Is it good to have more then one teacher?

[slurred_beat]

I'm thinking if it's good to have more then one teacher? If I have one teacher they teach me many things, but if I have one more teacher they can teach me things that maybe the first teacher dont know about. Is it good to stick to just one teacher? Or should I have many? 

[ranjit]

It looks like you're a beginner. I'd suggest sticking with one teacher. You might think that you are missing out on what another teacher has to offer, but trying to do both at the same time will only confuse you. You can decide on which teacher seems to be more effective, but once you've selected a teacher, don't needlessly go around comparing what they are teaching with other teachers purely in terms of content. This is because a lot of the ways teachers teach beginners are more or less equivalent when you look at it from a more experienced perspective. The basics which need to be taught are fairly universal, although methods to teach them can vary.

I would suggest not worrying at all about whether or not a teacher doesn't know beginner material. Most of them, if they are good at all, will have 99% of the information you'll need to know. What you can consider, however, is whether or not their teaching style seems to be a good fit.

[j_tour]

Agree with ranjit completely.

If it were studying counterpoint and theory with one teacher, and hiring another for keyboard technique and repertoire, that can be a very fine thing, which I did as a younger student.

But, I think one's head would explode trying to subconsciously integrate two approaches to keyboard technique.  That sounds like a terrible idea.

Possibly if it were two very different genres, like jazz and legit music, but I don't think that's what you're talking about.

I say "hard no," that sounds confusing and takes away from the time you need to develop on your own between lessons.

Teachers teach, that can be true, but everyone teaches themselves first and foremost through effort, determination, concentration, and will.

If one dilutes the pool, it's no good.

[lostinidlewonder]

I have taught a small number of students who had two teachers, it is a very uncommon situation though. All the time they have used me as a sight reading teacher. I don't think it would be wise to have two teachers teaching you repertoire at the same time. The logical reason is that your teacher should attune to the pace you can manage and give you enough work to deal with each week. How can you manage the work load from two teachers?

In the old days it wasn't so uncommon for students to have daily piano lessons with their teacher, I think this is highly beneficial and would increase your rate of learning a great deal. So if you want 2 teachers it is probably a better idea to study with the same teacher more. You shouldn't be thinking what the teacher isn't teaching you if you have not completed all the work they have set for you and mastered it. If everything is too easy and you are completing all your work without challenge then you have good reason to question whether a different teacher is worth it, I would talk to your current teacher first and ask for the lessons to be more challenging.

[lelle]

I had two teachers for a time growing up, and though I enjoyed it I think it would have been better if I had just selected one of them, as they sometimes contradicted each other. The second teacher made up for some things I felt were missing in the first teacher, so I might have been better off just quitting lessons with the first one. Could there be any conceivable good reason to have more than one teacher?

[slurred_beat]

Allirght thank you all. I think I'll stay with one teacher than. I wish I could have lessons everyday like lostindlewonder says. Or maybe not, how did they have time to finish the homework in just one day? 

[lostinidlewonder]

Allirght thank you all. I think I'll stay with one teacher than. I wish I could have lessons everyday like lostindlewonder says. Or maybe not, how did they have time to finish the homework in just one day? 

I guess the targets every day would have been much smaller getting through work wouldn't be too difficult. Most back in the old days would have at least more than once a week lesson which seems quite the norm today. I can see the great benefit for having many more lessons during the early stages of development but later on it might seem excessive especially when you confidently can work on your own.

[timothy42b]

Allirght thank you all. I think I'll stay with one teacher than. I wish I could have lessons everyday like lostindlewonder says. Or maybe not, how did they have time to finish the homework in just one day? 

If you practice 30 minutes a day for 6 days, that's three hours per lesson.

Or if your lesson were every day, you'd put in 3 hours a day.  That's certainly doable.

Until you became injured of course. 

[lelle]

I don't really think they got injured. With expert teaching and a natural, tension technique carefully honed from the beginning they would have been safe practising 3 hours. I know from a book written by a Liszt pupil who went to his masterclasses there is an anedote of one of the pupils having practised 10 hours a day for years.

[timothy42b]

I know from a book written by a Liszt pupil who went to his masterclasses there is an anedote of one of the pupils having practised 10 hours a day for years.

Liszt was famous for putting in 8 - 14 hours a day. 

Most of us ordinary mortals would risk injury playing 10 hours once.  But really there's no practical reason to do that, and a lot of reasons not to.  After your concentration fades you're not practicing piano, you're practicing sitting.  I don't know where your concentration fades, but mine doesn't last 10 hours; in fact it's considerably short of 3 hours. 

[dogperson]

If you practice 30 minutes a day for 6 days, that's three hours per lesson.

Or if your lesson were every day, you'd put in 3 hours a day.  That's certainly doable.

Until you became injured of course.

I attend adult piano camp: 1 hr daily lesson,  practice during free time, solo performances every evening —- not only have I not been injured, I have never had pain.  It is very possible to practice/play 3+ hrs per day without injury.  I am not unique— I am just conscious of tension and not repeating the same pattern for an extended time. 

[lelle]

Liszt was famous for putting in 8 - 14 hours a day. 

Most of us ordinary mortals would risk injury playing 10 hours once.  But really there's no practical reason to do that, and a lot of reasons not to.  After your concentration fades you're not practicing piano, you're practicing sitting.  I don't know where your concentration fades, but mine doesn't last 10 hours; in fact it's considerably short of 3 hours.

I guess if you really love playing the piano a lot and it omes easily to you concentration is not an issue. When I was a teenager I could easily play computer games 10 hours a day, so I can easily see how somebody who finds piano to be fun and addicting in the same way could put in that kind of time!

[timothy42b]

I guess if you really love playing the piano a lot and it omes easily to you concentration is not an issue. When I was a teenager I could easily play computer games 10 hours a day, so I can easily see how somebody who finds piano to be fun and addicting in the same way could put in that kind of time!

Yes, I agree.  I've long thought computer games are a model for motivating people to spend long hours at an activity, enjoying rather than dreading it, and they certainly do develop a high degree of skill.

(I think my hours spent at computer games were motivated more by avoiding doing something i should have rather than the game itself!  but that's a few decades back)   

That said, I don't think it is the most efficient method of developing skill.  It is many hours of fairly low effort, as opposed to few hours of focused efficient practice.  It also requires failing most of the time - apparently games are designed to a standard of failing a level 20 times before passing. 

Possibly we need both. 

[ranjit]

I guess if you really love playing the piano a lot and it comes easily to you concentration is not an issue. When I was a teenager I could easily play computer games 10 hours a day, so I can easily see how somebody who finds piano to be fun and addicting in the same way could put in that kind of time!

That's pretty much exactly what happened with me (with the piano)! I used to play video games although not a lot, but when it comes to piano the added advantage was that the things you conquer are meaningful and affect long-term progress, plus you get a skill to show for it -- which made me inherently really motivated to learn it. This is why I disagree when people think prodigies are "forced". Maybe a minority are, but for many of them, the area in which they are precocious is just fun, it's a game. I know because, although I was no prodigy, math was the same for me when I was a young kid, and I was able to multiply numbers in my head and so on by figuring out a lot of tricks myself. It was a game for me, with no external motivating factor. Apparently my parents were asked if I was sent to "abacus class" or whatever, because I was outperforming those kids on mental calculations. No, I just thought about it so much that I had come up with many of those arithmetic tricks on my own, and sometimes mine were better!

[ranjit]

That said, I don't think it is the most efficient method of developing skill.  It is many hours of fairly low effort, as opposed to few hours of focused efficient practice.

Another analogy which can be made with (certain kinds) of video games is that there is often nothing that prevents you from attempting a hard level, so you play both easy and hard levels, and ultimately settle for something which is challenging for you but not frustratingly difficult. At the same time, sometimes attempting something overly difficult can be good for improving your skill level and motivation.

You also have a fair point, that playing a video game is about passing a level once, but in the case of the piano, you want to get it to a point where you are consistently "passing". However, I think the process is very similar in that once you are able to pass the more difficult levels, lower levels become trivially easy.

The motor coordination required becomes second nature over time, and you gradually internalize strategies and figure out techniques -- that is quite similar to playing the piano. There is an anecdote I had heard a while ago. Someone needed to operate a forklift (or maybe a crane). He observed that while a "normal" person was struggling quite a bit to operate the joystick, most people who used to game would be able to pick up similar things (movement controls) within a few minutes. I don't know if that ability generalizes to better coordination -- if it does, that would be a pretty cool statistic.

It also requires failing most of the time - apparently games are designed to a standard of failing a level 20 times before passing.

This is interesting to know.

[lostinidlewonder]

I guess if you really love playing the piano a lot and it omes easily to you concentration is not an issue. When I was a teenager I could easily play computer games 10 hours a day, so I can easily see how somebody who finds piano to be fun and addicting in the same way could put in that kind of time!

I've thought about the computer game analogy especially whenever I see students of mine playing computer games but haven't completed their piano work! If when playing the computer game they were constantly learning new ideas and being at the bottom of the learning curve I feel that they wouldn't play as much. It is the fact that you can tune out and simply do something you know well and without hinderance that encourages them to do it for hours and hours. Doing something well is fun for most people.