by Christine Bougie | June 14th, 2010
I took piano lessons when I was about 7 years old. My sister (sitting to my left) had already been playing for a few years.
When I was about halfway through the “level 1″ book, I started to feel pretty confident that I had the hang of it. So I skipped to the very last page, excited to see what the hardest piece would be.
I can’t remember the name of this piece, but I can still play it. I played it at home, over and over, and committed it to memory.
When I went back for my next lesson, I was so excited to show my teacher that I memorized the hardest piece in the book.
I showed her.
She wasn’t impressed. Or at least, she didn’t show it! All I remember is that she said I’m not supposed to memorize the music, I’m supposed to read it. And don’t skip ahead, I have to work through the pieces in order.
That’s when I decided to quit. I told my parents I didn’t like piano lessons anymore, and that was that.
Now that I teach a bit, I always encourage students to memorize stuff, and to follow their curiosity. I would be ecstatic if one of my students skipped to the end of their book and memorized the last piece.
Hooray for memorizing!
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This almost exactly mirrors my piano lessons experience. My teacher would ask me to play the piece; I’d ask her to play it so I knew what it sounded like which makes it MUCH easier to play.
I’d then play it, partly by ear – my ear was always better than my sight-reading. Then I’d get corrected for playing it by ear.
Sadly, all the sight-reading in the world couldn’t have made me an intuitive musician, while my intuitive musicianship has taken years to recover.
Sight-reading will never be a substitute for the “folk” (i.e. oral, hands-on, intuitive, cultural) approach to music.
How could you not eventually memorize the piece? That’s silly. My piano teacher was awesome. He explained to me that all great “pop” songs are basically 4 chords by playing the simple root changes under the main theme of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” Changed my life.
@david – sight-reading makes you a good sight-reader. ear trumps eye when it comes to music.
@sky – you were lucky to have a cool teacher!
Man it’s amazing that any of us still play music at all after crappy experiences with childhood piano lessons. As a young kid in North Bay the only option was the nuns at the Catholic boarding school who used to yell and scream and even hold a ruler over my hands to smack my fingers when I made a mistake. Eventually I was allowed to quit and then, when I was sixteen, I had the infinite good fortune to find an INCREDIBLE classical guitar teacher who was everything a great teacher should be and who taught me things I still use every day. I guess blind luck has a lot to do with it…
This is insightful. I have just started piano lessons for the first time in my life, and it’s hard to practice ‘Three Blind Mice’ when all I wanna do is rip through the ‘Doogie Howser, M.D.’ theme music.
@deltaslide – those nuns are crazy. I’ve heard nothing but horror stories from people who had nuns as teachers.
@kim – here you go http://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/mtdVPE.asp?ppn=MN0042142
LOL. I went through about 10 guitar teachers when i started at age 11. I was dead-serious about learning this instrument and I could see right through the ‘doin’ it for the money’ slack off attitudes . Finally found an awesome jazz guitar teacher at Walter Osteneks but he moved after a year, so i just took over teaching myself by imitating my favourites off of records (Steve Howe being the major inspiration- whom i ran into in New York – he liked the Tim Horton outlet)
@dean – Osteneks!? I was right around the corner, taking my lessons at Ryson’s!
It sucks to know that at times while young one had very bad experiences while learning piano..
The learning experience at a very young age is crucial to maintain the love for piano..