13/06/2026
For a while now I have been using transparent coloured stickers with my students. The idea is that we put a sticker on the music when we need to draw attention to something. It might be some tricky finger work, a difficult chord, some dynamics that aren't coming across. Anything really! The stickers seem more effective than pencil reminders. And you can write on them, and reuse them if you've not written on them.
Then once the issue is sorted out we remove the stickers.
Once of my students has been struggling a bit recently. The joy seemed to have gone out of piano lessons and it felt as if it had become a chore. I tried lots of strategies, but hadn't really found anything that worked. The music was covered with stickers. A forest of stickers. I wondered if one day there would be no white paper, just stickers. That wasn't the original plan...
Then something clicked. A lot of practice was done in quite a short space of time and today we removed 19 stickers in one lesson. My student knew they'd worked hard. But I don't think they expected so many stickers to be removed, ending up stuck to my table rather than the music. The smile on my student's face was great to see and it matched the huge grin on my face. I think we've both rediscovered the joy of these pieces.
Maybe the stickers helped.... just a little bit.
