"Pamela gives us interesting material to play and she uses a lot of positive reinforcement when we play a song well! That really motivates me. She gives us hard songs, but we don't feel a lot of pressure to always play them perfectly. She prepares us for recitals and makes them fun, like the Halloween Recital where we got to wear out costumes" -Claire, age 10 years old, and Hannah, age 9 years old
Why Study With Us?
What sets us apart from the typical piano studio? Here at Boulder Piano Lessons, we care about the individual interests of each of our students. Through our holistic approach to learning music, we teach students how to play in a variety of styles as well as improvise and compose. We encourage creativity and fun in everything we do.
Top 10 Reasons to Take Lessons With Us
1. We make learning to read music fun and easy. One of the first trickiest parts of playing the piano--learning to read music notation--can actually be super easy and stick for years to come. We have combined our pedagogical knowhow with practical experience to arrive at a clever music reading approach that uses color to make connecting visual notation and playing music easy and reliable for even the youngest student!
2. We train the whole musician. Playing the piano is about so much more than pushing keys. We teach students to train their voices to match pitch and their ears to recognize notes and harmony right from the first lesson. This will help them if they want to join a choir, a band, or perform in a musical in the future. We work on counting but also on internalizing rhythm and being aware of pulse, knowing they may one day play in a band or an orchestra. Learning to play the piano, if done right, becomes the jumping off point for learning any other musical instrument and participating in so many other musical endeavors. We want that foundation to be solid and functional by teaching our students to learn how to learn.
3. We are focused on real world skills. Not everyone is going to play piano for a living or make a career out of music. We take a holistic approach to piano lessons and work with each student to build real-world skills, like being able to sing your favorite songs while playing along with yourself or learning to write down your own musical creations. At the same time, we value and want to impart in each student a sound technical foundation and appreciation for great music and culture.
4. We make recitals an opportunity to look forward to, not something to dread. Everyone in the studio is individually coached and prepared to play in our studio recitals, so no one is unprepared or set up to fail. The recitals often have "themes" that engage our students' creative side and challenge the tedious mold of years past. Sometimes our recitals feature pieces by only the most famous composers, self-selected and researched by the students. Other times we team up everyone in the studio with a partner for duets, which has been a blast. Last year we set a challenge of practicing your song 100 times to learn the process that it takes to reach excellence. Every single student stepped up to the challenge. Of course, costume recitals come Halloween, are the studio-wide favorite each year!
5. We seek to build a professional but personal relationship between our students and ourselves. We welcome our students into a warm and friendly environment that they look forward to coming back to week after week. We care about our students as people and the qualities that make them who they are. Being an artist requires that one go deeper than first impressions and get to what really matters.
6. We have realistic expectations. We know that our students have many activities to which they are equally committed and piano lessons need to be prioritized in relationship to these. While daily practice is a must, we also understand that everyone has ups and downs, good practice weeks and bad practice weeks, and that learning to play the piano is a journey. We emphasize the value to our students of giving their best effort. We are ok with the way motivation and time commitment can move in waves over the weeks and months.
7. We work on student motivation and practice skills. We actively seek out new and more engaging ways to teach. We help our students build a toolbox of useful and fun approaches for practicing their music at home. We implement studio-wide practice challenges like working with students to learn and polish 30-minutes worth of music and then collaborate on recording their very own CD in our studios. Look for samples on our student page in the coming weeks!
8. We are specially training in healthy piano technique. Only a generation ago, a lot of piano teaching perpetuated horrible playing habits and poor technique that led to many injured piano players. We have both studied with teachers who helped re-work our technical approach to playing the piano. We now incorporate what we know about building an ergonomically-sound approach to playing the piano into our own teaching.
9. We believe that creativity and learning the classics go hand in hand. Improvisation should be an integral part of learning to play the piano. We employ jazz, and blues and rock styles to teach these skills to all of our students, from the youngest beginner to adults.
10. We love what we do! We can't help but share our enthusiasm for teaching music and playing the piano. We want our students to get that same spark of passion for being creative and expressing themselves through music that we did from our first teachers! We hope you want to learn to play the piano and become a lifelong lover of music.
2. We train the whole musician. Playing the piano is about so much more than pushing keys. We teach students to train their voices to match pitch and their ears to recognize notes and harmony right from the first lesson. This will help them if they want to join a choir, a band, or perform in a musical in the future. We work on counting but also on internalizing rhythm and being aware of pulse, knowing they may one day play in a band or an orchestra. Learning to play the piano, if done right, becomes the jumping off point for learning any other musical instrument and participating in so many other musical endeavors. We want that foundation to be solid and functional by teaching our students to learn how to learn.
3. We are focused on real world skills. Not everyone is going to play piano for a living or make a career out of music. We take a holistic approach to piano lessons and work with each student to build real-world skills, like being able to sing your favorite songs while playing along with yourself or learning to write down your own musical creations. At the same time, we value and want to impart in each student a sound technical foundation and appreciation for great music and culture.
4. We make recitals an opportunity to look forward to, not something to dread. Everyone in the studio is individually coached and prepared to play in our studio recitals, so no one is unprepared or set up to fail. The recitals often have "themes" that engage our students' creative side and challenge the tedious mold of years past. Sometimes our recitals feature pieces by only the most famous composers, self-selected and researched by the students. Other times we team up everyone in the studio with a partner for duets, which has been a blast. Last year we set a challenge of practicing your song 100 times to learn the process that it takes to reach excellence. Every single student stepped up to the challenge. Of course, costume recitals come Halloween, are the studio-wide favorite each year!
5. We seek to build a professional but personal relationship between our students and ourselves. We welcome our students into a warm and friendly environment that they look forward to coming back to week after week. We care about our students as people and the qualities that make them who they are. Being an artist requires that one go deeper than first impressions and get to what really matters.
6. We have realistic expectations. We know that our students have many activities to which they are equally committed and piano lessons need to be prioritized in relationship to these. While daily practice is a must, we also understand that everyone has ups and downs, good practice weeks and bad practice weeks, and that learning to play the piano is a journey. We emphasize the value to our students of giving their best effort. We are ok with the way motivation and time commitment can move in waves over the weeks and months.
7. We work on student motivation and practice skills. We actively seek out new and more engaging ways to teach. We help our students build a toolbox of useful and fun approaches for practicing their music at home. We implement studio-wide practice challenges like working with students to learn and polish 30-minutes worth of music and then collaborate on recording their very own CD in our studios. Look for samples on our student page in the coming weeks!
8. We are specially training in healthy piano technique. Only a generation ago, a lot of piano teaching perpetuated horrible playing habits and poor technique that led to many injured piano players. We have both studied with teachers who helped re-work our technical approach to playing the piano. We now incorporate what we know about building an ergonomically-sound approach to playing the piano into our own teaching.
9. We believe that creativity and learning the classics go hand in hand. Improvisation should be an integral part of learning to play the piano. We employ jazz, and blues and rock styles to teach these skills to all of our students, from the youngest beginner to adults.
10. We love what we do! We can't help but share our enthusiasm for teaching music and playing the piano. We want our students to get that same spark of passion for being creative and expressing themselves through music that we did from our first teachers! We hope you want to learn to play the piano and become a lifelong lover of music.