All About Choosing Piano Schools And Teachers

[Dreamaurora]

sleepy:

Dreamaurora:

she is entitled to her opinion

Thanks for being so understanding

Dreamaurora:

every parent has his/her own set of criteria of what makes a good teacher and for her being able to achieve fast result is quite obviously at the top the of the list.

Yes, I know very clearly what type of teacher I'm looking for, after many trials and errors

Er, regarding fast result.. not entirely true.
See my posting above.

Inclination, interests and right teacher to bring out potential.
If all these components are present, result should come nautrally

Yes, I see what you mean. But difficult lar to find your dream teacher because the qualities you are looking for may not coexist within one single teacher.

[phankao]

pirate:

I used to go \"wah\" at youtube videos of all these young children playing fast pieces on the piano. They are so young and yet so proficient on the keys.

But now, I find it more interesting to see whether they can play the slow, \"easy\" pieces. It seems that many children can be taught to be technically proficient and to play faster and faster pieces. Musicality on the other hand...
.

So easy to play fast, meh? I wish it were that case.

[dasalo]

phankao:

pirate:

I used to go \"wah\" at youtube videos of all these young children playing fast pieces on the piano. They are so young and yet so proficient on the keys.

But now, I find it more interesting to see whether they can play the slow, \"easy\" pieces. It seems that many children can be taught to be technically proficient and to play faster and faster pieces. Musicality on the other hand...
.

So easy to play fast, meh? I wish it were that case.

Actually it's true, fast is easier than slow. Slow harder to emote the repertoire esp for young children.

[Imami]

Yes, I also think playing fast is easier than playing slow. Like pirate, I used to get so impressed w very young children playing so well. I remembered watching a little buy who played Bumblebee on YouTube.



These days I m less impressed.

[pirate]

Dreamaurora:

As I have mentioned earlier, regurgitating to children is a far faster and easier method to get things done in lesson. Making them think and experiment is harder and takes a lot more lesson time.


But I think it is a sad state of affair these young students do not understand and connect to the music on the personal level. And even as a teacher, I face an uphill battle because a lot of local students are very passive and not really pro active. I try my best to guide them to understand their music by asking them to find out more about the music and the composer, make up story to accompany their pieces, set lyrics, think of mood and colors, etc. But everytime I have to prompt them and remind them. Very few will actually be curious and go beyond what I ask them to do.

Yes, but most teachers only have like an hour a week.

I think this is an area that parents can actually do something about. Even for non musically trained parents like me, we can engage our children in the pieces that our children are learning. Often, all it takes is just a little googling on our part. We may not be able to engage on a musical level, but we can engage them on what that particular piece is about.

For DD, I tell her that Handel's Allemande is a court dance, and that a court dance is like a dance done by princesses at the palace. That then opens the door for me to ask her questions about her playing like: Wah, so fast, how to dance? Is that a princess dance or a robot? :evil:

For the Kabalevsky, I tell her the title means cavalryman. Then I ask her does her playing sound like a horse or does it sound like a donkey? Once, she said Little Pony. Then she says she wants to see Cavalia :slapshead: .

I remember when she was doing her grade 4, I told her once that her sun in the Sun is Setting just went \"plop\" into the sea. She went :razz: but it got her thinking.

[waiyean]

I think it depends on the pieces being played.

There are pieces that has very fast notes, with lots of jumps and large intervals, it’s technically challenging to play it fast with all the right and even tones. Also, many recordings on Youtube of children playing Flight of the Bubblebee are playing it too slowly anyway.

The difference though, is that tempo challenges can be overcomed with lots of practice. Whereas, a slower piece that has to be played expressively requires lots of musical maturity, which many young children are lacking.

[phankao]

waiyean:

I think it depends on the pieces being played.

There are pieces that has very fast notes, with lots of jumps and large intervals, it's technically challenging to play it fast with all the right and even tones. Also, many recordings on Youtube of children playing Flight of the Bubblebee are playing it too slowly anyway.

The difference though, is that tempo challenges can be overcomed with lots of practice. Whereas, a slower piece that has to be played expressively requires lots of musical maturity, which many young children are lacking.

I find \"fast\" difficult bc of the \"technical challenges\" that you mention and the small hands.

Surprised you all find fast easier. I would think \"fast\" end up easier to create a \"mess\"! For small kids, I mean.

[crm]

I have a small child who played a slow song during exam. At first yes really play like robot but eventually got full mark in the exam

It can be trained anyway
I kind of being touched while listen to my child play more than I did when listen to cd

[Imami]

Recently spoke to my son’s teacher. She has a p2 kid who just did g2. She said her kid got a merit for g2 after putting in a lot of effort from her and her son. I am not very sure but I believe her kid must have taken the exam earlier this year (not the most recent batch). I don’t think the results for the most recent exam has been released?


She said her kid’s classmate scored a distinction whereas her kid just managed a merit. I asked her how long her child had been learning piano, her reply was "close to two years".

Then she told me, she would be registering her kid for g5 exam for next mar14. That came as a shocker to me. For one, I personally think the time gap between g2 exam and g5 exam is too short in this instance. Secondly, from the way she said, I figured that the kid’s foundation had not been built firmly. Either that or it has been too rush for the child.

Is this a rational move given that

-the child scored a merit for g2 this march. While the score for this grade may not necessarily be a natural extrapolation for future grades, I believe the students should get high score at the lower grades and that, unless there are valid reasons (such as being sick on exam day itself), a lower score is a reflection of poor mastery of the syllabus.

- there is only about 12 months to prepare for g5?

-

[ipiano1980]

Pirate,


i think it is wonderful that you help your child by invoking imagination into the pieces that he/she is playing. It really helps very much. I hope more parents would do that.

Most of my students’ parents do not play the piano but their child can still score decently in their performances due to very good imagery which helps with the expression department. So good point.