Musings from the Front Lines No. 2: Lessons with J Cool
J Cool (not, obviously, his real name) is the student every teacher would love to have. He is bright, outgoing and talented among many other wonderful traits. He is also a teenager — 13 to be exact. He got accepted into one of the crack highly competitive NYC public high scools where he is, of course, an A student.
As a result his piano practice suffers. On top of that, his older sister is in Juilliard prep, a piano major, and practices umteen hours a day. She, rather understandably, monopolizes the piano. She has agreed howeve that J Cool be allowed an hour each day (dream on).
In this type of situation, time management, is crucial. This week I worked out an assignment with J Cool practically down to the minute. I also asked him to prepare for me each day as precise an estimate as possible as to how he planned to deploy his time each day. Will this help? (Will he actually do it?) Tune in next week.
By the way you can find a clips of his playing on our web site (taken a couple of years back). If you scroll down on the home page for “Our Community” you will find him playing:
- Fandango from Piano Patterns
- A Trip to the Moon (Moonscape from Keyboard Challenges)(shown above)
- Learning Chord Positions B and Bb (Tango from Modules)
