It might be your own experience!!!!!

[PaulNaud]

In due course you came under the supervision of various piano pedagogues. To the first you gave implicit obedience, endeavoring to do exactly as you were told. The next teacher said you must begin all over again, as you had been taught "all wrong." you had never learned hand position nor independence of fingers—these must now be established. The following master told you finger independence must be secured in quite a different fashion from the manner in which you had been taught, which was "all wrong." The next professor said you must bend the finger squarely from the second joint, and not round all three joints, as you had been doing. This so-called fault took several months to correct.

To the next you are indebted for good orthodox (if somewhat pedantic) ideas of fingering and phrasing, for which he was noted. The hobby of the next master was slow motions with soft touch. This course was calculated to take all the vim out of one's fingers and all the brilliancy out of one's playing in less than six months. To the next you owe a comprehension of the elastic touch, with devitalized muscles. This touch you practised so assiduously that your poor piano was ruined inside of a year, and had to be sent to the factory for a new keyboard. The next master insisted on great exactness of finger movements, on working up velocity with metronome, on fine tone shading and memorizing.
Such, in brief, has been your experience with pedagogues and teachers of the piano.

[m1469]

Well, I will say that as I have been on my own for several months now, and being a teacher myself, I am having a different perspective on some things regarding my own lessons as a student (the couple of times I have had them) than I used to. 

I cannot explain all of what I am feeling disenchanted with, but often, what one master says will be in direct or mild opposition to the other, as you have elluded to paulsylvianenaud.  Regarding this, there are many implications for an aware student. 

I suppose more than ever, I am feeling a deepened sense of wanting to sharpen my own ears, read more, listen more, and continue experimenting.  Perhaps this, and a deep trust within that, are the truest provisions for the wishes of one's heart (regarding music, of course ).


m1469

[alzado]

I can only share my limited experience, but I am 64 and have been messing with piano for most of my life.

My current teacher is great.  I took lessons from her between '89 and '94, then quit.
She was old then.  Now, after starting again about 2003, I am back with her.  At this point she is VERY old.

Some endearing qualities of hers---- .  I decided to play a lot of left hand single notes as octaves.  Not every note, but I started to do this a lot.  She just raised her eyebrows, but let me do what I wanted.  Now I am challenged to play much more difficult pieces with much octave work in the left hand.  All the unnecessary octaves I played -- much of it in popular music (e.g., Stardust) -- has aided me immeasurably for when such playing is required.

Another endearing quality is that when I play a piece and am doing well enough on it, she does not keep stopping me on it.  When I finish, she will take me back through the piece and point out, one by one, mistakes I made.  I HATE it when the teacher keeps stopping the student -- sometimes in the midst of a phrase -- and badgering the student.  It is almost impossible to sustain any continuity when the teacher does that.

My current teacher never lectured me on finger and hand technique, but I find when I am playing material in the 'early advanced' category I just naturally MUST adopt the proper finger and hand techniques or I simply cannot play it up to speed.  One MUST.  it is not just "nice to do," if you get me.  One example would be to arch the wrist and get the hand high, and come DOWN on the chords.  Another is to get arm and forearm into fast runs of octaves or thirds.

I had a discussion about hand technique, and I told her that I am finally playing the way teachers have always wanted me to play, vis a vis technique, but now I see WHY. 

A second level student playing some simple silliness like "twinkle twinkle little star" will not see the importance of technique because playing with flat hands and fingers works fine with this elementary material.

Another good thing about my teacher is that she allows me to select my own music.  She sees her job to aid me to play it properly and well. 

For what it is worth, two larger pieces I have been playing in recent months are "Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring" (Myra Hess version), and "Sheep May Safely Graze" (F. Ferrari version).

Hope this helps somewhat in the discussion =--

[whynot]

I was very shy as a child, almost morbidly so, and I always did what everyone told me to.  Except on the piano!  My first teacher told me to do a few things that just seemed wrong to me, and--as I learned about twenty years later--probably would have ruined my hands.  Not just my technique, my HANDS.  I thought she was wrong, although I couldn't explain it, so I quit.  Since she was the only person available to me, I didn't study with anyone for years and years afterward.  It's been almost the only thing in my life that I have been so self-protective over.  Since then, other teachers have also asked me to do technical things that I had a bad feeling about, and I just wouldn't do them.  I am probably not a fun student to teach! but I still have my hands, which I wouldn't if I hadn't looked out for myself.  The teachers I've had in recent years have been real master performers, and they have not tried to physically change my playing; instead, they have shown me more techniques for specific situation, how to make more sounds, find my own style, and take more risks.   

paulsylvia... , were you really writing about your own experience?  I am horrified.  I'm suspicious of teachers who tell a student that she's/he's doing it all wrong.  I mean, how is that even possible?  Anyone who has played for years and spent time on it must have figured out some aspect of playing that is working, even if it's only that aspect.  "Doing it all wrong" means, to me, doing some things that the teacher doesn't understand.  For example, some technical quirks actually make sounds that we need to make sometimes, but which wouldn't be a healthy way to play all the time.  So, the student has still made a useful discovery, it just wouldn't be the foundation of her/his playing.

Many people don't recognize any path but their own, and they are either threatened by someone taking a different route, or they honestly just don't know how to work with someone's playing that looks different from their own.  Either way, I find this troubling. 

I really like the sound of Alzado's teacher.  She is someone I would like to know.

[PaulNaud]

In a sense yes. My true first piano teacher was in fact my second, I was 16 years old. I started the piano at the age of 14 and a half. He told me that I should begin all over again but I trusted him almost all over my life because he was a really good teacher. I studied with him during 4 years. Unfortunatelly I had to stop. He was not available anymore. I tried many other teachers but none of them would teach the same way. I would quit the new teacher after 1 or 2 lessons. the longest trial lasted 6 months. I decided to pursue by myself the difficult road that leads to virtuosity, for 20 years I did basically sight-reading, but I wasn't satisfied by the results. Now I am 51. I've broken 20 years of silence when I started studying again the piano last year at the Music Faculty of Quebec University with a well known piano teacher. But thanks for your comments I'm doing exactly what you said:when he asks me to do technical things that I have a bad feeling about, I just wouldn't do them.
Many thanks!
Paul