Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum If piano teaching were compared to flight instruction

Useless it may be but here, and I suspect many other countries, the issue for schools has been politicised. The government won’t call out bad parenting so they point to bad teaching- as if a teacher can make up for an unsupportive home environment.

Music teaching is of course not a hot political issue but the same thinking carries over. Many parents won’t take responsibility for home practice for children. It’s anecdotal but several teachers have told me the drop out rate by grade 2 (around the first 2 - 3 years) is close to 90%.

It's not quite that bad. A lot of kids quit within 4 months because they are simply not interested at all, and neither are their parents. They are just testing the waters. However, if they stick it out past that, they'll last probably around 4 years.

Several years ago, on of the PW teachers who has since passed away (John) wrote that many kids quit at the juncture years, such as 5th-6th grade and 9th-10th grade. It's like when they are ready to move on to middle school or high school, they are allowed to drop one activity.

I lasted about 4 years of organ lessons from 6 years of age to 10. Although I learned how to read the notes I had yet fully grasped the idea of subdividing and often played by ear and my internal sense of rhythm. My first teacher loved that I could play well by ear and that I had good hand/eye/foot coordination and she reassured my father that what I was doing was okay and there was time to fix any of these deficiencies. She kept telling my parents that I was talented. Every lesson from her was followed by a big hug and lots of smiles.

Unfortunately teacher #1 retired and when teacher #2 came into the picture he nearly destroyed my love for music but clearly destroyed any desire to continue music lessons. He was this geeky pencil neck teacher with thick rim glasses working at a Lowry Organ Shop in a mall who immediately was exasperated by what I was not able to do at 10 years of age versus what I was capable of doing. You could see he was immediately frustrated and though he tried to correct my playing by writing things out and talking about theory his approach was so off putting even to a 10 year old that I told my parents in tears that I wanted to stop lessons. I could understand how some may have viewed some of my weaknesses in subdividing needed a lot of work, but when you are working with a 10 year old who was clearly motivated to learn and who loved to play music you have to show patience and understanding. I don't have much patience with any teacher who show a lack of understanding for young children these days.

What happened years after that was I continued to play the organ and piano and decided to teach myself. For years I was convinced that I would never understand the concept of subdividing until a teacher came along and showed me how easy it was and took the time to explain it to me. From there I played the 1st clarinetist in the high school concert band and continued with piano lessons for adult learners at conservatories and continue with adult lessons today. (As an aside, I happened to be speaking with pianist Ian Hobson yesterday and he told me he also learned the organ as a 4 year old playing strictly by ear and like me also liked to arrange music we heard on the radio- so I feel good that I wasn't in bad company)

Those first 4 years with an enthusiastic caring music teacher was critical to me continuing to love music and to continue to learn the piano. So although students may only make it only to the first 4 years does not mean that a well meaning teacher had failed that student. Good teachers plant seeds that can grow a lifetime. Bad teachers are the worse thing that a young student can come across because they are so clouded in believing this perception of the train wreck student when the true train wreck was only themselves.

I'm an adult student of less than two years, so please bear that in mind. I also apologize for getting wordy.

Some things that helped me is simple repetition, and exposure to more music. Mnemonics are awful, intervals are awesome, but take a bit of time to seep in and stick, so to speak.

My teacher had me start on chords (Alfred's books occupied much of my first year) and told me to go home and practice these chord patterns 100 times (everything is 100 times). I'd audibly say the notes while I play them. C-E-G. After doing that enough times, it reinforced exactly where C, E, and G were on the bass and treble staff lines and where they were on the piano, to the point that they're my automatic reference point when looking at music.

Learning more songs outside of the basic fragments and simple songs got me more exposure to the notes above and below the C-E-G chord that I'd played an absurd number of times.


Not practicing at all is a problem that doesn't need explanation. Maybe the kid hates it and their parents are forcing them to play? Not much to do there but soldier on, I guess. Other than that, perhaps frame it differently like fifteen minutes minimum, try to keep it at the same time each day, and try to go for more bonus time on top of that. The prospect of an hour might seem daunting, but fifteen minutes is much more digestible and odds are they're likely to keep going once getting into it. It could also be the songs and music type that they're learning. Maybe they're learning classical and have no interest in it? Could try including more modern music arrangements alongside the normal stuff.

How often do you focus on teaching students how to practice? How to analyze their playing throughout the week and adjust accordingly? I'd also recommend including them in the discussion of the music and their practice sessions beyond just a general "How'd your week go" or "How was practice?", but probe a little bit more and get them to self-analyze how they did and where they had difficulties. That might carry over to home and spring to mind when they're not around your influence.

Last week I was on vacation and even though I spent it at home, I was not too terribly interested in practicing day to day. I've video games to play (Control), books to read (I'm eight behind for the year!), and a messy apartment to clean. So what I would do would be to do my techniques, then do my various songs I was playing through five times each, then I was home free. I was aware of the problem sections, where I'd either trip up on the notes, or needed some more time to focus on a transition or something, but mostly ignored that. The sections that I had down I played as much as those I didn't.

This week, I've been trying to correct from that. Techniques and whatnot, then go into each song once through, or maybe twice through, once slow then once at speed. As I played I saw the same issues as the previous week. My teacher discussed some of them with me during our lesson noting some things. Then ignore the sections that I had down, and slow practice the areas I had problems with. One section I played through fifty times, a few others twenty times. Then once more all the way through. The difference between beginning of the week and mid-week has been dramatic.

Hopefully that helps! Good luck.

Thanks, but Blague, adult students learn very differently to children. They also do not have the vantage point of a piano teacher with twenty five years experience teaching.

Very few children dislike piano lessons or are forced to take piano by their parents. This is a common misconception. Rather, what they dislike is working at it at home when other alluring things take their fancy, such as video games.

I took music lessons years ago. In my younger days the Internet wasn't available and coming from a non-musical family I didn't know where I would be heading and had no expectation of achieving a certain level. The only info I got was from my music teacher.

The 1 thing that stopped me from continuing lessons after 4 years was money. In my younger days my parents paid for the lessons and they got frustrated the kids weren't getting anywhere. Many kids are in the same situation. The parents pay for the music education and they don't want money wasted. When parents don't see results, they would stop the lessons.

I know 1 kid (friend of the family) who was enrolled in the Yamaha music program 2 years ago. His mother went with him to the lessons and learned alongside her son as a requirment so she could coach him at home. After a year the boy's parents said forget it. The mother was spending more time practicing at home and the kid wasn't getting very far.

When we get older, we pay for our own lessons. Some of the students that are enrolled with my piano teacher are retired in their 60s & 70s. Older people want to engage in activities to keep their mind sharp. Some seem to take a leisurely approach to learning. They're not learning pieces like they are preparing for an upcoming recital or conservatory exam. Some would work on an easy song for a month or longer.

I belong to a music group and would pick up unfamiliar music all the time. I tend to be very time conscious even when I'm not practicing a piece for a performance. I'd be pushing myself to finish an intermediate level piece in 2 - 3 weeks at most. I'd download a new piece off the Internet occasionally.

Candywoman; I hear your frustration.

I believe that "playing the piano" and learning to read music should be considered as two entirely different learned skills. Learning to Improvise should be the first priority followed later by note reading training. Tapping into a students innate playfulness and freedom should be lesson one. Improvisation should not be thought of as a facility gained only after years of formal training.

Improvising can be as simple as holding a couple of left hand triad chords while the right hand doodles an arpeggio of random notes. For a beginner to hear themselves playing just that can be very rewarding and motivating.

The goal should always be to give a student the gift of being able to play alone to entertain themselves for a lifetime; never prioritize the notion of being a concert pianist.

The problem with your method, Will, is that parents are paying for the lessons. You can't have students do much doodling during the lesson because you cannot maintain discipline during the lesson. You need to give specific instructions towards a goal. Even when I teach things like a Blues progression, they don't try the same thing at home later. In fact, with your method, the parent would not know whether they were progressing, and you wouldn't be on the road to the recital either (if that was relevant).

I keep my students for a long time, but that isn't the point here. And the notion of concert pianist wasn't mentioned in my posts. I couldn't even be a concert pianist.

I am not a piano teacher, this job seems one of the top difficult jobs to do it well.
But I think a good piano teacher should:

-understand his/her interests about the music.
-keep his/her interests about the music.
-understand what he/she can understand and what he/she cannot understand (feeling is important).
-just guide his/her attention, explore what he/she can do the best,
-what is his/her bottleneck, doing little thing at some point to get great improvements.

the foundation is the interests of the music, but it is not always possible.

If the above doesn't happen then ask him/her play Hanon, Czerny, piano scales intensively. And it may looks like a boring pilot training center.

In this case, the bellow should be the teaching objective:


100 Most Difficult Piano Pieces
https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthre...-difficult-piano-pieces.html#Post3023427

The last makes even less sense than the first. Actually, it makes no sense at all.

You've made a nice nod to gender, but it isn't clear if the pronouns are referring to the teacher or the student.

As a 40+ year professional teacher, instructor, University Professor and educator, a few comments.

Over my desk I had this quote that I looked at everyday for 20 years as a high school teacher:

"A teacher effects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."

I am still influenced by my first teacher, Socrates from 2500 years ago! And as much as I sometimes would like to, I can not escape the influence of Bach.

Yes I have had a class of 40 students of which 37 did not want to learn. But I used every ethical/moral trick, technique, guile etc. to get them to learn. But I often felt that 90% of the students were only there to make the other 10% look good. Then I went back to my office and looked at the quote over my desk.

I have found that when I was teaching some of the kids who were kids of my former students, that my teaching was not in vain.

Teaching is like farming, you have to have faith. Farmers plant seeds with the faith that they will grow. Some do some don't.

As for teaching kids piano, maybe they will influence their kids to play the piano, and just maybe some of those kids will take it seriously. Or 50 years later that indifferent student might become an ardent piano student in their 60's!

As a pilot, the fun part is flying the airplane. The unfun part is learning the FAA regulations, which if you don't learn you will not become a pilot, or might become a dead pilot. Somewhat like learning scales for the piano, for most just not fun.

Finally Lao Tzu told me:

"When the student is ready a teacher will appear."

But a teacher must plow and prepare the ground before the student will be ready. A student who does not know what a piano is, will never learn to play it.

I've thought the Socratic method of learning is actually ineffective and possibly unkind. When you ask questions, the students often come up with the wrong answers. Worse, they come up with no answers and are afraid to answer because they might not know the answer. I think it's better to tell the information and only ask questions they can answer.

We are all like the ripples emanating from a pebble thrown in the pond; our influence may go far. But as a piano teacher, I'm not satisfied with those small gains. I would like to have piano students who learn to "play" the piano not fight with the score or dawdle at their practice sessions.

The problem is only a few piano teachers can gain the right reputation to skim the cream off the top and get the good students. You can improve your students but generally you know from the first lesson what you have to work with. Yet if you take a really light approach, you will have trouble keeping your students so you have to pretend your efforts will bear fruit and be serious.

The Socratic method is effective for issues that require thought but not for issues that have concrete answers. That is, a question for the Socratic method might be "What is good?" which could inspire learners to think about values. On the other hand asking students "How many flats are in the key signature for the key of F?" can not possibly inspire discussion.

I mostly agree with your post, but I wish a teacher had taught you the difference between affect and effect.

I think I made a wrong turn when I last logged into this forum; thought I was on a piano forum. Oops!

Panama did say it was on a sign hanging over a high school teacher's desk.
To me, even in a pianocentric discussion, it seems that usage, spelling, and punctuation contribute to communication.
YMMV

My mistake the original quote had affect. Spelling was never my strongest academic skill.

I am more of a math guy, but I did learn from a High School English Teacher that there are three types of people in the world, those who can count and those who can’t.