I have been studying music at a university for the third semester and am taking lessons with a teacher. He is the second teacher at this school with whom I have taken lessons from. There are many things that I am interested in and none of it is ever taken seriously, like the repetory and particularly about piano technique.
My current teacher thinks Hanon and Czerny is the way to become a better pianist. I have done this in the past and have found it to be of almost complete waste so I never practice these. His technique is primarily based upon using his fingers to do almost all of the work - there is virtually no use of forearm or wrist motions when he plays. He does play rather well, I should add, but practices Czerny way too much.
What I want is to be able to play repetory with the most effective and efficient technique as possible, not just grind away at a piece for hours with satisfactory abilty. Unfortunately, whole body technique is never mentioned.
I could change to the last teacher at school but from talking to her students and more importantly seeing how they play, I don't think a change will be that significant over the instruction I currently recieve.
What is more is that many of the students have generally inefficient or poor technique - they slump over the piano, sit too far from the keyboard, do not know how to balance themselves, or know hom to use their arms. This applies to the students of all of the piano teachers. I know one student who has pain when she plays and her teacher won't even discuss it when she mentions it! Her teacher was my first teacher who pedals very bad advice and some of his students take it seriously and their technique became worse as a result. This teacher, I should mention, was a very famous concert pianist many decades ago and his ego is the size of the Goodyear Blimp. My current teacher was also a concert pianist many years ago though he has not this inflated ego.
So now my dilema is this: Do I continue to have lessons which have shown to be of little value? I feel they are a waste of his time and mine. I have two more semesters before I graduate and I have considered changing schools though that seems unlikely. My complaint is primarily with the piano teaching instruction as the theory classes and eartraining classes are taught by very good to exceptional teachers.
I am already leaning toward ceasing lessons entirely for the remainder of my study and replace piano lessons with independent study. I would do the semester juries as usual (even though I think there will be this bias against me should I follow this path). I should mention that I am very open when I criticize and I know that there are some teachers and students who may not like me because of it. One student has even accused me of thinking that this university is Juilliard! ("This isn't Juilliard" she said behind my back.") Just because this ins't a world-famous school doesn't mean that the instruction has to be poor. But it seems that the politics of hiring teachers are based on qualifications, not whether or not they are actually qualified.
Topic: Dilema with poor piano instruction at university