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For me, two of the bigger challenges in teaching students is the art of pedaling and also dynamic control.
For most people, the pedals are often not a very natural place for their feet to be, and in addition, they don't feel as comfortable making minuscule changes in direct reaction to the sounds that they are hearing.
So I can find it challenging (but rewarding!) to work on in-depth pedaling with students.
Also, it sometimes takes alot of encouragement to get students comfortable using BOTH feet across all 3 pedals!
Best way to get students to start using the pedals is to begin marking in the score places to use them...the difficult aspect is to have them begin using the pedals instinctively. Takes alot of consistent work and listening to get to that point!
Dynamics are always a challenging topic. Even for myself (I remember my student days) we always think we have a wide range of dynamics but...our teacher thinks otherwise! Indeed it can be challenging to have your student truly open up their dynamics and have that huge range that is desired. Lots of different ways to get a student to get there but often having them "exaggerate" their dynamics can help! (9/10 times the exaggeration is actually..."better")
What do I enjoy the most? Well, when I hear my students mastering the above skills, I certainly enjoy that experience!
I also very much enjoy sharing the wonderful stories of the music and composers with my students to see their imaginations spark.
Also, I love sharing all my little tips and tricks to make their lives easier/more fun on the instrument :)
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Dominic Cheli Delightful and insightful! Thank you, Dominic!
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Dominic Cheli as a student, learning about dynamic is very difficult. Jared’s course and recent stream are so helpful but I still found it difficult to execute.
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Dominic Cheli I just read your "Piano Practice Breakdowns: Toolkit to Productive Practice". It is superb! In its expertise, clarity and vision it soars and surpasses all expectations! It is quite evident that you passionately want everyone to succeed and reach their goals. Thank you, Dominic!
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Hi everyone,
I wouldn't say it is a struggle, but teaching how to choose the best fingering right away is a tough one.
Although we can tell our students several rules and preferences, it will always depend on each passage and the personal interpretation.
I love teaching them the pianistic movements and touches (which will be connected to dynamics, metric, and articulation). It is so exciting to look at their reactions when they get it, and feel the comfort on their arms and fingers, and hear the difference in their sound.
The most enjoyable part of the lessons, for me as the teacher, is discussing and making the interpretation happen. This is the time to put our creativity to work and use all the resources they've learned into action.
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As someone who teaches beginner/intermediate, something that challenges/engages me (especially with intermediate) is teaching in a way where students feel enriched by each lesson, like each one makes them a more autonomous and deeper musician, rather than just absorbing and regurgitating content, especially if they're just playing for fun without any goals of competitions, or in some cases, even performing. One key factor that I spend a lot of time thinking about is sequencing: when a student should learn certain concepts (eg. what skills does a student definitely need to have before they work on their first Chopin etude?), how to help them connect to concepts emotionally first (before analytically), how much I should expect from them, whether it flows smoothly from what they've just previously learned or not, and whether I'm skipping over anything - possibly due to my own insecurities/blind spots as a musician.
Also, some beginner adult players can be tricky; I find they hold more tension in their shoulders and elbows than kids.-
Emma Wallace
Loved your comment as it is something we are always concerned about, but sometimes it stays in the background and might be "forgotten".
I guess we could keep a visitable Post-it for each lesson:
- leave with something new (knowledge, skill, or insight) or at least better understood/done
- challenging repertoire should be one or two steps ahead, not 100.
About the tension on shoulders, you can see it in everyone nowadays. I've noticed that focusing on the movements and body awareness during a few lessons can be the solution.
I'm studying biomechanics for piano technique and it has helped me explain and reinforce to my students how important good posture and right movements are for their piano playing.
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Teaching young students how to read notes is very challenging especially if you don't get much support from their parents. Keeping their kids too busy to practice is another challenge.
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Ji An I approach sight reading - especially for young students - as language literacy. Repertoire is learned more so by ear/rote, but we do sight-reading exercises that focus first on single pitches, then combinations of pitches, then common melodic figures (analogous to learning letters, phonemes, and ‘sight words’ in an alphabetic language). It’s slow at first but makes them quite independent as musicians.
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Getting them to focus on scales and arpeggios across all keys without dulling their love of playing pieces. Agree with the challenge of fingering as my hands are small and I have a student who can already do an octave and 2 easily and often trips over fast passages.
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Getting a student to bring out a melody by using their ear, rather than a purely technical approach such as "play the right hand louder and LH lighter."
Also, developing ways of continuing through mistakes by maintaining an inner pulse.
Lastly, sightreading. Simply because everyone hates it.-
Kyle Johnson At least in my experience, you need to start with a technical approach to balance before it becomes natural. I think that's been one of the big problems with traditional teaching, this assumption that the ear will take care of everything and the hands will just obey. I find that it doesn't take all that much of the "technical" approach before it becomes a natural feeling for them. I always find it useful to practice hands separate and talk about staying close to the bottom of the key and minimizing vertical arm movement for the softer hand (the key word being minimize and not a complete absence of movement). Oftentimes students do want to do what we're asking, they just don't know how to get their playing mechanism to do it.
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I think the hardest thing is sussing out whether a student is not practicing something out of a lack of know-how or a lack of desire. So often with pre-college age students, they're not making progress because you haven't really awakened a love for that particular piece. I always want to get into the weeds of technique (love the Taubman approach, I'm that kind of guy), but teaching always goes better when the musical picture and expression are handled first.
I remember I once saw a presentation at MTNA where the speaker showed this big pyramid with rhythm on the bottom, then notes, then I can't remember the rest of the order, maybe pedaling or tempo next. He claimed, as many do, that one needed to have the notes and rhythms in place before working on any expression. If there's one thing I've learned in teaching, it's that putting accuracy first is a surefire way to have mediocre students. You have to awaken a desire for accuracy, and that comes from putting music-making above all.
Just to emphasize how important love of music is, I have a ten-year-old student who is playing Haydn XVI:40, the Bartok Sonatina, Grieg Butterfly, Chopin Waltz in C# minor Op. 64 No. 2, and Mozart Sonata in D major for 4-hands with her older brother. Of course she is not the norm, but we don't waste time on scales and arpeggios--we don't have that time. Yet her accuracy is fantastic, her playing is fast, and she gets a good number of awards and has played in Carnegie. When she came to me four years ago she was playing out of Piano Adventures 1. She loves the piano, and that love makes up for skipping over a bunch of things you're "supposed" to do as a teacher. The biggest problem with my teaching is that I often teach her and her siblings in the ideal way because I see their repertoire as "big," and the other students really need the same beauty and expression in their lessons even though they are playing something more like Neefe's Little Song.
