WHY I FIND PIANO ENSEMBLES BENEFICIAL FOR MY PIANO STUDENTS.
I organize piano ensemble workshops for my students quite often. I also run piano ensemble lessons once a week for a specific group of students.
What are the piano ensembles?
Piano ensembles are piano sessions for a group of students.
Piano players usually play solo. They don't have to follow anyone and they are the boss of their performing. Piano ensembles help them learn how to play in a band and they also realize that each one of them is important for the success of a performance.
In most of my ensembles I have students from different ages and levels.
Therefore my arrangements have easy and more challenging parts.
I usually choose a popular song or music that I know everyone will like and I give each student his part. When they learn their own music part, they are ready to play with the others.
For the success of a piano ensemble performance, teacher and student should consider two important things .
- Students need to know their part pretty well so they won’t stop and confuse the rest of the team.
- Dynamics are also very important and each student should learn to listen to the other ones. Piano students usually don’t know how to do that because they learn to play on their own and be the king or queen of a solo performance. With the group playing they learn to play softer and let other piano students come first.
But being part of a piano ensemble is so much more than just getting together with other piano students and playing a well-practiced piece.
It is fun,
it is interesting,
it is energetic,
it is beneficial.
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Benefits of piano ensembles
- Developing Self Confidence
The students’ self-confidence improves with the realisation that they are contributing to something greater and that they are especially selected to be part of that group.
- Developing Social Skills
Being part of an ensemble includes the special benefit of developing a sense of belongingness. To play well, each member must bond with the rest of the group in order to serve a common purpose – which is to execute their musical pieces to the best of their abilities.
Students who are part of a piano ensemble feel at home in a special community where they develop relationships with like-minded people who are there to support each other.
- Developing Discipline
Having to perform as part of a piano ensemble, students need to develop the sense of discipline and self-organisation. They have to manage all the work, the practicing, the rehearsals wjth the rest of the group, the performances with other aspects of their life. Balancing everything requires discipline.
- Learning teamwork
Learning how to be in sync with others is not an easy job.
Students who are part of an ensemble learn to see beyond themselves and develop an awareness of what is going on around them. They learn to play their parts accordingly, to be part of a team, to communicate not with talking but with playing.
- Applying the techniques they learned in their one to one piano lesson.
Before joining an ensemble, the students must have some important skills through private piano lessons. During the individual piano lessons students learn rhythm, notation, technical skills, improvisation. All these might sometimes be boring for them but as they become part of a piano ensemble, students learn to appreciate their application in a group setting.
Being part of an ensemble, also enables the students to see why learning their part in perfection matters in the greater scheme of things.
These skills become very advantageous to our piano students later in life, where they are applicable in so many ways and in all aspects in their life.
Here is a playlist with piano ensembles from my piano students.
All the arrangements will be available to purchase soon here.
FREE PIANO ENSEMBLE ARRANGEMENT PDFS
If you would like to start teaching your students piano ensemble, then start now by downloading FOR FREE a piano ensemble arrangement. All you have to do is to subscribe to my email list below and you will get an email with all the details on how to get access to the pdfs.
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Happy piano ensemble teaching!