Is your new primer student demanding to plahy Waiting For A Miracle from Encanto?
What about your beginning teen student? Is he knocking at your door holding the latest single from Harry Styles?
Popular music should, without a doubt, be a part of piano lessons. As students gain more and more experience, it may even become a central focus.
But before then, it should be introduced carefully and with a great deal of consideration.
If handled incorrectly, popular music can be a problem for your new students and your studio.
To avoid this, today we’re discussing how you can handle popular music requests from new students and from young beginners who aren’t quite ready to rock and roll.
We’ll also share a pop-infused resource for older beginners that will satisfy the need for pop-style music while delivering a pedagogically perfect program!
The Piano’s Problem With Popular Music
To be clear, Andrea and I spend most of our time composing pop-infused music. But pop-infused music and popular music (the stuff you hear on the radio) are two different things.
Don’t get us wrong, we are avid fans of popular music. And, we believe popular music plays a central role in a thriving studio.
But it is a double-edged sword.
Popular music can save some students, while absolutely defeating others. And those that are most likely to be defeated are your brand new students.
So, it is these new students that are the focus of today’s popular music post.
Popular Problems For New Students
Many new piano students sign up with the incorrect assumption that they will be Lady Gaga by the end of the first lesson.
They arrive after being inspired by a friend who performed a Disney hit at their school talent show or after watching a Youtube video of an influencer crushing the keys.
Inspiration is great, but expectations must be managed. If your new students begin dictating all repertoire choices, they won’t be students for long. And this is why…
1. Popular Music Is Not Leveled For New Students
A single sheet of music is not a method book; there is no logically sequenced set of skills. New students can learn a piece by rote, but ultimately they won’t know where they’ve been and they won’t know where they are going.
The skills required to play one popular piece will be entirely different than the skills required to play another piece. By the time a second popular piece is learned, new students will have forgotten everything they learned in the first piece.
And it’s not just a problem for the student. Teachers who attempt to teach new students with popular sheet music waste all of their prep time building a library for a single student. That time can more efficiently be used to prepare studio practice incentives, marketing campaigns, and community outreach activities.
2. Popular Music WILL Be Too Difficult For New Students
A brand new piano student cannot assess the challenges in a piece of sheet music they bring to you or request. So, it will be too difficult.
If you rework the song to suit their limited skills, it will not sound anything like the original and your new student will most certainly be disappointed.
If you do not rework the song, it will be so hard that any attempt by your new student to perform the original will also lead to disappointment.
Even published books of popular music or Disney hits that claim to have some degree of leveling will not fit well with any reputable beginning method book program.
3. Popular Music With New Students Can Hurt Your Studio
Popular music with new students becomes a real problem during recital season and it will hurt your studio.
Piano teachers, who often aim to please, find it hard to say no when a beginning student wants to perform popular music at a recital.
I know the pressure, but yet I encourage you to resist the urge to give in to a new student who just isn’t ready to play a piano piece.
I have witnessed, on many occasions, new piano students drag their way through a popular song during a recital. While the title may sound impressive when announced, it ends up being a frustrating performance experience when push comes to shove. It’s won’t be the performance result that either your piano student or their parents likely anticipated and it won’t showcase their abilities as well as a properly-leveled piece composed for beginning piano students will.
So, What Is A Teacher Do?
We do not blame you, in any way, for grappling with the new student-popular music conundrum. A new student is precious and valuable, and teachers will strive to create an experience that matches expectations.
But there are ways to get new students pumped about piano without sacrificing your pedagogical beliefs.
1. Plan Expectations With The Parents
Often, the request by a new student to play a popular song actually comes from a parent. For this reason, it is important that repertoire expectations are discussed during preregistration meetings or correspondence.
Once informed of the benefits of a structured and pedagogically appropriate start to piano lessons, parents will become both a cheerleader and an ally in the implementation of quality method books and supplementary materials.
2. Get New Students Into A GOOD Method Book
Many method books have not been significantly changed or updated for, quite literally, decades. When presented with these method books, it makes sense that new piano students will make a run for popular music.
So, the key is to get new students set up in a quality method.
I know we’re biased, but Andrea and I will put the WunderKeys Method Books up against any piece of popular music.
WunderKeys teachers know that once primer and level 1 students get ahold of our method books, the engaging characters, illustrations, and music will erase any memories of Encanto 🙂
If you are not already using the WunderKeys Method Books, check them all out here.
But what about older beginners that want pop-infused music?
Well, we have a book series for them too! In fact, on Tuesday we released the second book in our series, WunderKeys Pop Staff Piano Library For Older Beginners, Book Two.
It is available right now on Amazon.
With its unique approach to older beginner piano education, WunderKeys Pop Staff Piano Library For Older Beginners is a game-changer.
The original piano pieces and pop-infused twists on classical repertoire are composed on the grand staff and on our innovative Pop Staff. The Pop Staff is a modified bass staff that accompanies a treble staff. Chord symbols placed on the Pop Staff enable students to play simple left-hand pop chords, creating pop-infused music that is way more rewarding than repertoire found in traditional older beginner books.
And the best part… the music is combined with technical exercises, sight-reading activities, improvisation, and note reading exercises.
This is quickly becoming the go-to resource for teen and adult beginners.
You can click here to check out Book One.
You can click here to check out Book Two.
3. Use Pop Music As A Reward
As mentioned earlier, one of the major downfalls of popular music with new piano students is the inability to continually find music that follows a pedagogical process. Teachers who go down this path often end up creating their own popular music renditions which takes more time than anyone has available.
So, while weekly pop music is nearly impossible, providing popular music as practice rewards throughout the year is very doable.
If you only have to find appropriate pieces for a few occasions a year, you can justify spending the time.
When used as a reward, popular music can be a wonderful tool for beginning piano students.
4. Finally, Take A Break With The Very Useful Piano Library
New piano students will need a break from even the best method books. But those breaks don’t have to mean finding sheet music for popular songs.
We created Andrea and Trevor Dow’s Very Useful Piano Library as a supplementary resource for primer and level 1 piano students.
These laugh-out-loud, story-based piano books form a 17-level collection that always has the perfect book for every student.
Click on a cover below to check out a few of these exciting titles:
You defined the pop music dilemma so well. So much wisdom in your analysis and solutions. I’m excited about the Older Beginner series!
So glad you found it to be a good read 🙂
We have all had beginners begging to play the latest Disney song or second year students bring in an “easy piano” movie theme book. As teachers we know this repertoire will be filled with reading challenges and frustrations. However, these songs can boost motivation if reading is taken out of the picture. Students rarely want to play the whole song. Pick out a theme, phrase or motive and use these to teach concepts. Popular snippets work well for ear training and transposing exercises. For example, I have one student who loves Disney music. Reading is difficult her. She will spend hours playing the first part of Beauty and the Beast starting on different keys. She is playing music she loves, I have her practicing pentescales. It is a win for both of us.