share with him or her your concerns that what you feel you have learned is too specific to individual pieces, and that you would rather concentrate on building strong foundation skills that will be then transferable to different periods of repertoire and even styles of music.
For the record, alongside other work in different forms I might typically aim to improve speed and accuracy in a student through a rough progression of sonatas fromclementi -> kuhlau -> mozart -> beethoven...
Do you ever have students that don't like this stuff? What would you do with them?
(either that or try Kabalevsky/Dohnanyi/Bartok)
triple dosage of bach
no seriously.. I just go with level appropriate material that they do like - or in other words, I don't force people to develop technique that their genuine musical desires do not necessitate... ..unless I can myagi them to do so along the way with whatever material - which is always, because movement principles are transferable into different musical contexts.I like to assign alot of listening work, so my students have a broad range of potential learning material that I know they like. ( I also often already know what they don't like).I also dont teach classical music/piano, I just teach music. So for some people that means things very different to what we talk about here. Eg. Last night I was working on piano parts with a hip hop MC. We were working on adding contrapuntal lines into certain accompaniments to compliment the lyrical element, some of the lines were fast (so he had to improve speed and accuracy). I wouldn't give him a sonatina, its an incompatible musical context and he wouldnt practice it anyway. I give him a "riff" or a chord voicing to experiment with, supervise him transposing it through modes and different keys and then just let him free for another week. If he comes back and is having physical trouble with something he created I fix it with direct contextual technique instruction.
When I try to practice things like classical era sonatas I never get to the point of speed and accuracy, because it takes me so long simply to learn the notes. When I finally have I am already so fed up with the music that I cannot stand practicing it anymore... It's a bit difficult for my teacher, every time she gives me something to learn I don't really like it. I do always try but it never ends well I guess I could try some Clementi again, but I need to get a better edition, the one I have gives me a headache...
It sounds like you are fed up with trying to play Classical sonatas entirely from memory, and that perhaps you would better enjoy playing them with the score in front of you? This way you don't have to spend time 'learning' each one individually, and your reading and musical skills will increase rapidly. Trying to memorize individual pieces is what I call 'wrote learning' and it doesn't help us to develop our musicianship as much as we think it does.
I don't know, I really disagree with the whole 'memory' thing. There is just so much wonderful music out there to play that you could not possibly memorize and do justice to at the same time. The Liszt arrangement of the Beethoven 9th for two pianos, for example, that I am working on with my girlfriend right now. It's over 100 pages long. No conductor would be expected to memorize the entire 9th, why the heck should a two-piano team be different?
WHAT YOU SHOULD BE LEARNING in your lessons is this. How to see with your ears and how to hear with your eyes.
I am not sure if you meant this for the OP or me, but learning this is quite a task and will take years for someone who is not studying music full time. It is a good goal, but not all of us will ever reach that stage...
Learning this will take years for anyone, regardless of what they study full-time. If being an artist was easy, everyone and their brother would be an artist. I meant it for anyone who wishes to become an artist.
OK...I'm afraid my artistry will be on other areas...When it comes to piano I'll settle for being able to get a nice sound from my piano and hopefully be able to play/read through as much as possible of all the wonderful piano music before I die...
If you are suggesting that there should be a lesser method for lesser players.... an easier method intended for the mediocre pupil to stay forever mediocre, well then I suppose there are plenty of such methods, and plenty of teachers out there, who will be forever happy to cater to this pupil.
unfortunately my time in this world is limited
All the more reason to make sure that every minute you spend at the keyboard is one spent maximizing your musical potential in the absolute best way possible....
Hey all - thanks for the interesting thoughts. A couple points:1) I don't feel 100% comfortable with all of the scales and arpeggios yet, mostly because in working on them, I did them on my own. I don't feel any kind of pain or tension while I am playing them, but I still don't know if I am doing them "correctly".2) Someone mentioned that the half horu lesson may be part of the issue. Basically from week to week, I go in, we chat for a moment while we set up a camera to record the lesson, I play a piece, and then we talk about it and work on specific spots. We don't actually have technique time worked in - maybe that is because of the short amount of time that we have, but like I mentioned before, I have little to no actual technique. The professor knows this, but I feel like I have dived in head first and I am just going from piece to piece without getting concepts engrained - or understanding how to bring them different rep.My audition into the school involved a Chopin Prelude, a 3 part Bach Invention, and a Haydn sonata. My first semester we went up to a Bach Prelude and Fugue, a Beethoven Sonata, and a Chopin Waltz. I get through the course, and I manage to get good grades and comments from the other professors at jury times. I just feel like IF we are going to play Bach, I should know how to play a 2 part invention pretty close to perfect, and then take what I learned there to go to a 3 part, and eventually 3 and 4 voice fugues. I mentioned that to him and he said that you can learn just as much from more challenging rep. Someone else in my studio did a 2-part invention last semester so I know it isn't a strict requirement for certain pieces, but that things are tailored to the students abilities.@maitea - So, I am all about improving my skills which is why I posted this. You mentioned working with scales and arpeggios - and possibly some other exercises. Would you suggest working on them on my own and just bringing in pieces, or saying i want a specific assignment based on my level? I can pull out some Hanon exercises and start work on them, and then just go in and say "Look at this....why does this happen or feel like this in my hands"?Thanks all.
From the looks of your signature it seems you have a very interesting repertoire developing!
Sounds like some very dedicated teaching work
aside from the need to get better at reading, perhaps the odd bit of material with a technical push would be good for you, but where there is a great deal of use made out similar but vaired figures. So the reading and memorising is less of a factor, but the faster passage work is.Consider say trying a bit of Debussy's Dr Gradus, its littered with semiquaver passaged, primarily RH broken chord figures that you can learn in hand position clusters of 4 - and it sounds nice a bit slower too I think. (hopefully) not too hard...
Maybe your thumb needs some more training? Czerny believed the thumb to be the principle difficulty involved in playing the piano. It is the most important finger.... the one which allows all of the others to glide seamlessly over the keyboard in any scale, arpeggio, or passage.