Piano Forum

I'm just really worried that teachers will think I'm crazy, and tell me not to attempt them for another 5 or 10 years, and start me out with grade 1 books. But I will end up attempting them anyway since I love them so much!

A good teacher wont make the experience such a shock throwing you back so far immediately. It should all be a gradual process which you come to trust and want to follow yourself. A good teacher will ensure that the student is truly "on board" with it all, just having a polite student that agrees with whatever the teacher sets is something that both the student/teacher needs to become aware of because simply following advice strangles the individuality of the lesson especially with experienced self learners.

When dealing with self taught pianists who have many years experience it is almost rather offensive to me that a teacher would simply want to recreate them and not nurture them from the point they have worked hard to get to and consider how it could grow better from there. There is a strong tendency in us teachers to change what we think is not right, but we need to be careful HOW to go about about this, if something works well for that student taking it away is not a nice experinece or necessary for them, replacing it then with something they struggle with makes the experience full of drudgery.

When I come across students who have self learned for many years I realize I am dealing with someone who understands how to function as an autodidact. They are very accustomed to make decisions for themselves and solve problems with their own tools they make up or have tested works well for them. So advice often needs to help guide their experimentations and it is beneficial for the teacher to actually go through that journey with them and talk out or show how they are process the information.

I wrote a thread about the four types of thinking which I think is quite relevant especially when teaching self learners, it is important that the self learner understands how they think and the teacher they deal with needs to become more attuned to understanding how the student actually processes infromation. This is because self learner have selected many learning tools for themselves through their experimentation, so a teacher needs to analyze what kind of thinking processes came together to encourage the use of those tools.
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I have come across many students who really are inspired to play difficult pieces even though it would be more efficient to go back and build the skills at an easier level. There is nothing wrong with learning hard repertiore but it shouldn't become a main focus so a good teacher should still allow you to work on pieces you like but at the same time encourage you to work on smaller works too.

They should give you strategies to deal with difficult works and help you learn them faster and more secure. Sometimes we have to forget about the playing these hard works with complete mastery because it will simply take way too long to polish it all up because of the current lack of capability, but we can go as far as efficienctly possible. There is a point where you can put in a lot of effort and get very little back in return, usually when we sense that situation we have to admit the reality and move on otherwise time will be wasted.

It really is a mixed bag when you deal with students insisting on working with difficult works. A small amount really do excel and improve at a very fast rate when dealing with difficult works and they actually manage to gain mastery over it all at a good rate when all the work is laid out for them, but I would say the majority are merely overwhelmed to  different degrees, frustrated and end up floundering about.

I'm pretty confident that I can somehow manage the notes of relatively hard pieces (such as FI, some of Chopin's etudes, parts of the Hungarian Rhapsodies, etc.), but the real consistency and command over the techniques will be lacking when I compare myself to someone actually at that level. I think I will need a teacher eventually in order to get that sort of command over technique.

My students who are at the level to play these type of peices learn them at a very fast rate then we spend the most time simply polishing it up. When you work with a piece that is at your level the notes and fingering themselves should not be the major problem facing you. When you work with pieces that are difficult for you all of these notes and coordination issues become the main problem.

how do teachers teach someone who has actually manage to teach themselves some decent material, Chopin waltzes or nocturnes, or even Fantaisie Impromptu/Liebestraume/Etude Op 10 no 1, etc.?

The teacher needs to prioritize what is the most important changes to make. Sometimes the self learners have done a great job and would pass an exam if they played at that level, but those who really overstepped the mark and persisted learning something too overly difficult for them it can be a real mountain of mess to have to clean up and very difficult for the student to let go of because they have invested so much time into it. It almost feels like a hospital triage to me when I see a self learner play something difficult but not very well, I try focus in on the most sick patients. Often I can tell it is all beyond saving but rather than telling the students I hope to make them realize it for themselves,  I just lay down all the work they need to go through and that often helps them move onto something else for the time being.

The common "reasons" not to self-teach fall apart given a fairly conscientious, talented student with prior experience self-teaching other subjects. Most people talking about self-taught pianists talk about those who play hackneyed beginner pieces with a ton of mistakes and with barely no sense of musicality. It's a pervasive stereotype.

And not only the talented self learners should be a role model but those who struggle but actually make some progress on their own. Self learning is better than not learning at all. Some people have no choice but to teach themselves. It can become very confusing and frustrating for the majority so the danger is that they can think the entire process is just not worth their effort and they give up altogether. The internet has made learning much more confusing too because you will bombarded with what to do and what not to do all of which comes to you without those sources of information actually knowing you personally.