Live-streamed lessons

Have you ever wanted to know what it's like to be your own student?

I started live streaming lessons a week and a half ago. (Today's the 10th of March 2026) I'm going to do my 6th one today or tomorrow.

It's such an interesting experience. You should try it. I started by teaching an imaginary student.

At the moment, I'm working on having all my students be able to keep steady beats with repeated chord patterns and bass lines in all 12 keys, both major and minor.

I'm probably learning more than my students. For example, I am starting to understand what I'm asking from them when I tell them to repeat the patterns in all keys at home. I'm also understanding why they seem so exhausted at the end of a lesson. (happy, but exhausted)

Because I'm playing what I want my students to practice, the videos themselves are like mini practice sessions. In fact, I'm thinking of restructuring the lessons into lesson/practice session where the focus is on playing and repeating, with explanations as students are doing the work.

In the 4th video I counted that I played the minor 1-4 chord progression over 300 times. If students are able to do that at home, which some are, the progress they will be making is significant.

There is a large ear training component tied to this as well,

Lesson 5 takes it up a notch, while the rhythms are the same as the first 4, the left hand pattern is using all 5 fingers, and the right hand is playing both the 1-4 major and minor patterns.

Here's the pdf sheet that goes with the lesson:

six two five one - Full Score.pdf

Download PDF • 64KB

Here's the link to the live stream from lesson 5:

https://youtube.com/live/KY0WJs-XUME?feature=share

After teaching this to several students, and having several iterations, I may be recording shorter live streams to reinforce this one.

The left hand pattern is particularly interesting. It's a 6-2-5-1 pattern in this example, but I could use the exact same notes and create a 2-5-1-4 for teaching jazz. It's a 2-fer!

At some point, I will buy a microphone for the piano, but I don't feel like spending the money at the moment.

This is a way of flipping my classroom. If my students use the videos at home, we work on refining them, improvising, and working on pieces that use the chords.

On this one, the 6-2-5-1 chord progression is what Chopin used for his waltz in a minor, plus a gazillion other pieces, so it makes learning those other pieces much easier.

Lessons got way more fun when I started teaching this way.

Happy Playing!

Sarah