You Tube Effect on Teaching

[jdledell]

My wife and I have been teaching piano for 30 years and we have 150 students between the two of us. However, one aspect that has emerged over the past few years is the effect of students watching You Tube videos of the pieces they are learning.

Back in the "old days" as teachers we were considered the models that students sought to emulate. We taught to what was written on the music, dynamics, tempo etc. In addition, we teach technique as we had learned with respect to fingers, hand, wrist and arm position etc.

Now students review numerous You Tubes of the music and emulate a classical performer that produces the sound that they like. They may take several different interpretations of the music and produce dynamics where none is indicated and more rubato than I was ever allowed in my piano studies. Some return to using more flat fingers as they see in some classical pianists.

I don't want to mislead, some of these students using this technique produce glorious versions of very advanced piano pieces but sometimes it's difficult for me to adjust. I was taught to play to the music. (ie if Beethoven wanted it played differently, he would have written it that way)

I know if I insist on the student ignoring this other input, I will lose them. I love listening and working with these musicians and it would break my heart to lose them. Do others encounter this type of issue?

[keypeg]

I don't know how strict you are in your understanding of "playing as Beethoven intended, as per the score", so this might make it tricky.  When we work on music, we do make use of the Net (not necessarily YouTube per se) in a particular way.  We work on understanding the music from the score first.  This assumes some knowledge of theory, genre etc.  The way I've been taught by more than one teacher, scores are not to be understood literally, i.e. not literally 120 bpm, not total strict following of dynamics or anything in a robotic mechanical way.  That is not "as the composer intended".  But you also can't just go off and do your own thing. That's where a teacher guides in what the parameters are, and what kinds of things you can do which are right.  Often my teacher demonstrates various ideas.

We then also go to Youtube (Internet).  We will study what various performers did, and figure out why they made those choices.  It is not for imitation, but for understanding.  Sometimes there will be other factors. For example, old pianos did not have the same degree of sustain, so the music might be played faster, or tastes were different in the past.  Youtube together with a teacher, can be very enriching.

The other factor is what a student is actually capable of doing at a certain point.  Students are themselves works-in-progress - not just the piece.  If you are just mastering how to keep steady timing and handling relative note values, it may not be the time to experiment in rubato.  If your technique is up to a certain point, then it may not be time to be doing other subtle things beyond your capability.    In my own studies, some of the things I see are shelved as "for a future time - for now do it simpler".  As a student, it is good to know that certain abilities need to be acquired, and that creates a motivation for working on those technical skills.

I'm writing as an adult student, but I believe that young students are also given a chance to see how something might be played in the future when they have more skills.  Of course, pieces are also selected according to a student's level.

[louispodesta]

I was always taught when I was much younger that I should avail myself of as many recordings of a particular piece that I could find.  Much to my chagrin, I noticed that most of my fellow students did not.

Now, I am overjoyed to hear about young pianists flocking to the internet to expose themselves to as many interpretive piano voices as they can.   Every art or drama teacher worth their salt encourages their students to expose themselves to as many experiences as they can.

However, for far too long piano pedagogy has been "my way, or the highway."

Please scroll down to my new post "New Video On Brahms and Debussy," where I have an extensive discussion on how pianists in the 19th century regularly rolled/arpeggiated their chords, asychronized their melodies, altered rhythms, and modified tempos.

And, they all did it for the same reason   They were trying to make music, which is what your precious students are trying to do.  Please give everyone of them a loving hug for me, and tell them to keep up the good work.

If a symphony or an opera conductor got up and did a literal reading of a particular work, they would be laughed out of the hall.  And, as stated by Dr. Kenneth Hamilton in his book "After The Golden Age," in the 19th century the score was never meant to more than a guide.

If one wanted to know how a piece was to be played, they studied it under the composer or one of their students.  Through You Tube, that is exactly the process you students are trying to re-create.  God, bless them!

And for the record, Beethoven's publisher pressured him into writing down his 4th piano concerto because he never played it the same way twice.  Most applied musicologists consider Urtext to be a myth, and I highly suggest you delve into the new research on the subject.

Finally, you are experiencing one of the great joys of teaching, and that is when the student teaches the teacher.

[slobone]

I think you should regard it as a positive that your students are so eager to perform well that they do research on their own. Of course if that leads them to do things incorrectly, you have the opportunity at their lessons to fix it, just as you would with any bad habit they've gotten into. At least they're not apathetic.

[ppianista]

Do others encounter this type of issue?

I think Youtube is a great opportunity to learn and to open one's musical horizon - for my pupils and for myself. And so I encourage my pupils to go to there and browse and watch musical videos. I'm glad when they discover pieces there which they want to study or when they simply give me links to music they like.
I don't see Youtube as a rival or even as a subversion of my authority as a teacher. Not at all.

[jdledell]

Thank you all for your replies. I mentioned to my wife (also a piano teacher) at lunch today what I had written about in the forum. She went online and remarked about your thoughtful replies and told me to stop being an "old foggy". She said I should be pleased that my students care enough about their music to use modern methods (the internet) to improve. So.... I guess it's time I moved into this century.

She took me to You tube and showed me a video of Valentina Lisista playing one of my favorite pieces Chopin's Etude Op 25 # 12. I just closed my eyes and listened and when it was over I told my wife I don't care about her technique if she can make that Bosendorfer sing like that. At that point she left the room with a VERY smug look on her face.

[j_menz]

Seems to me that regardless of your feelings about it, YT and so on simply aren't going away and you're going to have to learn to deal with it.  People probably felt the same about the wireless and the gramaphone.

[slobone]

Seems to me that regardless of your feelings about it, YT and so on simply aren't going away and you're going to have to learn to deal with it.  People probably felt the same about the wireless and the gramaphone.

More recently I remember going to Tower Records and buying every recording they had of the Stravinsky Sonata. Charles Rosen's was the best IMHO IIRC.

[anakha13]

I agree that Youtube is a real opportunity for students to get exposed to music. When I was young my teacher would have to put the recordings on a cassette tape!! Now students can just log on and search a piece and get thousands of different recordings.

I also thought initally it was a bit of a nono musically for students to emulate the performances they saw on Youtube, and I was very cautious about it...'Did you listen to a Youtube performer??!'
However, I've relaxed now since I've seen my students actually be discerning about the performances they view. It's a great tool for critique. Alot of my teenaged students, I've found, won't just emulate blindly, but discern a performer is playing too fast or too sloppily.

I'm more concerned about 'tutorials' on Youtube showing people how to play certain songs. I find it is really detrimental as it gives the impression that you can just 'teach yourself' how to play the piano- this really bothers me.

[slobone]

I too was brought up on the idea of "don't copy recordings by famous pianists, you have to develop your own style", but now I think that's just nonsense for a player at my level. If I was prepping for the Cliburns then yes, i wouldn't want to emulate Hamelin or whoever, but when you're learning a piece it saves a lot of time if you can actually hear what it's supposed to sound like! If you get the right sound thoroughly in your ears, the technical process takes a lot less time. And it's especially helpful to compare performances, so you can explore your options with regard to tempo, dynamics, phrasing & everything else.