Is it possible to teach a piano lesson without a piano? My student's parent texted me two hours before their lesson that they will not have a piano available for their lesson. We were doing online lessons through FaceTime. So that day we did a piano lesson without the student having a piano. And guess what? We pulled it off!
Even though it's not ideal, here's what you can do if either the teacher and/or the student does not have a piano...
Theory
You and your student can still do music theory together by looking over what your student has filled out in the previously assigned pages and you can assign them new theory pages.
Games
You and your student can play games together whether you are together in person or online. We did "Rhythm Vocab" created by Colourful Keys where I showed my student the cards to clap out. Here are some games that work great when there's no piano in the room. Click on the words to get sent to the links of the games.
Composition
That day my student and I wrote a piece together as well. You can only do composition if either the teacher or the student has a piano. It took us 15 minutes to write and it was 8 measures long, but it could also be extended onto another lesson. Click here to read our blog about how to teach composition. Below is the piece that he wrote:
Future Repertoire
If you have a piano but the student doesn't, you can play music for them to pick out as future music. If neither one of you has a piano, you can find YouTube videos from sheet music. Click here to find another blog post featuring links to many popular composer's YouTube videos of their music (scroll to bottom under "YouTube Videos...").
Have you ever been in this situation before? Please share what you did during that lesson!