Football in piano lessons

"You went to a football match?"

squealed my piano student, Lewis.

He's one of many students I currently have who love football (or soccer)

They like to tell me about the matches they've seen, that they've played, and the footballers they admire.

And I've listened politely and then moved on to piano.

But recently, I've started incorporating football into my piano lessons in three ways:

Figuring out chants by ear

I discovered that footballers and teams have chants.

(Songs? Chants? I'm not too great on the terminology!)

They either tend to be melodies of well-known songs that students have never heard of (like "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is used in a Man United chant) or are annoyingly catchy.

Either way, it's fun (and fairly simple) to work out how to play the chants by ear.

One student loved figuring out how to play Haaland (Ha Ha Ha) in order to play it at school to his friend because Haaland is his favourite player. Adorable. And it got stuck in my head because it's so darn catchy.

Scoring goals in the piano lesson

This happened on the spur of the moment, but it's an idea I keep in my back pocket now.

Harry kept forgetting to tuck his RH thumb under at a certain point to let him reach the higher notes.

He'd reach the higher note, look down at his hand and go,

"AGH I forgot to move again!"

I grabbed a whiteboard and drew a goal at either end (they were badly drawn, but he knew what they were).

"You're going to play this section five times.

Each time you remember to tuck, you score a goal.

Each time you don't tuck, I score. Let's see who wins."

His ears pricked up at the mention of goals.

And funnily enough, every time he reached the tuck moment, he paused, looked down at his hands, moved, and nodded to himself.

New football-themed music game

A lot of my football-loving piano students are also bass-clef-hating students.

So I created a music game that ties in their love (football) and what I'd love them to do (practice bass clef note-reading).

There are also penalty spaces, which give me the opportunity to test them on other things

(or to squeeze in sneaky sight-reading, scale playthroughs, and anything else they need to work on!)

And, just like football matches, each game is the same concept but will always be different because the goal note and the red card note change each time.

Goooooooal! (bass clef)

£2.50

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Goooooooal! (treble clef)

£2.50

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Goooooooal! (ledger lines)

£2.50

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Slight warning: these games can result in no goals (no balls being collected) by the time the timer rings.

This was designed on purpose - in some football matches, no goals are scored. In others, many goals are scored.

However, if the lack of goal scoring is frustrating for your students, there are some modifications you can make (thank you to Miranda for this!)

• Score a goal every time you correctly identify the note you land on
  

• Set the timer for 2 minutes and 30 seconds, not 5 minutes. In the 'half-time', the goal note and red card note are changed. Then set the timer for another 2 minutes and 30 seconds and carry on.
  

• Each player has their own goal note/ red card note - this means that there are four notes players are looking out for now, instead of just two.

  • You could even extend this: if a player lands on the other player's goal note, the other player scores. Example: Ed's goal note is E. James' goal note is G. Ed lands on a G, so James scores a goal.
    

If you have any other modifications you'd like to share, I'd love to hear them!