Hello teachers,

This is my first time posting in this forum and am hoping I can get some feedback on what I think may turn into a problem.

To keep things short, I've been taking lessons under a new teacher and running on about 3 lessons under her. We barely touched on posture / technique which is mainly the reason why I wanted to take lessons in the first place. She also had me started on arpeggios with fingering that has been pretty hard on my hands (ex. RH fingers 2 on C, 4 on E, 1 on G and a thumb under stretch for octave C and so forth). Take into account that I'm barely finished with alfreds AIO adult 1 so I'm as fresh as you can be. I've asked her about posture and hand/wrist technique and havent gotten much feedback.

Does this seem like a good start / direction with my new teacher? I really would like to see this work if this is just misconception on my end because it is really hard to find a teacher in my area. Worse case scenario would be for me to drop lessons from her and learn on my own as I was in the past.

I wonder why you are asking this question? Are you learning things and enjoying lessons? Do other students of this teacher seem to be learning? Does she have your interests at heart when planning lessons? If you answered yes to all of the questions but the first (which was not a yes/no question :P), then I'd say you are doing well. If there is a no in there somewhere, communicate your concern to your teacher, and give her a few weeks to adjust. If she doesn't then leave according to her termination policy.

I guess I wasn't too direct with it after re-reading what I posted.

First of all it is my understanding from lurking these forums so much is that the best thing you can take from a teachers guidance is to gain proper technique to avoid injury and practicing with bad habits. After my last lesson I could feel pain in my wrist to reach those arpeggios just so i could meet her satisfaction.

In the end yes I enjoy her a lot but more importantly I am just curious if studying under a (dare I say "bad" and this is just to take things to the extreme) teacher could actually lead to being more destructive to my hands and wrists and in turn be a bad choice to stick around?

If you had asked her about posture and hand/wrist technique but did not get much feedback, I wonder if it was just a general question you threw out there before, or whether you had made it clear that your hands hurt from the practice and whether she saw any bad technique on your part that might have caused the hands to hurt. If you were specific enough like the later and she still ignored your question, then something is wrong. But give her the benefit of the doubt if she doesn't even know it bothers you and tell her specifically that your hands hurt and ask her what to do to fix the problem.

Volusiana, I would expect a teacher giving physically challenging instructions to a student who has only had three lessons to anticipate difficulties and discomfort, and be alert for them. Even if a student "only mentions it" then most teachers would jump on the mention of pain, I would think. To suggest that a student "wasn't specific enough" puts the responsibility on the wrong person.

Morodiene, I've been thinking about what you wrote:

We know that there are different ideas out there about the goals for adult students, and we students can confuse matters more by coming in self-taught, so that what we know and don't know isn't clear. In a sense we become transfer students with ourselves being the former teacher. Taking these one by one, ,here were my thoughts:

Are you learning things and enjoying lessons?
Supposing that I have acquired poor habits and a bad posture. If such things can be tackled, then eventually I will be able to play with ease and that will be fun. But tackling such things is hard, and at times it is definitely not fun. I would still prefer such things. Otoh, a teacher might give nifty tricks giving fancy effects or a piece that doesn't require much but sounds great. That is nice and can be motivating, but that's not enough by itself. I may be thinking that I'm "learning things" because of all the pieces, but do I know what I need to learn?

Currently in the ABF there is a student whose new teacher isolated the skill of placing your hand over where you are playing your group of notes, so that if that section is in a range of C to G, that's where the hand is. This lesson was not "fun" and the student had doubts. It also did not seem that much was being learned - where were the pieces, scales, etc.? Yet if that one thing could be adopted, as opposed to vaguely being in the vicinity of the notes (which I may have done at one time), what a difference this would make.

Does she have your interests at heart when planning lessons?
Very true. But how can we tell?

Do other students of this teacher seem to be learning?
Again, can we tell? If a student learns a lot of pieces, is that learning? If they zip through grade levels? How about the student who places well in competitions, has all his/her motions choreographed, but does not know how to approach a piece independently or read notes with any fluency after several years? We might think these students have progressed, and that they have learned. Can we tell?

I would think that this is the reason the OP has posted in the teacher forum. An instruction has been posted - the demands of that arpeggio - probably in the hope that teachers would be able to tell by the description whether there is anything to be cautious about there. How can we students tell anything about this? After three lessons there is hand pain. Meanwhile, we read about posture and form in the forum, but the student isn't seeing this addressed in lessons.

(posted as not-a-music-teacher)

Thank you Keystring for that response. It has clarified the points I was trying to get across and then some.

Basically I'm just worried because I've read numerous threads where teachers would receieve students who have studied under another teacher and is loaded with bad practices and habits. I just had another lesson and I did try to explain that I had pains from the exercise and would like to know what I'm doing wrong but nothing was really clarified and the lesson continued on.

The question that has me curious could I be a working progress towards that? In the end my goal would be to have a learning experience to be enjoyable (and painless ) even if it is advised to be on the search for another teacher.

bump

So, was the issue addressed at all? Did she change the fingering, say "don't worry about that," ignore you, all of the above..."

My sense is there's some communication issue.

I've been watching this thread since it started. A student has asked for advice and has stated the following:

- (s)he has only had 3 weeks of lesson
- Is already being asked to do octave stretches, and in these stretches for RH you have G1, C2, E4, G5. (Even without being a teacher I know that stretching 4 away from 5 that way is a huge stretch)
- Student is feeling pain, told teacher about pain, but is still being told to push through the exercises causing pain.
- Lessons do NOT address posture or technique, even though these first lessons.

I would assume that when a student has first lessons, posture and technique would be the first thing addressed. I also understand that you don't start with octave stretches as the very first thing you learn to do. Does this actually seem ok to teachers? Maybe it is ok, since nobody is there to observe - but I am puzzled that anyone is puzzled that such questions are being asked.

I didn't see anything in the OP about octave stretches. There is a description of arpeggios, which I find confusing:

I can't really tell what that's supposed to be as it's described. When do you do a "1 on G and a thumb under stretch for octave C," for example (thumb under....thumb?)?

I think the OP might not be getting the instructions right, and there must be a communication issue. This is something that needs to be clarified with the teacher.

Also, regarding posture: maybe the OP's posture was ok, and there were more immediate things to address about the playing first.

Again, hard to tell based on the description by the OP.

Sure. It's always a good idea to ask questions. I'm not disputing that.

Also, from reading the forums over the years I've seen a lot of "I read here that collapsing your nail joint is bad. I'm going to change teachers because she didn't correct this at the 1st lesson" type thing. The OP isn't doing exactly that. However there's a lot of "why isn't my teacher doing what I've read in the Internet that teachers are supposed to do?" in posts.

Answer: sit down and discuss it with the teacher clearly, and don't leave the room until you understand the answer. A lot of confusion would be avoided by this.

Phlebas, as a teacher, how would you like to see a new student handle such concerns?

I'm not a teacher. I just barge into these threads whenever I feel like it .

Were I a teacher, I would want students to discuss concerns with me to clear up any misconceptions, or impressions that I might not be doing my job.

As a student, I would discuss any issues with the teacher, try to make sure I understood the answers as much as possible.

Those are pat answers, and I realize it can be very complicated.

The lack of discussion is troubling. A good teacher should be willing and able to discuss and remedy basic issues regarding posture, fingering, and pain. If they can't, I think it means a big red flag.

That being said, I'm in complete agreement with Phlebas - just because a student or the internet thinks that something's important doesn't necessarily mean it's what's needed at a particular time. It's possible that the teacher wants to go in a different direction or focus on different things first. But if that's the case, then the teacher should be able to explain how and why he's doing what he's doing. Whenever I deviate from the "party line," with my students, I always make sure to let them know that we're trying something off the beaten path. (I even tell them to ignore judges' comments or say things like: "your goal this week is to get your parents to complain about you playing too loud all the time." (As I did with a student last year who always played on the surface of the keys and had a rather thin sound. We spent a whole month playing way too loud with way too much motion, then we scaled it back and everything's much better now...)

I seem to be more and more vague and confusing during each post so let me try and be as specific as possible.




Phlebas,
Please bare in mind that my terminology is very limited and I am speaking as a fresh beginner, so sorry for that.

To re-iterate this "arpeggio" exercise she had me do, she has me play Finger 2 on Middle C, Finger 4 play E, Thumb under for G (this is where I have a hard time), Finger 2 for Ocatve C and repeat to the third octave. Now, for me this was a stretch beyond anything I've ever tried in the Alfreds AIO Book 1 and it was near impossible for me to not try and twist my wrist to reach those far stretches which is why I've had my pains. I've also read that this wasn't proper fingering according to certain books that teaches arpeggios which I believe is 1,2,3, and 5? This and the pains are what made me start to question things.

I've tried to be as vocal as possible but there is only 45 min. in each lesson so it seems that we need to cover x-amount of things than address what I might think is a problem. The feedback I've gotten from her makes me think I am doing it properly and of course, as a new student and beginner I'd take her word for it. But of course the aftermath pain says otherwise.

There are other things which I think may contribute to my worrying curiosity but it may not seem more of a problem as it may be to others, so I will hold my tounge unless if more of my feedback is needed. It may be just useless ranting.




This is just my opinion, but what I've become to realize on these forums (and for any forum for that matter) is that for the true beginner such as myself who regularly visits this site, I (and maybe we) can be easily influenced on whatever we read and will take to heart some of these posts. It may be ignorant to believe everything I read on the internet but of course these will be from posters whom I trust are genuine and factual in their posts. It's all we really have for a person who is on the journey to learn and is near impossible to find teachers.




My true goal for me posting is to find out of this is a teacher I need to get away from. If this is a situation of me just overthinking and putting too much thought into then maybe this teacher could be the best route to take for my piano journey. Its all just too cloudy and these forums has wondering as to who is a good teacher and who isnt (Plus lessons arent cheap ).




I would also like to note that I am not in no way intentionally bashing my teacher, even if it may seem so. I admire her intelligence and playing ability but I just want to know that if there are troubles that I think are problematic this early, could problems very well be likely down the road as well.




Note: Crap I just noticed the mistake I typed out in my first explanation of the first posted arpeggio exercise. Will edit.

EDIT: hmmm it seems I cannot edit my first post... Please disregard my explanation of that exercise and refer to this one! lol

I'm unsure about what is being used as your lesson materials.

What is the spource of your instructions with the octaves and the arpeggios? Is this something being shown on a printed music page that you can identify, or is it something the teacher is showing by demonstrating only with no musical printout?

And you mentioned Adult 1 which it appears you have taught yourself before starting with a teacher: what do you play in that book? Do you have other lesson materials?

Exactly how much of a "beginner" are you? An experienced beginner or a absolutely first time at the piano beginner?

The pain is a consideration for you to be cautious about, but what kind of pain, where, and when you do what?

What did you cover on your first several lessons so far? What materials did you use? What were her comments about your playing? Is there any instruction going on that she is offering from herself or are you turning pages one by one or are you all over the place in the book? Tell us more specifically about your assignments so far outside of these octaves and arpeggios.

What kind of instrument are you playing on at lessons? And what kind of instrument do you have to play on at home?

From the sounds of it, if you followed your gut instinct right now, you'd be gone. Is that true?

So you just have to "stretch" with thumb on G and finger 2 (pointer) on C? That isn't much of a stretch. Three inches. Can your thumb and forefinger really not open three inches? Do you have arthritis, or some other problem? This should not involve stretching, twisting, or anything else. What am I missing?

Do you know that you are allowed to use the whole key and don't have to play each note at the front? If you start to turn your wrist, you may not be using the whole key.

Basically all what was covered was to play the C major scale 2 octaves, the root chord and its inversions, and said arpeggio 3 octaves. There has been no printout of these exercises and was purely off demonstration.

We are working through Alfred AIO book 1 and are currently going through the songs one by one. I have gone up till the end of the book on my own but I guess we are seeing if I am playing all of them correctly. As I've said, I've only had a few lessons and they are pretty short so not much has been covered. (we've had discussion on theory, history, where I want to be / goals, etc)

Not too sure how descriptive I can be on my pain but it is a pain coming from my wrist. I guess what I'm doing is twisting my wrist heavily side to side to reach the gaps and can't think of any way to do this without the twisting. I used to do this when I first did my self studying (mainly doing chords) and the pains were unreal. This made me realize I need to find a teacher ASAP. Over time though I've read a whole lot and watched alot of videos and tried to keep my wrist straight and relaxed and for the record no real pains since then but this exercise dug up bad memories.

We aren't playing on a weighted keyboard but it does have 88 keys. I own a Casio Privia PX-330 at home.

I label myself a beginner and have gone through to the end of Alfred AIO Book 1. Not too sure if this makes me an experienced beginner but thats how far I've gotten.

As for your last question, it may certainly seem like I would want out. But is that the right and most beneficial choice? This is exactly why I am curious if my assumptions could very well be the problem and not the teacher.

I'm sorry. I've totally directed the wrong part of the exercise although I wont lie I find the arpeggio exercise to be a hard one to begin with.

It's when I stretch from my finger four E, to thumb under G. It was instructed to play the notes as connected as possible but I cant seem to do it without twisting my wrist. I may twist my wrist slightly to reach for that octave C for with my finger 2 but yeah I guess I am playing in the white area of the keys and not more towards the "fallboard". This horizontal twisting motion may be happening in my actual playing with any exercise, song, or drill I do (which is why I wanted a teacher), but in this case it is the connected notes that have me doing the twisting.



Sort of off topic but sorry for all of the mistakes I've made in my posts. Kind of feel like an idiot with all of the mistakes especially with me asking for advice and all. Thank you for everyone who has replied to this helpless guy. lol

Can you touch your thumb tip to the base of your pinkie without pain? The stretch should feel like that. (At least it does when I do it.) Your 4th finger needs to ride back a bit on the E so that your thumb tip (on the edge, not pad) can reach the G without too much awkwardness or elbow flight. A little side-flexion of the wrist might be normal. (Boy this is hard to describe in words.)

Have you played the F major scale yet? The right hand finger 4 lands on Bb, then the thumb crosses under to C. This isn't quite as big of a stretch, but similar. Does it hurt?

I also wonder if your fingers are "wide". Do they fit between the black keys?

I don't know how to fix your problem, only asking questions to clarify the problem, and hoping someone else will jump in with the answers.

If I may share some thoughts:

The fact of being an adult student is more complicated for teachers because where we're at isn't as cut and dry. In your case, you did a method book on your own for a year - so are you a beginner who needs to learn the first things from scratch, or somebody who is in the middle of somewhere? If you are doing a run of ascending arpeggios in your first month, then you are being seen as "in the middle of somewhere". But in all likelihood, you need things that students learn in their very first lessons - posture, how to play in a range of 5 notes with a relaxed hand before expanding to a larger range - way before doing arpeggios with thumb under. There's a conflict between where you may be "at" in terms of abilities because you self-taught yourself this technique (you're not trained in it), and where you are "at" given where your year in the method book places you. That becomes a situation for your teacher to address.

The arpeggio you described makes sense if it is part of a piece of music (is it?) When we practice scales and arpeggios as an exercise, there is a default position which is handy, but if they come within music, then the fingering has to be practical for what comes before and after in the music. So the way this fingering is set out, it would seem to fit with some music. This is where you got something wrong from forums: there is not just one correct way of fingering things --- there are, however, principles behind fingering. For example, we have long and short fingers, and there are heighted receded black keys and lower "up front" white keys - that combination and the fact that we have 5 fingers and a scale spans an octave tends to make certain things practical. That, in turn, causes certain fingering patterns to work best which is why you see the fingering rules. An experienced teacher will be using her knowledge of various things to guide you in the fingering of a particular passage.

Back to choices teachers make in teaching, and the communication problem you are having. A teacher may well believe that you would be best off starting from scratch and maybe doing technical exercises or studying theory. However, many older students will be dismayed, or balk - unless you say something, this teacher may think that you want to continue with the book you brought in, or the same kinds of pieces, or focus on pieces rather than using pieces for learning technique. The teacher is making choices based on the goals that she thinks you have, in order to help you with those goals. If your goals are different, you may have a major and continuing miscommunication happening.

You may want to ask yourself what kinds of goals you presented when you had your first interview or lesson, and what kinds of goals the teacher communicated to you - or even whether this happened at all. You might want to talk to your teacher about this.

Or - something simpler - tackle your present problem: the tension with that arpeggio. As your teacher to observe you, suggest what you might be doing wrong to cause this tension, what you might do to prevent it from happening.

One problem is if you are measuring your teacher according to what you have seen on the Net. You cannot expect your teacher to be using the fingering that are presented here, because she may have reasons not to. On the other hand, if you have pain and it is being ignored, then knowing that teachers usually take pain seriously can be a red flag.

Another thing to bear in mind is that there is also a balancing act. If we become overly obsessed with correctness, correct technique, correct notes, correct timing, correct action - we may tie ourselves into knots. A teacher has to decide whether to induce us to let go, or whether carelessness is causing us problems. What a teacher does with you may be due to what that teacher is observing about you, and what experiences that teacher has had with students in general (what she finds tends to work).

There is however also the factor of many teachers being aware of student expectations: if they think something is necessary but that you wouldn't accept doing it, such as pulling back to a lower level for example, they may hesitate - you have to communicate, like a few teachers have indicated.

Have you ever done a major scale before for one octave before doing 2 octaves? Have you prepared and understand the fingering before. Do you feel you understood the verbal instructions before starting. Did any of the instructions get written down for the major scale?

Are chords new to you? Is the arpeggio new to you?

Do you play songs at your lesson? What are the teachers comments to you about the songs.

Could the pain you feel, which I beleive you are saying is only in the arpeggios be tension? Are the muscles of your shoulder, arm and hand being held tightly held in place?

What about the shape of your fingers? Are they flat or are the fingers curved roundly at the joints?

Why does she have you playing such a strange RH fingering for CEG arpeggios?

Pain is never good and you need to not push through it at all. I believe something is amiss in your understanding of what she asked. Either that or she is not aware of what you are experiencing - ask her to demonstrate the part that you are having problems with - something is missing.

It seems to me that something serious is happening between the two of you that is to your disadvantage. Do you know her credentials or reputation?

I wish you luck in solving the problems.

Betty

Beginner Fanatic lives in the Styx but has managed to find a piano teacher ... by 3rd lesson, wonders whether being sold a lemon ... especially over apparent disregard , when early mention had been made by the OP about posture and hand/wrist technique ... however, the teacher had logically opened with arpeggio studies to free up the fingers ... but now it would appear that the exercises are found to be hard on OP’s hands (poor dear!!).

Never, in all my born days (having already clocked my three-score-and-ten ) ... I have never had an adult student complain about hands ... which makes me believe the OP is suffering from some chronic malady (age, muscle disorder, depression or plain lack of confidence).