Why it really is a necessity to have a good piano teacher and not try to teach yourself.

Piano Lessons - January 30, 2019

 The Learning Experience

I was practicing a part in the song Rhapsody in Blue in which the proper fingering was difficult and felt awkward.  However, I was playing it with the correct fingering and thought I was doing a mighty fine job at playing it when my teacher stopped me and told me I had the rhythm wrong in my right hand.  I had to re-learn that part, but it was easier to re-learn it correctly since I had already got the fingering down, all I had to fix was the rhythm.  Had I not had a teacher, or even a good teacher who caught it being that Rhapsody in Blue is 29 pages long with a lot going on, I would have never known I was playing that part wrong.  Another part of this same song I was practicing which was a difficult part is when on the sheet music the treble clef is written on the bottom where bass clef normally is and bass clef was written on the top where the treble clef usually is....AKA....a hand crossover while playing which can be tricky.  I caught the staff switch and got the hand crossover correct, but when I was playing thinking I was doing great at this tricky part, my teacher once again stopped me and told me that I had the notes and rhythm and the hand crossover accurate, but my left hand needed to go down one octave.  I looked at the sheet music and was perplexed that I had missed that octave jump.  Had I not had a good teacher to catch that, I would never had known to fix it.  It sounds like a small thing, but playing an octave lower adds more meat or more power to the song while playing.

The Positive

My teacher stopped me from playing; put her hand up and high-fived me for the first time EVER in a piano lesson when I played a crazy difficult part of Rhapsody in Blue accurately.  She was wowed and it surprised me, and only then did I realize the difficulty level of the part of the song I was playing.  I felt like a winner at that moment!  :-). 

Another positive is that I got to use the Sostenuto Pedal....AKA the middle pedal on the piano for the first time EVER!!!  Of course I've used the famous right pedal, the Sustain Pedal all of my piano career, and recently I've been using the left pedal, the Soft Pedal more, but never have I used the middle pedal.  This is a sign that I'm actually for real in advanced piano lessons.  Only upper level pianists use the middle pedal.  This was exciting to me!!!!....just way neat and a sense of finally being worthy of the middle pedal.  :-)