quarter notes, or half notes in the hard sections.

Beginning teaching is a balancing act teaching finger numbers, note letters, and rhythm. Make sure that nothing becomes a crutch - for example finger numbers. Test your students to make sure they truly understand.

Teaching is a word of mouth business. Advertising works, just not very well. Most non-business people think all that's necessary is to have a store or product, advertise and voila! They see advertising everywhere, so they assume it works.

It does, but most money in advertising is made by ad companies. Word of mouth is a hundred times more effective, although in the beginning you probably need advertising to kick start things. Also, network with other teachers. Often they may have an extra student to refer to you.

Churches are also a great place to network and find music jobs because they use keyboard music. A great resource is: church musician jobs