While I was still trying to figure out about CK’s poor standard of piano playing, she voluntarily told me something about her previous teacher’s teaching methods.
I don’t know what is the name of the method and where it derived from or who invented it, but if I get CK correctly, the teacher would guide her students’ hands with her own hands in playing. That means she would grab CK’s hands and place her own hands over and guide CK’s playing note for note, finger for finger. If there’s a change in position she would fling the student’s hands across the keyboard to the desired register. This is the method she employs for all her students throughout the year, right up to the eve of exams.
I had been wondering why CK couldn’t play her scales properly (even C major) besides being a very poor sight-reader. She can’t even read her own exam scores! Her present exam pieces were marked (or rather, doodled) all over the place, indicating work done with dates written; or alphabets over certain passages and circles and fingerings from the beginning to the end, but she can only play the first 3 pages out of 6. It was the teacher’s way of indicating how much they have ‘played’ together in the lesson. Very often CK found it hard to practice at home without the ‘guidance’ and since she can’t read, she just practiced whatever she thought she knew.
How did you pass exams after exams, I asked. Oh, I would have to attend frequent lessons over the 2 months prior to the exams like thrice weekly, she replied. Did you play scales with the same ‘guidance’? Yes. How about sight-reading? Oh I was just told to go through the sight-reading book on my own with one or 2 performed in lessons. And what about aural tests? That, we would just go over for a few minutes each time just a month away from the exam. And all the while your fingers are being pressed by the teacher’s fingers? Yes. How do you feel each time during exams? Very, very nervous and lost, but managed somehow. Do you still remember the pieces after the exams? Nope. Do you have any other repertoire? Nope. How well can you communicate with your teacher? Not at all, because she would have few other students in the room at the same time, doing theory while teaching me so her attention is divided all the time, so I don’t like her enough to talk to her. Then why did you continue your lessons with her for so many years? That’s because my mom wants me to be in her musical/drama plays and her condition is to allow only her piano students to join (they have occasional overseas stint).
While I would take some time to recover from my shock of the above revelation, I would like to research on this new piano teaching method. Would someone shed some light on this?
I think this is a different form of “playing by feel.”
Makes me think of the saying…. something about ‘giving someone a fish and you feed him for a day but TEACH him to fish and he learns to feed himself for a lifetime’ ….
This is truly bizarre. I am a piano teacher and have never seen this. The only thing I do similarly is place the child’s hands on top of mine when I introduce a piece and want the child to hear it.