Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum Always build up, never break down.

LiW, could you take a few days or maybe even a week or two to really browse this site to see what ideas and approaches are already out there. I would suggest that both the teacher forum and the "Adult Beginner" forum are good places, the because the ABF has some people who are not beginners, and people who have done a lot of research, a lot of thinking outside the box and have contributed some valuable things. Look for things like "effective practising". I can't explain why I'm suggesting this, but you might see a reason yourself by doing so. It may also act as a bridge in various ways.

My grandma had a friend who would call her on the phone from time to time. This lady could talk like the wind blows, like the sun shines, and like the rain falls. My grandma would fall asleep with the phone to her ear and wake up periodically and respond empathetically. We grand kids used to run in the other room to laugh our heads off or wake Grandma up when she started to snore. If only we'd had ubiquitous 21st century video technology back in the mid-20th, I'm sure we'd have recorded it, and I'd share it with you all now.

Why do you think I should do this keystring any more than what I have already done? I would have thought you can say this to the few vocal minorities who are responding here off topic, perhaps they can learn how to stay on topic? I don't see how me doing what you say would change any of my approach to the forum and much of what is written echoes ideas already posted on pianostreet which I have read for some 15 years. There is a lot of repetition on all forums I have been on so if I repeat anything it doesn't matter at all. I also am sharing some experiences that I have gone through which I think is helpeful to add. Your response is a little confusing.

Again if people don't want to contribute to this thread in a useful manner and merely want to talk about other things that is up to them, I can't control their actions. If people want to take up what I have said into consideration or expand with their own ideas that is probably a better response and what should be expected in a teachers forum. A number of vocal members who have posted on here a few times actually contribute nothing much at all just banter about. This however does not respresent the majority of users that are on this thread, like I have said the majority do not even respond and just read, unfortunately those who post think that they represent the majority which is quite mistaken. So I will continue to post my ideas that I think are relevant.

Because there are things to refer to in responding to some things you wrote that would be easier if you were familiar with them. Because in a dialogue, there is a meeting of different worlds, and communication can only happen under those conditions - otherwise you have monologues. For "more than you have already done", I don't know how much you have done. Anyway, it was just an idea.

I agree completely with keystring that it could be useful for you to gain some understanding of the audience at PW. By looking through posts here, you could decide if you wish to become a member of the community.



This is also true, but it is possible that a personal blog would be a more appropriate vehicle for you to disseminate your doctrine.

All these passive aggressive remarks towards my post isn't bothering me on bit, its quite funny really and I feel sad for them in another way. People who are upset about me posting were first confrontational and when they realized it doesn't work they try something else. This is all very good evidence why many others might not wish to post here because there are a few loud marginalized minorities (which you get on all internet forums) that band together and try to make themselves feel better by casting unconstructive crticism. I think though that it offers an interesting window into the psychology of these kinds of people, so I learn something as wel about the mindset of people who disagree and cannot contend with the actual content of what they are disagreeing with and must attack it sideways. Poor delicate petals.

Can you give examples of what I could refer to and how it would make my thread any better? Are there rules on pianoworld which encourage people to do what you are saying? Why do you think that I need to do what you are saying? Why do you think you need to control this thread any differently from all the others that are posted here?

There is no rules on pianoworld which says I cannot post freely knowledge to others, I also encourage others to respond and question if they have something to say and have engaged with every single person who has done so. Also I prefer to post on forums because I have personal journals offline that I already write in, so I don't see the need to do one online as well, also I don't mind having my writings being looked at by multple people and dont mind any response that is generated by it, negativity is to be expected that happens everywhere on the internet but there is much more positive energy that generates from my postings on forums. I have met many interesting people though these kind of forums some in person and others just through messaging. I am a people person so I dont mind being around my favorite creatures :P lol

You are extrapolating or projecting attitudes and thoughts that I do not hold. I cannot answer why I think I need to control the thread, since I have no such thought. You may be surprised that some people cooperate and help each other.

I posted to one of your threads to give it a chance. I will withdraw if the editing window still allows me to do so. I don't feel comfortable with these frequent views of confrontation.

The very next sentence that followed what you quoted was: "What is written here is in general form, of course the individual must know themselves to see where they perhaps fit inbetween the descriptions below, also this is only one way to measure there are others too."

So considering Quality and Quantitiy is only one tool one can use to measure, there are others too. I agree there are specifics but what I offered in that post was one method in which one can have an overall view of what they are doing. Again, there are more ways to do it I didn't want to list everything because I wanted to go into detail on Quality and Quantity.



Yeah, sometimes it is amazing what people actually don't find common sense I come across that quite often. Or at least they can understand it is common sense but never really put it into consideration. Sometimes these kind of things are good to meditate upon because they are easy to agree with but what they actually mean for our journey is a much deeper issue.


A 20 year old who has just began would be somewhat a beginner compared to the average pool of 20 year olds who play piano and have the potential for years of experience. The average skill level of 4 year olds who play piano will be lower than that of 20 year olds, from my experience this is true which is taking into account may hundreds of students I have personally taught, maybe they are not all exactly 4 and 20 year olds but around those age groups. If we are comparing the exact time for learning I would say that a 20 year old can progress faster than a 4 year old in most cases so there is a higher expectation on average as the age goes up to some point. I taught a beginner 85+ year old and they progressed slow though, so there is that upper limitation. If a 4 year old sits at a piano and plays our expectations are much lower than if a 20 year old sits down to play.



So this quote was attached the idea of sight reading studies. Less time in several senses, one that when you get older your time becomes more restricted you have more duties, work, family etc, you also naturally have less years in your life left. Building sight reading skills is a long term procedure which never really ends, so starting early is a good idea then your potential is given more time to grow that is the same with many things about piano study too.



Good point, one can certainly think too much and flounder about. I use adults strengths to their advantage and push them on if they get into this "analysis paralysis" mode. This over thinking doesn't happen to all of them but yes it is a possiblity. A good way to avoid it is to give concrete ideas which can be solved AND applied to some context and not left in generic mystery without context. If you generalize ideas and say things like "in time you will understand" this can often leave them lost in a circle of their thoughts, as teachers we should avoid that and go along with the students thought process on issues to ensure it isn't happening.


Oh yes there are many ways in which you can throw a student into the "deep end" Here are some ideas and by no means are all that you can do:

[1] Since a lot of musical work has to do with the visualisation of the group of notes in the piece we try to learn I ask students to discuss this in detail instead of just trying to play. I ask them to identify common shapes found within their music made by the family of chords and scales we often encounter. This common shape sense aids our memory of course a great deal and i like to get students thinking this straight away. It is easy to observe these shapes by themselves but to see them in the sheet music, in an actual piece, and to understand how and why they change requires musical logic.

I ask students to work on Bar x to y for the week for a particular peice. I ensure that they write down how they observe the patterns that they see in the score. I think this type of observations are very impottant, seeing how each hand relates to one another through similar notes, seeing which fingers replace or go near or use the others when moving etc etc. I like to read these observations from the more beginner/intermediant students who are still trying to get their heads/hands around form at the piano because it reveals their musical logic process.

I usually spend a while discussing shape and form the student came up with for the sections we set the previous week. Contrasting their ideas to my own I offer them other perspectives as to how they should perhaps see the pattern in the score, and what other patterns can be found to further guide our memory. I guess, tricks as to how to look at the score, and how to use it to aid the memory. This contrasting of ideas expands their logical mind, and hopefully then they can understand the patterns hidden in the movement of notes clearer.

As well as being able to highlight patterns in the sheet music they should also connect those patterns to the movement groups found in their playing (i.e: when the hands have to actually move). These usually set the basis for drills used to memorise the music. One would play passages where the hand doesnt have to move without disrupting the flow, but pause between each movement group. So I ask them to play for the the drills that they created to memorise and develop a "Routine touch" (play without thinking about notes rather the physical movement to produce them) for the music. Of course i will not ask of this from advanced students, rather i will listen to their playing and observe their physical playing as a whole rather than caring about how they went about binding it all together, i assume they know how to bind, i just critique the finishing touches.

[2] A further way i throw students into the deep end is by setting them at least one very small section of a hard piece beyond their ability for now. I ask them to make progress on that as if it where a peice they had to study and again write down and discuss the more indepth memory processes and visualisations that have to be gone through, also the physical technique required to produce it. They know it isnt music they have to play well, rather it is music used to demonstrate their ability to absorb music. If you can only absorb what is at your level that is never good, leaves too many mental boundaries and less room for growth imo.

What i want is not a student who is a master of playing, rather one who is a master of resource and tactics of musical study, so that they can work on anything and know if they are doing it right or wrong. The only way i find i can do that is by forcing them to make musical decisions. When I set something ridiculous often the following week I get a blank stare and its rather apparent that they where utterly lost and fell flat on their face. This is fine so long the teacher is there to guide, try this, put a bit more effort on this, this was on the right track, this wasn't etc. They begin to think more musically and see shapes in more difficult stuff, then when they look at their easier work the patterns just look so simplistic.

[3] A further way i throw them into the deep end is by playing their music they learn back to them and ask them what i did right or wrong. I make obvious errors and also not so obvious, and ask them to tell me to stop when they think there is something wrong. I will also play music they havent heard before and play it without expression or dynamics and ask them to tell me what should be done just by listening to the notes a few times.

Of course these things do not take the majority of the time in a lesson but they do come up every week.

Oh so many ways to throw students into the deep end!!

Yes, because of the generosity of our host, you would be allowed to post on PW to your heart's content.

Since you show very little interest in the ideas, opinions, or needs of others, I forsee that you might receive fewer and fewer responses, with the result that your posts a personal blog hosted on a public site. It wouldn't be the only one. There are a few vanity threads here, some with quite a few followers.


I haven't seen this, exactly.


From reading your posts, my impression is that your favorite exemplar of your favorite creature is yourself, which I find tedious, but others may have a different view.

Please let me clarify that it isn't personal; I have little interest in pretty much anyone with a communication style similar to yours.

Maybe control is a wrong word, it could be replaced with "assist" in any case I don't mean it to be used in a negative manner. I hope the other questions were not read in a negative way.

That is not an accurate assessment of my interactions one bit, I respond to peoples with interest so much so that some of you complain about the length of my posts and merely tag it in negative light. This all seems to me another instance of the pot calling the kettle black. If I respond in agreement or disagreement to someone questions to me that should show my interest in what they say.


Exactly? There is ample evidence of this throughout the entire thread, so I don't know what you are reading, it obviously is not the whole thread.


Well you are making assumptions about me in a negative light so trying to "clarify that it isn't personal" is a pretty poor way to dodge exactly what you are doing. Take what I say as truth when I talk about myself since you don't know me well enough to argue that fact, that is just being silly on your behalf. If you have little interest in my communication style then you have no need to post on this thread, you are not forced to you know :P

Well said.

Yes pat each other on the back for personal attacks on other members that you have no personal knowledge of at all. Just highlights the type of marginalised perspectives you’d expect from a band of minorities who want to simply insult instead of share useful knowledge.

[b][/b]

But that isn't really the case, is it? After all, we have a HUGE volume of your work product, and that tells us quite a bit about you.

And a number of responders have tried rather generously and tactfully to offer ways that you could fit in better. I haven't been as welcoming as keystring, for example, who has tried rather hard to explain how to better become part of the community! though I had good intentions - I'm just not quite as good a "people" person.

At any rate, what you perceive as personal attacks are quite often sincere attempts to be helpful, and it would be useful to react as if they are, even if you don't like the way they may be worded.

When I used to drive on the Autobahn we had a saying: If you see one Geistfahrer, dodge them and you're probably okay; when you see a hundred, there's a problem. Relevance to this scenario is obvious.

Here's an example of a personal attack, Lost (in bold print):



No one's called you any names or attacked you in any way. We certainly haven't called you a "poor delicate petal" for disagreeing with us. That is a derogatory label and entirely uncalled for.

Please understand the difference between disagreement with ideas and name-calling / attacks on persons.

What does it personally say about me, it seems it says a lot more about my perspective about piano education doesn't it? Yet people want to read into personal issues and also ignore what I say about myself when asked to post elsewhere instead of forums, a journal, which I said I prefer to write on forums because I like to be around people to which I was told I only like myself more lol.


Fit in better? Please! Who made all these people the rule makers who are supposed to help others fit in? Oh they are so altruistic? LOL!
I also private message keystring about many other issues over many years I wonder who else wants to private message me? Oh no they just want to make a public spectacle and argue irrelevant things as if that makes them look better or something, it's just rather funny though.



No it is a personal attack, the poster even tried to evade it by saying "this isn't a personal attack" lol. I've said something simple that I am a people person and like being around people to which it was thrown back at me saying I like myself more than others. How do you see this? Oh, a very selfless way to help me fit in, that's right lol.


You are mistaken that these vocal minorities are the majority, you should realize that a much larger % of users don't post at all and simply read. If you think that vocal minorities represent the mass you should do some calculations of views of this post vs the people who are posting negative irrelevant rubbish on here.



So calling people up on their personal attacks on me is a personal attack? What kind of witchcraft logic is that! lol.



Where is this a standard as a derogatory label? Who did I personally call a delicate petal and why would that be a problem? Is what I am saying in this quote fitting exactly what the vocal minorities are doing? In your mind they are not doing any of this so they can't be classed as "delicate petals" right? You don't even know what I mean by it so fill in the gaps yourself.

You obviously cannot read that the following is a personal attack, there have been several attempts but this is the most recent one:

I say: " am a people person so I dont mind being around my favorite creatures :P "
I get response: "Your favorite exemplar of your favorite creature is yourself" and added to the end "Please let me clarify that it isn't personal; I have little interest in pretty much anyone with a communication style similar to yours."

So this person has little interest to communicate with me and just wants to throw their unfounded opinions about me? They simply want to disagree with what I said to fit their little world. The context of this all was that this person told me that I should post on blogs away from this forum, I explained I have the right to post here and reasons why I post here instead all of which was ignored and there merely was a wish to throw in a personal attack on me which they were well aware of it since they had to flippantly attempt to avoid it in a feeble way and specifically say it is not an attack. Good grief if it was not packaged in such a way there would be no need to lie about what it exactly is.

A few minorities are crying about how I post and the length of my posts, they can't even contend with the infromation I have offered so to be heard they complain about quite unintelligent issues. I can't stop them but they are not foced to remain on this thread, there are plenty of other topics being discussed, they certainly will not stop me one bit, I really don't care about the unconstructive opinions of negative strangers, been on the internet far too long, very desensitized to it

So another issue that can help one build up is to know the subtle difference between right and wrong. In terms of piano technique development it is actually quite instructive to show the small difference between right and wrong or efficient and not so efficient. Piano technique is not like violin where you must have good technique or you sound terrible, with the piano you can have inefficeint technique and still produce good sound.

One thing I have found in all my students beginner-advanced is that they learn a great deal from being shown how subtle the difference between good+bad playing or even practicing a phrase of music can be. With beginners I identify the a particular physical movement they make which is rough, I reproduce it for them (or exaggerate it) pinpointing exactly which movement I disagree with and draw their attention to it. Then I demonstrate the exact change they need to make which often requires only a very slight change to their original physical movement as if it is too much it can overwhelm/confuse them and you risk them merely parroting without intrinsic awareness. If there are many issues that need correcting we will focus on the main one rather than try to recreate everything, we must build on what they already have and move towards efficiency rather than expecting it all to be picture perfect at once.

I will identify which bounds in the score they must repeat so that they train the change to their technique. I will also break this up in as many steps as they require so that there is no struggle for them personally to achieve a correct repetition of the passage. This is always different for each student, the beginners need a lot more direction, the more advanced usually only need a single idea to make the change to their technique.

From this I have found I am putting more little marks on their sheet music then referring them to their notebook which I have written this physical change they must act towards in a way which they can understand. It makes their study more secure and they do not have to mindlessly repeat until they get it. I will also highlight where this improvement to their movement repeats (or is very similar) throughout the piece, this application of knowledge makes it more efficient to master small passages.

Many of my older students from doing this do not mind laboring on small passages where otherwise they would have simply played over it and continued on. They can appreciate the small difference needed in their playing and can act to improve it and observe this improvement.

When you as a teacher see a student play a piece with technique which is just very slightly off, how do you act to improve it? General comments rarely help unless the student is advanced enough to form their physical playing at will. Even advanced students need to be described things in details now and then. I really like to show the small difference between good and bad playing and higlighting it through their own subtle bad playing.

I definately do not mould a student to play like me, but I can aim to see changes in the students in a way which improves ease of their playing. Before imposing ideas upon students I must ask or investigate whether what I ask for really is easier for them or not. More often than not they will agree agree it is easier, but sometimes they refuse to agree or don't feel a difference. So when I ask the student to judge whether the physically changes I require from their technique is indeed easier for them, I have to ensure that 1) they fully understand logically what I am asking for 2) They can see what they have to change in their playing 3) That the change they make has an observable feeling to their hand that they can compare to their original method to decide which is easier. 4) That they agree that my suggestion makes things easier for them.

As you speak with a student, the diagnosis you go through as to what you have prescribed them must be spot on. I know the hands of all my students in great detail, I know exactly how it feels just by watching their hands play. I developed this diagnosis through experience observing hundreds of individual hands, the choreography of the hands is something experienced teachers do pick up on and proponents such as Taubman would place great research emphasis on this (ideas which I think are mostly quite interesting).

Bad technique is like an inefficient marathon runner. They move excessively and waste their energy. However some can be inefficient and still run very well and even win events! But in the long run it will adversely effect their endurance.

My concept of good technique is one which the hand is kept as relaxed as possible. The Chopin hand form is a compass (RH resting on E Gb Ab Bb B ). I try to act against unnecessary expansion or contraction away from this natural hand shape.

When you play your hand should not continually change shape if it's not required. If you must change the shape of your hand it is done in such a way that it required least amount of effort. Sometimes I see abrupt changes to the hand form instead of a smooth gradual one. For instance if I altered a Hanon exercise (I'll use Hanon because it is a simple model to discuss) like this:

RH: (CE) F G A (A octaves 5th not moved, thumb expands downwards ) G F E ... using the fingering (12) 3 4 5 (15) 4 3 2

Good technique has a gradual expansion of the thumb rather than a hurried and rush movement to the octaves, then a gradual contraction back to the original position. While the hand plays the EFG the thumb makes it way slowly to the lower A. This is only a microscopic window into a part of the technique found in this exercise but certainly in this example there is very subtle difference between playing this right or wrong. Gradual movements are difficult to observe when playing pieces because a rushed movement can be controlled and mastered even thought it isn't as efficient as a gradual movement.

Sometimes bad technique is not about hand form or moving smoothly but rather moving unnecessarily. In all music we have chunks of notes which can be played without moving the hands position. I call them movement groups and often circle them on the score if a student moves unnecessarily when playing the group.

Thus we can see music like this:

[Movement group] --->movement to next movement group [Movement group] --->Movement to next movement group etc

If there are problems in a movement group it is because of fingering, if there are problems in the movement to another movement group it is because of inability to control the shape of one movement group and altering to the other in a smooth motion. This is very general stuff and has branches touching many different aspects of playing your instrument, but it's the basic thought process going on when determining how to initially physically tackle a phrase of music.

Yes, my perspective is "marginalized" because you write so many useless words, and my words get shoved to the margins. Is that what you mean?


Look around, buddy. YOU are clearly in the minority.


You may have "useful" knowledge (useful to whom, I don't know), but you don't know how to share ideas properly. Cutting and pasting ideas is _N_O_T_ sharing ideas. Drowning out people's advice is _N_O_T_ sharing ideas. Typing endlessly is _N_O_T_ sharing ideas.