There are people out there who learned to play a little using YouTube, through self-instruction and watching videos. This shows great initiative, but most of them start to feel the limitations of this approach soon enough, and instead look for a live teacher to help them over these limitations. They will surely experience them, as they have not yet learned to play in the proper way. Most of them will have bad hand technique, stiff hands, wrists, and fingers, will have no idea how to coordinate their arms and hands, and either cannot read music at all, or read slowly and with lots of errors. Their coordination between eyes and hands is almost non-existent.
A common misconception is that playing the piano is all about moving your fingers fast. It is not! This is what you see on the outside because the movements are so subtle and organic.
The variety of knowledge among this group of students is wide. Some can play quite difficult music by ear, but have no knowledge or understanding of how music reading works. Others can read a bit, but stop on each note, full of tension and stress.
Can you learn ballet, gymnastics, ice skating, or boxing from a video? No, you will get injured. Most people feel this intuitively. But when it comes to their hands, they do not think that they can get injured, everyone thinks it is sooo easy to play. All this because of the popular idea that music does not require any special effort, and that to pick up an instrument is just easy. This is not true!
What all these students have in common is wrong expectations. Their idea is that they are already pretty good at piano playing (a false feeling), and they expect me to share some magic knowledge and fix all their needs in a few lessons. Yes, there is a sort of magic, but there is a lot of it to share! I need to attach it to your brain, muscles, joints and tendons. This takes time. So, some people very quickly become disappointed, and quit. What I have to do (case by case, as people differ a lot) is to find the way to fix their hand-limiting movements, to help them to advance, and along with this to teach them how to read music.
Often these students want so much to play the piano that together with my instructions they watch various videos, try different things, and come back even more confused and with even stiffer hands. Why? You think you can pick music up that fast? Or do you not trust me? The reason tends to be because they want to save money and shorten the process. You cannot. It just takes time. And for each person it takes a different amount of time. Every skill that takes time costs more money. But you are paying for your improvement, not for mine, so enjoy it. Every little thing you learn and improve is a victory!
Despite so many years working with this type of student I have had only two students fully understand the process of relearning so as to fix limiting bad hand movements and to create good coordination between eyes, ears, brain, and hands in their playing. These two students learned to play well, and they still do at a much more advanced level. Others came, took a few lessons, got the false impression that they were not improving (while in fact I was working to bridge the gaps in their self-learning), and quit. Others took one or two years of lessons but were not persistent about working to fix their limiting movements, so only partially improved. Being impatient, they eventually sabotaged their learning. Often students like these are actually very intelligent people, musical and driven, and very good in their own professional area. But they forget that here they need to learn something new almost from the beginning, and they find it hard to do so! I first must remove their bad habits in order to teach them the proper technique that will serve them for long years.
Why do they come? Because they want to enjoy playing the piano. I say to all my students: just be patient, and remember I am on your side. I want you to play well and to enjoy doing so. Do not sabotage yourself. Invest in yourself!
Let me help you!
Nelly Matova@ 2024 Matova Music
Matova Music School 