student – Clara Hsu

The Quirky Side of Things

Kids get sick. They sneeze and cough and wipe their noses with the back of their hands and then come into the piano studio and play on the keyboard. It’s a miracle that piano teachers don’t get sick more often as they should. Perhaps the constant exposure to germs help in strengthen the immune system.

Neither do piano teachers go to the toilet like normal people do. “We can hold it like nobody else,” said one. It’s true. They cross their legs and beat the time and five hours later their legs are still crossed.

Not that these subtle observations would bring insights into the quality of teaching, but sometimes a student wonders about the indestructible quality of his piano teacher, how she counts, one-and-two-and, how she throws herself passionately on the piano to demonstrate a phrase, and just as he thinks she is going to have a nervous breakdown after listening repeatedly to his miserable wrong notes, she calmly asks him to please play the phrase one more time.

Image from Peas and Cougars.

A Treat

Despite this being the last day of the year, all my piano students except one came for their lessons. They seemed happy, relaxed. Maybe because they were still on winter break. And practiced too, so that a few of them actually made some good musical progress. Most of the year they came to their lessons yawning or sick. Kids work so hard when they’re in school. Three or four tests a week, book reports, projects on top of everything else. I felt sorry for them, but they just shrugged their shoulders. They learned from a young age life is work.

As a teacher I demand the same thing—practice, practice. But piano often loses out when pitted against schoolwork and I find myself a lone caller in the wild. “It’s OK,” I tell myself, “so long as they don’t hate coming to their lessons I’ve done my job.” And look, we had fun today. What a great way to end the year!

No Notes, Please

A violin student came into my studio for a lesson on singing and listening.

“I can’t sing.” He said sheepishly.

“Of course you can.” I said. “Sing with me.”

We matched pitches, going up and down the scale. His voice was shaky at first, but soon he was able to hold a note for a few seconds and hop up and down small intervals. A big smile spread across his face.

He didn’t know about the major musical periods. When I began to explain he took out his notebook and started writing.

“No notes, please.” I said. “Just listen.”

He was not used to doing that, and felt uncomfortable. He was a good student.

I played him examples: Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Gershwin. We talked about musical lines that run horizontally and chords that move a piece of music vertically. He asked questions now, of things he didn’t understand.

At the end of the lesson he didn’t want to leave. A good student. I look forward to seeing him next week.

In The Quiet

The milky fog enfolds the city as it has been most of the summer. It is Sunday morning. Outside my kitchen window Felton Street lies soggy from the moisture. I am preparing breakfast, cutting an orange and peeling a banana and missing something. It is the absence of sound.

Felton Street is a bus route. When the number 54 makes its way up the hill it usually gives a good grunt at the stop sign before taking on the next climb. At this moment—and it has been a long moment—not a car has come into view. Not one person is walking in the street. The birds outside and my three cats snuggling in bed are still in dreamland. The day has begun with biblical significance.

The chill in the air, the smell of yesterday’s cooking and the sound of my knife separating the fruits on the chopping board, I think about what I read in a booklet: When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Or, when the teacher appears, the student is ready. With all things great and small it has been a continuous lesson.

Photo by Andy Stock.

Why Practice?

My piano students don’t understand why they have to perfect their Hanon technical exercises. What’s the point in playing perfectly in a lesson only for their teacher to say OK let’s move on to a new exercise? Surely they are not practicing that hard to please me.

“Imagine you are an apprentice working in a piano factory,” I said to twelve year old Kelly. “You are trained to do one thing, like wrapping the bass wires to make them thicker. You’re doing it and doing it because it’s what your boss asks you to do. Then after some time they train you on leveling the keys and you do that over and over until it becomes second nature. With each skill you know a little more but in the big picture you don’t know how the piano is put together. But as you accumulate these skills, you’ll begin to have some ideas, and I’m talking way down in the future. Some how, some day, these little insignificant details you have perfected will have an impact on your playing.”

She nodded at me politely. Did she understand my point? Will she practice more vigorously for her own sake? Each night I write a poem and each day a blog. It is how I polish my writing skills. As for my students, I only hope my teaching means more to them one day than their piano lessons.