You often hear that people hated their piano studies when they were children because it was so boring, so tedious, so dull. Or maybe they never played themselves, but they heard that so often from other people they assumed it to be true and never wanted to try to learn to play.
You also see many, many ads for online classes, books, etc. promoting methods that don't have all the drudgery that traditional methods have. They claim to have the magic answer that will enable you to learn to play in a fraction of the time and work that "traditional" methods require. It's clear that these people advertising these "amazing new methods" surely know that people are expecting drudgery and boredom, so of course they are intrigued when they learn that you can just bypass all that. IF you buy their class or book, of course!
However, you need to know that almost all of those quick courses are not teaching classical music. Just some very simple popular music, which, being simpler, will be faster to learn, They are also easier because they usually have you learning to read only the melody and play chords using chord symbols. I highly recommend learning chords and chord symbols (see my post "Playing from Fake Books"), but you can't learn classical music that way.
A lot has changed in the field of education in the last few centuries. In just about every field, not just music, a strict adherence to rules and specific methods was insisted upon, often with corporal punishment for the student who did not comply and had the audacity to try something different. Thankfully, that is all changed, just about everywhere (hopefully).
Unfortunately, in music studies, it was particularly rigid. Teachers insisted on many hours of scales or arpeggios, or other types of finger exercises. Not very many years ago I had a student who told me her previous teacher ripped up her music and threw it to the floor, right in the middle of her lesson, because she dared to use a different fingering than he had prescribed. Imagine!
So of course it was going to be boring, possibly intimidating, and definitely far from FUN! If a teacher learned from someone like that, there is a strong possibility they will teach the same way. And so the association with piano and drudgery gets perpetuated.
Of course you know by now I'm going to tell you it doesn't have to be that way. If you find your piano practicing boring, it is because your teacher has made it boring, or you have made it boring, or both. If you are learning without a teacher, then it's on you, but you probably picked up a few things from what other people said, or what you read online, that is making it boring.
The boredom comes from these forms of practice:
1. Too much repetition. People will always say you have to do endless repetition but it's just not true. If you do too much, the brain will just "turn off" and you won't get nearly as much out of it as you think. The mind doesn't want to be bored. If you do a passage of music over and over, soon you will find your mind drifting off to think about what you're going to have for dinner! Instead, just do it a few times, but with focused attention to everything your hands and arms are doing. If you can determine what is the cause of it not coming out how you want, try to assess what the problem is and do it differently. If you find that it starts to go better, I suggest you stop. Let that be the last thing your body remembers. If you do it dozens more times, it will almost certainly get worse before it gets better.
2. Exercises. If you've read some of my previous posts, you know that I recommend you don't do ANY exercises such as Hanon or Czerny. Many teachers who assign those actually want you to do them in a very mechnical way, which only teaches you to be mechanical. Besides not being actually beneficial towards building mastery, they are just not musically interesting. Again, your mind will get bored and will drift.
3. Lack of imagination and experimentation. Although I show my students the best ways to approach technical issues, sight reading, memorization and every other aspect of playing, it doesn't mean you can never try something and experiment on your own. For example, I may show a fingering that I think will work well for them (it's not a one-size-fits-all) after having them try it, but at home they may discover something that seems to work better for them. By all means, try different things and see what comes of it. Of course, including improvising in your practice is a great way to experiement and use your imagination.
4. Playing without emotional engagement. This is the ultimate soul-killing form of practice. You wouldn't want to go to a concert and hear someone play like that, or go to a play and hear the actors deliver their lines robotically, so don't do it yourself. People will tell you that you have to do this just to "learn the notes first," but they are dead wrong. And "dead" is what your playing will be. And boring for you, as well as any listeners you may have.
5. Playing only one kind of music. Even if, say, classical is your main interest, I highly recommend you learn to play some jazz or popular or Broadway tunes, preferably using a "fake book." (See my post on that subject.) It's a great way to loosen up and have fun. The same with improvising. If you're focusing on classical, play from all periods. I've seen many teachers give students a copious amount of Mozart and others from that era because they are easier in some ways for the beginner and early intermediate. But you need to have a varied diet. More modern composers such as Bartok and Kabalevsky, to name just two, wrote pieces for children that are lovely and interesting and these should be explored.
If your teacher is insisting on doing things in the boring and mechanical way, find a new teacher. If you are trying to learn on your own, see if some of these suggestions make your practicing fun again. As that saying goes, "if you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong."
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