How do I find a good piano teacher? (Piano teacher’s advice and tips)
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- Опубликовано: 31 янв 2025
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I'm Jeeyoon, classical pianist from US, originally from South Korea. I make videos about behind the scenes of a life of classical pianist, some tips about a practice, vlogs, struggles of life and anything fun! I write an email newsletter that contains some quick thoughts! (dedicated-thin...)
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1:10 That's a great question! I thought of my physics professor. 14:11 Another terrific point to think about!
Excellent video friend of very good quality and entertaining, I had a good time watching it and it was very useful.Thank you for sharing it
Thank you for the comments, Karla! Glad to hear that!
Thank you for the video Ms. Kim. I have had two teachers ( including the one I have now). My first one was great but I did not practice much what he taught me, which led me to be unbalanced as a pianist. (Good ear but bad technique). My current one is a retired concert pianist and we get along great! She has a funny way of correct my voicing when playing. She would say “We do not want to hear those notes!” Or “No one wants to hear that...”. The biggest part has been she taught me how to practice better which has made the instrument fun! You are a great teacher and pianist Ms. Kim😊.
Thank you! A good teacher is a very important factor for a growth, and I am glad that you have one!
I agree with your statement that the best teacher won't always be the best performer, so not to just go by how they play, or how many records they've sold. Of my five piano teachers, #1 (chronologically) was hired by my folks, and since we didn't have a piano in the house, I couldn't practice at home. I could practice on pianos in empty auditoriums or classrooms at school, but I'd usually get kicked out before I could make much progress. Since I couldn't really practice much (we only had one of those cheap electric reed organs which I used as best I could), I was never really ready in my lessons, and this teacher mostly just yelled at me for not being ready. ...so I learned early on, to associate learning the piano with getting kicked out of places, and with getting yelled at. Some friends and I found teacher #2 a couple years later, and I had a Wurlitzer electric piano to practice on by then, so those lessons went better. After I had progressed to a certain point, #2 handed me over to #3 who taught at the college level at a local university. #3 was my classical piano teacher who was also a working concert pianist. He taught from the Russian School, and at one point he promised to make me "better than Horowitz". I laughed when he said this, but it turned out he was serious, and we talked a lot about the "state of mind" and its affect on goals and the potential for accomplishing them. He taught me Bach two-part Inventions from the Peters edition, and Beethoven Sonatas from the Schnabel edition, and he told me inspirational stories about people like Richter and Gilels. I learned a lot from him, then he moved away, and handed me over to #4, who was the head of piano pedagogy at the university. His home studio 30 miles away from me, and my rickety 1st car made a bad combination, so car trouble caused me to miss a lesson after having attended one of his masterclasses. We never properly reconnected afterwards, and as a freshman in college I signed up with #5 for credit. She and I were not a good fit, so we parted company after the second lesson, during the drop/add period, so I decided to leave classical piano to others, and to invest my credits in voice lessons. Whenever people ask me how they should look for a good piano teacher, based on my experience, I'm not really sure what to tell them. Now, I'll send them a link to this video, because I think your recommendations make sense in the age of Google and RUclips. Have a great week, Jeeyoon!! Annyeong!!
Oh man, what a [mis-]adventure! I just read this...
Wow, that is some history here! haha. I enjoyed imagining the experience with the story. A nice storytelling, DrQuizzler. I am curious how long did you study with #3 teacher. Maybe #3 teacher was the best one in your piano teacher history it seems? I created this video also as a tool for me to send it whenever I am asked this question as well. (quite more often than I thought) haha. Thank you for sharing your story! Loved it!
@@jeeyoonkimpianist Annyeong, Jeeyoon, and thank you for the compliment! Teacher #1 taught in her house, and her living room was like Grand Central Station with kids queued up waiting for their lessons. I can imagine it must have been frustrating for her to have so many kids coming and going on her teaching days, and have this one kid who was never ready, so let's not be too tough on her. I quit after two years with #1, but never stopped messing around on pianos playing stuff by ear. About three years after I had quit taking lessons, Teacher #2 came and taught at my and my friends' homes. She was kind and encouraging, and she got me through two or three John Thompson books, and she brought me fun songs to learn. She also patiently listened when I played her half-improvised stuff I had learned from a pop sheet music book series called "70 for the 70s". She made our lessons and my practicing fun and enjoyable. After two or three years, for my final month or so of lessons with her, she told me she was looking forward to introducing me to a friend of hers who was a concert pianist. I was looking forward to meeting this guy and hearing him play, but I didn't know what was really going on until the day she drove me to the local university and introduced me to him. She told us both that she had taken me as far as she could, and she invited him and me to start working together, and he became my Teacher #3. I studied with Teacher #3 for two or three years. As much as I got out of my lessons with him, I credit Teacher #2 with getting me "back on the horse" and making formal piano study almost as fun as messing around by ear.
Amazing advice
I wish you were my piano 🎹 teacher ! 🤙🤙
Great post! Excellent information for both teachers and students.
How wonderful to hear that, Brenda! Thank you for stopping by!
You’re welcome, Jeeyoon! I really enjoyed your presentation at the CAPMT State Online conference. It was so uplifting and encouraging during this pandemic. I went and subscribed to your channel right away. Have a beautiful day!
Ah, how wonderful to hear that Brenda! I couldn’t really see attendances while I was presenting but I am so glad to hear that the session was helpful and positive for you!!! 😘
Great tips!
Thank you! Hope it helps some people to navigate themselves better! 😊
Finding the right piano teacher, especially in formative years, is as important as finding the right partner or spouse.
Getting references is good- but a teacher who comes along with and is adored by a student might not come along at all with you. For that, Jeeyoon's "trial time" is a wise decision.
Musically I grew up with a very, very severe "old school" education. But my parents were adamant that "this is the best for you", so I had to suck everything up. In retrospective, that probably was more damaging than good, but it also wouldn't be fair from me to blame everything I did (or didn't) later solely on that. So much for my experience.
Hi Andres!! I have a follow-up question: Can you give an example of something you learned from this Draconian teacher which you had to later un-learn?
@@DrQuizzler Yes, three things: 1) an outdated playing technique (of which I never got completely rid, though); 2) Reluctance to play at all out of fear (a mental attitude), 3) Playing like a robot because *everything* had to be done strictly with metronome (I wore out 3 metronomes in 10 years I had that teacher). I still have trouble getting a rubato right, but getting better 😂
I was wondering the same thing, Thank you DrQuizzler to ask that question for me too! I can see that those things can be harmful especially during formative years, but hey, now you are much aware of these and I am sure you undone things that you needed to redo by now! ;)
Good advice
The foundations that your first teacher layed out for you on the holistic approach has It's flaws. I don't know that person, nor do I know you. Therfore, I'm not saying that this person is wrong in any way and I'm not judging your in any way. I'm just opening up, letting your into my world and letting you see my perspective on the subject. In case you didn't have these thoughts already then it might be interesting to read at least. To be a healthy person, in order to create healthy music. Depends on what healthy music means for you and your teacher. The way I see it is that you are trying to say "Happy person=good music" in short and I don't agree with that. Now I'm sorry if I have misunderstood you but if not, let me explain why I think that way. I will take myself as an example and give you a little background so that It's easier to understand. I'm the opposite of a healthy person. I'm sincerely broken from within my soul, to the point where I'm trying to do something meaningful for others to make my birth worthwile. My defeat has become my motivation in a way which opens up doors that was never ment to be opened. These doors are certainly closed for people living traditional lifes where they end up with that traditional relationship, family, duties etc. When I realised that this is really happening to me, one of the things that I started doing was to explore different personalities out there. My interest started growing in people who have been very dedicated and exceptional in their field. I discovered two people in particular within the music world that had abstract personalities, unexplainable, sometimes to a point where it scared me. This fear which I still feel sometimes, unfortunately. This opened up a conversation in my head that helped me get through. The fear was things not ending up the way I had imagined them to be from when I was a little kid. I was programmed with this since birth and no one could tell me otherwise. You might wonder, what is my point here really. Now let me go back to these two people within the music world. Beethoven and Horowitz. Amazing personalities, unexplainable. Were they a happy person? Absolutely not. They were in some serious trouble behind the scenes. They put on their masks out there and gave people unbelievable performances, one performance after the other. I'm not going to write about their struggles since I'm not even sure if some of them are nothing more than rumors but we both know that they were far away from happy. Yes, they used music to escape but so do we with other activities. So what is the difference between them and a person using Tennis as an activity to escape? This is where things get interesting. There are different layers of sadness and emotional personalities. You can be sad and play Tennis or you can be devastated, crying as you walk. One person is taking out his/her anger on the tennisball and goes home while the other person is self-aware, soaking up the sadness, accepting it and growing with it. As the sadness grows, different doors opens up as I wrote before and considering that you are constantly soaking in those feelings you soon become that material that is required for creating this amazing music. Now of course it doesn't have to be music but it was in the case of Beethoven and Horowitz. One of the things that interests me with Horowitz is his untraditional playstyle. Have you ever had someone explain to you how he managed to get that sound out from the piano when playing the way he wanted to play. When he was himself. It's crazy because it almost feels as if he sat there, playing day in and day out with so much feeling, not caring about all that "You are supposed to play this way" advice because he had grown with his sadness to a point where it didn't matter anymore, to a point where time stood still. I'm not even going to get into Beethoven, that guys struggles, frustration is on a different level. He was broken down physically where life started to hinder him from doing what was his escape which just crushes you into so many pieces that you are not even able to see them. My explanation is far from proper and I wish that I could express myself fully through text but I can tell you one thing for sure, what you call beautiful music is not created by happy people. To make the piano sing, give it to an emotional person that is pushed to the edge, and they will give you magic.
Do you know of any good teachers in the nyc/nj area???
Harris Betty Thompson Sharon Anderson William
most great music was created by unhealthy sick composers that died young.So much for holistic approach
Life expectancy was very poor in the past...healthcare was very basic if any... diseases were rife and vaccinations non existant...