Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum Lies Music Teachers Believe

Maybe next time Nyke could just choose one idea and explore it, instead of lecturing fellow piano teachers on everything we are doing wrong in business.

@peter k mose, I will continue to write in topics that interest me as well as other music teachers. For as long as it continues to benefit them and empower them to build their businesses. The was a time when I didn't know these things and wondered why my studio wasn't growing, now with two studio locations I want to help teachers who want to build their private studios or build large music schools.

With all due respect Nyke, it seems to me that you may have a basic misunderstanding about PW and the Piano Teachers Forum, and how people interact here. And given that you are not really listening to any of the complaints or disagreements people are expressing, it seems unlikely that this misunderstanding will be cleared up anytime soon.

PW is a discussion forum, where people exchange ideas, not a place to deposit articles (blog posts) that engage in a unidirectional information flow. People post about all kinds of topics, including some of the topics introduced in your first post in this thread. But posting generally takes the form of something more like "here's something I've been thinking about, how do other people handle this? what do you think of my suggestions?" whereas your post comes off very much like a lecture (as others have noted) and does not seem to suggest any interest on your part in learning something from the other posters here. Keystring even tried to bring this thread into a more PW-esque mode of discussion where opinions from other PW members are sought, and you basically disregarded it completely, suggesting that you're not interested in what the other teachers on this site might have to share.
I'm referring to this comment:


Given that, it would seem like your only goal in posting here was to increase traffic to your own web site, which, if that is the case, is a questionable activity given this board's policies about advertising etc. If, as you protested, that was not your intention, you would probably find more posters interested in participating (rather than critiquing/criticizing) if you gave the impression not of talking down to everyone here but of being interested in hearing about other people's experiences.

You might want to help but reposting content from PW is in violation of the copyright notice clear printed at the bottom of each page and besides doing so without peoples permission is simply rude.

nyke,

You are walking a thin line here. Self promotion is against the rules and you are USING Piano World for your own gain. You are promoting your website. You are also POACHING from posts here. The people participating in this topic are probably not aware that you are copying their posts and adding them to the comments on your blog.

Notice this little blurb at the bottom of the page....



So let me ask you, have you asked permission from Frank Baxter, owner of Piano World to take content from here for your own website?

Oh my.

I just found this on your website:

I do NOT like things I wrote here, in context, being put on your blog without my permission.

You have a LOT of nerve.

Wonder how she will take to a little turnabout...



Fair is Fair...

Shirokuro's prior post, from which I have just extracted 2 sentences, is superb in its entirety. I couldn't have explained PW this well. Bravo and thank you!

If Nyke wants to converse about piano teaching instead of sermonize, I'm sure she is still welcome.

What everybody else said so far!
Don't poach stuff from here!
Don't promote yourself so shamelessly!
Offer some useful advice, or don't say anything!

Some of my own writings here come from things that are under copyright, and have been published elsewhere. If you poach my stuff, you'll have trouble from more people than Frank.

And if you think that's what it takes to make a successful studio, or have good career as a teacher, you don't know 1- much about this business, or 2- anything about teaching.

Agreed. Shameless self promotion usually is counterproductive in this business. Teaching piano often involves working with the same client(s) (our students) for over ten years. Why would there be a need for pushy "used-car-salesman" behavior? Visibility within the community and perhaps some tasteful advertising can be beneficial at times.

I hope the OP is listening. These can be hard learning points, but worthwhile. There have been several advertising, self serving posts in the past. Forum members seem to have gracefully ignored them. I think this one was past the tipping point.

Hi Passion,

In this day and age of Skype lessons, and digital this-and-that, sometimes these hard-sell strategies work...to make money.

But it doesn't make great musicians, and it doesn't produce Great Art. And it also doesn't make for a very nice life, in the long run, nor does it lead to the success people think it will. Nothing easy ever does.

But today, instant gratification takes too long! God help these people if they ever have to learn how to play a trill.

+1

LG, I agree with you about Skype when people truly have the chance to study with teachers in real time.

(There are special circumstances when that is not possible.)

For me the biggest drawback is the quality of sound. Even when both people - teacher and student - have good cameras, Skype does not always provide great connections, and even when it does the sound at best is not too good.

Also, even when cameras are working well, it's not the same as being able to move around and see things from all distances and angles.

I think that if nyke were really interested in being a part of this community, she would be posting on other topics and contributing and learning like the rest of us. Oh, and not poaching.

RE: Skype. I must say that it has allowed me to teach several students that I would not otherwise be able to teach. One was a voice student had to leave the US and return to Haiti to live with her family, and she has still progressed quite well in spite of the issues. I hope that someday she will be able to return to the US so I can work with her in person, but this is better than nothing. Same goes for my voice student who is a pop singer and often on tour all over the world. Then there are the voice and piano students who just didn't want to part ways when I moved from WI.

Apart from the woman in Haiti, however, I do get to see all of my students in person 2-3 times per year. This helps. And I would not take a voice student on Skype whom I had never worked with in person before - although piano I probably would. That hasn't come up yet. Still, nothing beats regular, in-person lessons.

Hi Moro and Gary,

I shouldn't be running down Skype so very much as I use it myself, and not just for lessons. However, I'm not in the volume piano lesson business.

I agree about its limitations. You end up intuiting a lot of things that you can't see or hear, which sometimes works.