subject: Piano Lessons - Playing a Famous Song Takes a High Degree of Skill [print this page] Piano Lessons - Playing a Famous Song Takes a High Degree of Skill
An important thing to know, particularly for parents of piano students, is that playing a song or a famous piece of music requires a pretty high degree of skill. Why I'm saying this is I've had some of my students' parents have unfair expectations of their children. I want people to understand how much skill and years of study it takes for the average student to play a song that most people will recognize.
This is not to say that parents aren't proud of their children's accomplishments at the piano, particularly in the beginning of their lessons. What I notice, though, is that over the course of a student who is between six months and one year into their piano lessons, somehow this very unfair set of expectations begins to creep into the mix, unprompted by either me or the student. Usually how this works is one day, let's say eight months into lessons, the parent begins asking when their student will begin playing things like well-known classical pieces or popular tunes that are years beyond the student's current skill level.
Even easy tunes we've all heard on radio or TV can take a few years of study for the average student to play with two hands in a tuneful and rhythmic manner. Most songs, depending on the difficulty level, will take between a week and a few months to learn, but that's for students who have already been playing for two to three years. If your six-year-old is in their first year of lessons, they are often still in the stage of working up to learning to play with two hands. For them to be able to play a well-known song and have it be recognizable and musical is at least eighteen months to two years of skill to be able to get to that point.
Most children do not automatically play that way, and it's a lot of work to get them to the point where they can. As an example, Beethoven's "Fur Elise" is something that most kids can't even approach playing until they are in their third or fourth year of lessons. Lots of people hear the song and think, "It doesn't sound that hard. There's not that many notes." NO, NO, NO! To play a piece of music at that level, or something on the radio, can take three to six months of study just on that song! If they are playing pop music, but they've only ever studied classical music on the instrument, the rhythms can be horribly hard for them to coordinate and often take a few months of study in themselves to perform.
Lots of people think "It's just pop music. It wasn't even written for piano," yet nothing could be further from the truth. Pop songs still take a high degree of skill to do well. Often times, it takes far more skill to play a song that was not written for piano and make it work tunefully on the piano. This is not something that the average student study's, and in fact is often college-level work.
For student player and their parents, it is really important to understand that kids do not achieve that in the first year of piano lessons. Sometimes they don't even achieve that in two years of lessons. However, they will eventually if they stick with their lessons and study. Having realistic and fair expectations of student players is the most important part because they need encouragement and they need to feel good about what they are doing. If the expectations are set too high, the kids struggle, they resist, they feel overwhelmed and they have too much pressure on them to be able to learn.
Having appropriate expectations for both the age of the player and the length of time they have studied is one of the most important things you as an adult can have. If you are an adult player, likewise, don't be harsh on yourself. Be understanding of yourself and what it is you are trying to accomplish.
If you have any questions about this, please do contact me at through my web site and I will be happy to get back to you.
