Be a Great Teacher

As you embark on the journey to master piano playing and become a great musician, you will need to wear two hats: the student, and the teacher.

As artists, we are often severe and self critical. There is always something wrong with our work and we put ourselves down for it. We are never good enough. Clearly separating between student and teacher mode avoids the self-hatred trap:

• We can adopt a problem solving mentality (teacher) rather than beating ourselves up for being bad (student).
• We can separate playing and expression (student) with review and critique (teacher).
• We can treat ourselves with more compassion. (Your students wouldn’t last very long with you if you treated them the same way you treat yourself…)

Self teaching takes a lot of focus and discipline. It’s often difficult to get the perspective we need to progress. Having these two modes forces us to switch perspectives, which will often be healthy and productive.

On many occasions I have found myself facing a seemingly insurmountable problem. I would practise the same passage for days without making any progress. The more I would try, the more frustrated I would get. I would feel inadequate and stupid. “Someone at my level should be able to play this” was a common saying during those times. After doing this for days on end I would eventually take a break and get some distance. During that time I would think, “if one of my students was having this problem, what would I tell them?” And as stupid as it sounds, that is often all it would take for me to find the solution. Playing piano builds us an ego, and we need a good teacher to keep it in check. A good teacher doesn’t care about what “someone your level should be able to do.” They only care about finding solutions to your problems and helping you succeed.

How to review

Quality feedback is one of the best things a teacher can provide. If you have never had a lesson with a great teacher, I would recommend finding one and getting a few lessons to see what I mean. It’s difficult to know what you’re missing until you’ve experienced it.

Reviewing at its core, is about comparing what was with what could be. In other words it’s about comparing what you played compared to what your ideal is. And this is why it is so important to have a strong artistic image.

A review should only be about the product: what’s good about it and what’s bad about it. Nothing else. In this case, the only thing that matters, the only thing that’s under review is the music.

Saying something is good or bad is not reviewing, it’s criticising. We want to critique, not to criticise. This might be a meaningless semantic difference, but I do want to distinguish between the two. Criticism offers no specifics, it generally comes from a negative place and doesn’t care to improve. On the other hand, critiquing comes from knowledge, it’s specific and is often aimed towards improving.

Instead of saying this is bad, we might say my pulse during this passage isn’t consistent – I’m slowing down. Notice the difference as it’s an important one: one is general and unhelpful, the other is precise and points us in the exact direction we need to head to improve.

Problem solving mentality

As we review our playing, we transform mistakes and inadequacies into problems. Some of these problems are easy to solve: the question contains the solution (e.g., this section was too slow, therefore, play it faster); others are more difficult and they require new knowledge to be acquired.

Examples of these more difficult problems are:

• “I can’t play this at speed.”
• “I can’t figure out a good fingering for this passage.”
• “I can’t seem to memorise this section.”
• “I’m not satisfied with how this section sounds but I can’t pinpoint why.”

The problem solving mentality is about framing every roadblock as a problem that is possible to solve, rather than a personal quality defect that will never change.

The gap in our ability to identify problems and our ability to solve them is simply a knowledge gap. We need to have the right resources to solve all kinds of problems. Let’s take a look at the examples above and try to solve them.

• I can’t play this at speed – This is a technical problem that can be solved by researching and practising the technical skills required to get it at speed.
• I can’t figure out a good fingering for this passage – This is also a technical problem that can be solved by researching what other pianists are doing (through video), by learning fingering principles, or by experimentation.
• I can’t seem to memorise this section – This is a common problem and usually comes from a lack of theoretical understanding of the music. I’ll discuss this at length later in the book.
• I’m not satisfied with how this section sounds but I can’t pinpoint why – There are many possible solutions to this problem. It usually comes from a lack of musical understanding. It can be solved through close listening of other musicians (playing the same piece or a similar one), by listening to other compositions by the same composer, or again by experimentation.

As you encounter more and more problems throughout your journey, you will start to recognise patterns. You will start to develop solution templates or checklists for common problems you’ve encountered in the past. I would encourage you to keep track of these somewhere, they are an invaluable resource. If you think you will just remember it, don’t be so confident. There have been many times where I’ve struggled with a problem, only to realise later when looking in my notes that I had already solved it months ago. Compared to the amount of effort it takes to solve a problem, capturing the solution doesn’t take very long. Take that little bit of time, you’ll thank yourself later.

Compassion

Playing music should be an enjoyable activity, but practising can sometimes be challenging and even discouraging. We tend to conflate problems and obstacles with failures. We unwillingly get attached to an idea that we are not good enough, that we are too old, too stupid. We need someone to be kind, to help us solve problems, to promote our progress. We need someone to put us back on track and detach the ego from skill building. That someone is usually the teacher (good ones at least). But when we are self teaching, that someone needs to be us. We don’t need someone to tear us down every time we encounter difficulty.

Being compassionate doesn’t mean being complacent. It means narrowly focusing on the problem and finding a solution. It’s about accepting obstacles and moving forward by overcoming them. Being compassionate is about helping yourself. Some of the best advice I ever got for reviewing my playing was treat yourself how you would treat a good friend.

The most meaningful way to build that belief and confidence is to solve problems and gain skills. This is another reason why having a teacher is useful, they will know how much to push you so that you are presented with challenges that you can overcome. As self learners, the responsibility falls on us again. We need the self awareness to know what kind of problems we are ready for. In the beginning, sticking with existing curriculums like the one presented later in this book will be the best way to stay on track. Later on, once a good foundation has been laid, the playing field expands massively. You get to choose where you want to go.

How to change hats

Making the distinction between student and teacher mindsets is already half of the battle. There is one more thing we can do to help promote that difference and switch roles more easily. We can record ourselves.

By recording ourselves, we are gaining distance from our playing. We are able to view it more objectively than we were in the moment. It helps with being compassionate. By recording ourselves, we don’t multi-task. We play with all our focus, then we review with all our focus.

Once you have recorded yourself, listen to the recording and identify the problems as a teacher would. Then you can come up with different solutions and try it again. The key is to have a quick turnaround time between execution and feedback. The quicker you can iterate, the more you will be able to achieve.

Conclusion

Self teaching is difficult for many reasons: it takes more knowledge, more patience, it takes discipline, and faith. We need to believe in ourselves, we need to trust the process of improvement. We need to find our own way and accept constant uncertainty.

Doing all this alone is daunting but if we can create these two artificial personas to embody, it’s almost like we are not alone. By clearly separating our two roles: the player and the reviewer, the student and the teacher, we reduce our responsibilities at any given time, which allows us to fully focus on either doing or reviewing.

Framing everything as a problem that can be solved is the most efficient way to improve. It’s also the most compassionate thing you can do. A problem with your playing is not a problem with you, it’s a knowledge gap that can be bridged.

Now that I’ve laid the foundation of musicality and discussed the way to approach self teaching, we are ready to move on to the second part of this book: learning the piano.