Dear all,

When starting to teach privately (piano and clarinet) are there any good books out there that can give me some handy hints and good advice? Perhaps there are some books out there that contain tried and tested lesson plans for all abilities? Ideas for excercises, both written and performing and that kinda thing?

When I was taught all those years ago I was just made to play through my pieces over and over again and wasn't really given sound advice and although I got through all my grades successfully - looking back I feel that we never made good use of the time we had. This is something that I'm quite concerned about when teaching any "potential" pupils (haven't quite started yet!)

So maybe some of you might know of some good publications to help with offering some good quality teaching. Any help would be appreciated!

"Instrumental Teaching" by Susan Hallam. Or "The Sounding Symbol" by George Odam - gets you thinking, that one!

Violinia

The Associated Board to a good book called the Music Teacher's Companion, part written by Paul Harris which is useful.

The AB also have a book called 'All Together', which is helpful for teaching in groups.

"A Common Approach 2002" gives you a structured approach to teaching. It comes in two sections - a generic section and an instrumental section, which includes a general framework for teaching the instrument , programmes of study for levels 1 to 5 (pre Grade 1 to Grade 8). It's expensive - £20 + £4.65 postage, but a very worthwhile publication. I used it a lot when doing an assignment on Curriculum for the CTABRSM course. More information can be found on the Federation of Music Services website.

Quite different, and cheaper, is Not Pulling Strings by Joseph O'Connor, £9.95 and available from Amazon. This is not lesson specific and the author is a guitar teacher, but the approach and ideas can be adapted for any instrument and I would strongly recommend it.

Have you thought about doing the CTABRSM course? It's designed for teachers of all ages and experience, and is an excellent course. Open morning for the 2005-6 course are currently being held - Sunday 13 March at St Paul's Girls School, Hammersmith; Sunday 20 March at Radley College, Oxford; Sunday 10 April at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester. Details on the main website. Like you, I had suffered from the "old style" teaching and have found the CTABRSM invaluable for my own teaching. It's a big commitment, both financially and in terms of workload, but it's worth it.

Thank you very much to all those who aswnered my question. I have ordered a copy of the ABRSM publication "A Music teacher's Companion: A Practical Guide" to start me off. I seem to have it on good authority that it is a useful book and it is quite well priced if I do say so myself.

Any other suggestions though - I would be glad to read them.

Thanks again.