Piano World Home Page Forums General Discussions New Feature Requests Just for self-taught pianists

Would it be possible to have a forum just for self-taught pianists? In the other active thread the mantra is "get a teacher" ignoring the fact that some people live in remote areas where there are no teachers, where school kids don't have any music option, and in a climate that in winter often prevents travelling. Also for some people the piano is a sort of therapy but they may be uncomfortable interacting with a person telling them what to do. In such a thread the self-learner would be at ease talking about problems, or successes, and get encouraging responses from fellow self-taught.

Thank you,
Mirliton

I think it is a great idea. My first issue would be defining, "self-taught." Many people learn things without taking formal lessons but they are, in fact, taught through the passing of information from one generation to the next. That actually defines roots music.

You can learn from youtube videos. I've learned a lot that way. Is that "self-taught"? You make a great point. How do others define "self-taught" piano? I'm interested in the responses.

I guess "self-taught" means exactly the person who doesn't take formal lessons.

First I couldn't find the thread again, second my husband had a finger accident with a piece of wood an a miter saw and a long recovery. Piano did get neglected while I played nurse, cook and chief bottle washer. Since we heat with wood, I also had to go into the woods, cut trees,haul them back and chainsaw, split and stack the logs.

To get back to the thread I define self-taught as in my case, no lessons, viewing some Utube (not too many helpful I found), listening to professional recordings of the music I'm hoping to play, and practicing as much as I can. One hour at this time. I learned a lot just reading the forums about books and methods as well as DPs. I now have two methods books for classical piano, Alfred book 2 but use it mostly as sight reading exercises, though I do work the classical pieces more thoroughly - my taste is classical almost exclusively. I just acquired the Hanon exercises having read about it on the forum. A book of finger practice "A dozen a Day". And since the goal is to play music I have Bach for Beginners, from which I am building the beginning of a repertoire.

It's an interesting idea, but I guess an alternative is simply to ignore all the "get a teacher" responses, if you can't, or don't want to, engage a teacher.

"get a teacher"
Kevin, I have been a lurker for a long time. I find I can't just ignore the "get a teacher" it becomes irritating. In my case and I believe there are others who simply cannot get to a teacher for reason ranging from expense to remote areas - here we don't have cell coverage, TV reception and internet only by satellite which, when it is on, does not have enough bandwidth for tools like Skype. In starting this thread I was hoping that with others like me we could share our specific problems and solutions. But maybe that's what everybody does, "ignore all the "get a teacher".

I think this would be a good idea for a sub-forum.

I had teachers growing up, but since I reached (exam level) grade 5 I have been working on my own because I like to work to my own schedule and really enjoy planning my own practice approaches and experimenting with various ways of solving problems. I find that weekly, or even monthly, lessons get in the way of that. Plus, having one teacher only gives you a somewhat one-sided view of the process of practicing and playing.

I do, though, have a couple of people (locally and online) who I really respect take a look and listen to my playing every 5 or 6 months; sometimes more frequently and some times a lot less frequently. This gives me varied and honest feedlback on the things I've missed - both good and bad. I don't really like skype lessons because of the low-quality images and sound, and I prefer, these days, to record my playing (and practicing) and get email feedback. For me this is a very happy situation.

I do find youtube highly valuable - not in terms of online lessons, but just watching many, many people play. Watching their hands in high definition, and being able to listen again and again to the same piece. It really helps in the assimilation of pieces, and gives you so many different ideas on how to play a piece.

I also watch Youtube for performers' hands and posture. Also for their interpretation.

Quite. I'm not disagreeing with you at all. In principle, it's a good idea. I'm just not sure whether it would work in practice. People don't necessarily know which sub-forum a particular topic is in. I don't know which sub-forum this topic is in, because I just clicked it in the "Active threads" list. So I think you'd still get people posting "get a teacher" responses, unless there was some sort of artificial intelligence that recognized responses like that and prevented them being posted.

In addition, I think that dealing with any web forum requires a certain amount of mental filtering. Even if you can remove the "get a teacher" responses, you've still got to deal with replies from people who haven't actually read the discussion, or misinterpreted it, or are just generally clueless, like me.

I am so happy to see Mirlitin's post! I also am starting to almost feel brainwashed by the "get a teacher" ... "Need a teacher" mantra. I am 65 and more or less retired now, just work around two weekends a month. I have had my fill of turning up somewhere on time, prepared, "performing", being critiqued, or even criticised however constructively, being given something I need to do or think about before the next meeting. I'm like..... Yippeeeeeeeee I'm finally freeeeeeee!!!!!

I started piano late age18, had lessons for about three years, playing kind of dropped off then I had a long gap of no piano, then got an older digital I just played some easy stuff on to relax after work, then another gap of about eight years for various reasons house reno etc. i decided to take it up seriously again on retirement as a sort of " this is my last chance" and have bought a brand new Roland digital, but decided I did not want the pressure of expectation, performing, feeling whenever I did anything but piano I "should" be practising instead for the next lesson, because you know, teacher, dog ate my homework, not to mention the cost.

There must be lots of people on here that feel the same, or similar. I have picked up lots of tips and ideas and kind of "instruction" on here in just the two months I have been a member. It's been great and I have given back whenever I could.

I am beginning to teach myself technical/theory which is a huge gap in my learning and am getting the Faber adult books to help me fill in those gaps and recover lost ground and move forward. It was someone on this Forum and the Faber thread which I then researched, that took me in this direction. I just ordered some books today. So this Forum has been wonderful for me.

I just do a sort of cyber fingers-in-ears-la-la-la thing and skim the "really need a teacher" stuff. Maybe if I were 40 and had the time and money, but at this stage in life, when I prefer to just stay home rather reclusively and either play in my garden or my piano room and enjoy my remaining years far from the madding crowd, no.

Lots of folks on here progressing well without a teacher, hope I can be one of them. But I think if we shut ourselves in a separate sub-forum room, we will miss out on some good learning opportunities, miss discovering our bad habits and worse still disappear into our own vortex.

.. and get the best there is

I don't see why anybody should engage a teacher if he or she does not want to but, at the same time, I suspect that many folk who recite the "you need a teacher" creed are doing so with the best possible motives. It isn't just to drum up business, or because misery loves company.

It's irritating to get inappropriate and unhelpful advice, however well-intentioned, but it seems to be part of the human condition to offer it. It would be a shame to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

In starting this thread I didn't mean to shut ourselves away from the other useful threads - I did learn a lot from them - just a place we could talk about the art of self-teaching without someone barging in with "get a teacher" "you'll never go anywhere without a teacher", etc.



Why do you think a self-taught place would "get inappropriate and unhelpful advice"? There are excellent methods books that give detailed advice, so if I have a difficulty and no one has a solution I'd buy the book and study the relevant item and share the solution which could help the other self-taught. However, if I posted this in the other thread like the Adult Beginner there's bound to be a ton of replies shooting it down and then "get a teacher" refrain.

I don't see why anyone should have any angst over a request to have a self-teaching sub-forum. I think would be just as relevant as any of the other sub-forums. It would signal to those whose world view is 'no progress without a teacher' and 'you're wasting your time trying to teach yourself', (both opinions that occur frequently on PW.) that participants are looking for input and comments mostly from others in a similar situation. The concept that one would be shutting oneself from other ideas is nonsense. Most of us follow discussions in a number of sub-forums.

Mirliton, I interpreted Kevinb as meaning the "inappropriate and unhelpful advice" was the continual advice to get a teacher. I thought that was what he meant because he cautioned against throwing out the baby with the bathwater. In other words not to ignore the other forums because there is some good advice in there as well, which is what I was saying in my initial post.

Inero is correct in that most of us read and post in several different subforums. My advice, like kevinb's was that if a teach-yourselfers' subforum was started, to caution against staying out of the other forums to avoid "the mantra" which, after all can start to feel like admonishment, because there is so much other good advice available in them.

Of course, it won't stop those pro-teacher posters coming on and reading and posting ....

Maddie, maybe I didn't express myself correctly (English is not my first language), I never meant to ignore other forums just hoping this sub-forum would be free of the oft repeated "get a teacher", and self-taught pianists would feel at ease discussing their successes, difficulties, etc.

[quote=Of course, it won't stop those pro-teacher posters coming on and reading and posting ....[/quote]

Of course. Maybe it is not such a good idea after all.

Well, why not,? Give it a try. See how we go. Your English was perfect by the way, at least, I understood it. I look forward to reading, learning, and helping where I can. Happy new year playing, everyone.

Bach_ingMaddie has read me correctly. I meant to say that continual advice to get a teacher might be unhelpful, but people who offer that advice are doing it because they think it is helpful, and not just to rattle your cage.

Exactly.

I'm not in charge of making new subforums, but this was my first thought on reading this suggestion.
When folks browse the forums they often use the "active threads" option and don't really pay attention to where the post they're replying to is from.

A good example of this is the Teachers' Forum - it's supposed to be for teachers - but tons of students post there as well. Can we keep them out? Not without heavy monitoring (which isn't going to happen).

This division of thought "teacher versus self-taught" is not new, it's been going on for years.
I can appreciate that it's frustrating to be told to get a teacher when you're really not able to or not interesting in doing so, but I don't think a seperate sub-forum will solve the problem.
Just my opinion.

Casinitaly
I would suggest that, contrary to what you claim, most posters are fully aware of what subforum they are posting on.
It's not a case of wanting to exclude the pro-teacher lobby (which would violate the democratic nature of PW) but in a subforum devoted to self-learners the Get-a-teacher advice would be redundant. We have Classical and Non-classic sections. Posters are free to respond in either but the nature of the subforums tends to be self-selecting. A beginner seeking advice and is, by choice or circumstance, going down the self-teaching route would post in the self-learner section. A beginner who is thinking of finding a teacher would not. What is complicated about that?