Styles of Piano Learning Teaching and Motivating Students

Styles of Piano Teaching and Learning

At its core essence, teaching piano is a skill and a craft, as well as inculcation in a musical art from the student's perspective. In other words, a student must learn to love what he or she does enough to practice often tedious scales or pieces he or she has little interest in, but provides him or her with strong foundations and fundamentals that can help give birth to creative artistry. A teacher must select the correct pieces, stress the importance of practice, and still teach musical appreciation and understanding to his or her charges.

Perhaps the foremost responsibility of a piano teacher for beginning and intermediate students is to lay a good technical foundation for these students. "This is not merely the teaching of rudiments such as scale and arpeggio fingerings, dominant and diminished seventh arpeggios, octaves and chords." Rather, "it also should include the concept of sound, tone production, touch, pedaling, gestures and control." The ear as well as the eye upon the musical scale of the student thus must be trained in harmony. Also, "even the physical aspects of piano playing" techniques, "cannot be neglected by an effective piano teacher." In light of this truth, some piano teachers have deployed such physical relaxation methods as the use of the Alexander technique, which not only "demonstrates and advocates good posture at the keyboard," buy also emphasizes the awareness of body movements and tension. Tension in the arms, shoulders and body are common problems among young pianists that need to be detected, diagnosed and resolved early on." (Leung, 2004)

Teaching the piano is thus a holistic practice, of uniting the student's mind and body, of appreciation and art. It is also psychological, as "teachers should work to build confidence in a student's musical pursuit, instill a positive attitude toward successes and failures, promote emotional maturity and provide motivation and challenges. Unlike coaching, which is specific and goal directed towards achieving mastery of a piece or becoming more accomplished for an upcoming performance, teaching music attempts to treat the entire performer, technically and tempramentally. (Leung, 2004) A student may be forced to stretch him or herself to play a piece that he or she is not particularly accomplished at, or even well-suited for, as a learning experience. A teacher takes interest in student practice habits, as well as the sound of the student's playing in the immediate present.

Instilling a love of technique, an often difficult acquition process, has proved a constant challenge to music teachers. As early as Bach, composers attempted to create pieces that sounded interesting to student ears but still taught the student of the piano something about technique. For instance, the "Two-Part Inventions of J.S. Bach" were composed as teaching rather than as performance pieces. By the composer "Written from 1720-1723, the Inventions were a part of the compositional output of the years Bach spent in Cothen. Every Invention contains two voices that exchange or converse with motivic material. The mastreo stated he composed his works, proper introduction, whereby "lovers of the clavier" or piano," would formulate their technique by "learning to play cleanly in two voices," or the two sides of the keyboard played with different hands. The piece also further progressed the student to proceed to the next level of percieved difficulty, "with three obbligato parts correctly and well -- at the same time not only receiving good ideas," in other words the forumation of inventions or improvisation but also be able to utilize them for their own unique "style of playing, and for the procurement of a thorough foretaste of composition," in other words of making their own music. (Stanley, 2003)

Even if compsoition is not the modern student's goal, as few students hope for an equal mastery of composition and artistry as they did in Bach's day, the stress upon allowing the student to 'own' his or her music is well taken in Bach's explaination for his construction of this teaching piece, and others. (Stanley, 2003) An understanding of "dynamics, articulations and tempo markingsdynamics, articulations and tempo markings" enable a performer's creativity, and although Amy Stanley has observed that few students enjoy the technical demands of Bach's 'teaching piece,' they profit from this exercise when they leave the piece and then proceed onto pieces that are not purely designed to teach and to tax a student's expertise at playing.