Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum giving up method books

OP has a teacher, in his case, method books are pointless.

The argument about "can't afford teacher or other reasons" is a leit motif in ABF, the uncomfortable truth for most people is that they don't believe a teacher is going to help, they believe they can do it by themselves and they don't want to pay for one.

It's a matter of priority.

Okay, let's be clear about one thing... no adult beginner will ever play Scrabo. Ever.


How can you be so sure? Alright, I have to admit that before coming to Pianoworld I myself wasn't convinced of the value of a teacher (oh, how wrong I was) but there are people who truly cannot afford one.

I'm a bit late to this conversation, but I'll throw my 2 cents in as well. I think there are multiple ways to effectively learn piano. Some students will work well with a method book, others with various single pieces selected by their teachers, and still others some combination in between. I think which method is best, is determined by the personality of the student's learning style and the goals the student has.

As for my own learning, I tend to agree with a lot of what Linda has written in her posts. The reason I have enjoyed the method book approach so far (I've been learning for ~10 months with a teacher) is because it is very easy for me to see the exact technical lesson I'm getting out of the piece I'm working on at any given time and in addition I have an easy reference of everything I've done before. In a way there is a syllabus or checklist of all the fundamentals I'm learning and I can gain confidence that I've covered each of these items to some extent.

I think for many students having a very clear view of where they have been and where they are going helps the learning process by building this type of confidence.

That's not to say that it's the best or only way to learn. But a method book certainly mirrors the way that many of us have been taught to learn other subjects in our younger years.

My personal journey, will likely take me through the Alfred's series. Along with some outside selected classical and rock/pop pieces. After this obviously I will be out in the wild unknown and my teacher and I will select pieces together. But I think that by that point in time I will be more confident and prepared to be outside of the method book environment and at a piano playing level that I am secure in my knowledge and skills that at least the basics have been covered and that it is now "ok" for me to selectively work on various pieces my teacher and I choose together.

At the end of the day I think there are multiple ways to progress on the journey, some will be more effective for certain students while other methods for other students.

This is very subjective. Not everyone is heading in the same direction or with the same goal.

For those taking the classical route with rapid progress in mind this may be the case. On the other hand, the journey may be more important than the arrival or, indeed, the progress.

For me, practising the piano outweighs the playing time by a considerable margin even though I do now get several opportunities for an outlet. It may be that this practise time is more important than reaching a waypoint. It may be my meditation, my therapy, my pleasure or my pastime. If I want to unwind after a hard day at the ofice this may be my fix. I may have no intentions of progressing on the instrument any further than my own interest and abilities allow.

I have a desire to play the Hammerklavier but I don't have a realistic expectation of it. Tackling it may well be fruitless in terms of the possibility of performing it. But it allows me to hear a professional performance of it with more knowledge, more understanding, greater appreciation and greater pleasure. Maybe others hear Traümerei the same way. For them, trying to do it themselves may be everything.

Method books aren't the best route, though, if progress or good music is the aim. They are useful for the first few months, as bennevis says, and as sight-reading fodder but there are better ways of achieving their main aims.

The very first thing, at my very first lesson, that my teacher did was toss the Alfred's book to the side.

Same experience.

Tell that to the piano teachers , pedagogy professors /students and publishing houses who seem to think they have a point !!

... and then loose all that confidence once you realise that there is so much more that your method book is not teaching.

I kind of agree with Ataru. Your teacher has the experience to guide you. If you like having a plan you can look towards "milestone" pieces.

I'm not convinced of the sanctity of teachers. Very useful for sure, but far from necessary. That's my opinion after learning for about 6 months, and getting 3 lessons in the middle before discontinuing because I couldn't afford it (very well respected teacher that I really got along with too). It will be interesting to look back in a few years time to see if my attitude has changed.

My experience has been that I could not live without my teacher. I am a returning adult, with an extensive theory background from the old days. My teacher hears nuances I would never hear, and offers a different approach to problems that I would struggle to find. I realize that economics are a big issue, but I hope you find a way to make it work. If impossible now, leave it as an option when funds are better. I can truly estimate a 50% improvement in the last year from what I think I would have had without the lessons. Can I prove this? Of course not, but I am a believer. I think I would make my dog beg on the street corner if that is what it takes to continue.

Well not quite unknown, we have discussed it a bit, and from what she has told me, I can't wait. She has 40 years of teaching experience, and has many many intermediate level pieces and beyond waiting to explore.

As far as the conversation about methods book are good, bad, a waste of time, incredibly important......etc. These comments are opinions, not facts. My experience in other matters has taught me that people learn differently, and that teachers teach differently. One size does NOT fit all. The only thing that should matter is, is the student progressing and is he/she satisfied with the result?

For me, the combination of my teacher, the Faber lesson books, and my supplemental material has worked very well so far, after 23 months.

In a nutshell, you have 6 month of experience and 3 lessons to back up your claims...
Back in my early youth, I childishly asked my teacher if after the 10th year of piano study (when you get your conservatory diploma) you finally feel that you have reached somewhere... ( at the time I was in my 6th year of studies)

his answer was, "no, it's when you really begin learning something."

When you have solved most of the technical issues and you can play pretty much anything is put in front of you is when you really start focusing on what is important in making music.
I took lessons for enough years and have been without a teacher for few years to know that without a teacher there is no way to progress even to a decent pace, a lifetime won't be enough to be able to do what you can achieve in few years with a teacher.

I generally agree but I think you're over simplifying it a bit. Students often have limited perspectives on progression and goals. They often aren't sure what they want or even if they do how to go get about getting there.

Here's some videos I found the other day that I thought was very funny (in the good way).

Video week 1 of learning piano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOx4dA1Tbr0

Video week 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx2_-POIxJI

6 Months on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV5S5E39vus



Absolutely. But at the same time inexperience is not a strictly worse perspective than an experienced one. You should be more careful about your claims, and state your inexperience when offering opinions, but at the same time it doesn't invalidate them.

Maybe not, but I have enough Beethoven sonatas under my belt to know that I wouldn't ever got here without all the help I got from my fantastic teachers.
in Italian we have a way of say about beginners that sounds like "you still have your mom's milk on your lips and you already want to teach dad how to engage intimately with her" maybe is a little rude but to gives a little of perspective about the whole process.

Whew, just read through all the new posts. Lots of good stuff.

Ataru074 and outo, thank you for your replies as well as the questions you asked. It's given me a lot to think about.

My teacher is young and doesn't have a lot of experience with teaching, but I'll ask for her thoughts on teaching with repertoire only. Or at least get an idea of when she moves a student out of method books.

Linda, a friendly advice, you think really too much. I feel the anxiety from the other side of the screen. Trust your teacher, enjoy the trip.
It does take A LOT of time to get somewhere and if you think too much about it, you just get frustrated.
When I started with my current teacher about one year ago, took me about one month just to be relaxed playing for him...
Fifty-ish lessons later I look back and I see a couple of preludes and fugue, a french suite, two Mozart sonatas, one Beethoven sonata and a set of variations, few etudes and some other smaller pieces... so, I'm quite happy, but while getting here, it felt like a walk in the desert with not enough water and shoes too tight.

Yeah, maybe I think too much sometimes. Even so, I mostly I just go with the flow. I'm not in a hurry to get anywhere. And I feel like I've been making steady progress. Plus I now have a teacher. So I really am not feeling any anxiety. Sorry if it came across that way. I should probably use emoticons more.

That sounds great, Ataru. I'm seven months in (building on previous lessons, not from scratch), and I'm looking at 1 2-part invention learned. In a few more months I may be able to add another 2-part invention, and possibly a Chopin waltz that I've already been working on for 6 months, as learned, and by then I'll have been slogging away at a Chopin Nocturne for 6 months.

I'm following my teacher's lead for what to play, but apart from the inventions I feel like progress is incredibly slow and completely unpredictable. My teacher thinks it's good for me to be stretching for these pieces, and seems to think this rate of progress is normal. With the inventions I feel like I know how to make progress, but with the waltz it has felt like fail fail fail fail fail make-a-little-progress start-working-on-another-aspect lose-the progress-I had-previously-made fail fail fail fail fail. I'm trying a very different approach with the Nocturne and *only* working on the 4 or 5 hardest measures. We'll see if that leads to a different type of learning than I've failed at with the Waltz so far.

Not I guess that that has anything to do with method books, and I'm not wishing for method books at my stage of lessons. Just riffing off your reply: you feel like it was difficult but looking back you've made progress; I feel like it's difficult and I'm making barely any progress.

shouldn't your teacher be suggesting how to practice instead of letting you take that kind of decisions? any time I feel like I'm not making progress it's a matter of how, more than what and how much.

I think I'm following what my teacher suggests about practicing, but I often feel like it doesn't make any difference. Or like I'm not understanding correctly. Her most recent directive in several things is that I need to push myself to go faster, and then I feel like I'm just cementing in screwing up because I play it wrong when I push myself faster, and then she says I need to back off the speed to just the right amount of pushing myself faster so I'm not screwing up, and I feel like I can't find that spot.

Or, there's a part of the waltz with two notes at a time for several eighth notes (like 24, 35, 24, 13, 24, 35, in essentially a five finger position) and I've been trying for months to get them to sound at the same time, and she's given me suggestions, and they seem to work for a few tries, but then they don't become reliable even when I keep repeating them in practice, and I don't know if I should just keep doing it 100 times more and even though 90% of them are bad eventually somehow my body will figure it out and the % successful will go up.

When I started I felt as if every week I was learning things I'd been thirsting to learn for years, but now for several months I've felt frustrated and stalled. But I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I think I know things about how to practice but judging by results it feels like I don't.

Or maybe I'm just at a level where it's going to be years and years before I feel like I'm making any progress, and in the meantime I just have to be doing the time to get my 100s and 100s of repetitions in.

But reading your last sentence this sounds like it's symptoms of me not actually knowing how to practice.