What kinds of music to keyboard teachers teach?!

Is it always pop/rock? Do you work from written music, or always by ear? I'm very ignorant about keyboards. It's a whole new world, and I'm soon going to be the owner of one!

What kind of keyboard to you teach on?

Presumably when you say 'keyboard', you mean something that doesn't have weighted keys, and has lots of rhythm and sound options? You don't mean a like an 'electronic stage piano'?

Thanks for all info!

I'm assuming you are talking about teaching electronic keyboard - I teach primary school pupils keyboard at school where there are generally Yamaha 61 key keyboards (of various ages!) with a range of rhythm accompaniments and a range of voices. I teach them using a tutor book supplemented by other material - often treble clef piano pieces or familiar traditional tunes - the pupils will learn to play melody from treble clef on a single stave, then they will learn to play left hand chords, either single fingered to start with or fully fingered (depending on age generally). The chord symbols are printed above the treble clef melody line. The tutor books generally include all the familiar nursery rhymes or traditional pieces you get in beginner piano tutor books - Mary had a little lamb, Merrily we roll along, Clair de la lune, often a lot of traditional American folk tunes as well. I will do a range of activities as I would with piano - rhythm work, playing by ear, listening, reading etc.

All my pupils are primary age, except one, so I haven't taught any beyond initial tutor books or the early TG exam grades. I'm using the Victoria College First Steps book with most of my beginners at the moment (supplemented with lots of other pieces) but I have used Keyquest with older pupils - age 9-10. I also have the LCM Early Tutor book I haven't worked through this with a pupil yet - the pupil I planned to work with on this stopped having lessons in school. If you look at the Trinity Guildhall and LCM exam syllabus' for keyboard you will get an idea of what kind of repertoire they use - mixture of classical arrangements, show tunes and other pieces too. There's a real shortage of good beginner tutor books for the very young (age 6-7 or so). I personally choose not to use books with the note letter names printed in the note heads.

In the early stages, it's learning keyboard geography, developing good hand position, using fingers correctly, reading music, listening to pulse in the rhythm accompaniments, learning to play with the accompaniment and playing hands together. It is a different approach to piano but at the same time there are a number of similarities in terms of reading notation even though there is only one stave in keyboard music, co-ordinating two hands together.

Other people can probably tell you what they do with older pupils or more advanced pupils and what kind of repertoire they use. The more pupils progress through the grades, they need to start thinking about making arrangements of the pieces - choice of accompaniment, using different voices, changing register and using the facilities to save settings etc which can all get quite complicated and I wouldn't be teaching keyboard beyond about Grade 2 or 3 for now.

This has become a much longer post than expected but hope some of it is useful.

Louise

Very useful, Louise. Thanks very much.