When is one considered 'advanced' or 'professional'?

[celestialriceball]

Professional: When one is an expertise in all areas of a certain subject
Advanced: Being high in level of a specific subject, not a novice

So, when did you consider yourself advanced at piano? Did you determine yourself as advance through grade markings? For me, I've fully mastered Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C# Minor, Fantasie Impromptu, various Chopin nocturnes (all level 8 nocturnes, according to this website's level ratings), Schumann's Aufshwung, and I know how to perform various pieces of the same level (not perfectly like the previous listed). Do you consider me advance? If you consider yourself advanced, what pieces are the most difficult that you've personally mastered?

That being said, what is professional? Is that when you are paid to perform?

[philb]

I would think one is professional when his profession is playing the piano.

[gerryjay]

Dear CRB,
In my opinion, you are professional in music if you make a living out of it, regardless of your skills. Bob Dylan is a professional musician, and he barely plays the guitar or the harmonica (although he is one of the most influential composers in pop music ever). So, I think we have two very distinct notions - professional and advanced - and the former, to me, is not a matter of controversy: you pay your bills with your music? Professional you are!

Now, about advanced... that is an absolutely relative concept. It will depend completely on its benchmark, and that is quite variable. Let me use what you play as an example.

You say you play pieces that are grade 8 (let me assume it is ABRSM). So, in the basic grade path, it is the last level, the final grade, so it is advanced by definition! On the other hand, if you consider ABRSM as a whole, after the eight grade you are just beggining: there are the diploma, the license, and the fellowship. So, in this bigger picture, grade 8 is a basic one and the FRSM is advanced.

If we are talking about Chopin, the same nocturne which is advanced compared to - let's say - his Prelude number 7, is very introductory stuff when compared to his Sonata opus 35.

I can carry it further, because the pieces in the FRSM syllabus are far from being the most difficult in the repertoire. There are many levels beyond FRSM, some of which I can only conceive in theory.

Anyway, I think that there are some works that may help define an advanced challenge: major Bach works, late and a couple of other Beethoven sonatas, major works by Chopin and Liszt, usw.

Best regards,
Jay.

[lostinidlewonder]

Professional: When one is an expertise in all areas of a certain subject
Advanced: Being high in level of a specific subject, not a novice

If we look at doctors for instance we notice that some do indeed specialize. You do find that in the professional piano world too, some people specialize as teachers, concerting pianists, music administrators, composer, conductors etc etc (and we have even deeper shades such as someone who is a performer but specializes in a particular composer(s), or a musical therapist working with Autistic's for instance ). Some do more than one of them, some like to focus their attention into one area, there are no rules.

I know many musicians who earn good money from teaching and doing gigs but they have a different day job. Some even play as well as professionals who devote their life to their work, so it is difficult to consider where professional/advanced meets. The consideration doesn't really cross my mind when I am listening to someone play the piano (whether they are pro or not). There was no difference in what music felt to me when I took it professionally compared to when I was doing it next to my non-music schooling and university. The relationship you have with music has little to do with your profession, that is what I ideally like to believe anyway! When I was finally able to devote my time to music nothing really changed, things got harder I guess rather than easier, the path opened up and I specialized in things that interested me (performance, teaching, writing) and broadened my horizons. But the love I have for music didn't change, it is essentially the same, and I think that is the important aspect of music which should drive your work, not whether you are a professional or not.

For most of us professional musicians, music is such a force and influence in our life that it distracts us while we do other work. I noticed this a great deal while studying 3 years of engineering and computer science, although you get through that work and align yourself to work in something non-musical the music is just always at the back of your head. When I would walk around university in my head would be playing piano music and I would be lost in thought (often I would catch myself walking to the music in my head), then when I arrived to my next lesson I had to tear myself away from the music and work again. I would sit in the library listening to piano recordings through my mini disc player (new and wonderful technology back then!), at the end of the day when my uni work had been done I always rushed over to the piano practice rooms and spent a couple of hours or so playing.

Many times people asked me where I was studying music when they observed me playing piano while I was an Engineering student (I played at a lot at lunch time free student concerts Ken Hall Theater on a nice Boston concert grand). When I told them I was not doing a music degree they where always quite surprised, I really didn't take notice of it. When I attended a master class from a world famous concert pianist he asked after I played for him what I was doing with my life, when he heard I said Engineering I noticed him slump in disappointment, I certainly took notice of that! That was the point in my life where I said, "Ok fine this is enough already! Let's take a risk and just do music instead!" and that year I did my first solo concert which was the most successful and still is the only piano solo concert ever to hold a capacity audience in my city's concert hall (which gets international performers from all corners of the world). So in my instance I went from a "advanced" pianist to "professional" in a split second pretty much.

I really didn't feel any different at all, there was a huge amount of more time devoted to music which made things a lot easier, also it made things a lot harder. As musicians we are our own business, we need to constantly push ourselves or we can stagnant and remain in the same position for the rest of our lives. This is ok for some, but for me at least, I always like to grow and change. Taking music professionally I think we consider our future musical path in a lot more detail, it is very easy to get caught up over certain avenues of music, for instance I could keep busy teaching for the rest of my life and do it quite happily, however, where do you go from teaching? A professional can merely teach students in their "little box" for the rest of their life. A business minded professional teacher however will expand their horizons and learn how to expand. It all happens in steps, you move towards what you want you don't just get your end product immediately.
    For my teaching experience, it started before I took music professionally as I taught people who came to my parents home. I learned about how other people perceived events and learned as a whole, also could use techniques taught me me but refined in a way which I thought was easier to understand for the individual student. Already my style of teaching was developing, that was to be flexible and yield to the students needs. I had many experiences with teachers who neglected this and they for me where the worst teachers, those that treated me personally I adored and still have never forgotten about.
    When I got my drivers licence I then earned extra cash teaching peoples at their home. I learned how to market my teaching services, also it opened me up to many different types of people further broadening my understanding on how people learned. I had many difficult experiences like meeting students who could sight read better then myself, students that didn't pay or cancelled lots of lessons, teaching children who where forced by parents to learn the piano etc. I learned about how unexpected business can be and how you need to plan for the worst. I was also revealed how much further I had to develop my teaching craft to satisfy a more advanced/difficult client. Being able to go out and teach random students from the public was really frightening because there where no safety guards that I had when teaching people that knew me. I took great care with my clients ensuring that I worked out exact what they needed and often I would spend a lot of time at home puzzling out how the next lesson would have to be set out. Structuring lessons for all sorts of different people and needs was really a challenge but as a professional I would work outside of lesson time carefully preparing my lessons and trying to solve my own questions about how a particular student worked.
 When I became a professional musician soon after that the next step I took was to teach at a music school where people came to me (there I learned about how to teach with restricted time and teach long connected hours without any breaks.) I learned how to work with other music teachers and school administration/management, something I didn't really have to worry about when I taught on my own where I was my own boss. There where rules and regulations as to how I had to teach/treat my students which I had to conform to. I had to remain flexible to my approach, I would often call my students on the phone and email them, but with students from school I was not allowed to do so which to me is ridiculous since it merely makes the piano lesson a short weekly affair and not something where you converse with your teacher outside of lesson time.

From understanding how a music school is run by being a part of its function I then planned my own music studio and school idea. It is too vast to really point out how I managed to get several grand pianos, a location, build a studio etc etc (having family and friends with a passion for music and disposable income to support the cause certainly helps a great deal, we are blessed in that respect more so than others). Importantly you need to be able to make your own money and invest in your own projects, but certainly it helps to get investors who are excited about the same thing as yourself. As professionals we tend to be open to musical opportunities a lot more and seek people interested in our cause without hesitation. I can relay one missed opportunity in my life before I was a professional pianist, a Yahama piano dealer was in a major shopping center in my city and I asked if I could try out some of their pianos on display. After playing he gave me his card and asked if I ever performed in public before in concerts, when I told him I did he said next time I do one please let Yamaha know how they can help. These connections are really golden and as rare as gold. I was too young at that time to fully realize it and lost the card......


We could even consider advanced pianist to professional like a human relationship, a de-facto relationship moving into marriage. My aunt and uncle lived together for over 20 years before they got married, and the actual marriage itself didn't change anything for them! I feel the same remains for taking music as a profession, nothing changed with your relationship,  but now that you have more time for it you can start developing it further (but what is important is that you actually have something to work with at the start, you don't create it from scratch becoming a professional!).

[fleetfingers]

lostinidlewonder, initially I wasn't going to read all of that (too long) but once I started I couldn't stop. It's interesting to learn details about your career and how it has evolved. I felt like I could relate to the beginning part of your story, since I am just starting out with teaching and having some similar experiences and insights. I feel like I began to develop a teaching philosophy years ago while I was "re-teaching" myself. No one ever taught me how to sight read (I could read the notes, but not sight read properly) so I went through a process on my own starting from the very basics then adding to it methodically. I apply the things I learned during that process to my own teaching. So far, I have changed very little in my method because it is working well. Other parts of my teaching and the way I run my home business has grown and changed along the way. I also like to spend a lot of time outside of lessons making plans and thinking about what I can do to better teach each individual student. I love how they all have different styles of learning; I love the challenge it brings.

I wish I could say that I can relate to your performing career. The teacher I had in my teen years wanted to help me prepare for and organize a concert, but I did not take her seriously. I quit those lessons at 16 and haven't taken any since. Looking back, I regret quitting because she was the kind of teacher who believed in me and, being a concert pianist herself, had some connections. Sadly, though, I don't think it would have mattered because she was not strict enough and my parents did not push me at all and I thought I did practice hard because it was more than my friends and siblings practiced. It was not much though - half hour to an hour several times a week. I did not grow up in a musical world (besides weekly piano lessons) and had no idea there was such a thing as a person who practiced for hours a day. Even if I wanted to, my parents never would have let me do that. I was expected to work, go to school, play sports, spend time with the family and otherwise be well-rounded. Anyway, that has nothing to do with the original question. It is late, and my mind was going off on a tangent.

A professional is someone who gets paid for their music, but as a teacher without credentials I don't feel like a professional. Even though I get paid. I don't need the money and so have closed my doors and only teach a select group of students who I love working with, and I consider my teaching as more of a personal learning experiment than a job.

I would like to consider myself a professional pianist someday and would love to be involved in chamber music and accompanying instrumentalists and choirs. I do some of that already but for free and not as often as I'd like.

[lostinidlewonder]

lostinidlewonder, initially I wasn't going to read all of that (too long) but once I started I couldn't stop. It's interesting to learn details about your career and how it has evolved. I felt like I could relate to the beginning part of your story, since I am just starting out with teaching and having some similar experiences and insights.

Sorry about the length and also in this post, but sometimes when I get in that writing mode I just forget, especially when it is about things which I am very passionate about. I would love to hear about some of your experiences and how you "found your way". We all have to find our way really when it comes to teaching, although you can get a degree in it, there are plenty of teachers I met throughout my schooling years that I would never want to have teach me again, and they have these teaching degrees!

Teaching is an art form that you have to learn from "doing" rather than reading about it. Piano teachers are generally considered tutors more often than not, you mostly deal with one student at a time, because of this our style of teaching is different to that of teachers who deal with larger classrooms. We need to personalize our teaching for the given individual and you cannot teach that from a book, it is impossible, you can only learn it by going out there and doing it. I think that was a frightening step for me but I never had second thoughts about it, I always liked to interview new prospective students and once I met one who was many times better than me in sight reading, but I kept my calm and cool and we ended up having lessons for over 8 years. Little did that student know I was biting my finger nails that whole first week trying to work out how I could teach them!

I feel like I began to develop a teaching philosophy years ago while I was "re-teaching" myself.

This is what I think makes a good teacher, someone who uses knowledge that they found themselves or actually use themselves. I had one high school teacher who must have just graduated from university and he use to dictate out of a book to the class room.... every single lesson for the first two terms. He was very good at keeping us quiet and ensured we did all our questions from the text book, when we asked him questions he literally took out his teachers manual to read out the answer for us. I will give him credit he did get better as the year progressed, but the thing was, we just didn't believe what he was teaching us because it looked like he didn't even care about the topic himself or use that knowledge ever in his life! Being dictated answers or shown that what we did was incorrect just simply doesn't help.

How can you personalize a subject for a student is really key for a successful learning and when you teach yourself technique and understand how it effects you and how it challenges and improves you, you can then transfer this similar type of experience over to other students but at the same time guide them through difficulties in a way that you might have appreciated when you went through the same trials.
     I can still vividly remember my first piano lessons at 6 years old with a teacher, a horrible teacher!!! She use to make me memorize theory and forced me to pronounce certain extremely long words for a child perfectly (and more difficult for me as I grew up with several languages and speak with an accent)! It totally didn't interest me but she pounded that theory knowledge into me for months and made me hate piano teachers (I didn't have another one until about 3-4 years later and I think attributed to me ignoring sight reading until later on). She forced me into playing piano like I was holding a ball and wanted me to make elegant movements with my arms which to me didn't mean anything at all and looked stupid. She didn't know how I personally related to the instrument, she wasn't even interested to hear the pieces I had played before! We learned from a little red book which had music that sounded terrible and was forbidden to play anything outside of that book.
     If I didnt have this tough experience then I guess I never would have been able to know what it is like to learn something you really didn't want to learn. I can even see it happen in my own lessons in the past with young students, I personally want them to play a phrase a certain way that tends towards mastery but it is uninteresting for them. As a teacher I cannot force them to do it because we end up wasting too much time on an issue that they probably will not practice outside of a lesson. I always remind myself what it felt like being pounded with info that I didn't want to know. I learned that people need time to be open to certain things and musical maturity is different in each person. But we had to learn that ourselves to trust in it, without that experience we are not as confident in what we do.

I also like to spend a lot of time outside of lessons making plans and thinking about what I can do to better teach each individual student. I love how they all have different styles of
learning; I love the challenge it brings.

I think this is a trait of a good teacher, that you find your students important enough to think about outside of lesson times and even during your own free personal time. It means you respect the teaching art form and are personally/professionally interested in your students musical development. I tell all of my students how interested I am in their progress and how far they have gone. Some of them forget where we started off and sometimes in a lesson we will reminisce where we came from and how far they have actually got. I think students like teachers who remember where they came from and what trials they have succeeded in, it shows you are interested in them personally and know their journey well. If people find out you take interest in what they do they will take great interest in what you have to say to them about it.

I wish I could say that I can relate to your performing career. The teacher I had in my teen years wanted to help me prepare for and organize a concert, but I did not take her seriously. I quit those lessons at 16 and haven't taken any since. Looking back, I regret quitting because she was the kind of teacher who believed in me and, being a concert pianist herself, had some connections.

I think the key word you used is "Believed in me". To have someone who believes in you is really a god send and something that is so wonderful to hold close to you while you work towards your dreams. It can encourage you and help you through what may look like impossible difficulties. This is not to say that you need it to get anywhere, some people certainly are inspired to do great things because of the doubt countless people throw at them. Still it is good to have people who believe in you that know a great deal more than yourself. If you are the only person putting in the ideas and you have no one to advise you, how do you know if you couldn't be doing things better or not?
       Countless people helped me throughout preparing my first concerts from finish to end, and even some people who I thought where helping a great deal I was advised where actually wasting my time and all talk talk talk. One concert event I gave was at a hall which was managed so terribly that if I had trusted that person who was supposed to be a manager to work for me I would have lost a lot. Ignoring putting my event in their monthly newsletter, failing to book me into a preview concert that the hall held every month help to promote my concert, charging me the booking fee for tickets that I sold myself, charging me extra to hire the piano and then again to have it tuned for them etc. It was only because I had other people watching over me that we knew we had to take action, if you blindly trust in the goodness in another person (which I naively did back then) you will get crushed in business. Without help I could imagine my first few concerts would have been much more difficult to organize successfully, nowadays on my own I can manage it because I have had good advice from those better than me in the past and can still call on them when I need it, also the money investment still always helps.

A professional is someone who gets paid for their music, but as a teacher without credentials I don't feel like a professional. Even though I get paid. I don't need the money and so have closed my doors and only teach a select group of students who I love working with, and I consider my teaching as more of a personal learning experiment than a job.

I think this is a good example where the definition of professional or advanced in terms of being a teacher becomes very blurry. I have been taught by people who have so many degrees and awards in music that to write it all down would make their name extremely long, but I have found that I learned more from a teacher who taught me from a caravan that they towed to my primary school every week. I guess it was because of my age, I was at an age where I could be influenced a greater degree, it was lovely to meet this teacher in a caravan who was finally a wonderful teacher, my last experience was terrible but this next teacher she was wonderful and made me see music for its beauty and love. You just don't learn that from university, you learn that from getting to know your student personally and having a personal interest in teaching them and seeing their progress, that to me is the most professional you can get as a teacher, one that cares more so than just earning money.

I would like to consider myself a professional pianist someday and would love to be involved in chamber music and accompanying instrumentalists and choirs. I do some of that already but for free and not as often as I'd like.

A wonderful aspiration, I love Choirs and although I never wanted to be a composer I could imagine writing religious music for choirs, it is just so beautiful sometimes.

[indianajo]

I quit taking lessons in 1965 before that teacher's group was formed, and the only standard "levels" I heard of were John W. Thompson levels.   When I quit piano lessons to concentrate on bassoon (a school loaner with responsibilities) I was playing Villa Lobos Polichinelle, Rondalla Aragonesa, Mendelsohn Agitation and Scherzo op10#2, Ernst Toch Der Jongleur, Ernesto Lecuona Maleguena original. 
I went without a piano for years, then bought one in 1982 and found music for Beethoven sonatas 1-24, Moussorgski Pictures at an Exhibition, JS Bach Peters organ book 1.  Since I quit working I've got the third movement of the Moonlight sonata up to 1/2 speed of Rudolf Serkin on the record. I'm halfway through Pictures at an Exhibition, that I heard at a piano senior recital over at the University of Louisville.   And I have 2 1/2 pages of Passacaglia and Fugue in Cmin JS Bach up to speed, with the pedals, on a 25 pedal Hammond I found and repaired. Much artistic organ voicing to be learned yet.  I've copied George Winston's arrangement of Holly and the Ivy off the Winter LP and play it at Christmas.  I've arranged a Christmas cantata for keyboard with some parts sequenced, and some rubato with soloists, and played it with the 2 choirs at church one year.  So, clicking the box on here, I call myself advanced. 
In future I hope to learn to play by ear, popular songs. So far I have figured out  Autumn Leaves, Three Button Hand-me-Down, and for pop organ,Yellow Bird, Baby Elephant Walk, Inna Godda Divida,  and Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies. I'm trying to figure out the riffs to Good Golly Miss Molly this week, inspired by the on air concert of Little Richard himself.