Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum Can you actually "teach" someone to play the piano?

Who can take a sunrise....etc.... great tune!
Sammy rocks!

Actually in my field I am quite famous however I enjoy my privacy. Using a real name on the Internet is idiocy. The Steve part is real however.
I'd love to play a score as written, but I can't. That's the point.
Can you play back, note for note more or less, something else someone just played for you?
I doubt it.
I've been told by some pretty famous people, Oscar Peterson for one, TO NEVER take formal lessons because it will ruin my style.
He suggested I study Errol Garner who I knew from "Misty" but didn't realize he couldn't read.
I'm one step, albeit a small step, above that although I wish I had 1/20th of Errol's talent.
I suspect so do you.

As for a video, I've spent so much time on the other side of the glass it's more difficult than I thought.
I will produce however and I'm sure all you learned types will get a good laugh.

How about Misty?

Will you "Play Misty for Me" Candywoman?
I'll play it for you....
I'll even toss in a little Sammy for good luck
Stay tuned....

Hi Elissa,
You obviously must hold your audience in awe of your wisecracks ... but what the heck does this corker mean?

“Maybe little Jenny's parents see piano lessons as a way
to extend her spatial and symbolic reasoning?”

God didn't gave you that talent to show off to other people, talk big about ourself and how gifted you are, and how crappy the people are that keep trying and will never be as good as you, who is even too lazy to do anything else with his talent then using it for himself, because you think you are too gifted to teach other people playing piano.

+1 djorkaef and welcome to PW! This thread's just some self aggrandizing BS. These type of threads come along with fair regularity.

I'm not quite sure what you mean in your first sentence there, but I can explain the line from my post that you quote: parents these days have been told that playing the piano improves children's spatial and symbolic reasoning, so some parents want their children to learn in order to get that outcome. Note, I am simply reporting that this is a reason these days that parents want their children to learn the piano. I appreciate that not everyone will agree with their rationale in this regard, and I was making a list of reasons parents might want "little Jenny" to take lessons even if she will never be Steve.

You're ducking the question Elissa.

You obviously must hold your audience in awe of your wisecracks ... but what the heck does this corker mean?

"Maybe little Jenny's parents see piano lessons as a way
to extend her spatial and symbolic reasoning?"

This sounds like a Jim-crack throwaway phrase for dummies.

Here is how I understood it.

You will see articles explaining that music lessons will create changes in a child's thinking abilities, which in turn translate into academic achievement. Spatial and symbolic reasoning are two such abilities that are being touted, presumably good for math and reading.

Extrapolating from this, a parent enrolling a child in lessons in order to get the spin-off of academic advantage will not really care how well the child learns how to play. That parent may not give the child the support that is needed to achieve musically. In fact, that has been reported by PW teachers several times.

Therefore, if Jenny is not doing well in her performances, it may be that her parents have not been supporting her activities in music. And the reason they haven't been, is because they care about spin-offs, not the music.

I teach a few "Jennys." With them, the work we do is more about learning process, or about being able to stick with something even when you're unsure of your ability, or even about being comfortable with yourself when you seem to be making every mistake in the book.

In other words - most of the time it's definitely not about music.

And about Tatum's and Garner's fingerings. I was always told that they relied on fingers 123 for runs so that if at anytime they wanted to interrupt a run with a melodic idea, their 4th and 5th fingers were available to start one.

Years ago, I went to a performance coach in NYC for advice on an upcoming performance of a Mozart concerto. She asked me to change the fingering in a few passages to the use of 123 only. I found out later that she originally got the idea by watching George Shearing play!

Um, I have no idea why this is tricky. Keystring has done a great job explaining it, but I didn't mean to 'duck' the question in the slightest.....

Parents have read research which shows that students who learn the piano score higher in spatial reasoning tests and in symbolic reasoning tests.

They therefore want their children to take piano lessons almost entirely for the purpose of increasing the abilities of their children in these two modes of reasoning. Being able to play is almost beside the point - kind of a nice bonus, shall we say.

Now, since I have not conducted the research, and since I have not kept up with developments in the research, I cannot speak to the latest perspective on the benefits of learning the piano on spatial and symbolic reasoning.

But my attitudes aren't at question here: the question was, why would parents pay for little Jenny to learn the piano when she will never be able to play.

This is a reason I've had parents tell me has motivated them to seek piano lessons for their children.

Am I missing something in the question you are asking me, btb? I can assure you, I had no strange agenda at play in listing this 'reason', and I can't think for the life of me why you think it's a corker.

If we prune away the unnecessary self-awe, maybe what the OP is saying is that there is something about making music that cannot be taught? Perhaps a certain innate musicality that sets the awesomely great apart from the merely good (assuming equivalent training and hard work)?

I think that there is something about *performing* that cannot be taught, something innate that the performer has about themselves that they communicate to their audiences. But I think that these innate abilities can be improved through good teaching. I feel that my educational opportunities gave me the chance to be better than I would have been completely self-taught.

If we wanted to turn this thread into something interesting we could talk about a quote from my late teacher: "I can't teach you anything; you have to take responsibility for learning, yourself".

You're right there, we're all learners.

That's an interesting quote. Actually, I can teach you how to play, but I cannot force you to learn how to play. But I suspect that's understood by most of us.

That was summarized in my post which was dismissed by the OP, answering whether you can teach someone to play the piano. His refutation involved his experience of being beaten by a top professional tennis player in tennis.

You are giving him WAY too much credit.

KS, you're right. I was just responding to the quote. Most everything that needs to have been said has been said many times over.

Perhaps your 'untalented' students aren't learning because you assume they can't. Just sayin'.

Mine was a touch of irony. I posted as student and parent, you posted as teacher. I doubt the gentleman will have any of it.

To tell the truth, the one thing that bothers me is the feedback that people who are still learning are getting. What message are those in the process of learning or starting taking away from this? Parents' expectations and maybe anxieties about their children?

+10