More Practice Resources For Students And Parents

Catherine Schmidt-Jones has written a Guide to Great Home Practice, a Home Music Practice Checklist, as well as a Parent's Guide to Music Lessons that offer some interesting insights, all available on the collaborative educational site Connexions. From the parent's guide:

Probably more students take piano than any other instrument. There are a couple of reasons for this. A beginner can get a good tone and play in tune easily. (But be advised, it takes just as much work to become very accomplished on the piano as it does on French horn or oboe.) Piano is also a wonderful instrument to use to begin learning about music, because the basic theory and practice of music are so easy to see on a keyboard. The student can see very clearly that scales follow certain predictable patterns and that intervals have a certain size. They become familiar with chords and harmonic structure in a way that is not as easily available on other instruments.