Bad Student Piano Insight

[Vinny Samarco]

Hi Ron,
Sad but true.
Vinny
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ron Nossaman" <rnossaman@cox.net>
To: "Pianotech" <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 25, 2004 8:31 AM
Subject: Re: Bad Student Piano Insight


>
> >  I seems to me piano
> >teachers are more divorced from the instrument of the trade than these
other
> >instructors. I wonder why. I think that is what I might have been asking.
> >Why is that?
> >
> >Terry Farrell
>
>
> As always, no guarantee on the validity of my thoughts, but I still have a
> few. The tennis and marksmanship instructors have likely been professional
> performers for some years before becoming professional instructors. As
> such, they spent a whole lot of time with their "instruments",
maintaining,
> tuning, and repairing them. The vast majority of the piano teachers I've
> known aren't full time professional teachers, never made a nickel
> performing on the instrument, and took up teaching because they could make
> some money with virtually no personal cost in training, and very little in
> materials (stickers and such). The tennis and marksmanship instructors use
> instruments that are vastly simpler than those of the piano teacher, and
> the knowledge required to minimally maintain these instruments is
> considerably less. Yes, these instruments can be buried in a fog of
> subjective mysticism just like pianos, but as basic tools, they are
> relatively simple compared to pianos. The requirements of the instrument
> are an important consideration here too. Both tennis and target shooting
> are ballistics. Both require a rather high level of precision performance
> as a minimal requirement. We are taught that we should clean, protect, and
> pamper our firearms, and purchase new tennis rackets and balls
> periodically, or possibly re-string our rackets if we are serious about
our
> performance. If a piano makes a noise when the key is depressed ("It's in
> great shape - all the keys work"), it's just fine. We learn this in
> childhood, and it is reinforced through "education" right up until the
time
> some suspect technician tells us that our piano is sub-standard. Pianos
are
> immortal, and never need service as long as all the keys work. Ask anyone.
> The marksmen and tennis players that aren't serious, don't know their
> instruments nearly as well as those that are. Pianists tend to be the
same.
> Dependance on an instrument for high performance levels demands greater
> understanding of the instrument unless you wish your performance (and
> livelihood) to be at the mercy of random circumstance. In teaching
> (beginning) piano, performance is of little to no consequence. It's so
much
> a half hour to pound in the basics. Tennis and shooting can be taken up
> with about fifteen minutes of quick briefing to tell you everything you
> need to know to participate in the sport. Playing the piano badly is
> somewhat more difficult to learn than pointing a firearm and pulling the
> trigger, or smacking a tennis ball over the net, so many people never
> progress far enough to get beyond the basics and into the desirability of
> learning something about the instrument. But they can still teach.
>
>
> Ron N
>
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