Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum In my head I call myself a beginner even though I am not.

I am an adult re-starter. This first year of playing has taught me so much more about technique that I never learned as a kid. I am a much better student now, with a much better teacher.

However, despite playing intermediate level material and being able to fluently read music, I always call myself a beginner in my mind. I wonder if there will be a day when I feel advanced? I feel like that day will never come because there is way too much to play in a lifetime. Wondering if anyone else feels the same.

Nothing wrong with seeing the truth and being aware of it, quite the contrary. It also depends on what reference you are using for the classification.
E.g., compare the definition of "past the beginning stage" by Beethoven/Czerny to that of the average YouTube "piano Teacher" of today. I'm sure there is a difference.


Only if you have patience, work on the right material, and in the right way.


No doubt about it.

Oooh yes. But I have started to overcome that feeling now, at last.

There is a little mantra I often use in my daily life, both in my profession and in my housework or hobbies (I am a hobby pianist). That is "whatever you do, do it as if you get paid $$$ for it". Or, in a more pragmatic version: "do it like a pro".

It is good to be humble in the sense that you always listen to advice and see every person you meet as a teacher, in one way or the other. Pianists, no matter what level, who behave like primadonnas are unbearable, and they don't develop either. Good pianists always strive to develop and get better, even if they have been playing professionally for 70 years.
BUT - be brave enough to take yourself seriously. When you practice at the piano, no matter if you do it for minutes or for hours, you should be serious about it. Ask yourself what a real pro would do in your situation. I have met real pros, and I have been amazed and delighted by their devotion and their humble way to tackle even the tiniest problems. If they need to work with a simple Hanon exercise in slow motion in order to make something sound better, they do it. If they need to practice and only have access to a wreck of a piano, or a plastic toy of a piano, they use it.

Primadonnas demand the best instrument you can get, or else they refuse to play, they waste time talking rubbish about their sensitive ears that get damaged by pianos out of tune or bad playing from others, they waste even more time asking for admiration and respect from others, they only want to play the most famous works and choose their pieces according to that, they have no deep and genuine interest in MUSIC.

So am not encouraging you to be a primadonna, but still, be a PRO. This means that you should spend no more time worrying about the pieces you CANNOT play yet (because then you will go crazy) or having a so called modest attitude: I am just dabbling around, my playing is nothing, I cheat a bit with piano playing, I am just a pathetic little amateur, yada yada. This will affect your practicing in a severe way, making you feel a bit silly when you try to be ambitious, so you hold yourself back. And that is dangerous! You are putting serious restrictions on yourself, on your true potential.

(Not to mention the classical excuse: I am too old to get somewhere. If my parents only had encouraged me more when I was younger. Etcetera.)

Where I live, in Sweden, this is a curse. We call it the Jante law, a satirical set of laws where the first paragraph states "you shall not believe you are something". (In proper English: who do you think you are?) Second paragraph: "you shall not believe you are better than the rest of us."
And so we all mock everyone who are sticking their neck out, trying to put them down. To "fail" is the biggest humiliation you can imagine, that must be avoided at any price, meaning that you should not even make attempts.

I am not a prominent piano player and I also hate to perform, but I know I showed an unusual attitude when I also re-started playing a few years ago. I have stopped making excuses for myself, I call myself a pianist, even though I am an amateur, and I practice like a pro ... meaning that I try to feel like a pro and I don't want to see any restrictions for myself.
There was a time when I said about certain pieces: "I will never be able to learn that, no matter if I practice for 200 years". I have realized that I can learn ANYTHING if I'm only diligent, careful and patient enough. (But I can never learn EVERYTHING.) I deliberately said to myself: "I am a pianist, and I am not a beginner." I said it until I started to feel it was true.

I have no desire to make a living on my piano playing and again, I don't even like to perform. I am not interested in acknowledgement, I play for my own pleasure and personal development. But I want to see how far I can go. I am 50 now and if I am still alive and in good health at the age of 80, I hope I will be a MUCH better pianist by then.
Some months ago I went to a nice recital and afterwards I found myself in a discussion with some other pianists, I mean professional pianists, one of them a world class concert pianist. We talked about pianos we had tried out and discussed different brands and techniques. I felt good afterwards. I had been one of them, a pianist, not just a fan trying to get autographs. And I had been treated like a colleague by them. I mean, why shouldn't they? I have been talking to young diploma students as well, their level of skill is also waaaay beyond mine, but why compare all the time? The point is that we all play the piano. They all have been at my level too, they know what it's like!


Long reply here. But the short reply is: Yes, that day will come, if you let it come. It will come today, if you just allow it. Remember, even the best pianists have new pieces to learn all the time ...

Some famous musicians stated similar things near the ends of their lives: "I'm still a student." (Pavarotti), and another whose name I've forgotten, when asked why he practised, said humbly something like "I think I'm starting to get the hang of it." What beginners learn is at the foundation of everything, so it is not a bad attitude to have. I'm sort of with you on that one as an adult student myself.

It's good to evaluate ourselves and scrutinize and criticize our own playing ability and skills. If we post recordings of our playing on the internet (YouTube, etc...) we are definitely going to get a lot of criticism, and perhaps a bit of cruelty to go along with it; along with some kind words and complements from a few. When we scrutinize ourselves and recognize our own strengths and weaknesses, we better prepare ourselves for the gauntlet of critics just waiting for that knock-out blow.

One of the things I've always liked about the ABF is that most members here are kind and gentle souls who want to coach and encourage others.

When we get comments from others like "it was a sad day when we were born"... wow, that's rough.

And, as far as actually getting paid for our playing/performance... well, even many of the best of the best fail to do that in their careers. And, on occasion, those with mediocre and less advanced skills hit the entertainment lottery, big-time.

There are no pre-set rules of engagement for success, depending on how you measure success.

Rick

I often feel the same way after 30 months of lessons. I know I will probably never reach an advanced level of playing, and that's OK.

In this forum sometimes the topic of "measuring progress" comes up. To me, this is important as I want a tangible way to measure my progress.

I like the fact that the Piano Guild has three basic levels of competency: Elementary, Intermediate, and Preparatory. In my case, I have moved into the first level of Intermediate material. When people ask me how well to I play, I state "early intermediate", which any piano teacher down here understands.

The problem with Beginner vs Advanced (or even Professional) is that for most of us, we will never achieve that latter or the two, for different reasons.

If after 5-10 years of studies I would still consider myself a beginner, well that would bug me.

I'm only 7 months into this journey, but I think I'll hit "advanced enough" in three years. This will be well below any official definition of advanced, but enough to accomplish my short term goals (i.e., play music with friends) and hopefully enough to set me on a trajectory of continual improvement from there.

In seven months I've progressed from what many 5 or 6 year olds can play to what many 8 year olds can play. Even if that curve flattens out, I'll still be caught up to some of the less diligent teenagers by the time I'm 70. Then it's just blue skies and an ocean of music ahead.

The milestone I'm really hungry for is to be able to "see" the keyboard mentally. I now know where most of the notes are and I know which key I want to press when I see it in the sheet music, but I still can't grabs the leaps and jumps without peeking. Once the keyboard is clearly visible with my eyes closed, then I'm expecting a big acceleration in the learning process.

Beginner is a mindset.

I still don't understand why it matters what you call yourself. It is only a label that really doesn't mean much to anyone. Labels distract from the tasks at hand.

I am currently working out of RCM "Level 4" book. But I am also working on a piece out of a RCM "Level 7" book. I am most comfortable playing pieces out of a "Level 1" book. Where does that put me?

I am a piano student for life. And the best way to achieve my goal for piano is to approach this discipline as a wide-eyed neophyte.

The minute you are concerned about a label for your level, whether it be what you call yourself, or how you perceive others see you...

You are in effect, comparing yourself to some 'standard' or 'progress' and therefore potentially setting yourself up for disappointment and possible failure if your 'progress' is not matching others over the same time frame.

If you tell someone what you play, to some you would be a beginner, and to some you would be advanced. it depends on the perspective of the viewer and his/her musical level.

What are we? We should no longer care... The importance is the end game we want to reach and whether we are there yet. Letting go of the label and the progression concern means that life is less crowded with self-doubt.

Progress should be one note at a time.... and the level is 'whatever it is'. .. without a label.


IMHO

I'm not a student of Zen by any means, but I do have respect for the concept of Beginner's Mind in which cultivating an attitude of openness to learning is valuable. From good ol' Wikipedia: "Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki, says the following about the correct approach to Zen practice: "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few.""

Thank you MeganR. This is exactly why I used "wide-eyed neophyte."

In essence I agree with this. However, I make a distinction between a pure "label" and an "achievement level", which may have some label attached to it.

It may be that in other parts of the world the material I'm learning right now is still considered "beginner". That does not matter to me at all. What does matter is that I can feel the progress. If a label helps to clarify that, as it does in the Guild, so much the better.

Oh wow! Such an amazing response thank you. Right after I read what you wrote I started to try to think like this for every practice session and it is helping me maintain my patience level much more. Every little thing that is going wrong with the piece is not something I get as flustered about. Instead I take some time to think about it and use various approaches depending on what I have in my knowledge arsenal.

Applying this to my practice structure has also helped a lot too. I am trying to increase my practice time to almost 2 hours a day and there's a chunk of theory that I need to brush up on. I know a pro wouldn't hesitate to do so - so I certainly need to make myself commit to it this weekend.

I am in the apartment below a pianist who is amazing at sight reading. Perhaps this is contributes to the beginner feeling but, I do always tell myself that any pianist who I admire was at some point where I am at. They just didn't give up and put the work in.

So there's the trick you never give up, and be a pro.