I've a 6 yr-old piano student. He is weak in couting the time. For example, I asked him to say 1 and 2 and and played the notes together. He doesn't know how to say the time and play the notes together. He'll either say the time but not playing the note...or says one for the first note and then stops playing the key when he says 'and'....what can i do? Is that he's not talented?

I'm teaching a young boy who has the same problem although the instrument in question is the cornet. This boy was unable to count for himself whilst he was playing but he could keep in time if I counted out loud. I decided that part of every lesson would be dedicated to 'counting', so that this became second nature to him. To start with we just worked on rhythm exercises without the instruments so that he had to clap and count out loud. He found this a struggle at first but could eventually do it. We then moved on to using a tambourine whilst counting out loud and when he managed to do this I'd start the count but then get him to continue the count in his head - I'd then stop him part way through the exercise to see if he was on the correct count/beat. This took ages for him to be able to do confidently but he got there. We're now trying to do the same thing whilst he's playing his cornet so he now has to concentrate on counting and maintaining pitch and tone - still on rhythm exercises or very simple 3 note tunes.

This all sound quite serious but most of it was treated as a game with loads of laughter. I certainly didn't make an issue of it. As well as the activities in the lesson he also has theory worksheets as part of his homework so during the timescale that we have been addressing this problem, the focus for the theory has been time signatures, filling in the missing note/rest.

Why not try something similar with your pupil?

Take a look at the "no sense of rhythm" thread! I'm not saying that your boy has no sense of rhythm, but there's some useful stuff there anyway!

For my beginners I use notewothycomposersoftware.com to write "sight-reading" that's all on middle C, in different rhythms and time signatures for them to play or clap and count to. They take some home as early sight-reading practice, and I gradually start adding the odd C# at cadence points. It goes from there!