Making Repetition Fun

"Practice is repetition," I tell my students repeatedly. I assign a number of times they should work on each section of their music during the week. Many of them are still surprised when I can tell that they didn't play bars 1 through 8 seven times each day. Some admit that they only played through it twice just before the lesson.

When that happens, we use the lesson for practice, and we do the repetitions in the lesson. To keep the interest and so that they don't quit piano the following week, I add variety to the repetitions:

• play it forte
• play it piano
• change the octave
• play it standing up
• change the voice (if you have a digital instrument)
• play it super slowly
• play it as fast as you can

It works wonders! Suddenly repetitions are not so boring. The students are laughing, experimenting and enjoying the learning process. It takes up quite a bit of time (especially when they get to change the voice and want to try out 10 of them before they choose one they like), but I end up with a group of super happy piano students who continue to "love piano class!"