I’m Robert Estrin, and today we have an intriguing question: Why can’t you buy a piano online? You might think it’s odd coming from me, given that Living Pianos was the world’s first online piano store, started in 2006. Howeve
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today we have an important topic: How to avoid destroying your piano. While we’ve discussed many things you should do for your piano, today we’ll focus on what to avoid. Some of these
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about playing by ear. Will playing by ear hurt your classical playing? There are many teachers who tell their students they must not play by ear because it will mess up the pr
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. A few weeks ago, I put out a video on the top 5 piano lesson fails. I thought it was only fair to do the other side of the equation. So today, I’m sharing the top 10 piano teacher fails! Incidentally, these aren’t just about piano teachers. Most of these apply to all teachers. So I think you’ll be very interested in this!
1. Your teacher doesn’t show you how to practice.
You go to your lesson. Your teacher makes corrections and they assign new material. When you get all done, they tell you to practice. You leave the lesson and go through those corrections. You have your new piece. But how do you practice? You realize you have no idea even how to approach the practicing! That’s because they didn’t show you how to practice. When you leave a lesson, you should know exactly what it is you have to do and how to do it. Just telling a student to practice isn’t enough.
2. Your teacher doesn’t show you how to memorize.
You learn a piece and you’ve played it for a long time. Finally, at the end of the lesson, your teacher says, “For next week, I want you to have this memorized.” You get home and you start from the beginning. You see if you know any of it. You remember just the first couple of bars. Your fingers kind of just go to the right keys because you’ve played it so many times. Then you wonder, “Well, now what do I do?” You can’t figure out how to memorize because your teacher didn’t show you how to memorize! They just expected you to know how to memorize.
This is really bad for a number of reasons. First of all, it makes you feel like something’s wrong with you! The teacher expects you to be able to memorize and you can’t do it. You feel like maybe you just aren’t smart enough to know how to memorize. Well, nobody can just instantly memorize! I guess there are some amazing geniuses out there who can just play music and it’s memorized immediately. Of course, if music is simple enough, maybe just sheer repetition will work. But if you have just one week to get something memorized, and you don’t have a method or a process, you’re in trouble. So, if your teacher tells you to memorize, ask them how to memorize. If you don’t get a clear, concise answer, then you might consider getting another teacher if memorization is important to you.
3. Your teacher gives you music that is too hard for you.
This is something that is so blatantly wrong and common! Teachers give music that’s too hard. Now, why would they do that? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First of all, you might be begging your teacher to give you a certain Chopin etude. So part of it can be inspired by the student asking to play something that is really not appropriate for their level. Another thing is that teachers often like to brag to other teachers and pianists. “I have students playing Liszt etudes and late Beethoven sonatas.”, or whatever it may be, because it makes them feel like they’re really good teachers. Or maybe they’re tired of the easy pieces they teach all the time. If a student asks for something that’s too hard, they just say, “Go ahead and do it.” They figure, at least they’ll be listening to something that they like. Occasionally, studying a piece far more advanced than you have played before, can help you reach new levels in your playing if you are willing to put in the hours of practice necessary to master it. But all too often, you can end up wasting valuable practice time on something you can’t end up playing on a decent level.
4. Your teacher talks over your head.
This is something true of almost all subjects. Some teachers will talk over your head. They’re talking as if you understand them, and you sort of do, but not quite. You don’t even know what question to ask. You feel like it would make you seem stupid if you ask a question after your teacher talks to you like you understand. This is particularly true with music theory. Maybe they expect you to understand some complex harmonic progression and they think, “Well, this is the C diminished, which obviously is going to be in the key of D flat.” And you go, “Mm-hmm”. Before you can even formulate the question, they’re going on to the next thing. “So this is the diatonic chord in this key. And you can see, well of course the key signature…” You’re nodding along hoping you will eventually catch on, but you never really understand anything they’re talking about! You sort of get it. And once again, you think there’s something wrong with you because you think you should understand what they’re talking about! They seem so brilliant. And if they think you understand it, you should. Well, sometimes teachers don’t appreciate the foundation you need in order to follow the whole chain of a conversation. You could be lost at the beginning and kind of nodding along, thinking, “Oh, I’ll get this eventually by the end of this talk.” But then before you know it, you’re onto the next topic, and you never even get to it. So this is a really big problem.
5. Your teacher never reviews what you’ve learned previously.
Your teacher introduces something new. Great! “Today, we’re going to do harmonic analysis.” So you spend a little bit of time with it. But that’s the last time it ever comes up. Next time they bring up something else, like how to play scales in contrary motion. They do it once, then you never hear about that again. You never quite got it. Before you know it, you’re going on to two, three, or four other things. There’s no follow through. So you end up with all these little tidbits of knowledge that go by the wayside. You never really understand any of them because your teacher is not consistent in the instruction.
6. Your teacher’s instructions are too vague.
Have you ever gotten some abstract instructions? You’re playing a piece and your teacher says, “Over here, make it sound like butterflies flying through the wind in the flowers.” You’re thinking, “Wow, that sounds great.” You’re just so impressed with the imagery. But you think, “What do I do to make it sound like butterflies?” You love the whole concept of it so much that you don’t want to ask about it. Abstract comments can sometimes give you some vague idea of what you’re after. But if it’s not followed through with specific instructions about how to achieve that sound, it can be meaningless. It might sound good, but you need more than that.
7. Your teacher makes you feel bad about yourself.
Now we’re getting to some of the heavy things. There are some really destructive things that teachers can do. A teacher might say something passive aggressive like, “That’s good if you think you like it that way.” They make you feel small. They’re saying things to you and making you feel terrible. Why is this so destructive? Well, first of all, it’s hurtful! Also, it might make you just give up on the whole idea of piano. If you’re constantly demeaned at lessons, then you lose the joy. What’s the point of studying piano if you can’t enjoy it, right?
8. Your teacher yells.
Teachers who yell, there’s really no excuse for this. It really is verbal abuse. “Why don’t you know your scales? You should know this by now!” Or, “You didn’t memorize this piece? I told you to memorize it!” Any kind of yelling, there’s no place for that in a piano lesson. There is one tiny exception. I notice that with online lessons, occasionally the technology doesn’t cooperate. A student is playing a sonata and I need to stop them. I’m going, “Hey! Hey!” Trying to get somebody’s attention online. But that’s a different story. I’m talking about yelling at a student because they’re doing something wrong. The teacher thinks they need to yell to make their point. No. That’s not an appropriate way to make a point. End of story.
9. Your teacher physically harms you.
I’ve heard so many stories about teachers who hit their students. Hitting is absolutely wrong in any circumstance during a lesson! There’s an old story, you’ve probably heard of teachers who used rulers to make students’ corrections. Every time there was a wrong finger, whack! The teacher thought, “If they know they’re going to get hit, they’re going to play with the right fingers.” Well, aside from the potential for damage, pain is not a good way of getting people to be open to concepts of instruction. Hitting is just absolutely wrong.
Early on in my teaching career, I had a student who hit me! It was a child, but a child who was old enough to know better. And Janine, if you’re listening now, I forgive you. She was actually joyful to work with and it really didn’t hurt. But it was kind of weird to be hit by a student! But hitting from a teacher, or a student for that matter, is absolutely inappropriate, obviously.
10. Your teacher doesn’t allow you to play through anything.
This can be so frustrating! You start your piano lesson and begin playing. You make a mistake early on and your teacher stops you. “That was wrong.” So then you try to continue, but you’re kind of put off by this. So you go on and make a mistake again, just because you’re not in your groove anymore. Before you know it, you’re so afraid of being stopped, that you’re not even concentrating on the music anymore! This is so counterproductive. A teacher has to let you play through your music so they know how to guide the lesson. That’s how they can see the points that need to be covered during the course of the lesson. They must listen through. Even if there are several things they think they absolutely must discuss with you, if they don’t hear everything, how do they know the priorities of the lesson? They don’t. Worse yet, it doesn’t give you an opportunity to show them the hard work you did during the course of the week. You want to show them your achievements and feel good about them before getting to work. So, if you have a teacher who doesn’t let you play through things during the course of a lesson, that’s not going to work. It’s not going to be a very useful or valuable lesson for you.
Those are the top 10 teacher fails!
I wonder if any of you have other teacher fails to share. Let me know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com or YouTube! Thanks so much for joining me. Thanks for subscribing, and telling people about Living Pianos. There are more piano videos coming your way on LivingPianos.com – Your Online Piano Resource!
For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. A few weeks ago, I put out a video on the top 5 piano lesson fails. I thought it was only fair to do the other side of the equation. So today, I’m sharing the top 10 piano teacher fails! Inc
Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Is piano hard for everyone? I know there are some of you out there who are frustrated. You find that you want to play well, and yet it seems so hard. Why is it so hard for you? You see other people play and it seems effortless. So is it really just hard for you? Or is it hard for everyone? I’ve got news for you. Piano is hard for everyone!
There are many different aspects of playing the piano.
Somebody who has very large hands can reach chords you could only dream about reaching. You think, “Oh, it must be great for them.” My father had enormous hands. He could reach some incredible chords in Rachmaninoff. But he had to work extra hard to be able to play delicately. For somebody with really massive hands, playing fast and light is a huge challenge. That’s just one example. Piano playing encompasses so many aspects of the brain, ears, emotions, and memory. For example, some people might have a great deal of emotion in their playing. But maybe it’s a tremendous challenge for them to keep straight where they are in a piece of music. Intellectually, the demands of being able to memorize music and keep track of where they are in an extended work could be really tough. The opposite could also be true.
When you see young kids playing really well, you might think it comes naturally to them. That’s not true.
Those kids practice a lot. I can guarantee it. Nobody comes out of the womb able to play the piano. Sometimes it seems that way. Sometimes it’s sold that way. For example, I went to the Manhattan School of Music. A lot of musicians in the orchestra would say, “I don’t need to take my music home.” They would pretend they didn’t even have to practice, they were just naturally that good. But that is bunk! They would get the parts somewhere else. They were probably actually practicing more than other people. But they wanted to give the illusion of effortlessness.
It takes hard work to be accomplished on the piano or any other instrument.
That is the honest truth. If you spend the time, you will develop. So don’t be discouraged if you find that piano is hard for you. It’s hard for everyone! The things that are hard for you might be easy for someone else, but the opposite is also true. You might think nothing of the fact that rhythms come pretty naturally to you. But somebody else might struggle with them. You have some things in your playing that are much harder for somebody else. So don’t fret. If you find something hard, just spend time with it. Anybody who’s really accomplished on the piano has spent a lot of hours with the instrument over a long period of time. That’s simply what it takes. I hope this is inspiring for you and not discouraging. I’d like to hear from you! Let me know, is piano easy for you? Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin
Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com
Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Is piano hard for everyone? I know there are some of you out there who are frustrated. You find that you want to play well, and yet it seems so hard. Why is it so hard for you? You see other peop
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today the subject is about talent versus musical intelligence. As a teacher, I get to see the vast range of both capabilities and weaknesses in students. Piano playing in particular encompasses so many different aspects of physiology and mental acuity. Because of that, you see drastically different levels of abilities in the various aspects of playing music. There’s rhythm, pitch, hand coordination, how well somebody can translate what they’re seeing on the page to the keyboard, long-term memory, short-term memory, etc. There are so many things involved. Now, some of them I would say represent sheer talent for the instrument. But a lot of it comes down to musical intelligence.
What is musical talent?
When I think of talent, I think of somebody who has a natural ability to evoke emotions in their music to create a unique musical statement on the highest level. That’s what talent is. There are so many gifted performers! So why should you listen to performer X when there are performers A through Z? What separates one accomplished performer from another one? To me, it comes down to talent. Somebody who really has a gift for expressing something unique and has something to say with their music that you haven’t heard before. But somebody might have that gift and not have a whole lot of musical intelligence. How does that manifest itself? I’ve seen pianists who are really gifted. They have fire in their playing, but they get lost in the performance. They can’t hold it together mentally. It’s very sad because while they have the raw talent for music, they might not have the intelligence to be able to really pull it off in performance consistently.
Now on the flip side, sometimes there are people who are unbelievably intelligent with music. They can learn music and play on a high level, but It’s really bland and ordinary. They play like everyone else. Interestingly, those people can be spoon fed interpretive ideas. You can actually work with a person who has musical intelligence. By working with them, you can impart the nuances of phrasing and structure. It’s unbelievable! These people can perform on such a high level that it’s hard to even make the distinction. Are they talented or not? You can’t tell. There are contest-winning performers who are nurtured with absolutely world-class pianists. They can reach a level of musicality and originality in their playing that maybe they don’t possess naturally.
There’s a certain amount that can be developed, but there’s a certain amount that’s just inborn.
You can always improve and raise the level of inventiveness and originality by working with students to get them to experiment and find their own true voice. But somebody who has that natural ability can reach heights that other people will never reach no matter how much training and practice they have. Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, there are people who enjoy listening to performances that are very straightforward and faithful to the score. Sometimes I hear a performance that’s so refined I could take a dictation and end up with the exact score that the composer wrote! There’s nothing wrong with that. There are all types of performances that are valid, from the super talented original thinkers who emote so much in their playing, to the ones who are articulate and accurate to a great extent. There’s room for all of this! We all have elements of both in our playing. There’s no absolutes in this world. So feel good about what you bring to the table with your capabilities, talent as well as musical intelligence.
Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin
Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today the subject is about talent versus musical intelligence. As a teacher, I get to see the vast range of both capabilities and weaknesses in students. Piano playing in particular encompasses so
