If I learn myself, can I practice any piece up to a professional standard?

[kantsuiex]

I haven't visited for this forum for a long time....

Perhaps it is quite a common question here.
But I wanna ask what is the best procedure to learn a piece.
I know even some greatest pianist still have their teachers...But you know at some level, your learning is being directed by yourself.
Anyone here is learning by yourself?

Also, as for the technique, do anyone have some good ways or particular to practice etude? I am now working on the Czerny Dexterity of Fingers...
What should I do with them? Should I practice them slowly with separate hands or should I treat it as a repertoire to play?

My little background:
I played piano for more than 10 years....
After finishing grade 8, I started self-learning..
So far the pieces i learnt are Fantasy Impromptu and La Campanella but I just can't play them well

[countrymath]

I'm learning by myself =p

[kantsuiex]

I'm learning by myself =p

any good way to learn a new piece or polish a piece ?

[keyboardclass]

No way.  or do you think music is easy?

[Derek]

As an amateur I'm struggling with answering this question for myself as well. I believe that yes, it may be difficult to polish a piece up to professional standards without feedback of any kind. Perhaps at the very least you could post videos of your playing for the more experienced pianists here to comment on. I'm gradually realizing, for myself personally, that on the whole I tend to prefer a large pile of non virtuosic pieces---so as an amateur, becoming an excellent sight reader is gradually becoming a higher priority than perfecting virtuosic pieces. In addition, I only have about a half hour a day to devote to piano.

Just ask yourself if you are happy with your music and if you feel you are still growing---that is all that really matters. I personally just find it a drag to practice the same pieces every single day for months, I'd rather enjoy a huge variety of music whether I improvise it or read it. That isn't to say I am not going to continue to pursue playing a few difficult pieces---it just isn't my top priority.

[stevebob]

Everybody has a different skill set and a different potential for advancement.  People who had decent instruction up to a certain level should have learned how to teach themselves to their own satisfaction at some point if they so choose.  That's my experience, anyway; I have no clue at all about the situation for those who are entirely self-taught.

Not everyone will be able to learn any piece to a “professional standard” whether they have a teacher or not, but it should certainly sweeten the odds.  And, unfortunately, some people with the potential to achieve virtuoso skills and artist-level musicality will not realize that potential because they have bad teachers.

[ongaku_oniko]

I really don't think it's possible.

I thought it was before, but more and more I'm beginning to realize just how much there is to music. There are so many deep, hidden things that are in music, and many more specific to piano playing.

Like how to hold your hand, how to use strength, how to understand a piece, what the composer is trying to say, etc, it's not something that one can figure out by themselves. At least not within one lifetime. Even prodigies probably won't be able to pick up on everything. After all, the hardest part is realizing that such things existed. For example, I always thought adding emotions to music is simply a matter of playing some places softer, some louder, at your own discretion. I didn't realize that there was a reason for playing it differently in different places.

So again, I really don't think it's possible to learn everything you need when you don't even know such thing existed. If you did, perhaps it would be possible to figure them out one by one, but that is taking a route that is just so much longer, and you'll go off on a wrong tangent much much more likely than not. It'll hinder your procress.

[brogers70]

I don't really know. But one thing that will help a lot is recording yourself and listening to the recording, marking up the score as you listen. It's much easier to assess your own playing when you don't have to try and play at the same time.

[cygnusdei]

I second brogers - recording your own playing is probably the most effective method to improve. Even the act of recording itself makes you aware of mistakes/imperfections you're making along the way. Beyond that, re-listening would help you realize small things you don't even realize you're doing.

As for me the main benefit of having a teacher is motivation, and an audience - the rest is up to you. Listen to recordings, hone your musical instincts, practice hard, record yourself. Rinse and repeat.

[nataliethepianist]

I like to think of myself and an independent learner, but sometimes there are things I do wrong that I could never have noticed. I do not think you will get to a professional standard by teaching yourself. A teacher has just so much experience that sometime your interpretation of a piece could be, well, maybe needs a little work, and you will need a teacher to keep you on track! A teacher is a source of information and guidance at your finger tips.

Good luck with your studies.

- Natalie

[stevebob]

I think it would be useful to frame the discussion around the understanding that "without a teacher" can mean (1) no teacher currently, or (2) never had a teacher.  It's an important distinction.

Also, it would only be in a perfect world that all teachers are competent, helpful or suited to teach any level of advancement.  They're not, and that's important as well.

[keyboardclass]

I think it would be useful to frame the discussion around the understanding that "without a teacher" can mean (1) no teacher currently, or (2) never had a teacher.  It's an important distinction.

Also, it would only be in a perfect world that all teachers are competent, helpful or suited to teach any level of advancement.  They're not, and that's important as well.

Agreed!

[liszt1022]

I think you can reach a stage where the general public will say "You play 'Piano' really well!"
But other classical musicians will notice holes in your technique, like awkward phrase shaping, uneven stresses, etc that most people wouldn't.
It depends who you're looking to impress.
If it's Youtubers, you're good to go.
If it's musicians, get a teacher.

[stevebob]

For some (and perhaps many or even most) amateurs, the practice of music is personal, private and solitary; "looking to impress" anyone is nowhere in the equation.

[keyboardclass]

Yes.  If you are going to play to others your duty is to elucidate the thoughts of the composer. 

[emill]

I feel that it is the pianist's duty to properly play and do justice to the piece or
composition whether this be for personal satisfaction or for the satisfaction of an
audience. Learning classical piano, without a teacher becomes an extremely daunting
task and you must be really driven and gifted to be able to do this without help.  Of
course greatly lowering the standards of performance is another story.

Get a GOOD teacher even at extra expense .... consider it as money WELL spent!

[stevebob]

So is it the position of the "get a teacher" crowd that the amateur needs a teacher's instruction and guidance throughout one's life and at every level of advancement?  Is no amateur ever ready to "fly solo"?

In my own estimation, one reaches a point where teachers are like technical exercises:  if you need them, then you'll benefit from them; if you benefit from them, then you need them.

And just as doing technical exercises incorrectly can be unhelpful or even detrimental, the same can be said for having a mediocre or incompetent teacher.

[keyboardclass]

I think it gets to a point where a 'teacher' just has an alternative view for you to consider.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

The risk of self-teaching is that during the process you incorporate a lot of bad habits which you don't perceive, but a trained musician will spot instantly. The longer you continue with them in place the harder it will be to remove these habits and you will be less likely to notice them when they turn up. Of course there are good teachers and bad teachers, and bad teachers are likely to cause more harm than good.

Not all amateurs are the same, but to the initial poster I would say: definitely see a teacher. I listened to your Liebestraume and think pianowolfi has already given you good advice which I don't need to add to. Making sure you find a good teacher is obviously not always straightforward, but they are out there!

Finally, even if an amateur reaches an advanced level of proficiency, it can still be very worthwhile to have an experienced musician to talk things over with.

[keyboardclass]

Of course, I'm speaking as someone with a degree, a performance diploma and ten years at the feet of a master!  If you've mastered the art of acquiring technique and have a sound practice method it's only a matter of time-frame when learning any work.

[jeffkonkol]

As a guy who had a few years and then spent the next 30 years on and off revisiting pieces I thought that I had 'played' only to relearn them and realize how much I didn't understand previously, I would recommend the teacher route.

A self motivated player often drives him or herself by selecting a piece that he or she probably shouldnt be playing.  Virtually anything can be learned with practice, but corners get cut, bad habits get developed, etc, etc....

The teacher can help chart the path to get to where you want to go, and can offer sage advice when you are about to make a mistake that may cost you countless hours of unlearning in the future.

Your subject line asks... can you teach yourself to play any piece to a professional standard.... within reason... yes..... the question though is how much harder will you have to work to do that, versus doing so under the guidance of someone who has likely already walked the path you are walking...

so off to research local teachers some more, to practice what I preach....

[Bob]

The professions I've run into might study with another teacher for a period of time and then move on.  They just get personalized advice from someone else for awhile.  And they pick up ideas from whoever they're performing with.

[keyboardclass]

Your subject line asks... can you teach yourself to play any piece to a professional standard.... within reason... yes.....

I disagree.  There are 'secrets of the trade' so to speak, which you'll never grasp.

[alars19]

In my opinion, there is two questions here, two ways to see that:

Is it possible to learn a piece to a very high standard without a teacher? Yes it is, BUT you will still need some sort of outside help... like another pianist much more advanced than you are that can give you a hint on the fly about what you can do to make your pieces sound better.

Is it a good idea, if your goal is to play pieces to a very high standard, to not have a teacher? Absolutely not. It's even a fairly bad idea. A teacher, even an average one, WILL speed up the learning process. And it will speed it up by a great deal.

You also need to keep in mind that even with the best teacher in the world, you still are the one who does the learning, but if you are good, a teacher can only make you better. Having a teacher doesnt mean your own judgement goes to waste, it's even quite the opposite.

I hope this does help and best of luck on getting to the level you want to be.

[stevebob]

Is it a good idea, if your goal is to play pieces to a very high standard, to not have a teacher? Absolutely not. It's even a fairly bad idea. A teacher, even an average one, WILL speed up the learning process. And it will speed it up by a great deal.

As this is stated with the certitude of fact and universal applicability, I'm curious about how exactly such a process can be guaranteed to work.

[...] if you are good, a teacher can only make you better.

That presumes that the teacher, too, is "good"; a bad or mismatched teacher, on the other hand, is likely to have the opposite effect.

[keyboardclass]

That presumes that the teacher, too, is "good"; a bad or mismatched teacher, on the other hand, is likely to have the opposite effect.

And I know lots of them!

[stevebob]

Hehe, I had lots of them.

I figure that the problem has got to to be worse in the U.S., where we have no national board to set policies or curricula for music instruction and there are no standards, requirements or credentials needed to teach a musical instrument.

[alars19]

Well, imo, a bad teacher will only have a limited effect because you will find out that you dont get better or that you do get better at the same rate as you did before. On the other hand, a good teacher will have a lasting effect. In other words, I do think that the rewards linked to having a good teacher outweight the risks of a bad teacher.

@stevebob
I agree that it's not guarenteed to work, even with the best teacher in the world. My point is that you are more likely to play at a very high level if you had a teacher (or more than one) than if you didn't. It doesnt mean that you will play at a high level if you have a teacher, and it doesnt mean that you wont play at a very high level if you dont have one.

[ongaku_oniko]

I really don't know any "bad" teachers. It's sort of hard being a bad teacher, in the way you guys are implying.

To me, a "bad" teacher is one who either does not care about his students, or doesn't know how to teach in an effective manner.

However, very few teachers will actually teach you how to play incorrectly. At most, they will not teach you how to play correctly.

So I think getting a "bad" teacher is not really a problem. Furthermore, piano isn't really something that differs from the norm. So if a teacher gives real bad and incorrect advice, I think the student should be able to figure it out (given that it's not a young child).

In the end, I think a teacher is most important in introducing concepts. For example, you can't learn calculus if you never knew such a thing existed. Only when you know that it exists, can you try to learn and master it.

Similarly, there are many aspects of piano playing that are not easy to figure out on one's own. For example, tension, muddy pedaling, rubato, legato... and many more. The most difficult step is to go from ignorant to knowing that these things exist. Only when you know they exist can you start working on improving them.

And it's hard to realize that these factors exist without a teacher.

So I think stevebob's point on whether a person's had lessons but is currently not having lessons versus a person who's never had lessons is a good point.

The former, possibly. The latter, highly unlikely.

[stevebob]

You make some good points, and I don’t disagree with anything you say.

I sincerely hope that there are “very few teachers [who] will actually teach you how to play incorrectly”; my own very negative experience with at least one such “teacher” likely has magnified the significance in my mind (and possibly the actual prevalence) of such a potentially disastrous situation.

I would add a bit to the defining characteristics of a “bad teacher” that you’ve already mentioned.  Even though “piano isn't really something that differs from the norm,” I’ve never been sure just what the norm is in learning to play “correctly.”  Is there an orthodoxy or even a consensus in such fundamentals as matters of posture and directing the movements of the body?  In my own experience, teachers were heavily invested in the conviction that their way was the correct way—and that others were wrong.

In practical terms, this meant a succession of teachers who were eager to correct, contradict and undo what I had been “taught” by one or more previous teachers:  “you’re sitting [too close] [too far],” “your arms are [too loose] [too rigid],” “keep your elbows [in] [out],” “play with [arm weight] [finger weight],” “your wrists must be [supple] [tense],” etc.  Even repertoire was fair game for criticism:  “this is [too easy] [too hard], so you’ll learn this instead.”

Is it common for teachers to be so dogmatic, or was my experience atypical?  I know little of the history of piano pedagogy, but I believe that the existence of competing “schools” of piano playing, often with conflicting principles, continues to the present day.  My own feeling is that piano technique should in principle be organic and work in natural harmony with our anatomy; given that we’re each a bit different from one another, the details of how each of us plays can be expected to be individual or even idiosyncratic.

The misadventures in poor tuition of my childhood happened many decades in the past.  I would love to think that most music teachers have moved past the petty pronouncements that that were imposed (or inflicted!) on me and are generally competent to help each student reach his or her potential.  Are they?  (Actually I’d love to think that they always were and my bad luck was an anomaly, but I’m skeptical.)

[ongaku_oniko]

I guess I'm still stuck in the beginner's mindset.

I don't hope to be able to argue with you in regards to proper technique at such an advanced level of playing, at least not within ten years.

However, I guess what I was trying to say, and what I meant by "norm", is that some basic principles apply in all fields, be it mathematics, sketching, painting, linguistics... anything.

Generally if the teacher tells you something farfetched, it's probably not good for you. Of course this becomes much harder at the advanced level you are talking about, coupled with the fact that there are much less qualified teachers at that level, I guess it is very possible that there are many "bad" teachers.

I guess my point is to keep in mind that teachers may be extremely helpful in telling you what you weren't aware of before, but teachers are not infallible, so if they teach you something that contradicts what you've known, then it is up to your own personal judgement as to whether what the teacher says makes sense or not.

Don't follow the teacher like the bible, but don't wander around aimlessly either, I guess.

[tunneller]

I think for a beginner the biggest difficulty of not having teacher is that you have no-one to critically listen to you, so that you get feedback not just of whether you are hitting the right notes or staying in time with the metronome, but as to whether or not you have captured the music.

I'm finding that self-recording is a great (actually very depressing) way to help me hear flaws that I dont hear as I am playing. If you dont have a teacher, then at least find yourself a microphone

Which gets me to the second difficulty. I have some sections of music where I'm on time, at the right volume level, etc, and yet "something" is missing in the recording. But what is it?? Likely a good teacher would spot instantly and it'd be higher wrist, or lower wrist, or looser elbows or something that I wouldn't even have thought of.

So I'm actively in pursuit of a teacher, even as I post this message. Even that is not easy: most "teachers" I'm finding in my town seem to be people who can teach how kids to read piano music and play chords, but not much else.

Regards, T.

[keyboardclass]

Go with the looser elbows!

[jeffkonkol]

well... one thing also to consider is that, while in the past people had limited access to advice and instruction outside of a teacher, we live in a different era.  The simple fact that we are participating in a forum which allows you to download sheetmusic for any piece, and search for discussions about that piece, offers potentially new approaches.

that being said... I am coming from the perspective of recently turning away from doing it on my own in favor of instruction..... but there is a part of me which still questions how much advancement could be gained by actively practicing and working through a forum such as this.

the paradigm has simply shifted.  5 minutes online and you can have 4+ recordings of the piece you want, and two versions of the sheet music downloaded, and a printout of a thread which says... hey.... careful about the phrasing in section 3....etc.....