How do I find a teacher?

[ranjit]

Hi, I've been getting really worried about this for a while now, so I hope discussing it here might give me some solutions. I plan to get a teacher in the next month or so.

Here are some of my old posts for some context:
https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=67173
https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=67160

I've grown to hate teachers over the years (please bear with me!). It's been my experience throughout school and even to an extent college that I fared better on my own, that teachers would try to impose some of their own dumb ideas of how to learn onto me, and whenever I made the mistake of trusting them, it would not just not be helpful, but actually make my learning worse. At some point that let to me completely giving up on teachers and trying to teach myself everything, which surprisingly enough, has seemed to work quite well with most things I've encountered up till now.

So now, I'm considering getting a teacher for the piano. However, I see the same thing playing out. Even in subjects in which I wasn't passionate about or didn't devote a lot of time to, I usually came up with a bunch of unorthodox ways to 'solve' them which worked quite well in my favor. But I'm actually passionate about the piano and have devoted a few years to it. The intensity with which I go about it has led to me learning a lot in an unconventional fashion. I've listened to thousands of recordings which encompass most of the popular 'classical' composers, and have tried to improvise using the vocabulary of those styles, to the point where many of the pieces are stuck in my head. I've taught myself music theory. I have a strongly developed sense of where I want the music to go. I've compared performances of many different interpreters and arrived at stylistic preferences which I feel work the best.

After all of this, if a teacher regards me as a blank slate and tries to teach me according to some "traditional" guidelines in a rather lockstep fashion, then that isn't just boring, but my mind actively rebels against it. It also grinds my gears when teachers rehearse common platitudes and rules in the name of 'musicality', which I've already read and heard a dozen times before. My natural default is to think deeply about something e.g. a technical problem, and come up with half a dozen possible solutions.

Common advice such as 'do scales/Hanon exercises' don't cut it, because I immediately get dozens of questions and alternate methods swimming in my head. Is it to develop some kind of flexibility? Wouldn't that be better done hands separate, focusing on each note? Wouldn't that be better done fast rather than slow? Or slow rather than fast? Or via improvised exercises? If the whole point is to practice certain hand motions, why wouldn't you just focus on the hand motions themselves? Or is it hand coordination? Isn't the whole point to figure out how the technique works -- in that case, what's the point of assigning an exercise and having the pupil struggle with it, doing it wrongly? Why wouldn't you just demonstrate it? Or is it so that they figure out the technique themselves? Then, why wouldn't you encourage them to experiment on their own accord subject to a set of principles? Or you could focus on technical sections of pieces and use them as exercises. Or, if you wanted to really go all out on hand coordination, you could give the student a Bach fugue and ask them to struggle with it. Progress needs to be gradual and you shouldn't get ahead of yourself? But what if they do and it works out for them, how would you know if you don't try? Or if you know that the piece is damn easy for them, but want them to work on a very specific voicing task or something, you need to state that directly. And so on, and so forth.

The fact that piano teachers have often suggested that I do things as they suggest rather than the methods I figured out, only to find that my methods worked for me and that what they suggested often simultaneously made practice a chore as well as relatively ineffective (and I would hate to learn to hate the only thing I'm passionately interested in), makes me wary of trusting a teacher blindly. At the same time, teachers often don't understand what I'm trying to convey when I explain my idiosyncratic understanding of how I think something works musically or some way in which I tackle something, and eventually just tell me to do it because it works and is the right way to learn, which then forces me to trust them blindly.

There is a certain 'spark' which I feel when how I play a piece clicks for me and makes sense. Working on a piece in a 'disciplined' fashion, slowly with a metronome for example, gets rid of that spark and often leads to me hating my playing because it sounds really amateurish and unmusical, and never touching the piece again once I've learned it. I'm not sure what I should do at this point and how I should go about finding a teacher. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[lostinidlewonder]

It's been my experience throughout school and even to an extent college that I fared better on my own, that teachers would try to impose some of their own dumb ideas of how to learn onto me, and whenever I made the mistake of trusting them, it would not just not be helpful, but actually make my learning worse. At some point that let to me completely giving up on teachers and trying to teach myself everything, which surprisingly enough, has seemed to work quite well with most things I've encountered up till now.

It is probably not an uncommon experience and depending on the area you live in, finding "in person" teachers can be a difficult task. I personally never liked online lessons even though it was enforced during covid lockdowns. They are just so clumsy and inefficient by comparison to in person lesson. Both teacher and students learn a great deal more in 3d rather than a 2d representation, that is how I feel anyway being a teacher.

When teaching subjects in the Arts there are so many directions and methods. It is not like studying a science subject where everyone should build from a particular point upwards. The starting point for studying piano is extremely various, there are many ways in which people think about the piano and many different ways in which they learn and progress. If you come across teachers who have a "cookie cutter" type method, or a "one size fits all" type approach, run away in terror, I can't tell you how many transfer students I've had who have solely studied out of method books. There certainly are many ineffective teachers out there who rather teach beginners who quit after a couple of year or so or who can play boring levels for years on end without pushing boundaries as to what is easy to play.

In saying all this however there are times where you simply "do not know you do not know" and you do have to take leaps of faith with teachers when they suggest something you haven't done before. The leap is not completely blind because you should notice improvement in some respect or another which should pique your curiosity.

... if a teacher regards me as a blank slate and tries to teach me according to some "traditional" guidelines in a rather lockstep fashion, then that isn't just boring, but my mind actively rebels against it. It also grinds my gears when teachers rehearse common platitudes and rules in the name of 'musicality', which I've already read and heard a dozen times before. My natural default is to think deeply about something e.g. a technical problem, and come up with half a dozen possible solutions.

I think you can easily demonstrate to a teacher that you can learn music at an efficient rate. They should be interested to investigate your process in depth to see what is working and what can be improved. For experienced teachers they will pick up on an unusual good rate of learning that you have and should build upon that rather than ignore it and suggest something which does not take you into account. You should say this specifically to any prospective teacher you come across, let them know that you can learn pieces at a good rate. What should be then created is a pathway for you to learn many more pieces which develop your technical skills (adding many different fingerings/coordinations between the hands to your knowledge database) as well as build upon your current memorization skills and also development of your reading skills. I think a good teacher should be able to encompass all of these together for you.

Common advice such as 'do scales/Hanon exercises' don't cut it, because I immediately get dozens of questions and alternate methods swimming in my head.

I think you are beyond this type of exercise approach and if any is applied to you it would be a very small amount. There is creating exercises to solve technical problems in pieces, I see that however more of a practice method though since the process is more than simply a physical realization but also a mental one as to how you exactly disect the music to create an effective pattern.

Is it to develop some kind of flexibility?

It depends what "flexibility" is supposed to mean. Technical flexibility is not quite there when you try to acquire technical ideas isolated in exercises. Sure you could play something in isolation but what about when it is in an actual piece with actual musical context? Things change then and exercises simply don't cut it. They can give you some idea as to some kind of control but really if one is using exercises to acquire technique they are going about it the wrong way. We need to study many pieces at a suitable level to develop our technical capabilities effectively. Sure you can do this with more difficult works but you never really will understand what "control" is since the technical tightropes feel so narrow and you always will feel stressed out in some form or another even if it becomes easier over time. This is a common problem with a vast majority of people. They overstep the mark and then fall into the ideology that everything must feel that way to progress, it is just a rough way to do it I feel with many scraped knees as you keep falling, people can get up and power on good on them but really its not necessary to punish yourself solely in this manner.

Wouldn't that be better done hands separate, focusing on each note?

I think it is always better to look at the tree rather than the leaves. When we start looking too closely we really can fall into traps of wasting a lot of time.

Wouldn't that be better done fast rather than slow? Or slow rather than fast?

Both are good but both require some kind of rules to technically bind it. For example if you practice something that is meant to be fast very slow you may create movements while playing slow which has nothing to do with the fast. You may also practice something very fast but it is merely an estimation of complete mastery, how do you then improve that estimation can sometimes simply be an impossible task to do efficiently if the skill has not been built from the bottom up. This is not to say this effects everyone like this but from my experience the vast majority even very talent students can have this problem when it comes to the estimation of technique which is beyond your current capability to consider it easy.

If the whole point is to practice certain hand motions, why wouldn't you just focus on the hand motions themselves?

I never teach my students like this, you know taking their hands and telling them to move in a particular manner. I see it done all the time and I guess it works for some but I always found it akin to parroting. If you natually understand the technique your hands will follow, but how do you come to this intrinsic conclusion needs to be done by building from the bottom up. You need a good teacher who can suggest pieces that will develop technique in not only a small challenging way for you so you can learn new ideas quickly but also such an easy framework so that you can complete it not only quickly but with mastery.

Or is it hand coordination? Isn't the whole point to figure out how the technique works -- in that case, what's the point of assigning an exercise and having the pupil struggle with it, doing it wrongly? Why wouldn't you just demonstrate it?

Some people learn a lot from seeing what mastery looks like and I think it is a good idea for teachers to demonstrate. However the actual feeling in the hands cannot be observed by sight and that is what is 100 times more important than what it looks like. There is also the issue that I could play the same piece with all sorts of different movements and hand formations and still feel totally relaxed and controlled so what exactly should the hand look like? Instead the feeling in the hands is more important. I personally can see in my students playing when I sit next to them exactly when they tense or estimate something, it is easy to immediately catch them and stop them then and we question what is wrong rather than what is more correct. I don't want to give them a solution but I want them to be aware of what is not going correct, then they can naturally come to a better solution. This process may take an extended time to appreciate but in the end the student does it naturally.

I have one extreme example of a young boy I taught when he was 5 and he would ALWAYS rest his wrists on the piano while playing. There was nothing I could do about it he refused to do anything else. He would also press each note with isolated finger movements and do all sorts of other terrible things. I've been teaching him for 6 years and you would have never known that where he came from technically was a real disaster. He naturally came to conclusions which would improve his playing but it always required that I set him up to come to those realizations. It was a long process but now he has a natural technique and the piano and can solve technical problems that may feel uncomfortable to him because he understand with his own two hands what comfort should feel like.

Or is it so that they figure out the technique themselves? Then, why wouldn't you encourage them to experiment on their own accord subject to a set of principles?

Yes but the experimentations are not always to come to a final conclusion, sometimes it will only partially solve the problem and there will be remaining issues which do not resolve. Then the teacher should suggest works where you can test out these technical problems in a successful manner or simply altogether avoid it and continue pushing your skills elsewhere until it the experience base is enough so that there are enough results to come to a better conclusion (often without focused attention). Some technical problems simply should not be stared at because the problem is not your fingers but your overall experience. Why learn a very difficult technical pattern you have never come across or find very difficult before you can conect it to something similar you have done before and can do with total mastery?

Or you could focus on technical sections of pieces and use them as exercises.

I think it is a waste of time but people can get joy of it. It is more rewarding to play pieces completely and with mastery I find. You also can get in such a fuss over technique and forget that we really play the piano to create music not obsess about technical problems. It is a much more musically rewarding experience to build your experience with entire pieces rather than excerise study. I don't feel that studying exercises really are that much of a catalyst to ones technical progress but everyone does need to do them at least to add to their experience base (but you don't really need to play them every day unless you have a specific situation which requires that, eg: early beginners).

Or, if you wanted to really go all out on hand coordination, you could give the student a Bach fugue and ask them to struggle with it.

Coordination can be built up, in fact it is one of the few things I think work well with exercises. I create many of little coordination challenges for my developing students but I don't find its application to more advanced students very beneficial and if we do them it would only be very briefly to highlight a coordination point.

Progress needs to be gradual and you shouldn't get ahead of yourself? But what if they do and it works out for them, how would you know if you don't try?

Throwing a student in the deep end (https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=7997.0) is certainly not a bad idea but if it becomes the focus I feel inefficiency creeps in. I am yet to come across anyone who doesn't benefit from studying smaller pieces which challenge them but are able to be mastered in efficient time. Sometimes people think that because they played a grade 10 piece that if they then study a grade 5 piece it is too easy and not worth their time. However I ask them to prove the point, if they can play something so difficult then demonstrate EXACTLY how easy lesser works are for you. There are still points of inefficent learning in even the easier pieces you may find and they are particular points of interest that need to be understood because they are magnified to a greater magnitude when you see it in harder works.

Or if you know that the piece is damn easy for them, but want them to work on a very specific voicing task or something, you need to state that directly.

If a student has little experience with polishing a piece up to as good as they can get it they need to experience this. Exam students do it all the time but I think it is a mistake because mastering everything before moving on can be very inefficient. This is more relevant to beginner/intermediate students however because there are many issues which can be scrutinzed and if you do all of them you can stress out a student and make them lose the joy of creating music because they are trying to be so careful all the time.

The fact that piano teachers have often suggested that I do things as they suggest rather than the methods I figured out, only to find that my methods worked for me and that what they suggested often simultaneously made practice a chore as well as relatively ineffective (and I would hate to learn to hate the only thing I'm passionately interested in), makes me wary of trusting a teacher blindly.

A healthy lesson environment is not about a student being a slave to the teacher and obeying everything and anything. It needs to be a discussion and finding a middle ground especially when dealing with students who have a learning process that they have devised themselves that is working. As a teacher I am extremely interested in how a student learns their music and it would never come across my mind to totally change what they do. Any teacher that does that simply is not interested in the many ways our artform is approached. Getting to the middle ground however is important, if the teacher simply follows what you do with no input you might as well study on your own and if you are not comfortable or willing to try out new ideas to balancing your method then you are not realy to have a teacher. Of course you have all the right to question a teachers method and whether it is right for you, you should demand that you notice some improvement in the short term rather than blindly following a regime in hope that somewhere in the distant future there is improvement, I don't think anyone who can think for themselves would subject themselves to that.

At the same time, teachers often don't understand what I'm trying to convey when I explain my idiosyncratic understanding of how I think something works musically or some way in which I tackle something, and eventually just tell me to do it because it works and is the right way to learn, which then forces me to trust them blindly.

You need to think about how to word the complex process you do in a way people can understand. Be as specific as you can, why not even detail how you practice what is going on in your head etc while studying a specific piece? Like a practice journal containing all your thoughts. It might slow you down but it may help you share how you work with your teacher and others. It is not necessary however if you can't verbalize your process, a teacher can experiment with you and notice how you work during a lesson and come to conclusions. They can ask to see how you learn something in front of them and then they can analyze the processes you are undergoing.

[ranjit]

Thank you for your incredibly detailed reply! I don't have much to add. Indeed, it isn't like teaching science -- there are teachers who are highly qualified and well-regarded, but still have a one-size-fits-all approach as you mention. Is there a way to find out if a teacher is good before taking a lesson with them? What kind of questions should you ask a prospective teacher beforehand?

[lostinidlewonder]

Is there a way to find out if a teacher is good before taking a lesson with them? What kind of questions should you ask a prospective teacher beforehand?

I guess you should feel inspired and look foward to the next lesson, that is probably the best indicator albeit a very subjective measurement.

There was a thread like this: https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=30543.msg353574#msg353574

There is only so much you can gain from the first few lessons with a teacher, usually it takes at least a term of work with them to come to some kind of real conclusion whether the lessons are good or not. Unless you are lucky and find a teacher where your relationship just clicks it does take time for both you and the teacher to get to know how each other works.

[ranjit]

There is only so much you can gain from the first few lessons with a teacher, usually it takes at least a term of work with them to come to some kind of real conclusion whether the lessons are good or not.

I was afraid you'd say that. I've also read something similar in the past. It looks like the best you can do is look for red flags and go with your instinct. It is also tricky to figure out whether the improvement is actually due to the teacher or not. I have felt significant improvement in my playing every few months or so when I've been learning on my own, so there is always that opportunity cost.

[quantum]

It's been my experience throughout school and even to an extent college that I fared better on my own, that teachers would try to impose some of their own dumb ideas of how to learn onto me, and whenever I made the mistake of trusting them, it would not just not be helpful, but actually make my learning worse. At some point that let to me completely giving up on teachers and trying to teach myself everything, which surprisingly enough, has seemed to work quite well with most things I've encountered up till now.

I place a distinction between independent teachers and teachers in schools or universities.  Teachers in schools often have a curriculum to follow, often defined by someone else.  They have to teach things because another person thinks it is useful.  In such situation, I would categorize learning in two streams: learning for the purpose of acquiring grades that satisfy course evaluation, and learning for personal growth.  We would much rather do the later, but often expend much time with the former. 

In my childhood years, I had my share of cookie cutter music teachers and can completely relate to your situation.  Although, when I found a teacher that genuinely fostered growth and skill development in music it was a very enlightening experience.  One of the consequences of that mentorship is that I was also able to meet many other teachers that would also greatly contribute to my musical education. 

There is a moment where you need to trust a teacher to take you in a direction you have never considered, even if that means going against techniques or theories you have developed yourself.  You need to give yourself permission to become vulnerable.  You don't have to stick with the idea if it does not work, but you should seriously consider trying it before dismissing it.  One of my teachers used to say "you don't have to do anything I tell you, but you need to do something," meaning, the commentary wasn't a directive to follow, but an encouragement to think of a solution, the commentary being a starting point. 

Developing your own techniques is healthy, but reinventing the wheel is inefficient.  Sometimes using the foundational ideas developed by others is a good starting point to develop your own ideas.  That might mean a compromise of putting your creative solutions aside for a moment and seeing how other people solved the same problem.  Remember, you can always go back if your solution ends up being better, but you would never know this if you did not give the alternate solution a chance. 

There is only so much you can gain from the first few lessons with a teacher, usually it takes at least a term of work with them to come to some kind of real conclusion whether the lessons are good or not. Unless you are lucky and find a teacher where your relationship just clicks it does take time for both you and the teacher to get to know how each other works.

I concur.  For many of the teachers I studied with, it took about one year for me to grasp the reasons behind their approach.  Sure, there are many useful things to be gained in the first few lessons.  However, the big picture of their teaching philosophy only came into view after at least a year of study with them. 

[lostinidlewonder]

It is also tricky to figure out whether the improvement is actually due to the teacher or not. I have felt significant improvement in my playing every few months or so when I've been learning on my own, so there is always that opportunity cost.

Why not continue learning on your own until you have saturated that aspect of your learning? If you find you have "significant" improvement every few months on your own there is no point in getting a teacher until you hit a dead end. If you constantly have that doubt whether it is the teachers efforts or your own which are improving you, you may not be ready for a teacher, ultimately it is more your own effort (since lessons time vs personal practice time should have a large difference) with the focus of your attention helped by the teacher. My higher advanced students don't use me so much to tell them how to practice etc but help them find direction and advise them where they should be focusing their attention and that in itself is valuable teaching for the more advanced. There are so many options and pathways it is often good to have an advisor who can go through the wilderness with you.

It is also not easy to admit ones weakness and where one simply "does not know they don't know" or "knows they don't know" but ignore it. So self learning can help you reveal your weakness if you are honest enough and then studying with a teacher can aim to address those holes.

[ranjit]

There is a moment where you need to trust a teacher to take you in a direction you have never considered, even if that means going against techniques or theories you have developed yourself.  You need to give yourself permission to become vulnerable.  You don't have to stick with the idea if it does not work, but you should seriously consider trying it before dismissing it.  One of my teachers used to say "you don't have to do anything I tell you, but you need to do something," meaning, the commentary wasn't a directive to follow, but an encouragement to think of a solution, the commentary being a starting point. 

Thanks for the reply. I've been a bit busy over the last couple of days so my response got delayed.

I think you're right about needing to trust a teacher to take you in a direction you had never considered. Although it is very hard to figure out when to place trust in a teacher, because too many teachers expect a lot of trust out of the box even when it's undeserved. It's uncomfortable being in that kind of situation, because there is a tendency for the teacher to argue from authority, and at that point saying what you think could likely come across as disrespectful to the teacher, but at the same time you may not be convinced with their suggestions. In an ideal scenario, the solution is evident or makes sense once explained (although implementing it would take time). The grey area is when a solution is offered, but it is not that convincing and also doesn't provide immediate feedback. It is often accompanied with the teachers assurance that they can hear the improvement which the student themselves can't.

Why not continue learning on your own until you have saturated that aspect of your learning? If you find you have "significant" improvement every few months on your own there is no point in getting a teacher until you hit a dead end. If you constantly have that doubt whether it is the teachers efforts or your own which are improving you, you may not be ready for a teacher, ultimately it is more your own effort (since lessons time vs personal practice time should have a large difference) with the focus of your attention helped by the teacher. My higher advanced students don't use me so much to tell them how to practice etc but help them find direction and advise them where they should be focusing their attention and that in itself is valuable teaching for the more advanced. There are so many options and pathways it is often good to have an advisor who can go through the wilderness with you.

It is also not easy to admit ones weakness and where one simply "does not know they don't know" or "knows they don't know" but ignore it. So self learning can help you reveal your weakness if you are honest enough and then studying with a teacher can aim to address those holes.

Yes, that makes a lot of sense. I feel that teachers will not proceed ahead without being extremely sure that certain things are present in one's playing. However, I often feel pretty confident that I could fix them on my own within say a couple of weeks so I don't see the point of having a teacher just tell me to do those things. This leads to dissatisfaction on both ends. So I feel like I should just try and improve upon my playing until I feel like I've really hit a plateau, and probably search for a teacher after a few months.