I've gone to college and all that. I don't like paying high fees for a teacher that only pays some attention to me during that one hour lesson, esp when their advice isn't quite what I'm looking for and I get the impression they're just picking up my money each week whether I progress or not.
So, what things should I be working on to teach myself?
1. Technique, staying in shape
2. Literature
3. Aural skills and rhythm
4. Listening and studying the literature
5. attending live performances
What else?....
6. Talking to people. Easy to do here for sure.
7. Maybe improvising
8. Duh! Performing
Who else is doing this? Do you have any advice? I'm looking for someone seriously teaching themself and someone who's got some education in music.
I know about the pitfall of not having those pearls of wisedom from someone else, but I really think I can find the answers I need on my own better than attempting to follow a teacher. 
I am my best teacher and my best student! With a teacher it was just piece after piece and I didn't really get any better after a point. And the teacher always seemed to be impatient that I didn't pick right up on their ideas, and when I tried to figure things out for myself, that annoyed the teacher quite a bit. Those nagging problems in the back of my mind, the ones I can't yet express clearly, really didn't seem to please the teacher, but I need to think through this stuff to find the answers I need. Otherwise, I'm just blindly doing what the teacher tells me. Ironically, they say to be independent in your thinking, but they are very pleased to have unquestioned blind following.
An example of the questions I have asked: Why am I adding this nuance? Is this what the composer wrote or something you (the teacher) added or interpreted? How do I know what's correct for the style and what things I can add from myself to the music without being stylistically incorrect? I don't know what to do, but want to be able to do this myself instead of just blindly following you the teacher.
These were concerns that couldn't be addressed in an hour. Eventually, I got tired of following them and started figuring these things out on my own.
Add not having the technique to do some of these nuances, and then not knowing how to grow technical skills, and I had quite a knack for ticking off the teacher. "Why I am I doing this? How do I do that? How do I go about knowing to do that without a teacher?"
I do think a teacher would be worthwhile for getting advice on a piece you have practiced to your utmost ability. I just hated having someone nose in on my work when I only had a week to work on it -- "I'm not finished yet. Stop telling what to do." A teacher would also be worthwhile for getting good directions to work in and ideas for steering your practicing in a one-time session.
mirrored at:
https://www.pianoworld.com/ubb/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/topic/2/6630.html
A teacher teaches, a student learns.
So you cannot teach yourself. But you can certainly learn by yourself. In fact only you can do that – and you should! – after all, no one can learn for you.
You may have a very distorted conception of the role of a teacher. The best way to fix that is to get a few students and teach them. This can be quite an eye-opener. Once you are teaching, you are a teacher, and therefore you can consider teaching yourself. Having had some experience with some students, may help you to understand yourself as a student and see the areas you could improve as a
student. You may discover that many things that annoy you in your students are attitudes you yourself have. Trying to become a
model student yourself (that is following the advice you are giving to your own students) may have dramatic consequences. It may also give you new vistas about this whole problem, so that you can come out of the corner you seemingly painted yourself in.
I've gone to college and all that. I don't like paying high fees for a teacher that only pays some attention to me during that one hour lesson, esp when their advice isn't quite what I'm looking for and I get the impression they're just picking up my money each week whether I progress or not.
This reminds me the story of the city guy who got lost in the countryside. He saw a farmer walking by, stopped the car and asked him:
“Could you tell me which way the motorway is?”
The farmer scratched his chin, looked this way and that and said:
“I am afraid I don’t know”.
The city guy showed him a map.
“Look here, are we near this town, or perhaps this one?”
Again the farmer looked at the map without nay signs of recognition and said:
“ I am really sorry, but I don’t know.”
“Well could you at least point me in the general direction to [big city name]?”
The farmer smiled in embarrassment and said:
“Er… I don’t know…”
“You don’t know much, do you?” said the guy in exasperation.
“Maybe not, but I am not lost…”
If you procure the services of a teacher, you have to trust that his advice is relevant. As a student it is not your role to question the advice of a teacher. Your role is to apply his/her advice to the best of your capacity and see what happens. The role of a teacher is not to debate and discuss with his/her students, but to instruct them in what s/he perceives as the problems that need to be solved. Do not be fooled: if a (good) teacher ever engages in debate with his students is simply because the debate is a tool for instruction. Real debate can only happen between equals. Between unequals you have instruction.
I am of course assuming a
good teacher. How do you know a good from a bad teacher? Not by intellectual argument and by imagining where his/her advice is going to take you, but by actually following their advice and seeing if it works. Even if it does not work, you should still give the teacher the benefit of the doubt and before dismissing his/her advice as useless, you should enquire further and make sure that you are actually following their instruction to the letter, and not following
what you thought were his/her instructions.
As for a teacher “picking up your money”, you must go back to my first suggestion and teach a few students yourself. It will change your perspective dramatically. No one values what they do not pay for. It is that simple. And most of times, the payment is not at all in terms of money. Do you know why people keep insisting that Hanon is good? Because they paid dearly for it in the form of a couple of hours daily for who knows how many years. No way they are going to cut their losses and let such a huge investment go.
A teacher does not simply “pick your money”. S/he gives you the most valuable commodity there is in this Earth: His/her time. Bill Gates, the day he is in his death bed will not be able to buy a single extra second of life with all his billions. And if you think that the time a (good) teacher spends with you ends when the lesson end, think again. There is a lot of work to be done on your behalf after you leave. I estimate that it takes me 4 hours for each hour I actually teach my students. Again, get a few students, and truly try to teach them to the very best of your ability. Here is what you will find out: There is really not enough money to pay you. Hence teachers do it because they love it, and the money they ask from you is truly the bare minimum for their survival, so that they do not need to get another job – and in this way they will have the time to teach you the piano.
So summing it up, my main suggestion to you at this point is to get a few students (don’t do it for free, though, since dealing with student’s reluctance to depart form money is an important part of what I am trying to show you through this experience). You will find out that:
1. You will learn far more than your students.
2. You will truly respect the work of a teacher and realise how unappreciated a teacher’s efforts truly are.
Once you have gathered some experience in this area you will be much better equipped to decide if you want a teacher after all, or if you are better off
learning by yourself (and not
teaching yourself). I hear Chrsitmascarol is sending a whole load of nice students you way!
It is of course very possible that you had the bad luck of having a number of bad teachers. But personally I do not believe in bad luck. I believe that somehow we attract our teachers, and once we become different students we attract different teachers. So learn from a specific teacher everything you can learn from him, without concerning yourself about what you are not learning. Once you have exhausted that teacher capacity’s for teaching, a new, better one will appear.
Does this help? I hope so.
Best wishes,
Bernhard.
Topic: How do you teach yourself? [Bob project]