Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Self-Teaching Support Thread

On the violin front - in various forums I've been strongly advised to a) always hold the violin in front of you b) always hold the violin to the side of you.

Will that do as my positive contribution?

Yes, there is, it's called Rockschool.

http://www.rockschool.co.uk/

I haven't used any of the piano material, though I'm told it's solid, but not easy to work through the higher levels without a teacher. For jazz specifically, ABRSM have a jazz section:

http://www.abrsm.org/publishing/jazz

I don't honestly think real jazzers think much of it, but for classical-literate folks, it's fairly accessible.

I think I should point out that our very own Pete the Bean has a site and several publications (http://www.poppianopro.com/ )
some of which is accessible to beginning players. Covers popular piano, blues, improvising, lead sheet reading, etc. Peter is very generous with help here on the forum for anyone wanting help with his material, or generally.

It does sound a bit like spin. Anyone here study Brendel in any great depth? But...I wouldn't be surprised if it's the case that Brendel himself considers himself self-taught.
Just because you attend class doesn't mean the credit goes to the teacher. If you sleep in class, does that mean the teacher deserves credit? Hardly.
I find it far-fetched to believe he did not benefit from others. It's one thing if it's all theory, and quite another if there is a physical component. Great pitchers need a pitching coach, great surgeons need an attending physician, and so on. (right? or wrong?)

What strikes me as eminently profitable for the self-learners would be a list of bad habits. After all, that's the real issue right?

Music teacher: "you will cripple your potential"
Self-learner: "why?"
Music teacher: "bad habits that will haunt you when you arrive at a certain proficiency."
Self-learner: "which ones?"

Bad habits is certainly one of the issues here. How about:

1. Playing the whole piece over and over instead of working on the hard bits?

2. Relying too much on the metronome? Or being addicted to "Play. Increase tempo one click. Play. Increase tempo one click. . . "?

3. Jumping around from piece to piece without really polishing any?

4. Doggedly sticking to one piece instead of working on several?

Yes, exactly.

Like I said - we've heard all the arguements against self-teaching a hundred and one times - a few are sound and logical but many are just plain BS - either way this isn't the place for them - and either way we continue to self-teach - so if you don't have anything helpful to say with respect to that...

JF

Actually, that has been covered in these threads here and there.

Here is a list of what I have seen with self-taught students as a teacher:

1. Poor body posture at the piano, which includes sitting too far back, or too close, seat too high/ too low, slumping, not sitting centered, seat not parallel to the keyboard.

2. Poor hand/arm posture, often with wrists too low, so the tendons that move the fingers must travel in a curved arc thru the wrist tunnel, which can cause serious physical damage.

Number #1 and #2 are hard to see while your thinking and attention is consumed by trying to play, read the music, etc. Another set of knowledgable eyes is invaluable, like a golf pro observing you swing the golf club.

3. No metronome usage, or counting, so tempo is unregulated. This is a hard one to incorporate later on, which is why many teachers instill it from the first lesson. Few people like the constraints of the metronome, and feel that since they can play without it, why suffer? Tempo problems are very common.

4. Little or no technique training, so finger independence is poor, and tension is high. This is very hard to overcome after muscle memory habits are formed.

5. Poor sight reading, especially the Bass clef.

6. Lack of knowledge as to how to practice efficiently. Playing a piece over and over is not practicing. I spend a great deal of time teaching people how to practice effectively.

7. Lack of knowledge of fingering, and the need to establish from the onset one system of fingering for each piece, phrase, etc.

8. Lack of knowledge of basic Theory.

9. No one knowledgeable about your playing to talk to, to receive encouragement from, etc.

10. Playing a piece unmusically. When students do that, I play the piece or the section for them, and ask them to identify the difference. Most of the time, they hear the difference, can play it, and it is a revelation to them that permanently improves their playing. Invaluable.

Which ones are BS?

I have in total learned four instruments do a degree of competence. Two I had years of lessons. Two I am self-taught. I have never had a bad habit. Sure, I've had many times where I've gone down a route, to discover I need to take a step back and start again. I've found a more ergonomic way of doing something. I've considered all of this a part of the learning curve. I've moved on and got better.

I really wasn't aware of bad habits in music until I joined this forum.

And I do truly feel there is an element of teacher needing to justify their value by finding bad habits in students that begin with them - whether previously self-taught or badly taught.

It seems to me that this thread was about support for those who are actively self-teaching for whatever reason. Perhaps a separate thread could be made for those who wish to discuss the relative merits of having a teacher?

Amazing!

+1

Strange but true. Perhaps I should also say that I have (on the instruments where I was taught) gone through several teachers. And yes they all had their own styles, and would get me to do different things. Perhaps they *thought* I had bad habits. But they never put it to me as such. No-one ever said, you have wasted your time doing this. They just got on with the positive task of teaching.

I have also, on guitar (self-taught) come to a realisation that my posture was wrong and had to correct that. It took me all of about three days to do it, once I understood what was wrong.

[quote=ten left thumbs]I have never had a bad habit.[quote]

Maybe you should charge admission to let the rest of us watch you practice!

Thanks for this Rocket.

Ejay, Thank you for your kind words.



The field of how we learn, regarding such a multi-dimensional subject as piano playing, is a field where new discoveries are constantly discovered.

I could write a book about what I have found useful, and just might.

The bottom line is that everything you do at the piano is a learned activity. This includes everything...the notes, fingering, body posture, dynamics, tempo, breathing, relaxing or not...everything.. so you must program your computer (your brain) with the simplest, most efficient, most expedient, most consistent, most effortless and most musical for the piece method(s) of doing things.

Its like tying your shoes...at one point, you had to learn the muscle movements, now most folks can tie their shoes without thinking about it, and while multi-tasking. Thats one reason why monster players can play so much better than most of us. They learn better, without having to patch up a galaxy of errors and clumsiness. That is also why their playing seems effortless...it is a relatively clean sheet of paper they start with.

But the key is that you learned ONE WAY to tie your shoes, so that action becomes automatic. Many things at the piano can become that if you do not clutter yourself with different ways of doing the same thing, AND if you have the proper technique in the first place to pull it off.

Fingering is the same...yes, scales are very helpful...and so is playing established repertoire that has good fingering already written in, although you cannot always use it, due to different hand size, and sometimes the fingering written in is just plain dumb, IMHO.

The rest is mostly common sense, and logistics...planning ahead for having enough fingers, and back again to technique, so you can actually play it with the best fingering.

Hope this helps.

That's what I call a good idea! If you did that, I would be able to afford a teacher!

As a self-teaching beginner, I've found that paying for music with well-thought-out fingering has been well worth the money, rather than downloading music off the internet and figuring out fingerings on my own. I learn new fingering tricks from any piece of music that has good fingering suggestions, and I love the feeling of growing capability that comes from learning new ways to navigate my hands around the keyboard.

In the absence of a teacher to refine my hand motions, I try to spend enough time finding ways of moving my hands that feel comfortable and natural and efficient. I try to monitor myself for tension.

In an semi-ideal world, given the limitations of my finances, I would like to find a teacher who would be willing to spend most of our hypothetical monthly lesson concentrating on working on my hands & posture at the piano. I feel that's where I could most use an outside eye.

Someone observed you, listening and watching, to verify that?

There are so many people here whose experiences are like mine.

I'm also one of those people who, once I was out of school and actually learning something instead of just intellectualizing it long enough to pass the test , found that my greatest joy was in ferreting out things for myself rather than having a teacher, and that I learned more and was more whole and healthy that way. I, as others have said, think that "self-teaching" is somewhat misleading here at Piano World partly because it inevitably gets contrasted with taking formal lessons. But for me, saying that I'm self-teaching doesn't at all mean that I don't learn from others - it really does mean simply that I don't take formal lessons. But I learn from a kazillion other people - here, from other musicians with whom I play, from books and articles I read, from music I listen to, from my brother who is a professional musician. Not all of them are piano players - most of them aren't, actually - but I learn from all of them.

And at 64 I have a lot of experience, too, as I think many adults do. I've played a lot of sports, hiked a lot, danced a lot, and have some sense of body awareness and that non-tenseness wholly-aware in-the-moment being that allows one to do physical things without injury. I think it's served me well.

I have a pretty good idea of how I learn best, and it's not thru formal lessons - everyone is different. I do sometimes learn things on my own and then go take a class that will help organize it and from which I will glean more. And then I'm off again

I had two years of piano lessons when I was a young teenager. I didn't learn anything about music. Many of the things I "learned" then have been bad habits that I still haven't gotten quite by - unmusicality being one, relying soley on the sheet music and the eye-finger connection istead of my ears being a huge one (and, of course, a major contributor to unmusicality), a lack of confidence in my own music, and on and on. But I love it now, so it's no big thing. I love learning. I love playing music with others. I love having people dance to the music I'm playing. Music is a big adventure

So I really appreciate the ideas and information and stories I find on this thread, and often in the ABF. This is a great place.

(gmm1 - my sense of the teachers forum is that the vast majority are fine with any of us posting there, but the one (maybe 2?) who aren't are so vociferous that it's easy to let them drown out others. But the others are in the majority by a long ways )

Cathy

I consider myself self-directing rather than self-teaching. I had lessons as a kid in clarinet and piano. Majored in music in college (clarinet was my instrument, not piano) and got a degree but never really used it - never worked as a musician but instead went in a totally different direction. This was well over 30 years ago.

I've been self-directing on piano for about three years now. I would probably take lessons if it were convenient and affordable. Not because I think it would make me a better pianist than I can be on my own, but so that I could play in recitals and with other people, something that I really miss from school. Playing in the ABF recitals helps scratch that itch, but in a virtual way.

The thing I always disliked about lessons was the way they tended to dampen my enthusiasm instead of encouraging it. Maybe that would be different now that I am an adult, I don't know.

I think it's a rare teacher that teaches how to practice rather than simply dictates what to practice - I never had a teacher that taught me how, but learned through long hours of trial and error, something that is ongoing. I think practice has to be deliberate to be effective. Identify problem areas and work out a method or process to overcome the problem. You know what you are weak at and where you need work. A helpful publication is the little four page glossy "Guide to Effective Practicing" by Nancy O'Neill Breth. It's published by Hal Leonard ISBN 978-0-634-06884-3.

What to practice? What's appropriate for your skill level?
For classical music, I have found "The Pianist's Guide to Standard Teaching and Performance Literature" by Jane Magrath to be very helpful. ISBN 0-88284-655-8. She covers a huge amount of literature from all periods, assigning levels to everything. (Although her levels are different from everyone else's - read the book).

Want to learn blues piano? Tim Robbins "Improvising Blues Piano" is the best and most comprehensive method book out there.

Everybody is different. I'm pushing 60, I have a music degree, I am confident in my own ability to learn and self-correct and self-direct. I'm patient. Maybe we should list the qualities of people that would be happy without a piano teacher... Having a teacher is not a guaranteed path to success. More important is your own desire to work hard and practice.

Sam

@Rocket: I tend to disagree with you. Learning to do thing ONE way is HABIT. This may or may not be the most effective way.

Knowing to do thing different ways is MASTERING it. You are in control of different approaches to the same problem. You know the pros and cons of it.

I know this may sound subjective but that's what I see that in everything we learn. Human learns through experiences, so why not let some experienced ones tell us about their "trials and errors / failure and success" ?

Yes, he/she might explored and discovered his/her own effective method (but very often that depends on individuals' ability).

This is the danger of self-teaching since one might not know the most effective way.