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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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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. -
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. -
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. -
The biggest challenge in general is to get rid of distractions and learn how to play the music for their own enjoyment. Second is to really reflect on what would help them improve, to unlearn and relearn either from other people’s advice and to actively think about if there’s a better way (fingerings phrasing etc.) to achieve the results they want. Also how to deal with frustration.
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Hello everyone, this is a very interesting discussion thread for me. As I ease further into retirement from my day job, I'm thinking about doing a little teaching, starting with a couple of my siblings' kids/grandkids, young adults, who have asked for some lessons,
My main issue is that I know next to nothing about piano pedagogy and I don't want to lead a student down a wrong path. I'm mostly self taught myself. Though I have a rather solid understanding of theory, I know next to nothing about formal technique training or progressively guided repetoire, etc. -- except for what I've learned on ToneBase, which has been considerable but only a beginning. (My own repetoire choices have been guided by pieces that I've heard and wished I could play--without regard to whether I'm actually capable of playing it! well)
SO, my question is: is there anything you teachers out there would recommend for me to start with, such as a widely recognized text book or authority on teaching Piano ?
It seems like a good place to start might be to see whether I could enroll online in Kodaly Institute program or something like that...but any suggestions would be most welcome. Thanks
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In my opinion the textbooks shouldn’t really matter as we shouldn’t limit ourselves on the methods provided in the textbooks. There are so many different ways we could approach the learning process and I often find it the best way to teach them is to invite them to have a open discussion on the topic but also teach them what really works to help them out. Sometimes it could be a counter example. Also the kids have to trust that or understand that we are doing this for their own betterment, which I find very challenging because they are often in denial of what’s really good practice (and it means to get them out of their comfort zones sometimes), and resort to their parents, or comfort