All About Choosing Piano Schools And Teachers

[Honesty]

sacredmusicals:

Honesty:

Hi,


I am looking for a piano teacher to teach my 9 yo DD. Currently grade 6 (both practical and theory) and she has passed her grade 5 (both practical and theory). We are staying at Telok Blangah area. Looking at Friday evening or Saturday morning at 9 am.

Please recommend or share contact if you have one. Thanks.

Have you asked Dreamaurora from this forum? He's teaching near your place.

My girl prefers a female teacher....

[Dreamaurora]

Honesty:

sacredmusicals:

[quote=\"Honesty\"]Hi,


I am looking for a piano teacher to teach my 9 yo DD. Currently grade 6 (both practical and theory) and she has passed her grade 5 (both practical and theory). We are staying at Telok Blangah area. Looking at Friday evening or Saturday morning at 9 am.

Please recommend or share contact if you have one. Thanks.

Have you asked Dreamaurora from this forum? He's teaching near your place.

My girl prefers a female teacher.... [/quote]AFAIK, there is no high level female piano teacher at the vicinity of our area; but perhaps there is one or two at River Valley area that I am not aware of. Perhaps some of the other forumers here can help you.

[Blue Pearl]

As my piano teacher complained that my girl did not get certain bar correct after two lessons, i made my gal to play took a video and sent to the piano teacher and asked her whther she played correctly. BUt i recd reply from her that i will listen next week during her lesson.


I was just wondering whether is this norm from a teacher because as a parent, when the teacher complained that my gal made mistake at the particular bar for two lessons, so i thought to avoid any comments in her next lesson, took a video and sent to her.

Is this wrong? Just want to hear some piaon teacher or parents with similiar situation views. thank you.

[Dreamaurora]

Blue Pearl:

As my piano teacher complained that my girl did not get certain bar correct after two lessons, i made my gal to play took a video and sent to the piano teacher and asked her whther she played correctly. BUt i recd reply from her that i will listen next week during her lesson.


I was just wondering whether is this norm from a teacher because as a parent, when the teacher complained that my gal made mistake at the particular bar for two lessons, so i thought to avoid any comments in her next lesson, took a video and sent to her.

Is this wrong? Just want to hear some piaon teacher or parents with similiar situation views. thank you.

Did the piano teacher explain how to troubleshoot the mistake? If your gal has tried to follow the instructions and still cannot get it right, then the teacher would be right to listen to the mistake again in the next lesson and analyse how to fix it. Technical errors often are not easily apparent through a video recording so need to be in person to troubleshoot.

[waiyean]

Blue Pearl:

As my piano teacher complained that my girl did not get certain bar correct after two lessons, i made my gal to play took a video and sent to the piano teacher and asked her whther she played correctly. BUt i recd reply from her that i will listen next week during her lesson.


I was just wondering whether is this norm from a teacher because as a parent, when the teacher complained that my gal made mistake at the particular bar for two lessons, so i thought to avoid any comments in her next lesson, took a video and sent to her.

Is this wrong? Just want to hear some piaon teacher or parents with similiar situation views. thank you.

Technically speaking, a teacher is paid for the lesson time only. Hence teacher is not obliged to spend additional time outside of lessons to review video, communicate corrections, etc. You can imagine if a teacher is fully booked, how can she manage all these requests if many of her students send videos to her?

Having said that, I am aware that some teachers do encourage students to send video recordings during their practice at home to them. My daughter's teacher is one of them. The teacher does it out of goodwill, and indeed I must say that it's very useful to be able to get instant feedback instead of waiting a week for the corrections. It makes practice at home more effective, instead of propagating a mistake for a week.

There are times when I send a few videos daily, and the teacher do take the time to review them and even spend about 30 mins telling me how to correct the technique. Sometimes teacher will also do a recording of how it should be done, and send it to me.
Of course, this is certainly not normal practice amongst piano teachers, and nobody should expect a teacher to do all these.

At times, the teacher will tell me that her data plan is reaching max, and to avoid sending videos till the next month, which I will respect.

[Blue Pearl]

Tks waiyean and Dreamaurora. I do respect the teacher for telling that she will listen the next lesson. It was just that the teacher told me that despite two lessons, my gal forget when she comes to that particular bar she goes a bit faster instead of slower.

[PianistbackinSG]

Hi Blue Pearl,

I just want to add to the good points made by Dreamaurora and Waiyean.

It sounds like the problem is that after two weeks, your daughter is still rushing in a part of the music, and so her teacher has probably given instructions to help (Be it counting/tapping rhythms out loud, checking with metronome, staccato/rhythm drills etc.)

The difficult thing about communicating over video, is that though the problem of rushing is easily detectable, there are several underlying reasons that the teacher may need to troubleshoot with the student before finding the real issue.

Here is a possible list:
1) Learning the piece with an incorrect reading of the note values.
2) Not noticing a harmonic change and so pianist just hurries along.
3) Not knowing which melodic line goes where, not knowing what to listen for in that particular bar
4) a genuine technical issue (be it fingering, wrong technique, tension, stiffness etc.)
5) Not having a clear sense of the tempo in that bar.

It could even be a combination of all these, with many different ways of approaching the solutions, and even when you correct one, another one may arise, so the process of figuring it out, I think is one that is much easier done in person.

[Dreamaurora]

waiyean:

Blue Pearl:

As my piano teacher complained that my girl did not get certain bar correct after two lessons, i made my gal to play took a video and sent to the piano teacher and asked her whther she played correctly. BUt i recd reply from her that i will listen next week during her lesson.


I was just wondering whether is this norm from a teacher because as a parent, when the teacher complained that my gal made mistake at the particular bar for two lessons, so i thought to avoid any comments in her next lesson, took a video and sent to her.

Is this wrong? Just want to hear some piaon teacher or parents with similiar situation views. thank you.

Technically speaking, a teacher is paid for the lesson time only. Hence teacher is not obliged to spend additional time outside of lessons to review video, communicate corrections, etc. You can imagine if a teacher is fully booked, how can she manage all these requests if many of her students send videos to her?

Having said that, I am aware that some teachers do encourage students to send video recordings during their practice at home to them. My daughter's teacher is one of them. The teacher does it out of goodwill, and indeed I must say that it's very useful to be able to get instant feedback instead of waiting a week for the corrections. It makes practice at home more effective, instead of propagating a mistake for a week.

There are times when I send a few videos daily, and the teacher do take the time to review them and even spend about 30 mins telling me how to correct the technique. Sometimes teacher will also do a recording of how it should be done, and send it to me.
Of course, this is certainly not normal practice amongst piano teachers, and nobody should expect a teacher to do all these.

At times, the teacher will tell me that her data plan is reaching max, and to avoid sending videos till the next month, which I will respect.

I think it's great to have a teacher who is very committed and willing to go beyond what they are required to do. And I think this is a mark of teachers who are truly passionate in teaching, as opposed to those who just treat the profession as a way to survive or earn extra pocket money.

I would be delighted if parents or students asked me questions related to their learning outside their lessons and would be more than willing to reply to them. But I think there is a risk that the student may become less independent if feedback is too easily available. Sometimes it is a good idea to let students experience the effects of mistakes or bad practice rather than correcting them immediately all the time. This will allow them to understand the relevance of the correct approach more. This I feel is quite important if the students plan to become teachers themselves in the future.

[Blue Pearl]

True n many tks for all contributions. Most importantly kids must enjoy n shld not hate music.

[Miaor]

Blue Pearl:

As my piano teacher complained that my girl did not get certain bar correct after two lessons, i made my gal to play took a video and sent to the piano teacher and asked her whther she played correctly. BUt i recd reply from her that i will listen next week during her lesson.


I was just wondering whether is this norm from a teacher because as a parent, when the teacher complained that my gal made mistake at the particular bar for two lessons, so i thought to avoid any comments in her next lesson, took a video and sent to her.

Is this wrong? Just want to hear some piaon teacher or parents with similiar situation views. thank you.

I don't like to judge the teacher but I don't like her attitude :siam: