Teaching dynamics to young piano beginners by Piano Comics

I have not found a better way in my 19 years of piano teaching experience to teach young students music elements than to give examples from everyday life, our speech, movements, feelings, nature. Maybe it’s because they can relate immediately or live examples gain their attention and automatically the brain makes effort to comprehend. Whether it’s tempos, dynamics, articulation or even deeper components like interpretation of the same tempo being felt as dolce or con spirito, examples that students can vividly imagine, or things they have felt, done themselves always glues the meaning to the taught subject. And if you add humour?! That’s synergy of a unique kind of pedagogy. Because learning with fun is learning that lasts.

In this post I will describe how I teach dynamics to my piano students. I don’t show it on the piano. Not yet. Firstly, I give a live example of calling my name out loud in 6 consecutive dynamics: pp – pianissimo where I almost whisper my name, then p – piano, mp – mezzo piano, mf – mezzo forte, f – forte and ff – fortissimo where I finish practically shouting my name. Sounds a bit funny, in an embarrassing way at the end ( the teacher screams! ) but the student having felt a strong feeling during this ‘show’ will not forget it. Then I make them do it, while I write down the symbols, naming each one and moving the pencil from pp up until ff and listen to how the student changes the intensity of their voice from whispering to almost shouting. If you want you can play a game where you say a whole sentence ex. ‘I like water fights’ marking different dynamics each time and see how the student changes his voice. Then you can proceed to the piano and play a short, simple, one hand melody in 2-4 dynamics. Make it a habit to mention dynamics during the lessons on the pieces, not too many, so that they get used to listening the names and react with their fingers accordingly. The music language should not sound weird to students learning music through any instrument at any age ( what a weird thing to state as a music/piano teacher ) .

In the next post I will describe a funny game I play with students to learn the changes of dynamics.

This is a matching game I created in my ‘Workbook Sheet Music’  by Piano Comics for piano beginners which you can download for free and use directly with your students ( this material and examples described in this post can be used in  a music classroom as well ) :