OK, so my piano teacher Mrs. H first started showing me some Debussy preludes and we listened to them together. I personally hate Debussy in general, so it was really hard for me to choose one that I actually liked. But at the end, I chose the one that sounded the most decent and soft.
Then Mrs. H showed me the List E (20-21 Century) piece that she wanted me to do: "Cat and Mouse" by Aaron something. Blah blah blah, boring.
After that, to my disgust, Mrs. H made me do my technique practice. I detest, abhor, hate, and loathe techniques, 'cause I kinda suck at them. My left hand is always behind my right and my fingers don't listen to me. So I naturally don't practice them a lot at home. As expected, I failed the major scales in 6ths and 10ths completely and jumbled through the arpeggios like a fool. If I had been with my old old teacher, she would have yelled at me in an insulting and hurtful way. Thankfully, Mrs. H was nicer, and she started going through a long lecture with me.
She told me that all her bright, intelligent students have had similar problems. Most of them just didn't see why we had to play the same thing over and over and over and over....again. They would excel at their written exams and such but would struggle with the actual playing of the piano. Mrs. H said that I was like that too. She told me that I learned everything very quickly, and that I had a university-leveled brain, but not exactly university-leveled finger technique. She told me that my fingers needed to catch up with my head and the only way to do that is through practice, over and over and over again, no matter how boring.
Mrs. H taught me good ways to practice my technique and improve, then half-way through that discussion, Mrs. H told me another story about one of her other students, supposedly her brightest one yet. "He's now a medical doctor", she said. "He was not only intelligent but he had acute hearing. He was gifted in that. He could be able to hear the slightest unevenness in tone and could tell when his fingers weren't playing at the exactly same time." I could only stare at her and regret that my ears weren't as awesome as his. Mrs. H finished herself off with this: "You know, I'm just telling you this because I want you to know that there are different kinds of gifted children. Your brain is quite good, so you should use it to try to get your fingers just as good! Because right now, you still don't really sound like a grade 10 student."
I love the way my piano teacher phrases things. She tells me exactly what I need to improve on and such without bitter harshness or hard criticism. She would just smile and tell me: "You need work a lot on that, young lady!" And I would understand, nod, and smile back at her, feeling calm and sure, not scared and nervous.
Then Mrs. H made me play my Hadyn sonata for her. She immediately pointed out that my left hand wasn't so even. She turned the metronome on, and told me to play it again. I did, and she said that it was much better with the metronome. "But when you're at the exam, there won't be a metronome to help you!" She taught me ways to steady it and ways to make my left hand softer and smoother. All her methods miraculously work. ^_^
Mrs. H has so much teaching experience it amazes me how she never gets bored of it. She has this strong passion for teaching, and she puts a lot of effort into it too. All her methods and ways to practice come from years and years of instructing and playing the piano. She is a superb pianist of a ripe age and she has so much to offer us. I feel really lucky to be able to have her as a teacher. Her lessons are expensive, but every penny is worth it. Even I am realizing that my tone and piano playing has improved greatly compared to when I first transferred to her class in February.
Though my playing seriously sucked, it was a good lesson. I learned a lot this week and I believe that next week I'll learn even more from my fabulous piano teacher Mrs. H. All that she had taught me will not be forgotten anytime soon.
"Life is like a piano....what you get out of it depends on how you play it." -Anonymous
-Vociferously yours, Vicky.
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