Piano Forum

For example, a student who can play a piece, but does not play in time, does not count; we as teacher can choose to help them with their timing in the piece, but that is only treating the symptom.  The true problem is the way they look at the music; more often than not excluding rhythm because the task was always a means to an ends, and not the ends itself.

It is not so much about WHAT skills and concepts to study, we probably agree in that, it's about HOW and WHEN to study them. Let me try to explain:

Ted already explained above how he learns. What he calls serial learning is usually called sequental learning. I do not learn that way either. Most people would fall somewhere in between but like Ted I am fully the opposite, what is called a holistic learner. For people like us it works very well to jump around and pick up things seemingly in a random way and then we just fill in the gaps. The other way does not work and to try to force it slows us down and also kills our motivation to study.

Another "problem" I have is that my mind is unusually active and innovative and sometimes too fast for an average person to imagine. It is constantly creating ideas and I have no way to stop them flowing. It's a good thing when the ideas contribute to the goal I am working towards. But if the work makes me bored and does not interest me these ideas start becoming a distraction. Since I am not able to stop them the work easily becomes non productive. So I must be careful to limit such boring work to very small doses or try to change it in a way that it is not boring anymore. You seem to think boredom is something that one can choose to feel or not. For me it is not. I would not mind at all to spend an hour every day with finger exercises or Czerny etudes. It's my brain chemistry that prevents me to do so. The sort of "anomalies" in my thinking and learning that I have consistently encountered ever since I was a child are not unknown in research. That's how I know it's not just an attitude problem but these are real differences among people and should not be treated as something to be "cured" by discipline. They can also be an asset as I have found. But only if understood properly. I was lucky to grow up in an environment where I was not forced too hard into a model that did not fit me. While adults around me did not always "get" me and must have found me difficult at times, they could see that I had some special abilities that children don't usually have and I was allowed to develope those further. I see a similar pattern with my piano teacher now, she does not necessarily understand, but she does see results, so she accepts.

You may or may not have encountered a student with this type of mind. If you did and they ended up quitting, it's possible you never realized why. It may seem to an outsider that the person is willingly lazy and has an attitude problem and that is why they have no discipline.

I cannot speak for other teachers, but I can certainly say I can discern the problem of a student’s lack of success after one week’s solo study.  Though we like to believe we are all unique, unfortunately we are not; there are many ‘tell-tale’ symptoms that even after 10 seconds with a student, I can discern what the problem is.

This to me sounds arrogant considering how long it took my teacher and me to create mutual understanding because we are wired so differently.

Learning, is learning; age is irrelevant.

Age is not irrelevant for learning. The older one is the better one should be aware of one's own learning style and if one has special strengths and weaknesses (or even learning challenges). Assuming here that one is generally studied, of course there are also adults who don't understand these things at all. But adults that do are often best experts in their own learning and that should guide the teaching, not just what the teacher is used to doing. Since almost all teachers started as small chidren have never personally experienced this and it tends to show in their attitude towards adult students.

I've already tried your way and failed once (as a child). I ended up never touching the piano for decades and I even disliked piano music for quite a while. Now I am doing things differently and while it's not always easy, I am practicing every day and find the work mostly worthwhile and enjoyable. It's all possible because unlike when 6 years old and at the mercy of my teacher I do now understand WHY certain things are so difficult for me and how to find ways to get around them. I am motivated by the music, nothing else. I have no need to show off to anyone, neither do I need to perform.

I would never label another music lover as arrogant just because they are differently wired. Usually with adult beginners there's a lot of ignorance and lack of understanding, which is something that cannot be cured in a day. Someone like you had 10-15 years to become more aware, how can you expect someone to just take it from you in an instant without given the opportunity to work it out in their own head and in their own way? Doing that is not time wasted, failures are a part of balanced development. I don't see it a very efficient way to learn to just follow given instructions year after year without being in charge oneself and experiment and learn from both successes and failures. But I do understand that some people don't want that sort of responsbility but rather prefer someone else to be in charge.

I'm not going to details here, but due to things not in my control I am not always feeling up to my lessons. Once after a really bad one I asked my teacher if she ever feels tired of teaching me. Her answer was that she wants to teach anyone who really wants to play the piano (I am sure she too does encounter kids who don't really). So what sense would it make for her either to try to kill my will to play by imposing things that we have already seen to do just that? I was never prejudiced against anything when I started. I tried all kinds of things and gradually found my present path.

My first teacher was the opposite of my present one, he had low demands on quality of playing and just told me I was doing fine, but tried to insist I play things I was not interested in. I was quick to look for another one, it just wasn't productive at all and I knew I was NOT doing fine technically because I could hear myself

My present teacher lets me try almost anything that I select from my large list of pieces I want to play (but I do have some sense of my own) and sometimes it works out, sometimes not. What she does is show me all the things I need to be able to do to make justice to the piece. I then try and if doesn't happen on reasonable time we set the piece aside and often return to it a year or two later. But from every such project I do learn something that will be useful later, find a part if the puzzle just like Ted explained above.

I don't know if my explanations are adequate, there's much more to it, not so easy to open up these ideas to someone who has developed a very different perspective. Yours is not a bad one, but it seems narrow to me and it may not work when you encounter someone unable to settle to your expectations and see things your way. I just ask you to consider the possibility that you may have prejudices that warp your assesment in such a case. With this lengthy post I feel I can only scratch the surface of a very complex issue. It appears to me that you have simplified it so that it fits the course of action you have found working in x% of cases. To me THIS would be arrogant, with no offense intended.

And finally, I am the first to admit that I have very little patience with people and find it tedious to explain things in detail that are crystal clear to me. In my day job I am forced to make the effort, so in my free time I prefer not to. So if something I write does not make sense, consider it may be because I've explained it insufficiently