Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum Just have to get this off my chest....

From the way you describe your use of caring adults in your teaching of children, Gary, that's not the impression I get.

One impression I do get is that not very many piano teachers here think of their job as one that includes teaching adults alongside young beginners. One reason they may think that's not their job is that most parents probably don't enroll their kids for piano lessons in the expectation that they will be learning, too. You presume a level of commitment that many may not have been expecting, and some may not even be willing to give.

The lesson from your experiences, I think, is that many family members are indeed willing and able to act as an effective assistant at home. The teacher just has to be willing to show them how to do that. One other advantage of having a parent present during lessons is that you will know almost immediately when there is a dynamic going on in which parental involvement will make things worse, rather than better. And then you can act accordingly.

I do think there's an age and/or level at which it's better to let the student spread their wings and fly solo. (As an aside: if so, what age / level would that be?) And I remain convinced that something is lost when a child, even a very young one, has a musically skilled parent sitting next to them during every single minute of piano practice. It's good to have someone in the house who has the skills and knowledge to help you work through major difficulties. But when there's someone sitting next to you at all times, who can give you the right answer in a snap, it takes away part of the struggle inherent in learning any new skill. That can be detrimental in the long run. See also: the challenges in teaching gifted kids who were always good at everything they tried, until they bumped into a limit and didn't know how to respond to that, other than by giving up.

I am much closer to the bumbling piano parent. I don't read music, yet even I can be heavily involved in the process. I'm sure I get things wrong- a lot more than Piano Dad but there are many things that I can get right. I can hear when my son is not playing the right BPM when the metronome is on. I can even remind him to turn on the metronome. I know the difference between F and P etc. My son and I can go over the notes his teacher writes and he can explain to me what I should listen for. I feel like even if I don't understand completely what he's said, just the fact that he's saying it again and "teaching me what to listen for" helps to reinforce the concepts in his mind. I can follow the beats well enough to know whether my son is phrasing.

Sometimes, I'll remind my son something all week and he still won't do what his teacher asked but when she reinforces it in the next lesson he's heard it not once but maybe 20 times. I'm 100 percent confident that he's doing significantly better with my involvement.

Most importantly though, I think the fact he knows I care makes all the difference in the world. I also think it's sometimes hard for non-parents to understand. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think parenting would be as difficult as it is and I'm lucky because I have great kids.

I really hate the argument that by working with my kids, they won't develop independence or be able to overcome struggles later. I often think that's the excuse used by lazy parents to not help.

I'll assume that since I'm the one currently making that argument, you're talking to me .

To my mind, it's not a question of whether or not parents should help their kids. Of course they should. Even having grown up with parents whose 'help' was anything but helpful, it seems self-evident to me that helping kids adequately tackle the challenges that life throws at them, academic or otherwise, is a large part of every parent's responsibility. The kind of help you describe giving your son during piano practice seems to me like what I would expect any supportive parent to do, pianoMom. What I'm arguing about is not, to my mind, a yes or no question. The answer is yes, always. But how, and by how much?

I teach part-time at a university. There are nineteen-year-olds there who would never come talk to me on their own, but whose parents I've had multiple conversations with on the phone. Except under special circumstances, usually all I tell those people is that I can't (and won't) really tell them anything. I will talk to their child. That's not a pleasant conversation to have, for either party. The kind of parent who calls their nineteen-year-old's teacher, instead of telling their nineteen-year-old to go talk to the teacher, is not the kind of parent who wants to be told to butt out. But I believe that I am doing these people a favor, by making it clear to them that I won't let them communicate with me through their parents. And after a few of those conversations, I've begun to sincerely wonder how it is even possible that someone who's legally an adult still operates that way.

Apparently, there are some people in the world whose parents hold them by the hand for far too long, and on too many occasions. But then, a parent who has micro-managed every aspect of a child's life up until their eighteenth birthday, can't (and usually won't) expect that child to suddenly wake up the day after, knowing full well how to function in the world with only the occasional call home for advice. They'll think they can't just stop doing what they've been doing from one day to the next. And they'll be right.

I am not raising any children of my own. So you're right, in that way I can't relate to you. But I do know a few things about what it takes for a child to grow up into a well-adjusted adult, from training as well as from experience. Many moons ago, when I was barely a grown-up myself, I worked at a group home for children whose parents couldn't raise them. A difficult balance we had to strike with those kids, like every parent (and by extension, like everyone who shares responsibility for the raising of a child, such as a teacher), was between providing sufficient guidance, and leaving enough room for autonomy. In the group home, what that looked like (among other things) was making young teens live in the home as if their room were a studio in some anonymous apartment building. They'd find their own entertainment, cook their own food, do their own dishes and laundry, handle their own money, ... They'd get progressively less help, and progressively more responsibility for doing all of those things on their own, from the age of fourteen onwards.

For a child from a good home, it may not be so vitally important to be completely ready to go out into the world all alone when they turn eighteen. They'll always have their parents to fall back on. But they, too, will bump into walls if they've never done anything without being closely supervised and/or backed up by a parent, or if their parents simply did everything for them. That's why I think 'over-involvement' does more harm than good in the long run, even if at first it yields results. And I think that applies to piano lessons (or, to stay closer to my own wheelhouse, high school math homework, and bad news conversations about school) as much as it applies to anything else.

There is definitely difference between helping a child and coddling. Parents who coddle and demand that their kid earns an A when they deserve a B for example aren't doing their child any favors eg. I know that happens in my children's school and as its a private I'm sure the big donors kids get away with more.

There's a huge difference between the parent who helps their child learn a concept and the one that makes excuses for their child or tries to get their child out of trouble. There is a difference between the one that writes the paper for the child and the one who sits and helps the child learn how to write.

Thank you for the compliment Saranoya. I'm just tired of sometimes being thrown in the second category because I do help.

Yes, there is. But even the parents who don't write the paper, just sit next to the kid while he does, will have to stop doing that at some point. If not, they risk sending a grown-up out into the world who doesn't really know how to live life without them.

My boyfriend spent two years writing his Master's thesis, when the original plan called for less than half that time. Impatient while footing the college bill, his father eventually did something close to what you describe: made sure he spent a good amount of time working on his his thesis every day, and sat in the same room as him while he wrote, thinking through the data analysis portions together when necessary. Do I think that's valuable help to get? Sure. Do I think it's OK for a twenty-something with a bachelor's degree to rely on his high school educated, recently retired father for that kind of help, while living on his parents' dime? No. Not really.

I love my boyfriend dearly, for many reasons that have nothing to do with how I just described him. I love his parents too. I do feel like they coddled him a bit, and to some extent, perhaps I am sometimes still 'raising' their son, even at twenty-six. If I were a mom today, I wouldn't want to let my son grow into the kind of guy who makes his girlfriend feel like she sometimes has to be his mother. I'd try to figure out how to help him not need me anymore long before that happened.

ETA: I showed this post to my boyfriend, and he agrees with me .

I think this is excellent. I would much rather have parents that can monitor practice and be involved like this. I do try to educate the parents or caregivers in this, and the ones that spend the time I see much more success in the child's progress. But there are many cases where the parent in the room serves as a distraction, so I take some time after the lesson to discuss the weeks' assignment with them.

Teaching is a 3-way partnership between the child, parent(s) and teacher. Without the parental involvement, it's much harder for the child to stick with it.

And honestly, I often prefer parents that don't know much about piano. Then they can't give the child the answers, they can only help them understand the assignment and do some monitoring like you do. I think children of musicians have it a bit harder unless that musician understands when to not give answers and just walk alongside the child as they learn rather than feel like the at-home instructor.

Not for the first time, Morodiene expresses what I meant to say more concisely .

Do you see how frequently you write anecdotally? You find a situation that fits your perception and then say, 'there, that's the example that proves the point."

Who is arguing against the idea that an adult ultimately must be an adult? No one. I think we just disagree on the best way to teach and the best way to use the resources the family brings to the table.

Like you, I'm neither arguing for, nor against the idea that an adult must be an adult. That's true by definition, and beside the point. I'm arguing that not everyone is equally autonomous in their functioning by the age of 'legal' adulthood. I believe the way different parents and teachers choose to raise and/or teach kids may have something to do with that.

And yes, so far, I have been arguing my points using anecdotal evidence. So have you. So has everyone else. I am under no illusion that my anecdotes constitute 'proof' of anything. They are meant to illustrate certain points; not magically transform opinions, more or less informed, into irrefutable facts. Scientifically speaking, there is no such thing as an irrefutable fact. It's only true until someone credibly shows that it isn't. But you want something beyond my personal opinions, dressed up by anecdotes? OK. I shall endeavor to provide it.

Davidson, Moore, Howe & Sloboda, 1993: a survey-based study involving 257 music students and their parents, which concludes that parental involvement in practice (asking child to practice, and the practice must be heard by the parent) without involvement in lessons (present during lessons, or receiving regular feedback from teacher), has no significant impact. Students whose parents are involved in lessons, however, take lessons for longer, and it is more likely that the student will quit when the parents stop being present in lessons (or asking the teacher for feedback) than when they don't. Parents in this study were overwhelmingly people with wide-ranging musical interests who did not, however, play themselves. So parental involvement in lessons is a good thing, regardless of the parent's skill. Corroborated here and here, among other places. Important (but intuitively obvious) caveat: parental support needs to be warm and non-threatening. If not, it undermines motivation (see the chapter on motivation in The Child as a Musician: handbook for musical development; no link, sorry). So no threatening / controlling / argumentative / judgmental parents in the room, please!

Now, ideally, other than being non-threatening, what should parental involvement in practice at home look like? What kind of skills are we looking to develop?

Nielsen, 2010: a case study of two conservatory students, showing high levels of self-regulation in their practice sessions. Tentative conclusion (because it's a very small case study, generalization is problematic): the ability to self-regulate during practice (which involves, among other things, setting goals, choosing what to work on and how to work on it, and self-monitoring progress and performance in relation to the goals) is an important component of a high-performing musician's skill set.

McCormick & McPherson, 2003: a statistical model, based on survey research among 223 Trinity College exam participants, more robust than the one above because of the much higher number of participants, showing a significant correlation between self-regulation during practice, and exam performance. For the sake of completeness: self-efficacy, i.e. being confident in one's ability to pass, shows an even stronger correlation with exam results; practice time less so, and its effect is mediated by the level of self-regulation exercised during practice.

So, if we agree effective practice depends on the ability to self-regulate, then the next question becomes: how does one develop self-regulation during music practice, and (if we can answer this one) what role can / should a supportive parent play in that?

McPherson & Renwick, 2001: a longitudinal study of young music learners, involving videotaped practice sessions from ages 7 to 9, showing that the kids differ significantly in the degree to which they engage in self-regulating behaviors during practice, even when they're just starting out. In its discussion section, this study notes a possible correlation between the degree to which the students engage in self-regulating behaviors autonomously (i.e., without outside / parental prompting), and the quality of their practice. It is, however, a small study (only seven participants), which makes it hard to generalize.

McPherson (2008) notes the importance of promoting a feeling of autonomy in order to promote motivation and self-regulation during music practice: the child has to feel he or she can make his / her own choices with regard to what to do and how to go about it. That conclusion is supported exclusively by research on learning in general, rather than music learning specifically, but until someone shows me otherwise, I see no reason to assume that music learning would be an exception to the rule.

I'm running out of time (already very late putting dinner on the table), but from what I know about promoting self-regulation in students in general (I want to, and can, provide links later if you're interested), I'd say it is vital to select appropriate assignments, and then first and foremost, create a structure within which the student is able to do the assignment and evaluate its results more or less autonomously (teacher's job?). The 'scaffolding' provided by the structure can be progressively removed as the student's skill and ability to self-monitor grow. The younger the student is, the more explicit the scaffolding will have to be. So yes, that could mean they'll benefit from a parent sitting next to them, reminding them of the steps they have to take, and checking that they do them correctly. However, if explicit scaffolding is not gradually taken away (ergo, if the parent doesn't gradually move more and more into the background to let mastery and self-awareness in a specific area develop), then true self-regulation cannot be achieved.

It helps to be older.

Most of the parents of the kids I teach are the age of my kids.

That's a game changer. I can play that card, and if necessary I do.

In ideal situations we get to start children when they are quite young.

I start from the very beginning with lines and spaces, both clefs, up to 5 lines above and below both staffs. I am literally showing how to do this from minute one, and I have a parent pointing to the notes and helping the small ones nail down these basics. If the children understand things before their parents, it will be tough. And that happens, but not often.

So I have two people working on skills, and both are learning. It's more of a collaboration, and the chances of TWO people showing up the following week having no idea what we did the previous week is much smaller.

Usually parents take a step back automatically when things are working. If the young students begin doing really well, at some point the parents can't help any more, and they know it. This is inevitable. In the end the only thing they can do at home is to remind the kids to practice, if that is necessary.

For me it never was as a student. My best students are remarkably self-motivated, at any age.

Having heard so many musicians' stories about their childhood and how they came to be musicians (from a BBC drive-time radio program), there is no doubting the fact that parents who love music (whether or not they are musicians, amateur or professional) make a huge difference to whether their kids stay the course. In fact, a musician who has no supportive parents is a very rare thing, from the hundreds of interviews I've heard on that program over the years. BTW, none of those interviewees ever mentioned anything resembling tiger parents - the vast majority said that their parents would have supported them in whatever they planned to do, including giving up music.

From my own upbringing, I have no doubt that if my parents had been supportive - even a little - my youngest sister (13 years younger than me) would almost certainly have made music her career. She had the talent I lacked, and when I was still living at home, she persevered despite all odds - my parents made our practicing a constant battle against the TV, and they cared nothing for music (they were quite relieved when my brother and other sister both gave up piano within a year, and then when I was sent abroad......) - and made rapid progress, more than twice as fast as me. She continued for another year after I left home, but finally gave up the battle in her early teens, having reached almost advanced standard on the piano from just three years of lessons. With no support from anyone at home (she was the only one left who loved music), she decided that enough was enough. She didn't quite have the sheer bl**dy-mindedness that I had: she cared about how she was perceived by people around her (friends & family), whereas I couldn't care less what others thought of me, when it came to stuff I enjoyed doing. But at least, she still made use of her musical skills, because she got a job in music publishing, where she's been working ever since.

Let me cut to the chase, because this is getting complicated, and I'm not sure I'm understanding anything at this point.

When I read words like "scaffolding" my brain goes numb because I feel as though I am now reading education or psychological buzz words.

Let's fall back on a little common sense: if little Sarah and Jack are not able to solve problems on their own and lead their own lives, Mommy and Daddy are going to be paying bills for the rest of their lives, and these grown-up children will eventually be living at home.

When I talk about having parents involved it is with the goal of eventually having independent, thinking young adults who know how to solve problems.

You can't play music well without solving problems. You don't get anywhere in music without solving problems.

That's what we are really teaching, skills, and how to improve these skills. Probably 98% of my teaching is about this: How to practice, how to structure time, getting things right the first time, not wasting time, now to get more done in less time.

I've never had a really advanced student need Mommy or Daddy sitting by them every moment to work for further progress. Having parents involved when students get into their teens is more about keeping communication open and having everyone on the same page.

I learned two instruments, and no one every told me to practice either of them. That's not what I'm talking about.

I don't think Piano Dad is talking about that either.

I want all my students to be as fully independent as possible, as early as possible. But I want them to be successful. Those to things are not necessarily at odds.

They aren't, and it was never my intention to imply that they are. That's why I posted the first study. You seem to have latched on to the part where it says parents have to remind their kids to practice. But that's not the important part. All parents in the study reminded their kids to practice; some did it more frequently than others. That, by itself, didn't appear to have any effect on the kids' success or perseverance. The effect came from parental involvement in lessons (plus or minus reminders to practice). In that study, involvement in lessons could mean one of two things: (a) parents are present during the lesson, or (b) parents are told by the teacher what the student needs to focus on during practice at home. In both cases, knowing what needs to happen at home means that parents can check that it's actually happening (in the way pianoMom described), which is helpful.

So the point I was trying to make is not that there is something wrong with involving parents in the lessons, whether they are actually present during lessons or not - on the contrary. My point is that success is more likely with parental involvement in lessons (particularly early on), but that it also requires the ability to self-regulate during practice. Opportunities to acquire self-regulation skills are hard to come by without autonomy. And autonomy requires external monitoring and control to be kept to the minimum necessary.

I apologize for the use of what you think of as a buzz word. It's not an empty container. It means something specific. It's anything you use to impose a structure on the way a student is going to tackle a task, which can be omitted once a certain level of mastery has been achieved. Like learning addition and subtraction by grouping and counting physical objects, until you can do it in your head without them. The objects, and (more importantly) the instructions on how to use them, are 'scaffolding'. I did not explain that well. I'm sorry.

Beyond that, I agree with you. Nothing I've said was meant to contradict anything you have.

I could not agree more.

My parents never pushed me, and in fact my parents were opposed to pressure. They thought that kids who are pushed live abnormal lives and have huge problems.

But they always supported me in whatever I did. As a child you can't ask for more.

I'm not basing my assumptions on studies, but I think this is logical. It's one thing to remind students to practice now and then, although that was never necessary for me. I'm one of those rare people who were absolutely on fire. I loved music, could not get enough of it, and it was my central passion growing up.

However, I could have been much better earlier in my life if I had had experts to guide my practice - not to tell me to practice, but to tell me how to maximize the benefits I got from practicing.

If you have an expert musician as a "second ear", it makes an amazing difference. I don't know how else to explain it.

But it is a see-saw. You can't just self-regulate. You have to know HOW to self-regulate. The most common thing I see is that students waste a huge amount of their time working in an inefficient way because they know of no better way to work. This was true of me, 100%.

Think of it this way: I follow tennis very closely, and you might that think that once players become successful they know how to stay on top. But all the top players work closely with some kind of coach, and that includes perhaps the greatest player of all time, Roger Federer. He has continuous input into what he might be doing wrong, or what he might improve. Obviously no one is telling him what to do, or how to do it. But there is still a degree of collaboration.

I want to push back really hard on something, not against you, but against others who are not making an important distinction. There is no way any parent can possibly have a rich idea of what goes on in my lessons without being in the lessons. I can't guide the parent as to what to pay attention to at home, or how to guide a young student. That parent has to learn along with the child because parents are just as likely to have horribly wrong ideas about how to practice as their children and in some cases will actually give horrible advice at home without having any idea of how wrong it is.

In other words, in the beginning I am helping the parent help the child. This means that the child may get five or seven mini-lessons at home, with guidance. But that means that I need to OBSERVE the parent helping in the lesson. If I am doing reading drills, and the parent is pointing to things, I need to see it happening. Maybe the parent is pointing to the wrong things on the page. Maybe the parent is correcting things that are right. There can be a thousand things that go wrong, but if I'm there to observe it, there is not chance that those wrong things will be carried home and stressed.

There are many things that are not black and white. Here is one tiny example. At first I call the G in the treble clef, on the top line, "bird on the wire". I call D below C "the hanging note".

But what if one of the small children says, "Under note"? The parent will want to correct, knowing that I have given a term, thinking that this term is important. At that moment I can step in and say, "That's fine. It is descriptive, and it is temporary. Later we will call it 'D', so it doesn't matter."

Or the top line is F, and that line is line 5. What if the child says "line 1" but hits the correct key every time? I can say, "You can actually do that, because it is number one from the top. I'd prefer line 5, but you can also say 'top line'. If you get it right every time, we don't even need that name. You are getting it right!"

How can any parent know what has to be exact, with a term, or what can be descriptive and called a thousand different things? Of course the parent can't know, and that is true even when the parent is a professional musician. One of my "dads" is a band director. But when I teach his son something, he will say, "Is it OK to use a different name here?" And most of the time my answer is: "Absolutely."

But sometimes he will do something a particular way and I will say, "I know what you are doing, and it's right, but I would prefer this way, and let me tell you why..."

It is an educational term, and I just found it.

"In education, scaffolding refers to a variety of instructional techniques used to move students progressively toward stronger understanding and, ultimately, greater independence in the learning process."

I'm still not totally sure what it means, but it may describe how I teach. I give structures to get things done, but the structures are a means to an end and may be totally disregarded in the future or pushed way to the background.

I would also include in this concept a tee, in baseball, two blades on an ice skate for beginners, things that help with buoyancy for beginning swimmers, and a million other things like that that are helpful or even necessary to achieve a level of mastery but that are later discarded. Add to that training wheels.

Concepts are used the same way.

So if I am on the same page, I agree with you.

Hi Gary,
My day job as a secondary school teacher means that I encounter the word scaffolding regularly at staff meetings. In simplest terms, it is the list of small instructions given to a student to enable them to move from start to finish on a project. Good teachers do it automatically. Inexperienced and ineffective teachers need to learn to do it if their students are to succeed. A well-designed scaffold for an older student should allow the student to work fairly independently.

In English, for example, a scaffold will provide students with detailed instructions on how to write each paragraph of an essay. In Mathematics, students would be taught exactly what to write for each line of working on a trigonometry question. When introducing a new piece to a piano student, he or she may be taught to tap the rhythm on the piano lid, name the notes, play hands separately etc. This is scaffolding. An experienced student will have internalised much of the necessary scaffolding and will not need to be re-taught each step. A less-experienced student may need a dozen or more mini steps to follow and these will need to be repeated and reinforced. This is why I ask parents to attend lessons so that can repeat the instructions at home.

In every learning situation there are four essential elements - the student, the teacher, the material to be learned and the method used to learn it. You cannot say "I taught it to them but they didn't learn it". If your students didn't learn something then you haven't taught it to them yet. You many have provided a scaffold of three steps but if a willing student fails to achieve you may need to provide a more comprehensive scaffold. It is for this reason that my favourite new students are "transfer wrecks" with 1-2 years of lessons behind them. As soon as the work is presented to them in small, manageable steps they can learn effectively - despite being labelled "dumb, stupid, lazy and hopeless" by their previous teacher.

Well, according to what you are describing this is exactly what I do.

I just don't use that word, obviously.

Here, for example, are the steps I teach to everyone, no exceptions:

Break things up into parts, and just go by lines if there are no parts marked.

Start either with the last part or the hardest part.

Play hands separate first. Don't put the hands together until you are sure that each hand works by itself. Don't use pedal.

Then both hands. Use pedal if it is required. (I have detailed steps in how to pedal, so that can be separate.)

Don't count or worry about rhythm until both hands are working together.

Add counting or rhythm (lots of options for doing this.) Do NOT attempt to play full speed.
Gradually increase the tempo.

Start adding extra things: articulation, dynamics, phrasing, and so on.

This is a basic checklist I still use for myself, but of course as an advanced player you may introduce steps in a different order, and if it works it is right.

The next idea is that skipping steps is OK if doing so does not result in errors. But I have to be quite inflexible about small parts and hands separate practice. I myself always practice in parts, but in most things my hands are together from the get-go.

In general transfer-wrecks are not helpful in making me reassess the steps I use because I have been dealing with them for more than four decades. In other words, by this time I don't often see "new problems".

Loving the discussion. When I started to have piano lessons alongside my daughter who came up with the idea, I was surprised that I basically learn how to learn a piece. I am being teached how to teach myself how to play a song. I am loving it.

That may very well be true. I don't really know, and I haven't read any studies that might shed some light on this issue, either . It seems logical enough on the face of it. However, for someone to help you maximize the benefits you get from practicing, it seems to me that person would have to be an experienced and effective practicer themselves. You probably agree with that, since you're talking about "experts". How many students of yours have an expert at home to guide them through their piano practice? .

Most learners, even when they're taking lessons from you alongside their (non-musician) parents, will soon outgrow the expertise of their parents (as you yourself have pointed out, I believe). Once that happens, they'll have a pair of expert ears available (yours) only once a week. Which means that the rest of the time, much like Roger Federer during most of the hours he spends training, they will have to be able to self-monitor and self-regulate. They will probably learn to do that more quickly and more easily if it's been part of the expectations from the very beginning ("I will show you and your dad how to tackle this, and your dad can help you do it this way at home, but you have to learn to do these things even when you're by yourself.").

And as Morodiene pointed out earlier, even a parent who does have significant experience and/or expertise to share, and who may not be 'outgrown' by their child until years down the road (if at all), will have to step back and let the child figure things out for themselves sometimes. Personally, growing up, I was the kind of girl who didn't tend to take advice easily. I mostly (sometimes rightfully) didn't trust the adults in my life to know better than I did. I understand now that sometimes they really weren't bullshitting me, and that I would have been better off taking their advice. But even to this day, things that I get to experience for myself (even if that means bumping into a wall before changing course), usually stick better.



Obviously. Which is where the scaffolding comes in. And yes, from what you've written, that is what you're doing.



Yes, you are.

What I've found in life is that when I listen to "conventional wisdom", studies etc rather than my own gut I am disappointed. In my own personal experience as a mom of 2, I have found that working with my children up until the point that they exceed my abilities has been critical in their success.

I'm using this same philosophy with piano. Unfortunately there I'm much more limited in terms of help.