Advanced Student: How many songs should be reviewed in a lesson?

[michel47]

I am the parent of a 16 year old who has played since the age of 8.  She practices at least 5 hours per week and often more than that and the repertoire she works on is late intermediate/early advanced.  She has a weekly 45 minute lesson and it seems as if the teacher cannot handle reviewing more than 1 song during that lesson unless they are in that time of year where they have to prepare more than 1 song for their annual evaluations.

I find it hard to believe that more than this cannot be accomplished in a 45 minute lesson.  My daughter dutifully practices all the songs she is assigned and the teacher doesn't get to them for weeks.  I am concerned.  I feel that time is running out for her.  She will be a junior in high school next year and in my mind, that will be her last serious year of piano.  She will take lessons her senior year but I am not counting on that to be a productive year with piano as there will be so much going on.

I doubt if she will study music in college but you are only young once and I would like her to go as far as she can before she enters college.  She is a hard worker who faithfully practices.

I realize that there may not be a black and white answer to this question but any comments would be appreciated.  I am a person who bends over backwards to be fair and have been very loyal to this teacher but am growing weary.  I have questioned things in the past but never seem to get anywhere and feel stuck with the situation as I am sure there is no magic number which I can use to argue my case.

Thanks.

[ajspiano]

Take a bit of caution with this, its tough to answer without really knowing the student better..

But i'm guessing that your daughter plays piece 'x' when she gets to the lesson and the teacher proceeds to pull it apart and give a wide variety of advice, which is fine.

What if instead, your daughter was to identify small sections of each piece that she most wanted advice on? She could then take some command over the lessons structure rather than waiting for the teacher to decide on everything.

Every few weeks you could do a more in depth whole piece analysis with the teacher that takes a whole lesson..?

The teacher need not feel offended by this, you can just go to the lesson and be straight up with the teacher..  open with "I know this is a lot to get through, but I'd really like to look at piece 1 bars, 22-34, piece 2 bars 76-80, and piece 3 bar 56-66 today". The teacher will be forced to assume that there is some specific need to look at those bars so will want to look at them all to ensure your daughter doesnt go struggling with it throughout the week..

[pianoplayjl]

You shouldn't be concerned about your daughter working on one piece for a lesson. Of course your daughter wouldn't have enough time to cover 2 pieces in 1 lesson. My lesson sometimes go over 1 hour 15 minutes and I'm still stuck on the same spot. Perhaps you are expecting too much but I understand. Sometimes I work on 1 piece for 2 months non stop without looking at the others. As the pieces progress in difficulty you shouldn't be surprised. Probably she is in the 'middle stage' of learning a piece which takes the longest, ie speeding up, adding details to the piece, making it expressive.

JL

[brogers70]

What does your daughter think? At 16 she should be able to evaluate her own progress and how helpful the teacher is to her. The more independent she is in managing her student-teacher relationship the better she'll do in college and in life afterwards.

On the specific issue of how many pieces to review per lesson, it's almost impossible to comment without watching a lesson. I could easily spend a 1 1/2 hour lesson going over a single piece with my teacher; but some days we run through two or three pieces just looking at spots that are giving me trouble. A student at your daughter's level should be learning to figure out what she needs from the teacher and to ask for it on her own.

[michel47]

I appreciate the very well thought out responses.  I have agonized over this teacher for years and I am not a "manager" type mother.  The teacher has always liked my daughter a lot but is not encouraging her to have her own ideas about things and grow up.  Controlling in a passive aggressive way and definitely prefers the younger kids who would never question things.  Never wants to deal with me and I get extremely little feedback.  When I confront the teacher, the result is always pouting, the silent treatment and I end up backing down.

I guess the situation is more complicated than can be presented here but I really do appreciate the feedback.  I don't know why it is so hard for me to pull the plug, people do outgrow situations.  I wish piano teachers could understand how much it means to a parent to be able to give their child lessons and have more empathy for the position of the parent.  But probably most of them do and our family was just not as lucky.  We have just tried so damned hard to make this work....

Thanks again.

[enjru]

If it's a large scale work that she's learning (eg, 10 - 15 minutes long), then spending a whole lesson on just that piece (or even just a part of that piece) would be quite normal. However, you are right that waiting for weeks before the other pieces are reviewed is not good enough. Perhaps the teacher and your daughter can fit in 2 lessons per week so that there is time for all the pieces to be reviewed regularly?

[michel47]

Enjru:  Thanks for your comment.  The piece is no more than 5 minutes.  Infact, we have a recording of it by Van Cliburn and it clocks at 4:36.

I pay $250.00 per month for piano lessons.  There is no way I can afford to pay for a second lesson per week.

Ironically, I moved my daughter from a 30 minute lesson to a 45 minute lesson years ago so that they would have time to do more.  Seems that this backfired.

I am just sick about all the money that has been spent and all the sacrifices that have been made to just have my daughter play 3 songs per year.  I just kept thinking it would get better.  I guess I have to accept my responsibility in this and move on. 

I can understand the skepticism about my daughter, if you only knew how hard she works at it.  But other than not being assertive enough (like her mother,) it is clear to me that she is not the problem.

You put your faith in people and I guess they just have agendas that you can't possibly understand.

[quantum]

I would be very cautious about measuring "achievement" with numbers.  Music study is a whole lot more than measuring the number of pieces one can play.  However, for parents the most tangible mark of achievement is the final result: a learned piece.  The problem with this is that the majority of progress, learning, and growth does not come in performance: it comes in practice.  That is, the work that is done behind the curtains, the work one does in private practice, the invisible work that takes place in one's brain through mental practice, the temporal growth that occurs in one piece over time as one studies other music.  To the onlooker much of this work is invisible, but to the student it is blood and sweat. 

As your daughter is approaching the advanced stages of study, know that pieces get longer, more complex, and thus take more time to absorb.  Many of the core skills of musicianship only present themselves in these early advanced stages of development.  Everything that was learned before was in preparation to learn these techniques.  It may seem that in the earlier years of study, your daughter tackled many pieces per lesson, and in comparison to the present level of music is not taking on as much.  This is more of an illusion, as those early pieces were meant to introduce the student to musical concepts in easily digestible portions.  Now that she has a good amount of knowledge backing her, she is able to work on music that is lengthier and more complex.

As students progress to the college level of study, it is very common that a single piece's performance length is longer than that of the actual lesson!  So it is not uncommon for such advanced student to take 6 months to a year on that piece alone. 

During my preparations for uni auditions, my teacher requested that I increase my lesson time from 1 hr per week to 1.5 hrs twice a week.  It was very obvious that the amount of material, could not possibly be covered in a single hour lesson. 

[megadodd]

I get assigned numerous pieces to work through. Though we only cover the ones I will enjoy spending alot of more time on behind just the notes, on lessons.
Learning alot of repertoire is good to get used to different techniques and styles.
It dosn't necessarily have to be went over by a teacher when you are at an early advanced level. Except, if you find something difficult, ofcourse.

[fleetfingers]

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[keypeg]

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