Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum no teacher for a few months.grrr

My teacher is taking time off for 3 mnths due to having a baby and I am still obviously learning new pieces but I am also feeling like I am at a standstill. I am so used to having encouragement on my improvement or being told what mistakes to correct and how to, and not having a teacher for 2 mnths has kinda left me feeling blah. I feel that I am not improving in the pieces I am playing.

Those without teachers, how do you figure out how to correct your mistakes without someone telling you how to? Anyone have any tricks to keep your spirits up when they are down?

I feel somewhat the same, since my music school closes for summer after the end-of-year recital next week, and does not open until September. It's not really common for teachers to teach year round here, so it is not the first time. Usually I work with the teacher to select what I should be working on over the summer before the semester ends, which is very helpful. It is still up to me to keep going however. General technique exercises are no problem, since you can just go along some book and keep your skills up. (I am not meaning completely new skills, but scales and other exercises, that you basically know how to do correctly.) I play more "for fun" pieces during the summer, since it is hard to to go for new things that do require help. Usually there is lot of progress during the summer as I have more time to practice anyway. To manage it on your own a while, I would say to listen. Listening to your playing is the only way you can spot problems. Listen to recordings and compare, and record your own playing and listen. When you have spotted a problem it is much easier to look for a solution or to ask someone, or to ask about it here on the forum. But unless you took the time to listen, you would not have found the issue. Sight-reading is another thing that you easily can practice on your own. Reading up on theory, history, or other things is also something you can do on your own. Meeting up with other musicians or another piano student when you have the possibility, is also helpful. At least you can get someone's encouragement and a little music talk to inspire further practicing. Finally, I intend to go on a summer camp, which definitly allows for much feedback and practicing.

Basically, I think you need to find a way to inspire yourself, and to make sure you move along and practice, even if you are not focusing so much on new skills that need teacher help. Not having anyone at all to share music with would be something that probably would make me stop practicing well. Therefore, I find it important to at least find at least some occasions to discuss the latest progress, or music in general with other people. But, as I said, you need to experiment and see what works for you.

Enjoy the summer!

One answer to this may be to see if you can find some recordings that are seen as "correct" of the pieces, then record yourself playing the pieces, then compare and contrast. It isn't Ideal,but may help a little.
There should be no problem with practising your scales and maybe brushing up on a little theory? Hope this helps.

Your teacher isn't away for too long, hang on in there.

Recording and listening to oneself, or playing for friends and asking them what they think. Also listening (& feeling in my rhythmic sense) for hesitations in my playing, such as places where the limitations in my manual dexterity interfere with my interpretation of the music.


My trick for keeping my motivation & spirits high as a self-learner are to find the areas where my brain and/or fingers are just "ripe" to learn & develop a particular skill or concept. I follow whatever particularly fascinates me this month, or whatever area in which my skills are ready to take off from their old plateau and sudden leap ahead. I just look for such naturally-occurring opportunities and milk them for all intensive learning excitement they can provide.

I can't imagine this.
For me I often try playing other pieces that I am not actively "working on".
I usually either download some free sheet music of pieces that I am interested in, go out and buy some or go through some of the fairly large collection that I have at home.
Sometimes playing different pieces, or a different style,even if you don't play them too well, is refreshing. And it is always a form of practice in that it should help improve your sight-reading skills.
Sometimes I practice doing arpeggios or working on chord inversions, whatever. You shouldn't always be needing somebody to "correct" you since there should always be some things that you can work on on your own.

And I was feeling bad about not having lessons for 3 weeks!

How about recording some of your stuff and emailing it to your teacher every month or so? Would s/he be willing to listen to it and make some comments on it? (Offer to pay her/him for doing this, of course.)

For something to work toward, you could plan on submitting a piece to the next ABF recital (in August).

Hope the time goes by fast for you, and that you accomplish a lot.

Sometimes when I get in a rut it helps me to focus on technical stuff on pieces I've started more recently. That's where I see the most improvement and get the most gratification. Pick up a new piece and just run through a few measures at a time, until you have them down, and then move forward. Switch pieces out more frequently than you normally would.

Three months will end faster than you think. Have fun!

Thank you for all the wonderful responses. I had a very bad week of migraines so I haven't played at all this week. Normally I feel bad but I need the break. I start again today! I am really hard on myself, my worst critic and enemy. I am sure there are a lot of us like that:)

I shouldn't be so hard on myself because I have taught myself to play 5 songs so far, it's mostly the polishing of them that is driving me crazy. Stupid mistakes that I can't seem to iron out.