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Your pupil comes in for their music lesson. They’d finally managed to nail that difficult passage last week and you’re excited to hear their progress. They’ve been diligent and repeated the tricky sections again and again. But – it’s happened. They’ve practised the rhythm incorrectly. They’ve forgotten to flatten those notes. You’re going to have to spend valuable lesson time and energy unpicking and re-teaching what they’ve mislearned. There has to be a better way! Time to make all this a thing of the past.
Demo Videos
Record Yourself
If the student has clips of you explaining how to do things, they can access your teaching at any point. A real practice pal! This will accelerate their progress because no time will be wasted unpicking anything mis-learned.
The introduction of new techniques takes some time to master, so to increase the pupil’s understanding you could record exercises too! If it’s rhythmical, counting out loud at the same time as playing can be a real winner. Or get physical and pulse the beat with your feet around the room, or use your arms to remind them of the dynamics to inspire them during their practice.
Record the Pupil
By recording the pupil, the video reminds them that they can do it – because they have already done it! There is real evidence that they’ve already conquered that section successfully in the lesson and will give them a huge boost when they’re practising it. It’s a big dose of confidence for students to go back and watch videos of themselves playing well. They can also show their progress to their parents, who’ll be more likely to engage with the practice if the videoed section is of their child rather than only of the teacher!
Long Live the Practice Vid!
Recording practice videos is a great addition to a music teacher’s toolkit and can save you a lot of time and energy. Practice Pal’s Lesson Room allows you to record clips which will be shared and stored in line with best safeguarding practices, and automatically sent to the account holder.
If you’re not using Practice Pal, just make sure you record and store it in line with safeguarding requirements and share it appropriately with the guardian, rather than just with the learner. Happy practice videoing!
Image by Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels
