I believe they are called “blanket statements”.  

Taking piano lessons is good for you / your child / your IQ / etc. 

You’ve heard it, perhaps tried to heed that advice.  Maybe it worked, maybe it didn’t.

While there is some research on the topic, the problem is that ”Piano lessons are good for you” is as accurate as “Eating food will make you fat”.   Everyone knows that, yes indeed, some food will make you fat, but it also depends on how much of which food we are talking about.   People don’t seem to be that descerning when it comes to piano lessons.   Piano lessons are good for you, right?

Wrong.

Remember the adage, “Practice doesn’t make perfect; practice makes permanent”? I’d like to add, “Perfect practice makes perfect.”

Good piano lessons are good for you.

Some 35 years ago, after my first piano teacher with whom I had studied for only a year or two got married and moved away, we were faced with the challenge of finding a new teacher.  Our piano tuner, a gentle and quiet man, recommended his mother.  I don’t know what her qualifications were, and it doesn’t really matter.  What matters is that this woman taught piano lessons on a tall and dark upright piano in a dark corner of her dark living room; piano lessons that for a while destroyed my love for the piano. 

While my first teacher, a young and enthusiastic woman, was good (which I didn’t realize until much much later when I read through some of the assignments she had written), I didn’t really learn how to practice.  I was kind of lucky – or perhaps not, depending on how you look at it -, because I had some talent, and excellent ears, and faked my way through the note-reading exercises.  My new teacher would get upset about my lack of sight-reading skills, urging me during our dreaded four-hand sight-reading sessions sternly, “Keep going!!!” – which is exactly what someone with no sight-reading skills can not do. 

Sight-reading was not the only thing I wasn’t good at.  I had no clue what it meant to practice. If I did sit down at the piano between lessons, I’d play through a couple of songs, usually not the ones I was assigned because those were “hard” and I didn’t know them, I didn’t know what they were supposed to sound like, and I didn’t know how to practice and I didn’t like them anyway.  I had no sense of rhythm, I couldn’t count.  My teacher managed to identify my weaknesses but that’s where she stopped; she was unable to help me overcome them.  All in a tense, rigid, dark atmosphere. What I learned from her was that I wasn’t good enough.  I hated lessons, and I still hadn’t learned how to practice, nor how to read, nor count.

After a while, I don’t remember how long I took lessons, my mother who by nature and nurture does not quit (“You started it, now you stick with it!”) said, “You know, if you want to stop lessons with her, that would be ok.”  She also made sure that, after a break (one year?), I auditioned with a new teacher who then became not only my new piano teacher, but also mentor, guide, coach, and solid rock in my tumultuous teenage years.  I was lucky.

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Perhaps because I love music and the piano in particular, and I love learning and studying and teaching, I think that we do not need any outside reason to study music.  If studying the piano does help with math, languages, etc., then all the better, but that shouldn’t be the main reason to take piano lessons.  

Another aspect:

Neurologist Oliver Sacks (author of case-history collections such as Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), during an interview about his new book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, had the following answer to one of the interviewer’s questions:

From the perspective of neurological development, is it important to give music lessons to your kids?

Sacks: One can become a creative and good human being without music lessons. But it does look as if fairly intensive musical training can promote the development of various parts of the brain, which may facilitate other non-musical cognitive powers.

Please note the first part of his answer.  Also note the fact that he says, “musical training can promote” and “may facilitate”.   A much more realistic answer, and therefore more honest, than the blanket “piano lessons are good for you.”

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The following is from an article in the K-State News Insider (online).

By playing the video game Rock Band for an hour, K-State students were able to help a pair of psychology professors with their research to understand how people can achieve flow while at work or while performing skilled tasks.

Clive Fullagar, a professor, and Patrick Knight, an associate professor, found that — like Goldilocks — most people achieve flow with work that is neither too easy nor too hard but just right.

“For those students who have a moderate level of skill at Rock Band, the song has to be moderately challenging and match his or her skill level for optimal enjoyment to occur,” Fullagar said. “That has broad implications for teaching. It means that if we want students to enjoy or get a lot of satisfaction out of classes, we need to assign them challenging tasks but make sure that they have the skills necessary to meet the challenges of those tasks.”  [Emphasis added]

The researchers wanted to see how people achieve flow — a state of mind that occurs when people become totally immersed in what they are doing and lose all sense of time. It’s an intrinsically motivating state, which means that people are engaged in the task for the pure enjoyment of performing the task and not for some extrinsic reward.

Posted in Research

This is “RESEARCH”??   News-worthy research??  Please show me one teacher for whom the above is news. 

The difficult part for every teacher is of course to find “challenging tasks” while making sure that the student has “the skills necessary to meet the challenges” - and that’s where even the most experienced teachers once in a while fail.  Perhaps not because they weren’t paying attention but because students have a habit of learning not in a straight line but in phases:  it is perfectly possible for a student to struggle with a concept for quite a while, and then suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, they get it.  Sudden change of skill level.

Or, your beginning piano student suddenly doesn’t even remember where Middle C is because “we got a new puppy!!” …  Sudden, if temporary, change of skill level.  

But, please, do we really need “research” to prove what every teacher already knows and aims to incorporate in his/her teaching??

The Art of Teaching is different from, say, the art of painting, or the art of playing an instrument, different from the art of tuning a piano, or the art of making a beautiful home.

If you mess up your painting, you’ve got a messed up painting. If you mess up on your instrument, you messed up a piece of music. If you don’t do a good job tuning that piano, then you’ve got a messed up piano which is annoying and can be expensive to fix.

When you mess up in your teaching, you are messing with a human being.

So, why is it that people who know how to play their instrument but have NO training in regard to teaching are let loose on pupils?

Recently, I had the opportunity to observe some poor and inexperienced teaching. One of the two teachers had a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching, in addition to a frenetic and somewhat chaotic personality (and teaching style). While this teacher was without a doubt very experienced, the lesson itself was not a very promising sign of things to come: it was crammed full with irrelevant information (way too much theory that would not be applicable/useful for several weeks), redundant information (without checking with the student what he already knew, this teacher “taught” concepts with which the student was thoroughly familiar already), and way too little actual instruction on the instrument. The student was not given sufficient time to try out the new concept and then make sure that it was sufficiently understood to be taken home and practiced for a week.

The other teacher had a much more pleasant personality and some day will probably be a good teacher. At the moment, however, this one has neither the experience nor the training to teach a beginning student. After grousing about how inexperienced this teacher was, I came to the realization that it was not inexperience but the obvious lack of pedagogical training which made the lesson unsuccessful.

We all start out “inexperienced”. None of us are born with experience. There’s a first time for everything. There’s a first time a physician performs an exam or a surgery. There’s the race car driver’s first race.

What sets these people apart is the fact that before their first “real” thing they did spend time, usually a very long time, observing their masters, and then learning to practice their craft, usually under the guidance of their masters.

For some reason, people think that as long as you can play an instrument, you can teach. I actually once overheard the wife of the head of a music department at a university tell one of the professors something to the effect of “I don’t understand what there is to learn about teaching: you gotta love kids and you gotta love what you do.” There. She said it. What more could there possibly be to it?

There are, of course, “natural” teachers, just like there are “natural” psychologists, people who have an instinctive, intuitive, “feel” for people. But think of the training a psychologist has to undergo before she is allowed to practice her craft!

My wish list for pedagogical training of any future teacher of musical instruments includes:

•mandatory lesson observations of different masters in their field, more than just once or twice please;

•study the art of teaching their particular instrument: while there is some flexibility, there is usually a certain order in which things need to be learned (master addition before you attempt multiplication) or else you end up with an unreliable foundation;

•study the teaching literature for their instrument: just because you grew up with a certain method doesn’t mean it’s the best;

•teach many, many lessons under the supervision of your teacher/master. In the beginning, this should take the form of observing your teacher’s lesson (of another student) and taking over for 5 minutes to teach a certain concept. Over time, you grow into teaching an entire lesson, more time and you’ll be creating your own lesson plans.

In short, some form of apprenticeship.  Think about a physician’s first surgery. Regardless of how simple the surgery, the physician has most likely observed this surgery many, many times, then, with more training (reading about it, studying all aspects of it, passing tests to prove she understands all aspects of it), assisted in this surgery before she ever gets to touch a patient without supervision.

Of course, you say, well, with surgery – you have to be that careful.

But why should a student’s learning process be different from surgery? As a teacher who gets transfer students, I see all the time the damage a teacher with insufficient training can do to a student who doesn’t know any better. (Of course if they knew better, they wouldn’t need a teacher …)

I dream of a world in which we hold (the training of) teachers of musical instruments to the same standards as physicians, psychologists, and other professionals in charge of human development and health.

Many years ago, Chuck Gardner, my favorite Methodist minister, managed to weave some secular history into one of his sermons.  While I don’t remember the sermon itself, nor the context, the piece of history stayed with me.

According to Chuck, in the un-enlightened Middle Ages, parents didn’t really feed their children until they were about 5 years old.  The little ones got table scraps, the left-overs no one else wanted, they searched under the table (if there was one) for stuff that might have fallen down, much like some people’s dogs nowadays.    Appalling, isn’t it.  I remember him saying with a chuckle, “The SRS would have had a field day …” (SRS being the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services.)

How could parents be so – mean? so uneducated?  Didn’t they know that children need good food in order to grow into healthy adults?  Of course they didn’t know that.  To them, a young child was a burden, something that wasn’t useful until old enough to help in the field, the kitchen, etc.  Something that more often than not might die before being old enough to be useful.  So, according to their thinking, why would you waste precious food on something you weren’t sure would live to be of use?

To our thinking, this is as irrational as it gets:  not feeding a young child good food because he/she might die …  One can only imagine the number of children who died - because they were malnourished!  And the number of children whose bodies, due to lack of nutritious and plentiful food, were too weak to fight off diseases or stand cold weather or recover from accidents.  Which, I suppose, only served to reinforce their parents’ attitude, “See, Mother, I told you he was too weak to make it!  Glad we didn’t waste good food on him.”

One could argue that only the strongest survived.  But even those strongest, I would like to argue, would have been even stronger had they been given a good start by being fed nutritious meals.  

We still have a bit of this attitude today when we claim “that which doesn’t kill you makes you strong”.  I beg to differ.  Take my mother who grew up during WWII.  While she was lucky enough to be evacuated, along with her younger sister and her mother, to a small village north of Frankfurt, south of a big forest which obstructed the view of the village to incoming (from the North) British bombers, thus in no immediate danger, the food that was available to them was inferior.  This inferior food didn’t kill her, but it didn’t exactly make her strong either.  There are many causes for brittle bones, but I blame hers on the lack of good food during a time when her body would have needed it to build strong bones and muscles.

Of course, good food and generally good care do not guarantee that a child grows up to be a healthy adult.  There are diseases, accidents.  Nor does a lack of good food necessarily mean that a child’s health is forever doomed.  There are no guarantees.  But we know that our chances of living a healthy life improve greatly if we set a good tone from the beginning.

And yet, when it comes to piano lessons, so many parents descend right back into the Middle Ages; it’s frightening.  They don’t want to invest in a good instrument or a good teacher because they are not sure that their child will stick with lessons.  Their argument:  let’s wait and see if the child is “interested” or “shows promise”.  How is this different from those parents a couple hundred years ago who waited until their children showed that they were strong enough to survive before they were fed the good stuff?  Yes, again, the strongest will probably survive.  But even those strongest would be stronger if they had had a good foundation via a good instrument and/or teacher. 

And what about those who are perhaps slow to show interest or whose talent lies dormant for a while – even with a good instrument and teacher?  What about those who need a bit of extra tender loving coddling care to bring out their talents?  They will certainly be turned off by an inferior instrument, perhaps being told that they lack talent. 

Eight years ago, Mark’s niece was born with cancer.  One particularly observant radiologist noticed in one of the pre-natal ultrasounds an irregularity with one of her kidneys.  She was diagnosed with neuroblastoma and underwent life-saving surgery at the tender age of 6 months.  The surgery was successful and for now, she is doing fine.

I have had several students over the years who initially showed no apparent promise and then suddenly burst into bloom.  I have also had students who showed “promise” initially but then lacked the desire to build on it.

I would propose that all children deserve good food, caring parents, good instruments and good teachers. 

From the beginning.

In the February 2009 issue of American Music Teacher (AMT), published by the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) of which I am a member, there is under “Impromptu” a short informational (infomercial?) entry for “Simplified Music Notation”.  As a teacher of all ages and all levels with a special interest in brain research and Special Education, I am naturally interested in anything that can make a student’s life (or mine) easier, less complicated.  The idea of a “Simplified Music Notation” seemed to fit that bill, so I looked at the website.

I have, in another post on this site, written about the issue of simplification, and the fact that there’s a right way and then there is a wrong way to simplify.  The right way maintains the spirit of the music but makes life easier for the performer - such as redistributing notes between the hands, or leaving out doubled notes in chords that are too large for a small hand.  When simplification is done right, you don’t hear a difference; as a matter of fact, it likely sounds better than the original because the performer is now technically able to play with expression whereas the original would either have been impossible to play or so strained that expression was a lost cause.

As someone who didn’t learn to sight-play (which is often called “sight-read”) until grad school, I had missed out on a lot of literature, growing up, because it was too time-consuming to learn to read the many notes – unless I knew how the piece sounded in which case I easily played by ear, using the score as a last resort to check on notes I wasn’t sure about.  Learning a piece I didn’t know was piece-meal work:  I’d laboriously figure out the notes in one measure, play it a couple of times until I had it memorized (another skill that comes easy to me), then go on to the next measure, and from there string the measures together.  Amazingly, this worked for Chopin Ballades, Scherzi, Etudes, Schubert Sonatas and the like.   It did, however, not work for Hindemith.  I had somehow managed to never play Hindemith before, so my grad school professor assigned the Second Piano Sonata.  Progress was glacial at best.  Dr. Edwards grew frustrated and finally, suspecting that my reading skills (or, better, lack thereof) were to blame, put an easy Schumann piece (Melody? or something like that from the Album for the Young) in front of me, “Play!!”  It was a disaster.  

As someone who suffered the consequences of not learning to sight-play until grad school, I now take great care to teach my students how to read and sight-play.  There is more to sight-playing than knowing your notes: sight-playing requires horizontal thinking and understanding, anticipation, and the development of  a secure knowledge of the keyboard topography – your fingers have to know where the keys are without looking down.   You also have to be able to “think” in different keys, so that there is an immediate knowledge of what to expect from, say, Beethoven’s Bagatelle in G minor – there’ll be B flats and E flats (from the key signature), and accidental F sharps, etc.  This is a skill that comes easiest to those who tend to play by ear but it is a skill I aim to develop in all of my students.

While my approach to teaching how to read works, I am always interested in learning more and perhaps finding a system which works even better.

According to their website,

Simplified Music Notation is a new notation designed to make sight-reading easier. It was originally created for musicians with dyslexia, memory impairments and other disabilities, but has gained interest from a broad range of professional and amateur musicians.

Sharps and flats are given by the shape of the notehead. This eliminates the necessity of relying on the key signature and dispenses with the need for accidentals.

The key signature is still there, along with all the information in the original score, but many of the unnecessary complexities of reading music have been removed.

“Simplified Music Notation”  promises

You no longer have to remember

    — the key signature
    — accidentals throughout the bar
    — cancelling accidentals at the end of the bar
    — transposing double flats and sharps

Wow.  What a relief! 

Or is it?

Unfortunately, this system is based on a couple of incorrect assumptions.  According to this system, reading difficulties stem from key signatures, accidentals, and double flats and sharps.  (I don’t know what they mean by “transposing double flats and sharps”.)

If that were so, then my attempt at reading that easy Schumann piece should have been a piece of cake:  I distinctly remember that it was in the key of C (key signature: no sharps, no flats); there may have been one lonely F sharp toward the end of the first line.  If they were to take that piece and transcribe and convert it to Simplified Music Notation, it would not look any different, except for that F sharp which would alter the shape of the note head instead of having a # in front of it – hardly a simplification.  

Next, it has been my experience that the difficulties that dyslexic students have with reading words/sentences, are different from the difficulties of note reading.  I have had dyslexic students who read music with relative ease, and I have had (way too many, usually transfer) students who had no trouble at all with reading language but couldn’t read music to save their lives. 

Then, they claim to eliminate “the necessity of relying on the key signature”.  While it is true that I tell my students that if a note sounds wrong, “check the key signature, then the clef (Right Hand is not always in the treble clef, etc.), then accidentals” – thereby acknowledging that remembering the key signature may take some effort – I also explain to them that the key signature is like their zip code:  it gives you a map, it tells you where to find what, it puts things into perspective, into a relationship.  If you are used to (skilled at) thinking in different keys, then playing a piece in A flat will pose no problems that could be traced to having to “rely” on the key signature.  On the contrary, having the key signature, thinking in the key, will help you read because you are familiar with the map, you know what to expect.  – If reading in A flat is a problem for you, then perhaps you are not ready to read a piece in A flat.  Simplifying the notation only covers up that problem. 

I suppose, the worst here is the issue of double sharps and flats, as well as “white key” sharps and flats such as E sharp.  They “simplify” the notation and write the note of the white key.  While it is important for students to learn that E sharp is a white key, it is equally important that they learn that E sharp and F are not the same!  Yes, they are played on the same key, but they are not the same note.  Just like B flat and A sharp are not the same.  I like to do an experiment with a beginning student who has just figured out, by ear, an F major five-finger pattern (black key – yay!) by asking what the notes were.  Many students will call that black key “A sharp” but it takes just a moment for me to explain the concept of the five-finger scale and they understand that it has to be called B flat because we are replacing the B.  What is altered when you use enharmonic notes is the shape of the melody, and, importantly: the visual image (and cue).   Imagine an F sharp minor scale:  harmonic minor will have an E sharp in the scale.  Simplified Notation will write the scale as F#-G#-A-B-C#-D-F-F#.  That is not a scale!  It doesn’t look like a scale, it violates the visual image we have of a scale.  

Or take a highly patterened piece such as Robert Vandall’s Prelude in G major:  The left hand pattern always starts with a half step down, then up again to the first note, then down an octave: G-F#-G-(low)G for instance.  Visually, it is instantly recognizable: one down, one up, octave down.  The pattern has implications for the fingering:  1-2-1-5, with the second finger always a half step below the first – meaning: very next key.  Learning, or sight-playing this piece, we put the visual cue and the fingering together.  In most measures, this pattern is followed by a repetition of the first three notes, creating:  G-F#-G-(low)G-G-F#-G, etc. (Did you notice the palindrome?)  Because we have looked at this and analyzed it,  we now know that we don’t need to “read” the last three notes – because we know that they are the same as the first three.  Actually, we don’t need to read any notes beyond the first because of the pattern!  So, there goes the issue of having to remember accidentals lasting through the end of the measure.   On the second page, there are two measures with (the same) double sharp: G#-Fx-G#.  Visually, we instantly recognize this as “the same” as before = same fingering, etc.  With Simplified Notation, this would look totally different:  G#-G-G# - we would have to think about it to recognize that it is actually the same pattern.  Destroyed is the consistency, the visual cue.  Yes, I am sure students can learn to play this piece with Simplified Notation, but they will have missed out on really understanding this piece.  And I don’t see how the Simplified Notation would have helped with memory.  Understanding patterns (visual, fingering, aural, and more) goes such a long way toward memorizing; I’ve been known to say to my (new) students, when they ask whether they “have to” memorize a piece, “If you really use your brain learning this piece, you cannot help but memorize along the way!”  (We know there’s more to memory than this, but it’s a fantastic and reliable start!)

The “unnecessary complexities of reading music” do not come from the key signature, accidentals, and double sharps and flats.  Music notation, the way it is, is a marvelous system that makes sense.  It has clear-cut rules that are mathematical in nature, they have to do with ratio, absolute distance,  etc. – unlike other musical signs, such as signs that indicate touch, tempo or dynamics:  there are (and should be!) infinite variations of staccato for instance.

Whenever I hear the cry for stricter rules here in town for – take your pick: non-smoking, vicious dogs, speed limits, I think: we do not need stricter rules, we need to enforce the rules we have!  The rules are there, but they need to be obeyed and enforced.

So, for music notation, what we need is not a new system with new rules, we simply need to adhere to the rules we have!  The rules say, for instance, that the barline cancels the accidental(s) of the previous measure.  But what do we have in the next measure?  A gratuitous, “friendly-reminder” natural/sharp/flat.  THAT is what clutters the score!  THAT is what makes reading unnecessarily difficult because it demands our attention, and then the decision that we can ignore the symbol – what a waste of brain power!  I can’t tell you how many times a confused student has asked, “Why is there a natural here in this measure?  I thought the barline cancels the accidental??”  What can I say to the student, other than, “Well, you are right, it is unnecessary and I so wish they didn’t do that but I guess they assume that you are either dumb or not paying attention …” 

When I shared with Mark who has a black belt in Karate my misgivings about this kind of simplification, he immediately had this story:

I told you about sparring with the Tae Kwon Do people.

I was paired with a woman who was perhaps 5 or 6 inches shorter than me. She had beautiful kicks and tremendous flexibility. Her spinning back kick was consistently higher than my head. Her form during the kick and after was atrocious. 

During the kick she was not looking at the target. At best her line of sight was 90º to the side, and at worst she was looking 180º in the wrong direction. Imagine throwing a pitch with a baseball. You look at the catcher’s mitt, you look at the target. You don’t throw the ball with your eyes closed and hope that it heads in the right direction. Without looking at the target you have no control over the kick or pitch.

After throwing the kick she ended up facing away from me. Her back was completely exposed. In the karate-do world I came from the back was a legitimate target. Exposing your back to your opponent was called  mubobi or a defenseless posture. In point sparring you were giving your opponent a free point, on the street you were giving your attacker your life.

While her form was beautiful it was completely incorrect. She had no visual control over where the kick was going, she consistently missed the target, and she finished the kick facing the wrong way. I never had to duck or block her kicks, and I always had a free shot to her back or the back of her head after she completed her spin.

She was offended when I pointed this out, and indignant when I started tapping the back of her head with my fist each time. “That’s not a target!” she would say. Maybe in Tae Kwon Do it isn’t a target, but in the real world it is a target.

Her instructors had done her a huge disservice; they had allowed her to advance through their rank system with the belief that what she was doing was an effective martial arts technique when in fact it was anything but. Her form was beautiful, her style was flawless, but what she was doing wasn’t self defense or martial arts.

Not exactly new (I read an article about this subject many years ago and subsequently shared it with piano parents), but definitely worth repeating:

Psychology of Parenting: Why Praising Your Kids Can Hurt Them

Po Bronson Debunks Conventional Parenting Wisdom that All Praise Is Good for Kids
By CYNTHIA MCFADDEN and DEBORAH APTON
ABC News (online) Sept. 3, 2009—

For writer and father Po Bronson, yelling praise from the sidelines of a soccer game to his child has always been part of his parental territory. And what parent hasn’t done the same, showering gushing platitudes like “You played great” or “You’re so smart” at their children at every twist and turn?

But praising your kids, Bronson says now, is what can ruin them. In his latest book, “NurtureShock,” written with Ashley Merryman, the science journalist explores some misconceptions about raising children and how certain modern parenting strategies, such as excessively praising children, can do more harm than good. 

[...]  “Kids become fixated on maintaining the image of being smart, of never getting anything wrong in front of people, of always looking like they’ve gotten everything right, of making it look effortless,” said Bronson. “Because if you show effort, it’s a sign you can’t cut it on your natural gifts. And so they make safe choices. They choose classes that won’t challenge them. They choose teachers and projects where they know they can get an A.”

Bronson said he’s trying to reform and all parents should too — for their the sake of their children.

[...]  “The difference is a child who is truly motivated and interested in learning, versus a child who wants to memorize so they can get a good grade so they can keep hearing how smart they are,” Bronson explained.

A decade of groundbreaking research suggests that constant praise can lead kids to lose self-confidence, not gain it, and make them actually perform worse, not better.

Bronson relies heavily on the research of Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University.  [...] Over the past decade, Dweck has conducted a series of experiments on 400 fifth-graders from different socio-economic groups across the country. The research provided the basis for one chapter of Bronson’s new book and points to a stunning result: Not all praise is created equal. Telling children they’re smart can actually hurt them, and you get a far better result if you praise children for challenging themselves, and for effort.

“Nightline” asked Dweck and one of her graduate students to show us how it works.

Mary, 9, and Jameson, 10, were given a series of IQ puzzles and asked to work on them silently. At the end, the researcher gave each child a score. The research assistant praised Mary for being smart, while Jameson was praised for working hard.

After reviewing Mary’s answers, the research assistant lauded her: “Wow, you did really well at these problems. You got 8 — that’s a great score. You must be really smart at these problems.”  If Dweck’s theory holds, Mary will want to continue to look smart, and when given the choice, will opt for a test that shows it — not something more challenging where they she could learn more.

In the next phase, when Mary was asked by the research assistant what kind of problems she would like to work on next, “problems that are pretty easy so you’ll do well, problems that you’re pretty good at so you can show that you’re smart, or problems that you’ll learn a lot from even if you don’t look so smart,” Mary chose problems to show that she’s smart.

“Problems that I’m pretty good at — so I can show I’m smart,” Mary told the researcher. “I am smart.”

Consider the difference with Jameson, who was praised for how hard he’d worked — not for being smart.  “Well, you did really well on these problems. You got 8 — that’s a really high score! You must have worked really hard on these problems,” the researcher said. Jameson agreed.

Dweck’s research suggests that Jameson — armed with praise for his hard work — will want to challenge himself — even though he got some problems wrong.  Following course, Jameson opted for “problems I’ll learn a lot from even if I don’t look so smart.”

Bingo. But Dweck took the experiment one step further. Both kids were immediately given another test — one that was much more difficult than the first and way beyond their grade.

While Mary actually performed extremely well, the researcher was discouraging, and asked her why she seemed to have more trouble with the second set of problems. A deflated Mary said that she wasn’t smart enough.  “There are other people in my class that are smarter than me. … I’m not really that smart because of that, because I’m not used to them [the problems],” she said. “I worked hard as I can, so I think I’m not smart enough. But I do think I’m really, really smart but not ready for the other problems. But I want to do them when I get home.”

Jameson, who got only three answers right to Mary’s six on the very difficult second test, remained undaunted, moving onto a third test and nailing it — getting nine problems right.

But Mary seemed to crumble, getting only three right on the third test. And remember, she’d actually done twice as well as Jameson on the difficult second test. The point, Dweck said, is that praising children’s intelligence makes them less resilient when they hit a bump in the road and less willing to challenge themselves.

“After they’re praised for their effort, they enjoy being challenged,” Dweck explained. “What we value here is the practice, the effort, the trying of many strategies, and then they can feel satisfied as long as they’ve been engaged in that way. But if you say we value how smart you are, how enjoyable can it be if you’re not shining?”

Bronson said the sense of failure, induced by Dwek’s experiment, made Mary perform worse than she could have. In turn, Jameson, who was praised for effort, learned strategies for concentrating and facing challenges.  “At the end of the day, on the medium test, he ends up doing a better job than Mary, who had actually performed at a higher level up until then,” Dweck said.

[...] While Dweck’s research suggests parents need to stop praising their kids in a generalized way, with catch phrases like “You’re so smart” “You’re great,” praise given correctly — for effort or for specific accomplishments — “I really liked how you passed the ball to Johnny” or “You worked really hard on the field today” can be helpful, as opposed to “You’re the best soccer player ever!”

[...]Psychologist Florrie Ng was interested in studying cross-cultural parenting. She conducted research while she was at the University of Illinois, with children and their mothers in Illinois and Hong Kong. She tested kids with a similar pattern-matching test used by Dweck.

During a five-minute break, American mothers were given their child’s score. They were then told that their child did not perform well, regardless of their child’s actual score, and were then instructed to talk to their child about the test. During the sit-down with their kids, the American mothers did not mention their child’s “poor” score, but instead offered their child praise and presents, regardless.

“We saw them ignoring — completely ignoring — their child’s failure. And not willing to help them, and if anything, praising them for their intelligence, or saying, ‘Don’t worry, ‘You’re going to do great,’” Bronson said.

By contrast, when mothers in Hong Kong were told their child hadn’t performed well on the same test, they addressed the issue with their children, Bronson explained, working through the problems with their children and encouraged them to stay focused.

When the American and Chinese children were tested again, following the one-on-one sit-down with their mothers, the Chinese performed 33 percent better than in earlier tests. Ng plants to continue her research at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

“You might think that these Chinese mothers were cold and inconsiderate and cruel and harsh to their children. But when you watch the videotapes, these mothers are touching their child. They’re loving, they have their arm around their child, they are stroking them, they are just as affectionate as the American mothers were,” Bronson said.

“As American parents, we can be loving and affectionate and supportive at the same time as we are directing our child’s attention to better strategies to improve and to learn,” Bronson said.  “The child wants to do well on the test; help the child do well on the test. Don’t do things that are just going to make the child underperform on the next test.”

[...] “I became a social praiser,” Bronson said. “And I started to feel like — that it wasn’t my child. My child was doing great at the new praise regimen. It was I who was suffering. The praise junkie wasn’t my child; it was me.”

But Bronson confirmed that there’s no limit on one kind of support. Unconditional love is something parents can repeat and repeat.  “Telling your child you love them is something else,” Bronson said. “You can tell your child you love them all you want.”

Please read the complete article at http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/nurtureshock-parenting-tips-praising-kids-hurt/Story?id=8475074&page=1

In the course of discussing ideal first pieces for beginning piano students, one of my teenage students suggested “the Do-Re-Mi song from The Sound of Music“  – not so much because it is easy but because she loves it, and “everybody knows it.”  She proceeded to quickly play through the tune – melody only.   She started from C, and curiously, played the entire song on white keys only.  She didn’t seem to notice? or mind? that it didn’t sound quite right.  There are a few modulations in this song which necessitate a few sharps here and there, and a chromatic passing tone (B flat) at the end.  As this song wasn’t really the topic of our discussion I didn’t want to spend too much time on this, so I just quickly played the tune for her, correctly, and pointed out that she had missed some black keys.  We proceeded to other pedagogical issues and then her repertoire. 

On my long way home – it is two hours from Manhattan to Olathe – I kept thinking about how she could have missed the sharps and the B flat in this song.  Played on white keys only, it sounds kind of like the song, but not really, and I didn’t understand why she didn’t hear that.  I concluded that she must have picked out the tune by ear and “all white keys” was as close as she could come to the real thing.  I also concluded that the sharps would make sense once she’d know about modulation – something we hadn’t covered yet, at least not in enough detail to relate to this song.  So, always looking for a chance to teach a new theory concept, I planned to introduce modulation at the next lesson. 

I started yesterday’s lesson by sharing with her that I had been thinking about the song, and my conclusion that the necessary black keys would make more sense once I taught her about modulation.  She had a smile on her face and was getting ready to say something but I was too enthusiastic to teach about modulation, I didn’t want to stop and listen to what she had to say.  Short intro to modulation, demonstration, she got it, and then, when I finally finished, she spoke up. 

The reason why she had played the song on white keys only, she explained, was that that’s how her school music teacher had taught it to her class.  I didn’t understand.  Surely her music teacher wouldn’t teach a song with wrong notes?  Well, she continued, white keys only is easier than a black key here and there, and the teacher had explained that teaching about sharps and flats would be too difficult and the students wouldn’t get it and that’s why she left them out.  Apparently none of the other students noticed or were bothered by this.

So, I suppose we could, in order to – simplify?, also play Für Elise on white keys only:  try it, play E-D-E-D-E-B-D-C-A.

Or we could teach to spell with consonants only, leave out vowels. 

Simplification gone wrong.

.

Simplifying and arranging is a skill, it is actually something that I include in my lessons: how to simplify without losing the essence of the story. 

I refuse to teach – I won’t even listen to – “easy arrangements” of piano literature.  Things like the Moonlight Sonata transposed to D minor, condensed to one page and arranged to fit a five-finger “position”, etc.  (heard it at a Talent Show once).

But skillful simplifying teaches the students to find that which is most important.  Which note out of a difficult-to-reach chord can be left out without changing the character of the chord?  Which of the way-too-many notes in a melody can be cut without losing “the melody”?  Whether or not we actually end up playing a (slightly) simplified version, the students have gained a greater understanding of that which they are playing. 

When Kirstyn started lessons with me, in the summer of 2005, shortly before her 11th birthday, a couple of things were immediately obvious:  she loved playing the piano, she had progressed very quickly to early intermediate material with her previous teachers, and I was impressed by her desire and determination to learn and practice and study and learn some more.  Her mother’s biggest complaint?  “I can’t get her away from the piano!” 

Also obvious was that there were holes in her knowledge.  Like most piano students who come to me from other teachers, she didn’t really know how to practice.  Her knowledge of music theory and history was rudimentary at best.  Her sight-playing and sense of rhythm were lacking.  Although she loved playing fast pieces, she didn’t really have the technical skills to do so without straining which in turn affects the sound.  But she loved to play and was determined to learn and improve.

We talked about all of this – she was well aware that her previous instruction had been somewhat random, and also that further progress would sooner rather than later stall unless we filled in the holes and therefore created a solid and reliable foundation upon which we would be able to build – I wanted the sky to be the limit.  I explained that we would choose material which would address the issues that needed remedial work but which would - hopefully – also be interesting and challenging.  A heavy dose of Burgmüller Op. 100 and Level 7 of the Celebration Series, Robert Vandall’s Preludes, etc., all of which she liked a lot, seemed appropriate.  We used the Music Progressions curriculum to get her theoretical knowledge and functional skills up to snuff.  We had a plan.

And so we went to work.  One of the highlights was when she fell in love with the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata, and, with my permission and support, quickly learned and memorized the piece.  She would have liked to play it much more passionately, faster, louder, but understood (intellectually at least) that this was a piece that needed restraint, with the dynamic level never above mp.  The expression had to come from her touch, not from increasing the tempo.  She performed it a few times, and I think she really grew.   

Last Fall, we started work on a Haydn Concerto (in F, rather obscure, but rewarding to teach and learn) which she performed at the Annual Piano Concerto Competition in February. 

And then a couple of things happened, and I am only now putting the pieces together.  In September, Kirstyn turned thirteen.  And even though she was making good progress with the concerto – mastering a few lines of tricky scale patterns she thought she’d never get -, her progress in Level 7 (yes, still the same book) was stalling.  It was apparent, or should have been, that she had lost interest in that kind of music.  After weeks of “practice”, she still hadn’t mastered Beethoven’s Bagatelle in G minor.  I would occasionally ask her what kinds of pieces she was looking forward to learning, and among her favorites was always the Maple Leaf Rag – which I told her was too difficult just yet; remember, we were trying to build a solid foundation from the bottom up, still filling in the holes, and that meant finishing – mastering! – Level 7, so we could go on to Level 8. 

In teenage (?) defiance of her teacher’s words, without telling me, she taught herself to play the Maple Leaf Rag.  With the help of another of my students, she learned to play much of the music for The Phantom of the Opera – by ear, with Jamey coaching her.  When I saw them, for the first time, rock away, their version of The Phantom for two pianos – I was shocked.  There was so much unrestrained joy and passion in their playing, I’ve got it on video, Kirstyn’s smile is just heart-breakingly beautiful and – most shockingly – her “technique” which had been such a big issue with her other pieces, seemed to flow almost naturally.

It’s not like Kirstyn suddenly and magically had filled in the holes; her technique, though improved, was still not entirely reliable, and there’s still room for improvement in other areas.  But I knew we had to change course.  So we did.  I have done this only once before, many years ago, and, as it turned out later, it worked, so I am confident (I think …) that it’ll work again:  out of sheer desperation, we are completely abandoning current literature, the stuff she still hasn’t finished.  In complete defiance of rational leveling of repertoire, we are jumping ahead to Copland’s Cat and the Mouse (a Level 10 piece), with the goal to use this so incredibly much more difficult piece to learn everything she needs to know. 

Cat and the Mouse is actually not that difficult as a first “difficult” piece:  none of the particular difficulties (and there are many) lasts more than a few lines of music; while the technical challenges are many and varied, there’s no endurance required for any kind of technical challenge.  There is great variety, it’s mentally challenging but, once you understand what’s going on, it actually makes sense.   What I like about it, especially for Kirstyn, is that it addresses so many different challenges, technical, musical; and it introduces new aspects, new terminology, pianistic challenges we haven’t had before.

I made sure both Kirstyn and her mother understand that this is highly unusual, untraditional – how can you attempt multiplication if you haven’t thoroughly mastered addition yet?  Aren’t we supposed to go step-by-step, one thing at a time, mastering each step before attempting the next, scaffolding, building on previous mastery?

Well, we tried, but she didn’t play along.

So, Cat and the Mouse it is.

Park University in Parkville, Missouri, is different.  Perhaps not so much in that Parkville is not your typical college town, or even in that Park University offers undergraduate and graduate programs on 43 campuses in 21 states and Online.  Park University in Parkville, MO, is different because it is home to the International Center For Music and Park’s Youth Conservatory For Music.  According to their mission statement,

The International Center For Music at Park University was established to foster the exchange of master teacher/performers, renowned young musicians, and programs from countries across the globe.  [...]  By involving the highest caliber artists of our generation, as educators, we will enable our students and audiences to experience the wealth of musical literature that has impacted generations of our global society.

And highest caliber artists they are.

At the moment, from March 6 through 9, the ICM is hosting The Grand Piano Festival: concerts which feature international competition winners from the Ioudenitch studio, and, of even more interest to me, masterclasses, all of which are open to the community and free.  Guest artist and Master Teacher Boris Berman is giving masterclasses from 2 to 5 p.m. Thursday through Saturday.  

At the end of my piano studies with Barbara Fry, I was lucky enough to be invited to a piano course given by her teacher, Bruno Seidlhofer (Vienna) in Switzerland.  Professor Seidlhofer explained that he disliked the traditional term “Meisterklasse” – master class – because it implied that either he was a master and/or that the students were.  Of course, he was a master, but out of humility and perhaps to draw attention to his emphasis on artistry , Professor Seidlhofer called this particular course an “Interpretationskurs” – interpretation class. 

William Westney, in a similar yet different attempt to get away from the traditional “master class” is promoting his Un-Master Class (R).  I remember his presentation from a few years ago. While I whole-heartedly agree that there are teachers who are so imposing and so intent on perfection that they stifle natural physical intuition and artistic expression in the student, I found Mr. Westney’s approach not quite as liberating as he probably thought it would be:  his shouting at the student, “Make a mistake!  Go ahead, make a big, fat mistake!!” was, to me, no less intimidating and stifling than a “master teacher” staring down a student for having played a wrong note.

Boris Berman, not that I expected any different but as I have witnessed yesterday and hope to see again today and tomorrow (weather permitting – it snowed, again!), is a true Master as well as Teacher.  Even if you didn’t know anything about him or hadn’t read his book Notes from the Pianist’s Bench, it was evident from the very beginning that he not only knows his stuff but knows how to present it to the student as well.  He took his time explaining what and why he wanted the student to try something different; he shared with the (pitifully small) audience of piano teachers his observations on how teaching certain aspects – in this case, functional harmony – has changed over the years, etc.  Given the format – a teaching situation – there were opportunities to put a student down, or ridicule a student’s lack of theoretical knowledge.  While Professor Berman never sugarcoated any criticism, he always remained warm, friendly and polite, occasionally using gentle humor, never sarcasm.  How liberating it was to hear him say, with a warm and comforting tone in his voice, “You look so worried when you play this.  Please don’t be so concerned!  You know this piece, you don’t need to worry about wrong notes.”

I am looking forward to more of this.

Another observation of Mr. Berman’s Master Class can be found here.

There is a reference, in the current issue of Clavier, to an article which appeared in the October 2006 issue, in which Greg Brown says the goal of The 5 Browns is 

to relax some of the formality of concert etiquette that might discourage people from attending classical music programs. We don’t mind when people applaud between movements of a work; it just means they like the music.

Say what?  Dilute the clear distinction between the educated who know that thou shalt not clap until the end of a work, and on the other hand the hapless, uneducated, uninitiated, who – heaven forbid – applaud enthusiastically after a particular beautiful or rousing movement even though there’s more to come?  (I am not talking about the people who clap because they think they are supposed to clap but have no clue where and when.)

Why is it that we hold the inseparatability of a multi-movement work so sacred? Can you imagine an opera where no one claps until the very end?  The singers wouldn’t know what to think!  Or imagine a rock concert where people start to clap at the beginning of a song because they recognize the song and show their enthusiastic anticipation of what’s to come. (Ah, yes, I hear ye, “But a rock concert is not the same as a classical concert!”  That’s right.  A rock concert is usually sold out, to tens of thousands of people, who want to be there.)

I once attended a concert with a woman who politely started to clap immediately at the end of a piece – even though the end of the piece was particularly quiet and there was the afterglow of the last couple of notes still in the air.  Her clapping actually disrupted, destroyed the lingering scent. When I mentioned this to her she said that she felt obliged to clap because otherwise the performers might think that she didn’t like the piece.

What I would really like is a performance world – and I have read that this is how they do it in Israel – where you clap when you feel like it, but only then.  No more holding back your enthusiasm after a movement that excites you, but likewise no polite applause at the end of a piece whose performance you didn’t like.  

There are other cases of  ”thou shalt” – traditions that we hold onto religiously, because we think we’ve always done it this way, although a closer look at history would prove us wrong. 

Among the most passionately fought wars in piano pedagogy is the issue of memorization.  For most of the 20th century, pianists performed from memory, and teachers required their students to memorize.  While there are students who seem to memorize effortlessly without even trying, memorization is actually a skill that can and needs to be taught and learned, just like sight-reading, or playing by ear.  The issue of whether to require, some will say “force” students to memorize, has been at the heart of many articles and discussions in professional journals such as Clavier, American Music Teacher, or Keyboard Companion. 

What seems suspiciously absent from these discussions is the distinction between memorizing and performing from memory which is a completely different issue. 

I teach memorization skills because they are an important part of a good piano education.  Those of my students who have studied with me for a while know better than to ask, “Do I have to memorize this piece?” because my answer is always the same: “If you do a good job practicing then you cannot help but memorize along the way.”  The implication being that good practice trains all the elements of memorization:  finger memory (because you have played the piece a million times), intellectual memory (because I have asked you to explain all the details of the piece and you have trained to play hands separately and from anywhere in the piece), aural memory (because you know how it sounds), visual memory (because you know what it looks like), and so on.  Memorization then becomes a mere extension of practicing, a different aspect of practicing, but not a separate issue.

My students are required to memorize their performance pieces.  But I don’t require them to perform from memory anymore.  If all that separates the student from a great performance is the comfort of having the score in front of him (I call it a security blanket), as a visual reminder, then he gets to use the score.  If there’s any suspicion that the student needs the score to read the notes, then we know that the piece is not ready for a performance.

The one criterion for a good performance is that the performer enjoyed performing and the audience enjoyed listening. 

The Manhattan Area Music Teachers Association (MAMTA) hosted the 11th Annual Piano Concerto Competition today. 

The Competition is open to students in grades 4 – 12.  Contestants are grouped by grade level, Elementary (grades 4 -5), Lower  Intermediate (6 -7), Upper Intermediate (8 – 9), and Advanced (10 – 12), and perform one concerto movement from memory.  

There were some changes this year, perhaps most noticeably the fact that instead of the 23-25 students we’ve had at each competition over the past couple of years, this year we had only 11 contestants.  There were questions and concerns as to how this low number might influence the issue of awards:  the thought was that it might be a foregone conclusion that if there were only two contestants in a division, there would be a first and a second place, and therefore not as much of a competition as when you have six or seven contestants in a division. 

Fortunately, these fears turned out to be unfounded.

For once, we had an adjudicator who was not afraid to not award a prize unless it was well-deserved.  In the past, while it was nice to have so many first and second places (which come attached with a gift certificate to the local music store as well as the honor of performing again at the winners’ concert), I have often felt that prizes were awarded too liberally.  Instead of judging the quality of the performance, most adjudicators seemed to rank the performances:  whoever played best in any given age category got first place, regardless of the quality of the performance.  Second-best got second place, etc.   Of course, many times the two overlapped, and the “best” performance was indeed worthy of a first place, simply because it could not have been done any better.  But many times, “best” wasn’t really good enough.

This year, for the first time ever, there was no First Place in the Elementary Division (grades 4 – 5).  There was no Second Place either.  While at first it was disappointing to receive “only” Honorable Mention (we practiced so hard …), it was actually exactly right and justified.  Anything higher than Honorable Mention would have sent the wrong signal to the student as well as the teacher, and the audience.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to this year’s adjudicator, Dr. Virginia Houser, for having the

integrity in refusing to bestow praise on those who do not fully deserve it.

Prizes are only valuable if they are restricted to the very few. Not winning a prize is not something to be seen as shameful – it should be the norm, something that happens to the overwhelming majority of people.

(Dylan Evans, in an article that was published in The Guardian.)

Another observation of this year’s event can be found here.

Last summer, Mark and I, in an attempt to find some kind of exercise we enjoyed and would therefore be more likely to stick with, tried out Tai Chi.   I liked the idea of a martial art that was non-aggressive, I liked the focus on body-awareness, balance, the mind-body connection, I liked that it challenged me physically without being stereotypical “exercise”. 

What we didn’t like, and what led us to discontinue after a few weeks, were two things:  one, our being very detail-oriented and interested in doing it right, all of it, conflicted with the instructor’s emphasis on getting the big picture.  Where Mark and I would have preferred to spend a lot of time building a solid foundation by learning isolated and minute parts of a movement, with tons of repetition, before attempting to put it all together, the instructor taught and expected us to go through the entire movement immediately without “worrying” about the details.  

The other thing that bothered us was the instructor’s personality (separate from the fact that his teaching style conflicted with our learning style):  while he seemed perfectly nice, there was something intrusive about him; he always stood a couple of inches too close, I always felt like backing off, I felt un-safe.  And then there was the rather subtle impression that deep down, in his heart, he was still a karate martial artist who for some reason had given up karate in favor of tai chi:  he kept stressing how useful tai chi was for self-defense, and his demonstrations of attack and defense seemed not only showy but were very unsettling to me.

After taking some time to think about where to go next, we decided to explore yoga.  One of Mark’s colleagues recommended a teacher, and after looking at her website and exchanging a few emails, we signed up for the class.  Unfortunately, we are now again in a situation where we are expected to do way too much way too soon. 

The instructor is a wonderful young woman, she comes across as sweet and sensitive, and there is no doubt that she most definitely knows her stuff.  But perhaps because we are in a class with other people who, unlike us, are not beginners, we are, again, being led through poses and movements that are beyond what we can do.  And while at the beginning of each class the instructor emphasizes the importance of doing only as much as one can do, never feeling pressure to do more than what feels comfortable, what happens during class is different. 

Perhaps because her class format does not allow for a short individual consultation or interview before the first class, Mark only told her, very briefly, during our first two-minute greeting (we didn’t want to take any more time away from class time) that he has arthritis in his lower back which means two things:  he’s looking for ways to strengthen his back but also needs to be cautious not to aggravate it.  He didn’t tell her that because of an elbow injury many years ago, he cannot straighten his right arm; and I didn’t tell her that I was born with hip dysplasia which, although it was treated when I was a baby, not only limits my range of motion (I was never able to do the proper pre-natal exercises because of this; however, childbirth was completely unproblematic) but also makes certain “normal” movements painful.  We figured that we’d take her suggestion and simply do as much as we could and leave the rest.

Taking any kind of class is always interesting for me.  Not only because I learn something about something I didn’t know before, but also because I experience a teacher.  It allows me to reflect on my own teaching. 

One of the things I learned early on, perhaps more from personal experience than from being taught, was to never, ever, tell a student, “You can do it.”  I know, I know, it’s the standard American cheerleader slogan.  But it’s the wrong thing for a teacher to say.  Here’s why:  for one thing, how do you know your student can do it?  What if, for some completely stupid or unknown reason, your student can not do it?  Not only will you have lied to your student (not the best thing to establish trust), but worse, you made the student feel like he failed (because you believed in him and he let you down).  Hypersensitive?  Perhaps.  But that’s what students are.

Unfortunately, during yoga last night, Mark had to experience firsthand – and I, as his lover, vicariously, secondhand but no less immediate - the sensation of failure.  We are in our forties, pretty established personality-wise, not easily shaken these days, but fragile in this new learning experience.  Our instructor was leading us through a pose and saw that Mark was struggling.  She came up to him, knelt beside him and cheered him on, “you can do it!”  I immediately knew, and Mark told her in a voice that probably sent chills down everyone’s spine, in a voice that left no doubt, that, no, he could not do it.  There are physical limitations which make certain poses impossible, no matter how hard we try, or how long we practice, or how much we are being cheered on.  I was furious at this discrepancy between “do only as much as you can” and then the expectation that if we only try harder we can do more.  Mark told me later that he had felt shamed by her.  We both know that there is no way that she would ever intentionally do that.  But it happened.  With just four words.

I take my work as a piano teacher very seriously, and part of my job is to teach how to perform. Most students, and parents, underestimate what it takes to perform successfully in public. I have very high standards, for myself, and for my students, and dismissive comments about a proposed performance, such as, “oh, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it’s just for church …” are unacceptable.

I enjoy teaching all ages and levels, and my goal is always to teach towards mastery. Mastery is different from perfection. A piece may be “perfect” but the skills necessary to perform the piece may not have been mastered.

People tend to think that the first year or so of piano study is not as important because the student is “only” a beginner, but they couldn’t be more wrong! Having to re-teach and re-learn after the student was allowed to acquire bad habits is frustrating for both teacher and student.

The following is from an article by Bruce Berr, first published in the Autumn 1999 issue of Keyboard Companion, a practical magazine on early-level piano study:

Newer teachers sometimes assume that because students are at an elementary level, they cannot play their pieces with mastery and artistry – this is not true! This is a matter of confusing standard with level. Instruction on any musical instrument is based on mastery learning. This hinges on the highly-successful completion of each unit of study along the way, especially and particularly the first few. Since students have varying levels of aptitude, and learn at different paces and in different ways, the main variant should be how much time and reinforcement is needed for that mastery, not the degree to which that mastery occurs.

To be more specific, when a well-taught student at any level successfully learns a piece, the student’s performance is virtually as good as the teacher’s:

• The physical approach is reliable and natural.
• Fingering is consistent and secure.
• Tone quality and rhythm are solid.
• Legato and staccato are clearly played and differentiated.
• Dynamics and dynamic differences are boldly projected.
• The performance authentically communicates the title and mood to a large degree, to any music listener (not just the trained ear of the teacher).
• There is flexibility in all of the above (except fingering!); one slight change in something, intended or unintended, does not cause a cascading failure and meltdown.
• Playing the piece is enjoyable.

This is true even for the beginner’s first few lessons! Yes, perhaps there are subtle nuances of shaping and timing and other aspects that a more advanced player might bring to an early-level piece. And an older player may understand the music on a deeper intellectual and emotional level, but these are not absolutely essential for each piece to shine and express. If we focus too much on these exceptions, they can become a smoke screen that hides from us an essential fact: if students’ final playing of most of their pieces is not excellent or very close to it, we are in effect building a structure whose foundation is of questionable strength to support what will be added on later.

Setting a goal of complete mastery right from the start, communicating that goal repeatedly to the student, and giving the student the means for meeting that goal – all of this acts as a springboard for many good habits: efficient practice, careful listening, etc. Conversely, if our initial goals for each piece are not set to the highest standards, we sell students short before giving them a chance to fully blossom into what they can become.