Teaching By Ear, Initial piano lessons Options

[barcarolle]

I have a male adult beginner whose aim is to be able to make up his own stuff. I want to teach him by ear for the moment and am wondering where to find material to do this. If it was a child I'd use nursery rhymes etc. , but that's not really suitable for an adult. I am thinking of finding an adult beginner singing book and using that as my basis. Does anyone have any ideas?

I usually dive straight into a tutor book but want to try getting away from that for the timebeing.

[barcarolle]

Morning - I am pleased to report that last night's lesson went down extremely well - he was delighted he was going to learn Coldplay's Clocks and from the moment he started having a go it sounded like the song. He left the lesson on a real high and I think will do lots of practice. How different from putting a beginner tutor book in front of someone, overloading them with information about time signature, note values, notes, bars, counting, reading the music, co-ordinating the fingers and then sending them home to play five consecutive notes all week that really don't sound like music at all.

I've asked him to work out twinkle twinkle little star (Digby!) for next week and am planning over the next couple of weeks to do some work on simple note values and eventually get him to write out the music for it. Can't wait till term starts to try out these new ideas on my other students! (all down to the professional development course I'm doing)