Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Private Lessons at Community College - experience thus far

OP here.

Decided to check in with my progress.
So far after 6 lessons (my son was sick one week) I have:
- progressed to page 80 in the Alfred Book so over 1/2 way through
- Played Major Sharp scales at least 2 octaves hands together to her satisfaction (quote "She knows them - don't ask to do them again"), C,G,D,A 4 octaves. Working on flat scales now.
- Up to excercise 28 in Schmitt.
She is happy with my scales progress, but I want to be finished with the Alfred book! We spend about 1/2 the lesson on scales and Schmitt which leaves about 15 minutes to pound out 15 pages of Alfred.
While I still need to polish some Alfred pieces, they are in the back of the book such as Chiapanecas (p. 120), O Sole Mio, (those 2 because I don't like them so they are about 70%), The Stranger is coming along, Scarbgorough Fair, Rasin and Almonds are about 90%. With Entertainer & Amazing Grace at about 50% (can play the notes, but s-l-o-w-ly), I hope to finish the book in the next 5 lessons or so then it will be time to select/practice my final jury pieces (8 weeks left in the semester). I hope she will let me use my Grade 3 exam pieces which are at about 70-75% right now

OP Here with another update (as if anyone one was interested )

With only 2 lessons left before the jury I am
- page 115 in Alfred AIO Level 1
- Major Sharp Scales in 4 octaves and most flat scales in 2 octaves
- Schmitt to exercise 33
- Selected Jury Pieces.
On this I played what I had for my ABRSM 3 exam pieces, but she thinks that for the jury I should scale back a little. Ouch. But she did select 2 Snell Rep pieces in Grade 2 so she doesn't think I am a total beginner Most of her students in the Alfred book use the Alfred peices, but she was excited to use others to break up the monotony for herself and the jury. It has been slow going in Alfred because of repretiore work, scales and such.
I'll post one last time for Jury which is me performing my 2 pieces from memory for 3 faculty members of which my teacher is not one of them. Really don't care about the grade, but the experience should be good as I tried to simulate that for my 'exams' but now the real thing. I am not too worried - not sure if that is a good or bad thing, lol. We'll find out on Dec 6th
Thanks for reading!

I am reading about material. By that I mean what pages you have been doing, what pieces, what scales. Are you getting feedback on technique, quality of the sound you are producing, (loud, soft, faded, overbearing), timing, and similar?

Good luck, Nancy - knock it outta the park!

Cathy

Keystring - she doesn't pass me on a song until my timing, tone, dynamics, etc is of quality. If I stumble, she will explain and have me do it again. Only 1 song she had me work on another week because of timing issues.
I am sure with my jury pieces she will go over them with a fine tooth comb at my next lesson!
So far I am pleased with my experience and think I have grown.
OT - but I also participated in my first violin recital at the commuity college today (did I mention I started violin in September so I can teach my son?). I messed up a LOT but darn I looked good doing it - peopel commented that I didn't look nervous, but confident and I didnt' stop, but just kept going like you are supposed. I feel good! Unfortunately, I have a camping trip to go on with my boys just when i want to cozy up to the keys for the weekend *sigh*
Thanks for reading and responding - it's been a fun (and frustrating) journey

I know (hope) you didn't really mean that.

Camping trip with your boys vs. cozying up to the keys ?

Not even close.

That sounds good then.

Last camping site I've been to had a piano bar. Why choose when you can have both?

I wonder if, as students, we can always tell what are the skills we are learning. It may be natural as students to name the pieces rather than the skills.

When I took voice lessons with my second voice teacher, I could tell you the content of what we worked on in lessons: breathing exercises, vocalises, basic repertoire (24 Italian Songs). But I would have to think about it to tell you what the skills were I was learning. Let me try:

Breathing exercises: how to support my breath and make it last

Vocalises: some skills I think were how to warmup, how to project (though I was only at the very beginning of this), how to make my mouth open like an egg, but probably lots of other things that I don't know how to name, because I can think of various vocalises which I can tell were exercising various skills, but I don't have the terminology for what they were doing.

Repertoire: how to use the above skills while honing my interval accuracy (I suppose, although I never had a solid sense of intervals even while singing songs that pounded on a particular interval).

The teaching of how to sing correctly came throughout all of these things, as my teacher corrected me, gave me images to work with, asked me to adjust my singing this way or that. But she didn't tell me technically what the goal of each item was (maybe the goals seemed self-evident to her), and I didn't think of the lessons as organized by skills, but rather by a certain order to the lesson, so my description of what I learned to do, beyond "learning to sing" might mostly be about the material covered in the lesson, rather than the skills learned.

On the other hand, I had an excellent impression of her as having a very well-thought-out order for what she taught me, that gave me needed skills in a good order, and built more advanced things on top of simpler things. Even though I didn't think of the lesson as a progression of skills, she may have thought of it that way. Or maybe in her method, the materials and how she taught them were so perfectly connected to teaching skills that it didn't matter which way you thought of them: as skills or as material. So even though I can't name what her outline of skills was for teaching me, I'm sure I was learning the right things.

By contrast, in my piano lessons I ultimately felt frustrated in that I didn't sense any overarching design of skills from my piano teacher that was directing the choice of material, and those lessons did come to leave me feeling frustrated that they were just about learning pieces, with only minimal guidance on how to learn to play better. It may be that my teacher had such a plan, but couldn't communicate it; it may be that she has a different philosophy than what I wanted about how skills are acquired (I think she believed that I would learn what I needed in the course of broad playing in a variety of eras with suggestions from her for each piece, vs. what I wanted was a sense of a specific choice of pieces to teach certain skills in a thought-out order). In retrospect, I did learn a lot of things while taking piano lessons, but I got to a point where I felt the pace of learning had dwindled, and I wanted more of a specific plan.

Another contrast: my first voice teacher didn't seem to have the same kind of extended teaching plan as my second voice teacher, but I didn't realize that until after I started with my second voice teacher. But I was quite happy with my first voice teacher while I was with him; the main thing I learned from taking lessons with him was a crucial crucial crucial ability simply to sing in front of someone else (for about 6 months, about half of each hour lesson would typically go by before I would be brave enough to sing anything at all). And he also introduced me to the specifics of vowels, diphthongs, and varying emphasis, which I am very glad to have learned.

So I don't know the full answer, but I do think that even a student with a good teacher may think that what they are learning is pieces, even though the teacher is deliberately teaching skills.

PS88, it sounds like your experience with different types of teachers has given you some good insight into what you are looking for and what works well for you. That's useful knowledge to have!