Piano Video Lesson: The Top 5 Piano Lesson Fails

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I'm Robert Estrin. And today, I'm going to give you top five piano lesson fails. Now I just want to say right from the get-go that I love teaching and I appreciate the hard work all my students do. And I've got students all around the world. I counted it up on my schedule yesterday. I've got students in 11 different countries, which is kind of mind-boggling, the world we live in, that such a thing is even possible. And I appreciate the time everybody makes to practice and diligently attend lessons. So in all due respect, I'm going to give the top five piano lesson fails.

One of them, a student comes in and as soon as it gets to repeat sign, they turn over and say, "Oh, did you want me to go on? Or you want me to repeat it?" And I always kind of chuckle inside because make a decision. I'm happy with either one, frankly. But it's really nice to be able to go on when you get to the repeat sign or take the repeat so that you have the continuity of the repeat or the continuity of going to the next section. But that's a heck of a time to ask whether you should go on or not. Make a decision, or ask beforehand if you're really not sure.

Okay, here's another one for you. You go through an entire lesson and you're getting some good things done and then the lesson's over. And then I'm checking my email just a few minutes later. And there's an email with like bunch of questions. It's like, oh my gosh, I just got done with this whole piano lesson. And now after the lesson, when there's not going to be another lesson for another week, all of these questions. Now I am always happy to answer questions on email. I mean, that's what I'm available for that. And I encourage that. But obviously, during the course of the lesson, these questions could be answered much more thoroughly with a back and forth kind of communication that emails don't allow for.

So if you have questions during the course of a lesson, tell your teacher, ask your teacher. That's what they're there for, to answer all your questions. So make sure that you take opportunity to ask your teacher at the lesson anything at all that is important to you.

This is something that some students are sometimes guilty of. You get busy during the course of the week and you only have a few days left before your lesson. So you just start cramming through everything, trying to get as far as you can. And then you come into the lesson and right from the get-go it's like nothing is solid. From the very first phrase, everything is kind of muddy and sloppy. Now, this is a real problem for you as a student. Why? Because now you've just spent all this time solidifying sloppy playing and undoing that is much, much harder than just learning a smaller part really well. Your teacher will appreciate the thorough good work that you do, even if it's a small section, rather than have a whole bunch of music that isn't on a high level. So don't worry. Your teacher understands. Believe me, my life gets so busy, it's hard for me to find time to practice. So I understand. I get it. And I'm sure your teachers are understanding in that respect also. Cramming doesn't work on the piano.

Here's another one for you, and I hope I'm not hurting anybody's feelings with these. That's not my intention. But hopefully, you find it helpful. The next one is starting a piece and oh yeah, you're gung ho so you start at a nice fast tempo and immediately start slowing down and slowing down and get a little further and slowing down more and slowing down more. And then finally you get to just where you just got up doing it and stops. Well, this isn't really very helpful for you because you must find a tempo to start at the point, the lowest common denominator. If you can't play measure 12 at the tempo that you're starting, you're in trouble.

Now, if it's a long piece and there's a repeat section after the double bar, you don't know that as well and you want to stop at a certain point, say, "I don't know this part as well, so I'm going to take it slower," that's perfectly understandable. You don't want to necessarily take it all drastically under tempo if you've got some of it at a good clip. But if you're going to keep slowing down the whole time, this does not really help you. You want to get used to playing at one tempo.

The last one is your teacher asks you to start on measure 47, the development section, whatever it is. And so you start at measure 47 and you get to one or two measures and you stop and say, "You wanted me to go on?" Kind of like the repeat thing, but this, in this case, there's no repeat or anything. It's just that they asked you to start at a certain place. For some reason, you think they didn't want you to play more than that one measure.

Now I will say this. And so often with my students, I have them play one specific section and I'll instruct, because actually the flip side of this one is I say, "Only play up to the first note of measure 50 and that's it, up to this note." And then of course, it's very hard for students to stop on that note because they're not really necessarily aware where that note is in the score. Because sometimes it's really important to stop on a specific note to gain security with it. But if your teacher asks you to start at a certain place, assume they want you to keep playing unless they stop you or instruct you to play a smaller section.

So those are just five lesson fails. And if you avoid those, you'll have more productive lessons, I promise you. So take it to heart. And it's meant in a positive spirit. And anybody who's got other lesson fails, leave it in the comments here on LivingPianos.com or YouTube. And again, thanks all you subscribers and Patreon subscribers. This is what keeps me motivated, the fact that you are interested in this content. And I'll have more for you, as long as you keep letting me know that you like these videos. We'll see you next time.

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Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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