CPTP160: Balancing rote repertoire and sight reading with Samantha Coates

Rote repertoire has been gaining popularity in recent years. Piano teachers are realising the value of teaching by rote alongside reading in order to teach technique and allow students (especially beginners) to explore more of the piano.

Samantha Coates has created a fabulous resource that combines rote repertoire with reading to create truly holistic music lessons. I'm delighted to have her back on the podcast today to explain why she has started incorporating rote work into her own teaching and what it could do for your students.

Special Listener Discount

Samantha is generously offering a 25% discount on everything at her roterepertoire.com site! At checkout, click to enter the coupon code 2019TIM and your pack or membership will be reduced by 25%. This code is valid until midnight on May 17.

Transcript

If you'd like to download a PDF transcript of this episode, please click below.

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In this episode, you’ll learn

• Why Samantha got into rote teaching
• How rote teaching works and why it's useful
• How students can connect rote pieces to reading
• How this approach can lead to students creating and composing
• Why note names are not as important as some teachers think
• Which students these pieces are particularly suited to
• The problem with a purely reading-based approach

Links Mentioned

• BlitzBooks Rote Repertoire
• Opposite Day
• 10 Level Non-Musician Challenge
• Piano Safari

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Thank you for Tuning In!

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, and I’m grateful that you’ve chosen mine. Whether you’re at the gym, on the bike or in the car, I know that you and your students will get lots out of what you learn in the long run. Just make sure you try out some of the ideas before they get lost in the business of your next lessons! If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons on the left of the page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes or on my Facebook page. Reviews are extremely helpful when it comes to show’s ranking and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally. Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live.

Do you use rote repertoire?

Have you explored Samantha's pieces or one of the other rote repertoire resources? How have you found the process?