Horror Stories From the Piano, 2nd Edition

 

Once again, in time for Halloween, here are some really SCARY stories from piano lessons, as related to me by current or former students from their lessons with previous teachers.

The teacher who would just "show" things to the student. For example, the teacher showed him how to play certain chords as he needed them to play the music they were working on. So the student learned a G chord, a B-flat chord, etc. The student correctly guessed that there must be some "system" to all these chords, and expressed to his teacher his interest in learning that system, instead of just getting them piecemeal. The teacher kind of groaned and said, "Oh, the learning curve is just too steep." At the same time, the teacher would be working on some piece with the student and say, "you see, it's all just chords," as if that would make it easier to understand. But since the teacher never really taught chords in a meaningful way, that statement only confused the student further. The teacher did have a background in music theory so he knew about chord theory, but he was just too lazy to teach it. 

The teacher who told the student that if he struck a note hard, with extra force and emphasis, that it would create a shot of dopamine in the brain, which would make it easier to find that note in the future. His premise was that if you were having trouble with accuracy, the dopamine hit would help. There are so many problems with this! First, although dopamine does have to do with search and reward, it wouldn't have any relationship to how loud or hard you played the note. Second, what if you have trouble with accuracy on lots of notes, as this student certainly did. Are you supposed to play them all louder and harder? Are you supposed to do it once or more often? When do you stop doing it? How do you prevent it from becoming habit? When one note is hit harder, it disrupts the phrase and is not pleasant to hear. Sadly, this student did develop a habit of hitting certain random notes harder and the effect is terribly unmusical. If the "dopamine" thing had really worked, he wouldn't still be having the accuracy issue. The teacher was, quite frankly, spouting bullshit.

The teacher who dropped the student because she said the student made her nervous. The student was somewhat nervous about playing in front of the teacher (as many students are, at least in the beginning), but instead of working to encourage and calm the student, the teacher decided she couldn't be bothered and just dropped her.

A woman came to see me about lessons whose teacher had her play almost all twelve of the Clementi Sonatinas, as well as a bit of Haydn and easier Mozart, in other words, all music of the same period. She played one for me and her playing was somewhat robotic, not musical at all. (I doubt the teacher worked on the musicality.) If you just love this music then go ahead and play it, but be aware you will never gain a broad range of technical and musical skills from this one style alone. This became the student's comfort zone, and when I suggested we do some Schumann, she looked skeptical. She never did start lessons with me.

And here, I will give you, verbatim, how one of my students described her previous lessons. The lack of caring, in particular, is shocking. (This student is very musical, really loves music and the piano in particular, is very enthusiastic, fun-loving, and aims to everything she does with dedication and high quality. Thank goodness these teachers didn't ruin her love for music.)

My first piano teacher gets special mention for tearing sheet music from a book (whose binding was failing) and giving that to me to play from, and for instructing me to “move my butt” on the seat in dramatic performance while playing. I was with her less than a year. I still have that sheet music (Classical) and I ache and cringe every time I see the reminder of her destruction; I feel so bad for the music.

My second teacher caused me to miss my first recital with her studio (and my first piano recital ever) because she did not actually specify the venue and was unreachable day of. 

She did not insist I learn music theory, and did not reinforce music theory principles essential to musicality and performance, and yet thought I could learn pieces well enough to accompany singers like her; I never did learn them well enough. Her studio was her sole livelihood, so when she canceled a lesson, she did not offer a make up [or give a refund], claiming that any make ups had to be made up in the month that they were missed, regardless of who canceled them.

 Although my first three teachers assigned Hanon, the third took it to an extreme. She challenged me to play the first 20 in less than 15 minutes (no repeats at least) in the space of a few months, and after I accomplished that feat, said she’d only extended to three of the dozens of students in her “studio”, and that it was a tool for her to gauge how much to invest in the students. Imagine my surprise when after that, she still declined to provide a curriculum for me or even to field questions about my curriculum and took offense to my making my own curriculum from books that she did not have in her possession. 

She conducted my lessons at my home; she sat several feet behind me, rarely demonstrated anything, rarely provided actual feedback beyond checkboxes. 

She pressed me to take the ABRSM [Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music] exams and then forgot to register me and took offense when I elected to register independently. 

She started me with John Thompson’s grade 1, although I had been playing for decades, would listen to me play through once, and if she was content, moved me on to the next piece in the sequence. 

One memorable episode: recital season was upon us and we were evaluating a venue, and conducting the lesson there rather than my home, and she spent more time inspecting the venue and wandering around than coaching my performance; she took offense when I called her on it. Her student roster was long enough and included enough small children that she divided the group into three one-hour recitals, punctuated with students-versus-parents musical trivia questions, keeping score. I was the only adult performer in my section. She justified it or attempted to mollify me that I was inspiring to the much younger children (as in age 4 or 5).

She encouraged competition for number of minutes of “practice” time across all the students in her studio, with prizes for levels of attainment and getting most practice time. She counted as practice time not just practice at the piano with fingers on the keyboard, but also transcription, research, completing theory worksheets, arrangement, and composition. 

She had a performance heavy schedule for her students (some kind of performance recording every month) that she claimed as optional opportunities, and when I indicated that I would only participate in a very few, she took offense.

 

I eventually learned that her studio location was a tiny, tiny room sublet from another business in a large office building, furnished with an electric keyboard and camera that her students came to (if they did not have an instrument in their possession) so that she could conduct lessons remotely from her rental apartment in Korea while she spent months with Korean orphans multiple times a year. I had an instrument in my home, so we had our lessons with her on an app I’d never heard of.

 

She encouraged me to play as many pianos as possible to find out what I liked in a piano, and after I had confided my tastes, she forwarded me an advertisement that claimed to be someone giving away the type of piano that I preferred after minimal thought or investigation by her, and which turned out to be a scam advertisement. (I did not lose any money, fortunately.) She blamed the situation on a trusted associate forwarding the advertisement to her, thus bypassing any due diligence on her part.

 

When I eventually asked the hard questions about the future of our relationship and she again declined to take responsibility, she berated me (the terminating client) at length after claiming that she never berated terminating clients.

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These stories make me so sad, and so angry as well. I feel badly for these people who trusted these teachers. They lost valuable time that could have been spent more productively through no fault of their own. I wish I could say that teachers like these are a thing of the past, but unfortunately they aren't. I'll probably be writing the 3rd edition of Horror Stories next Halloween.