Online teaching can most certainly work and was quite effective for me. However, you need to make sure that you are very, very observant -- as much as you can possibly muster.Get yourself an excellent teacher -- I would say it would basically be impossible to learn those pieces to a satisfactory level without one. I have similar ambitions and am improving quite a bit with a really good teacher. I would say it's imperative that you really find the best piano teacher possible if you really want to advance to playing those pieces -- someone, ideally who can play similar pieces at a performance standard themselves. You will realize that this will narrow down the number of qualified teachers quite dramatically, and you will be left with people like college professors, and at the very least, graduates from excellent universities with years or performing experience.I self-taught for several years and am not bad at playing the piano, but when you get ever-finer nuances which you need to perfect, which recordings sometimes don't even reproduce properly, you will be hard-pressed to recreate that on your own.My teacher says that I've achieved a high level of "imitation" based on listening to a lot of recordings. However, it sounds noticeably fake or approximated.However, all of this really only applies since I have high ambitions like yours. I have always told teachers that my hypothetical goal is to play Liszt etudes well, and they have taught accordingly, by trying to solidify my basics as much as possible, although each teacher has had their own approach.You need to be the complete package to get there, and actively try and improve any deficiencies you see. It is doubly hard as an adult, but still possible, or at least I hope so for my sake!Also, don't just follow your teacher. Think long and hard about what they have to say and try and come up with effective ways to develop the things you are trying to work on. For example, transcription and composition can help with understanding theory and ear training. Set yourself high standards and dream big, beyond what the teachers expect. The best students always imbibe things from teachers and challenge them when it is appropriate. A good teacher will not ask you to blindly imitate.ETA. Again, get a GOOD teacher if you're serious about attempting this. They should know about hand physiology, as since you are presumably an adult, you can't simply rely on imitation. They should blow you away every lesson with how much they are able to point out which can be improved, even in the simplest things. Don't settle, it just won't cut it if you really want to be able to play at a high level.
As for finding a good teacher I do have a teacher right now and he has recommended recently that I get a teacher who is more is more focused on piano since he is more of a jack of all trades and not a piano specialist. He has offered to recommend me someone but I'll be moving this summer so perhaps I'll wait until then to find a new teacher.
This sounds like a good plan. If you want to get to Gaspard de la Nuit a jack of all trades teacher that is not a specialist on piano simply wont do it unless you are a world class tier level of talent. (99.99% of us aren't). I would investigate the recommendation. Also keep in mind that while online lessons are useful, it won't be as efficient as in person lessons. Some technical concepts are most easily communicated through physical touch rather than with words which you obviously can't do online. THings you need to understand with your body moreso than with your mind.
I played piano for some 10+ years and never had heard of Gaspard de la Nuit or really knew who Ravel was, I had heard his Bolero but that was about all! Chopin and Liszt Etudes I became aware of around 6-7 years into my piano journey and started to dabble with in my teenage years a few years later when I finally accessed the sheet music and some more recordings. Beethoven Sonata's I knew very early on as a child since we had cassette tapes of them which I loved, this inspired me to learn his Sonata's when I was younger.
For a long time before the internet the piano world was full of mystery and discoveries to be made. Today you can listen to all the popular masterpieces in a matter of weeks, something that to me was revealed over many years. This to me seems like a problem, it's just so overwhelming for people who are developing at the piano. I felt overwhelmed as a teen seeing all these new works on the internet even though I had over a decade experience behind me and a teacher to support me.
I come across many self taught pianists who are just thinly spread all over the place and with plenty of holes in their development because they have so much listening experience and have developed a taste of music that is quite advanced. It is just so backwards I feel, there should be years of not even knowing about these master pieces while you study the piano and then when it is finally revealed to you it becomes a new chapter in your journey a new target.
When I was younger the piano students rarely overextended with works too difficult for themselves it just didn't happen, the choice was made always by the teacher and we followed. Nowadays students are expected to have some freedom of choice as to what they play and teachers should submit to it, we have the internet with access to so much music that we can craft different musical paths which are still highly effective to develop with. Self learners however easily have access to sheet music of pieces far too difficult for themselves and then go ahead and learn it.
but it is very expensive with your time wasted and sets people up for a world of estimated piano playing which is just such a tangled mess to unwind that it is almost always better to build from bottom up instead.
How would you get to know lesser known composers? I'm personally not so sure that it's healthy to only know about Beethoven, Chopin, etc., if I'm getting you correctly.
I definitely agree with the sentiment here. Of course, I would literally not be playing the piano if not for the internet, so I am deeply indebted to it. However, I think in general, that the deluge of information the internet provides overwhelms most people and often, paradoxically, makes them somewhat dumber. The amount of information seems so insurmountable that many people end up not spending enough time thinking about anything, and it leads to a shallow, uncertain understanding of most things.
Another problem is that it's unmoderated, and people who aren't good at critical thinking just don't know what to believe any more, which I believe leads to more delusional thinking.
I feel personally attacked
I see where you're coming from, but if you think of music as being a language, wouldn't it be best to have as much listening exposure as possible? You had classical music in your home growing up, which is certainly one way to go about it, but I think that making it a point to actively listen to a lot of music is important if you have had no prior exposure. For example, I did not have any exposure to classical music growing up, except the occasional Tom and Jerry cartoon. So there's no conceivable way in which I could make musical decisions while playing without getting some first-hand listening experience.
I think that the average student is much more likely to overextend themselves nowadays.
However, I think that the obsessed types overextended themselves in the past as well. Ted, for example, often recounts the time he taught himself the Fantaisie Impromptu before he met his first teacher, and this was about 60 years ago. Yes, this has happened to me. Now that I've got a really good teacher, I have realized what people were telling me about estimated playing. However, there are multiple obstacles. I wouldn't entrust my progress to 99% of the teachers out there, and it's very likely that my teachers would have been like that starting out, discouraging questions and stifling creativity -- and that would have put me off piano playing for a long time.
So I'm somewhat glad that I taught myself to the point where I could tell what I actually needed in a teacher, and to where I've gotten some confidence in my abilities.However, again, the way I've seen so many teachers teach online, on YouTube, on pianoworld and pianostreet, really scared me off. I was concerned that I would be made to blindly do exercises and recite things with no true understanding like I see so often.I have observed that the regular posters here, like yourself, are excellent teachers and pianists, but from what I've seen, the horror stories are considerably more common.
...I innately feel curious to check out how people can bring out different things with what appear to be the exact same notes -- however, that kind of curiosity is not shared by many.
It is because you can learn the language of music without copying what others do. Of course you need to start from easier situations rather than in the deep end of concert repertoire. If you can play easy music highly musical this also translates to skills used in playing more challenging music musically.
If you can play easier works with a high level of musically it translates to the capacity to play more difficult works musically. The only difference is the technique, number of notes, that does not necessarily make understanding the musicality in your minds eye any more difficult.
In my mind there is zero difference in the power of musical expression when more notes are added. If something is written well it can have minimal notes and express deep musical ideas, there are countless examples out there I don't need to even list them.
As a young musician I actually found it annoying to listen to real people play pieces I wanted to learn and much preferred to listen to midi recoridngs with very little expression. This allowed me to understand the notes of a piece (because my sight reading was quite poor back then) but be able to solve it musically myself as I imagined how the notes should be played.
I really feel it is a trap to listen to masterful human recordings and learn your musicality from them, it should be found first and foremost from your own playing and develop from there, copy pasting ideas of mastery is usually not a good idea. There are stages to ones own musical playing and merely approximating someone else neglects that imho.
I think this is usually only true for stylistically similar pieces. If you learn Chopin waltzes/nocturnes, you will not need to develop your musicality separately for his Ballades. However, I don't think it will transfer effortlessly to Mozart or Bach or Scriabin. There will be some overlap, but not that much imo. I did not find it obvious at all how to bring out musicality in Bach, but at the same time I find Chopin very intuitive. From what I've seen, the same holds true for pop/jazz music as well -- even though I haven't played them, I have heard enough to get a decent grasp of the musicality of those specific styles, and it's obvious to me when a classical player tries to play those pieces, without having absorbed the stylistic idiom.
And I think that listening is the only way to be able to absorb those influences and hear those musical ideas for yourself. It's not really something that you will come up with on your own.
...I think of music as being comprised of a number of different languages (even if they are related): if you know one, you can say more complicated statements in that language. However, that will not translate into being able to speak other languages well.
Music is somewhat different though because you can understand it and emotionally connect to it immediately without ever being exposed or told anything about the specific musical genre. The connection between music styles are very strong much more so than the difference in spoken language.
I don't really feel that knowledge and understanding improves the listening experience a huge amount perhaps you can elaborate how it does?
Topic: How to build up to difficult pieces? General Advice Appreciated 