Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Anybody have "once in a while" lessons?

Now that I'm old and have a decent piano and time to practice, I want to spend a little time learning to play the piano well. I grew up with one in the house to plink on, but never had lessons.

I'm not interested in regular lessons, but as my much-hated band director said, "practice doesn't make perfect--PERFECT practice makes perfect." Has anyone ever dealt with a teacher that they only get together with as need be? I wouldn't mind sitting down with someone once every couple of months or so to go over technique, but regular lessons just aren't of interest. Some help developing a "technical toolbox" would be nice, but all the recitals, theory, schedule pressure, etc. just aren't of interest or are things I can learn on my own.

I understand why teachers would prefer regularly scheduled lessons, but has anyone dealt with a teacher who will fit them in occasionally?

Hi Lucretia,

My teacher has almost all adult students and will do this - and I tried it for a while - but eventually decided on weekly shorter lessons - my mind just went into overload and I forgot half of what was said when we hand monthly, sometimes longer, reviews... which tended to last between 4 and 6 hours...

I don't have any recital/schedule/etc pressures - he knows that adults have complex lives and cannot practice as they would like to and often just want to play for themselves...

Our weekly 1.5 - 2.5hr lessons are still 'if we both have a slot free' events though - so yes, there are teachers out there like that...

My teacher comes once a month. I always dread his coming, because I never feel ready (despite putting in the work). But...he is always kind and encouraging, gives me very useful instruction and after he leaves, I am inspired to work on what we went over.

As an adult, I can't imagine taking a weekly lesson...but I am not a beginner either.

I have a friend who is a music teacher in the public schools. She doesn't have time for regular lessons, but there were a couple of times I'd get together with her and she would go over technique issues, especially when I first started piano. She also showed me how to practice playing with my hands totally relaxed and how to rotate my wrist on arpeggios. I found those sessions extremely helpful, and I'm with you in that I prefer sporadic coaching sessions like those rather than regular lessons.

I think occasional lessons are much better than none at all. My teacher teaches adults in every way--some once a week, some every other week, some whenever they get a minute to come in. I think you should try it and see if it works for you.

Nancy

My teacher is typically only accepts weekly students. But last year I offered him a year in advance for a nice discount because I was missing too many lesson due to my work schedule. So he held my time slot for me for my “once in a while lessons”. I have been averaging 3 lessons every 2 months. I’m hoping for a similar deal for ’08.

I know this feeling very well. Though I practice faithfully, it always seems I should have more to show for it when lesson time comes around.

My teacher travels a lot so lessons are infrequent. Sometimes we do correspondence lessons, sending scores back and forth to check fingerings, etc. Or I can send a taped performance.

At in-person lessons I keep a notebook handy and scribble notes of things to remember. After the lesson I spend an hour or so re-writing the notes in a more legible way and filling in the gaps with ideas I didn't have time to write during the lesson, as much as I can recall. This helps keep me on track during the long interval between lessons.

For inter-lesson reviews I wrote some web software that allows me to upload recordings and let my teacher make comments in the MP3 file itself.

I was thinking of generalising it to multiple users etc. Here's a demo, feel free to edit...

http://www.sailwave.com/mp3editdemo

It's very primitive at the moment - but I'd be quite interesting in developing the idea if anybody was interested - at the very least you get some private upload space...

Or perhaps a teacher would be interested in providing this as a service to their students...

For a number of years I was in the habit of taking a "one-off" lesson from a professional pianist or composer every so often. In the former case, it was usually because I felt I had a specific technical issue, in the latter because I wanted to understand where my own creations stood in relation to orthodox musical teaching.

I am afraid that only one of these teachers and composers was any good to me. They were all well intentioned and so was I, and I always made every effort to put into practice the things they told me. However, with the composers, I still preferred my "wrong" sounds to their "right" ones, and with the pianists I found most of their advice about physical movements to be verifiably wrong, at least for me; sometimes after wasting weeks trying to act on it.

Generally speaking, I think the more specific and well defined the technical issue, the more a really experienced player is likely to spot it and be of some use to you. The more general and vague the issues you have, the less good a "one-off" lesson is likely to do.

For instance, if you sought advice because you couldn't play rapid upward double notes, or something similar, then it would be worth having a couple of isolated lessons because a good player would sort you out very quickly. On the other hand, if you did a lot of improvisation and wanted assurance that it was good, then you might as well not bother. All the teacher will do is find something he/she doesn't like and tell you to change it, which process is too subjective.

If you really need to find direction with these general issues, then it is probably better to get it through listening and through direct social contact with suitable musicians.

This assumes you have gone your own way successfully for some time of course. If you are a beginner then there is no substitute for regular lessons from a good teacher.

I wish I could learn on my own, but having a teacher motivates me and she always pings on something that if left unchecked would change how the piece is supposed to sound.

We have some good laughs "Ok after you're done re-writing this piece, we'll play it the way the composer intended"

Even after the time comes that I won't need lessons I think I'll stick with her to do pieces. I love my class and her brilliant way of teaching.

Thanks for the feedback. I think Ted2 hit the nail on the head with what I'm looking for:

So many of the music teachers I've researched in the area fall into 2 camps: The first the is hearts, flowers, and warm fuzzy teddy bear "I will inspire you and teach you to embrace music as well as play the piano" type. The second is the "Catholic School Nun--I will whack you with a ruler if you do not practice" type. Both seem targeting children as students, although they claim to teach all ages. Either style would send me screaming out the door. I need a technician who will share methodologies, not a cheerleader or a taskmaster.

What I'm looking for is someone who can tell me if my wrist is sore due to bad technique and what I should do to fix it, or was it just painting the house, digging rocks, pulling weeds, using a bad computer setup, and practicing Hanon for too long all in the same day...

Anyway, I'll keep looking for a teacher. In the meantime, this forum and others at Pianoworld have been incredibly helpful.

Thanks!

Lavalse, I think you are heading in the right direction, I'm sure Cyber Piano Lessons, possibly where one never meets the teacher in the flesh, are next generation. The piano teachers who contribute to this forum, given the right software, etc., could easily be the pioneers. Perhaps there's a teacher already doing it?