Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum Consensus on what improves technical ability?

As with my previous teacher, I am very good at doing what I'm told as long as you give me the reason as to why I'm doing it, and how it furthers my musicianship and pianist abilities. I would think that is fair from a student teacher relationship.

In other words I am willing to learn and backup if that is what it takes, and I will discuss this with the new teacher.


Thank you PianoStudent88, I do appreciate your perspective and recommendations. It's going to be an interesting first lesson.

Working on any new skill is difficult. Most of us don't like doing things that are difficult. If you don't know how to count, counting will be difficult.



Do you need an explanation from a teacher about why counting is an important skill and how it will "further your musicianship and pianist abilities?"

Here it is: If you can't read note values, you can't read music.

I think I get what epee means: Why do I do this specific exercise/piece? What missing skill is it teaching me. I do not think it is too much to ask for the teacher to elaborate(assuming they can). I often asked and was always answered. Then it was my choice whether I wanted to learn that skill or not. And I sometimes went back with another piece that I felt would do the same thing and ask if my teacher approved the change.

I get it, but having a competent teacher that you trust is a better way. Then you can dispense with the Q & A and just follow the teacher's instructions.

Sometimes the "missing skill" is pretty obvious, like counting and playing rhythm other times it may be evident only to an experienced instructor, like arm position when playing violin.

Further, a student asking "Why do I have to practice scales?" reminds me of 6th graders asking why they have to do math. There are so many reasons that it is a waste of time to get started listing them. You DON"T have to practice scales in the same way that you DON'T have to do math, but life is really better if you do.

Yes, BUT:

HOW do you know that your teacher is competent if you have not had a competent teacher in the past?

I did not know what past teachers were not teaching me until I finally got a couple great teachers. I trusted my high school piano teacher, as did my family, and that's why we stuck with her for at least five years.

BAD idea.

She was not good. But how would we have known that?

I trusted her way more than I should have, because I was still young.

"Trust but verify"

Actually, the question should be "How should I practice scales?" and "Toward what kinds of goals?" That same kind of question could be asked about math too.
I wasted several years doing scales because I was told to do scales without having a how or a goal or any musical or technical elements that I could have put into them. The "why" can also go into that "how" and make those scales pertinent and productive.

If a student asked me about math, I would be delighted to tell that student, and it wouldn't be a list. It would be a road to discovery. Btw, I once had a high mathematician, a professor, stand in my stairwell talking a blue streak about math - it was fascinating and made me want to study it. (I never cared for math, but "did" math in school because I had to "do math".).

If you "do" math and scales the way I once did them, then you'd better first ask "Why should I do them?" so that they can actually be of benefit.

Asking why I'm working on something and what the teacher and I are trying to accomplish with the pedagogy in my mind is not unreasonable. This is not the military, where that hill has to be taken now. I can question as to how and why the hill has to be taken. As student and teacher, we need to mesh and understand each other in order to accomplish our goals in moving my skill set to the next level. The teacher's reward is seeing me improve under her instruction. My reward is improving and becoming a better musician and pianist, and "knowing" that I have grown in my abilities.

My previous teacher who I liked dearly, and was just getting comfortable with in terms of discussing things with her, did not want to work on more difficult repertoire, and asked that I contact this new teacher. This new teacher is considered to be a highly accomplished pianist, and I have no doubt in my mind that if our personalities mesh and she is willing to take on this old man I have every expectation that I will improve. I improved with my last teacher. Did my current teacher help with my deficits? Somewhat, and we were starting to interact more as we learned about each other. I have only had her since July, once every two weeks for one hour. That in my mind isn't all that long. I intend to have a detailed conversation with her this evening about many of the issues we have discussed on this forum.

From my perspective, I'm giving the teacher maximum effort. I don't want to waste her time. I respect teachers, I am a teacher. I especially respect piano/music teachers, because there are so many paths to the right outcome, and finding the one that meshes with a particular student is extremely difficult. It is not so clear cut as teaching academics in a public school setting. I hope I made sense.

I also appreciate all of you taking the time to discuss this issue. I am always humbled by the expertise on this forum.

Epee, I'm rethinking my response to Malkin. I actually don't know in which manner you ask why. I'm thinking that what I started to think about in my previous response might be good:
- what would you like me to practise toward / focus on, while I work on this? (this also gives you a why, indirectly)
- how can I use this?
I am ALSO thinking that some of the good teachers I worked with told me why, without my asking anything. Perhaps your future new teacher will be like that.

Asking why can also be seen as questioning the teacher's judgment, or a sign that you don't really want to do this thing (which can set some teachers on the defensive, or pulling back from giving you things you won't like.) It's also in how the why is asked, and how it's understood. (Thinking out loud).

I ask my piano teacher 1 million questions, and she never has a problem: but the questions are phrased like: would this also apply to xxxx music? Can you explain a different way? Will scales help with xxxx? Would you recommend xxxx ? I’m having a problem with this measure, how should I practice it?
I tend to demonstrate by playing after each explanation, So that we can both confirm I really understand.

I agree totally.

When I was a student of piano (& music), I never asked my teachers why I need to do/learn this or that. The same applied for other activities/skills I learnt as an adult: I asked questions if I wasn't clear on what I needed to do, but not why I needed to do it. (BTW, counting aloud in pitch with the notes I played was almost the first thing my teacher got me to do - and I felt pretty self-conscious & silly as a ten-year-old kid doing it, but she was doing it along with me, and I trusted her......). Because - from my own perspective - asking my teacher questions about why (as opposed to how) - wasted time, and I hated wasting time; and secondly, as an adult, I've learnt some highly technical activities/skills in small group classes, and I could see that the instructors/teachers got testy when a student kept asking "why?" (And BTW, when you're learning something like ice-climbing on frozen waterfalls, you're also risking life & limb - your own and others' - if you ask "why?" rather than do what you're told immediately......). And in my experience, good instructors will explain why as well as how, when the "why" is important - not when it's obvious or unnecessary.

In piano, very often, the reason for learning something doesn't become apparent until much, much later, when you're much further advanced. If you asked your teacher why you have to learn scales and arpeggios (and master their fingerings), when all you're interested in playing is pop music, you might have a point. But if the teacher answers your question, say when he introduces them to you after six months of lessons, by playing you the first movement of K545, and you say "But I don't like Mozart, and don't want to play him!" - nothing has been achieved on either side, except aggravation.....

And finally, in my job (nothing to do with music), I often have to tell people to do things for their own good, and/or for the sake of others, giving simple explanations why - if I think it necessary. If I needed to explain why each & every time with everything I tell them to do, I'd be tearing out my hair with frustration and thinking of the time wasted, and all the people I still have to see and sort out, who are also getting frustrated at the delay. In my job, we have a term for such time-wasters which I won't mention here......

Yes. This. The tone of voice and body language used to ask the question often conveys pretty well whether the question is in a genuine spirit of inquiry, or is really a (complaining) statement disguised as a question.

I enjoy inquisitive students and their "why" questions that stem from curiosity. They may be our future piano teachers, and if they feel encouraged to ask such questions, they'll have a head start on understanding the rationale behind doing or not doing certain things a certain way at the piano.

Bennevis
As a child, I would not have dreamed about asking why, or quite frankly any other questions of my piano teacher. I did exactly as I was told, but I feel that being allowed now to ask questions so that I fully understand has much accelerated the progress I have made at piano. I more quickly learn skills and am able to apply them to other situations. I view my lessons as an opportunity to pick the brain of someone much more skilled and educated than I am.

I don’t think you can understand this since you have not been a piano student as an adult.... And I don’t mean this statement as harshly as I’m sure it reads, but only as an explanation for why I find learning as an adult different than that of being a child ....

Yes, I realize there are situations where asking why is inappropriate.... But I don’t run across them very frequently.

I have reread Epee's OP in this thread, and I am not sure that asking "why" is the real issue here for Epee.


Epee's entire OP is about how he can play piano after a fashion, but he doesn't understand anything about the music. He doesn't know how to count music or work out rhythms, he doesn't know how to identify the key of a piece, he may not understand the pattern to how scales are formed, he's been given exercises to practice without any feedback on whether he's practicing them with correct technique or focus, he hasn't been instructed in sightreading, he hasn't had any ear training, etc., and he is thirsting for all these things.

Now, I do think it's possible to learn and play music quite beautifully without any of these things. It may not be ideal, but it's possible. And for proof, here is Epee scraping along impressing his teachers. But he's not satisfied, because he doesn't understand what he's doing at a basic level.

The question about asking "why" arises as a proxy for what I think is Epee's real question: not "why should I do Hanon?" (say), but "will doing Hanon help me learn something about all these areas that are completely missing from my musical education? If not, what, if anything, of what you're teaching me, will address all those missing areas?"

But a more efficient way to get those missing areas addressed, I think, is not to ask "why" about the default program your teachers are giving you (on an apparent program of "learn ever-harder pieces, without addressing how music works"). Rather, the more efficient way is to directly talk with your teachers about what you want to learn, and ask if they will teach it to you. This may result in a drastically different change in the direction of your lessons from what it has always been up to now.

After the direction of lessons is changed for something that will give you the missing basics, then the "why" question can make sense again. For example, "which of my goals (learning to count, learning how scales are formed, learning to sightread, etc.) will this exercise help me with?" But perhaps if the desired basics are actually addressed, the "why" questions may become less necessary, because it will be more obvious how each assignment helps with the desired goals.

I'll add that on my reading of Epee's OP and subsequent posts, the title of the thread, about "technical ability", is a misnomer. Epee's questions are not about how to improve thumb crossings, or play scales faster, or play with more nuanced dynamics, or any of the things that I would typically call "technical ability" that go into playing a piece more beautifully, and playing harder pieces. Rather, the questions and areas where Epee feels something is missing are all what I would call areas of musicianship: how to count and read music, how to construct and identify the building blocks of music such as key and harmony, etc. These are questions about understanding music, not about technique.

I think it's a fine line between asking relevant questions and sounding like a two-year old with their endless stream of 'whys.'

Too many questions can sound as though the student is requiring the teacher to justify each and every instruction. Yes, there can and often is genuine curiosity on the student's part about the reasoning behind a teacher's instruction. At the same time, the student needs to trust the teacher's training and experience to know how to get a student from A to B to C, etc.

How do you know if your teacher is competent? As a child, we don't know and we wouldn't know what kinds of questions to ask, either. As an adult, I would say that our ability to judge competence should be based more on results, i.e., experiencing slow but steady progress, and less on the answers to questions such as Why Hanon? Why Inventions? Why Scales Now?

This is how I ask questions. It often leads to discussion of larger issues and I come away with both useful tips for practice and a better grasp of the piano playing endeavor as a whole.

Stubbie, it's not that straightforward at all. The issue of "results" itself is not straightforward. The first time I had lessons on another instrument, I was going through RCM material, seemingly "mastering" it i.e. passing the pieces, and I was past grade 3 at the end of my first year. I had one exam early on, and I passed this with a high grade. At the same time I was missing very basic things, both in ordinary theory that you use in music, as well as technically. As an example of theory: I had the Saint Saens Swan which is in 6/8 time, and I did not know about compound meter, or even that there are 2 beats per measure consisting of triplets. I figured out that the feel of the piece was that "The swan kicks its feet twice a measure to propel itself smoothly forward."

A student who is diligent, motivated, and with some musical instinct can work through material of advanced grade levels to his teacher's satisfaction, and never learn fundamental things which you need increasingly as you move forward. It can become an endless circle if that student starts later in life with a new teacher who sees the "grade level" of the pieces, and just continues from that point. The fundamental skills that are missing stay hidden. A student will only know what is missing in retrospect, after learning these things. You can't see what you're unaware of.

I was helping a fellow student sort things out a few years ago, and he eventually changed to a teacher who looked for holes in foundations and filled them. The old teacher assigned some Czerny etudes. I could hear that the point was that these were broken chords that moved in a circle of fifths. If you knew that, you'd pick up the patterns, and it would also be easy to play. You would be learning the theory with the exercise. This student only had a vague idea of what chords were, let alone understanding the exercise. But a teacher may be satisfied that "she has taught" theory through assigning the exercise, and then "continues" with the next thing that builds on what has not been learned.

These are things that I have seen, and things I've experienced. If you were properly guided from the get go, being lucky with your teachers, you will not be imagining these possibilities. I know that some of the teachers who have sorted out transfer students, these teachers will know. And some of them may have had to sort out their own situations at some point..

No, results aren't everything. I would put them in the category of necessary but not sufficient. To say that you never know if your teacher is competent or not until you've experienced several more teachers and somehow developed a 'feel' for competency (and even that 'feel' might be a misreading) is just too discouraging.

The student might get away with it once, but surely the teacher--who is working with the student at advanced grade levels--will shortly see that fundamentals are lacking and set about rectifying the omissions. On the other hand, if the teacher is incompetent but working with a student at advanced grade levels, then the adult student should soon notice lack of progress (results) and that will be a red flag. Most adult students wouldn't accept that and continue with an endless circle for long.

That would indeed be discouraging. It's more the other way around. You may think things are fine when they're not. You might get an inkling at some point they're not - some bit of a feeling here or there. The point is to not assume that anyone is being taught properly or was taught properly. I remember reading a story by Gary a bit up from mine.

Some teachers who are aware will see what is going on. But for example, you may come to a student who teaches at an advanced level, where the emphasis is on interpreting music and fine points. That student doesn't work with building foundations, will not recognize the signs, or know how to rectify it. The teacher may be genuinely puzzled: how come the student seems advanced here, can catch on to things quicker than most there, and yet have these mysterious problems. I've seen this.

A teacher who is astute and aware of such things may actually have a checklist of things he tests and looks for.

You may think it's you, that you lack talent. You may think you have to try harder. You may not know what your inklings are telling you. I stayed in my situation for over 4 years. I've started many things from scratch on that instrument, after over a decade. My last assigned etude was gr. 7. I've relearned how to hold a bow, and that took 2 months.

I had piano lessons until age 20, so you could say I was already an experienced adult in my final two years of lessons (after having ABRSM grade 8 - and eight years of non-stop lessons - under my belt). But I still never questioned my new teacher about why I needed to learn this or that, or why something should be played like that, unless it was obviously contrary to what's in the score.

He was an experienced concert pianist and teacher (who didn't teach beginners), and knew his stuff. He occasionally gave me rep to learn that I didn't particularly care for, composers who I had no affinity for, styles which I didn't like. I had a specific goal - to get my performance diploma within two years - and I wasn't going to waste any minute of my weekly one-hour lesson with him by questioning why. We did have occasional informal discussions about performances or recordings that we'd both heard, and I realized how big the gulf was between his listening perception and mine: I recall there was one BBC Radio 3 live broadcast of the Liszt Sonata which I thought contained only two wrong notes. But he had recorded it on his radio-cassette recorder, and played me the notorious octave section just before the coda - and pointed out no less than three mis-hits in it, none of which I'd detected through the flurry of notes and pedal blur....

BTW, I did have one music lesson as an adult beginner - on the cello (during the time when I had no regular access to a piano). A national newspaper was sponsoring one-off lessons for beginners of any age in an effort to increase uptake of instrumental music learning, and I took up the offer. I told my prospective teacher when I arranged the lesson on the 'phone that I already played the piano (without specifying my standard) but knew nothing about playing the cello - in fact, I'd never even touched one before. At the lesson, my cello teacher rapidly discovered that I really did know nothing about cello at all, but did have a good sense of (relative) pitch, and had no difficulty reading music in any clef. I never once questioned "why" when she asked me to sit, or hold the bow or the fingerboard in a particular way (which I found awkward from my past experience of playing guitar) - I wanted to learn as much as I could in that half-hour free lesson, and (just as I did when I was a piano student) only asked questions if I was unsure about something. And I did learn a lot, and enjoyed the whole process: I was able to play a simple Bach piece with reasonably good tuning by the end. Afterwards, she looked somewhat relieved, and admitted to me that I was her first adult beginner student, and initially had misgivings about how I would take to instruction (having heard stories about adult beginners from fellow music teachers, albeit mostly on piano) especially as I already knew a lot about classical music. While she didn't actually say it, I got the impression that what she dreaded most was me asking too many questions requiring complicated answers, or just wanting to talk about myself or my own musical achievements, or going into a long list of unrealistic goals.

I'd certainly have gone on to have (paid) cellos lessons with her, had it not been for the fact that I had to move away for my new job within a few weeks.....and a cello is a hefty instrument to cart around, so I never did go further with it.

Let's start with this and stay with it. You have told us repeatedly about the excellence and thoroughness of the foundations you received. Anything you learned later as an adult rested on those foundations.

You have no experience of getting advanced material, not having learned how note values work, but expected to somehow play it anyway --- managing to play it somehow, and as a result, you get even more advanced material. Start with that, and then try to explain why a student should refrain from questioning, and just try to struggle through advanced material, while feeling he or she is missing something basic.

Please try to imagine that things may not be perfect in the teacher-student corner, and the problem may not be student attitude. If you cannot imagine this possibility, then you risk missing the picture lots of times.