The Faber Piano Adventure Method for Online Piano Lessons

I use Nancy and Randall Faber's Piano Adventures series with all of my students. From the First Piano Adventure Series to the Piano for the Older Beginner Series, the Faber Method has been an ideal fit for my teaching priorities.

The pieces selected for each level represent a variety of musical genres from all over the world and allow students to select additional pieces from genres that interest them most. After a relatively short time, students are often able to teach themselves new pieces, which gives them an increasing sense of empowerment.

The books also offer consistent opportunities for composition, improvisation and ear-training, three skills which lay a terrific foundation for composition by developing the player's creativity and voice. The Faber series is also a favorite of mine because of the way it entices students to practice with it's multitude of styles and song choices. 

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The Piano Adventures APP is a Game-Changer

Then there's the App!
My friends can attest - I talked of little more than the Piano Adventures App for multiple weeks after it's release. Every single song from almost every book, recorded with multiple instruments - complete with controls that allow you to adjust the parts, volume, balance and tempo. There's even a keyboard the student can watch that lights up the correct keys as the song plays!

The App answers all the questions that might stop a student from practicing, like:
What does this song sound like?
How fast should I be playing?
What note is that? 
How do the hands play together in this piece?

But the real MVP of the App is the built-in metronome. Playing with metronome is hard! Hard to learn and hard to teach. But the App allows students to hear a metronome beat along with a recorded version of the song they're playing. And that. changes. everything!

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But Do they work for Online Lessons?

They really do. The Faber Method has more song options per level than Alfred or Bastien or any other popular piano lesson method out there - and those options have been more important than ever as folks study from home.  

The Fabers break their piano information down into 4 books per level (Lesson, Technique and Artistry, Theory and Performance) while most method books just have 2. That structure has helped even my youngest students feel empowered to locate the information they need quickly. -something I'm quite thankful for now that they're managing their own books at home. 

Then there's the benefits of working with the most popular piano method series: they're easy for students to find and purchase, there's a host of supplement and supportive materials online, and almost every song from every book has a youtube video to accompany.

Switching to Online Piano Lessons has been a change for us all. So thankful that the piano lesson books my studio has used for years were ideal for the occasion!