Claudia has always hated the piano but was persuaded to do it at a very basic level by her music teacher as part of her general musical education so reluctantly went to lessons for a couple of years but with minimal practice. The lessons couldn't continue for various reasons so we decided to leave them and come back to them later.

The minute the lessons stopped, she suddenly started to like the piano and has teaching herself pieces that she has randomly come across but likes such as the piano accompaniments to things, pieces way beyond her level, pop songs, making up her own pieces etc. I am so happy that she is doing it for fun and doing it herself and want to leave it like that except I just want to make sure she is not going to do irreparable damage technique wise and then not be able to go back to it formally if she wants to later.

Can you do damage like this on the piano like you can on other instruments or is it ok to leave her to her own devices? She is definitely making huge progress in terms of the level of stuff she can play just by the fact that she is actually spending time at the piano.

If she's blossoming without a teacher, imagine how much more she could get out of it with a good and experienced teacher! I left my (violinist) daughter to dabble with piano for as long as I could get away with but eventually, when she was 12 and her dancing school folded, she was lucky enough to get a place with a very experienced local teacher who is a very good 'fit' and who also understands that my daughter's first love are her stringed instruments but that she also loves the piano sounds and wants to play as well as she can, albeit not to take it quite so seriously.

Is Claudia still at Junior Conservatoire? If so I would talk to them about piano and the possibilities for developing her music further through a second study. The teachers there will already be very experienced in bringing out the best in promising young musicians who already excel in a nother instrument. I know it's more expense but if my daughter's experience is anything to go by she will gain immensely from the opportunity.

Most conservatoires and a lot of universities have some level of piano required if piano is not your first instrument. If Claudia wants to go on to study violin as first study she will need to reach a fairly decent standard on piano. I am not sure what different colleges ask for these days - someone on here might know or you could look up a selection of colleges. I know from another thread that Oxford uni requires grade 5 ABRSM piano or equivalent.

Perhaps the teacher was not quite right for Claudia the first time round but I am sure a teacher could be found who would suit her better. If it was me I would be looking to start her back on piano lessons to make sure she is up to scratch for piano requirements IF she wants to study violin at a higher level.

Thank you for the replies. I have suggested she does piano at the junior department but she doesn't even want anyone to know she plays and would be absolutely horrified at the thought of having to play in public (wouldn't even play in her audition, just pretended she only did one instrument).

Also I know we wouldn't be able to fit in the required amount of practice as the violin is what she really loves and that takes any time left after homework etc.

I am so worried that going back to formal learning will kill her current interest. She's making progress because she is playing what she wants to play. I don't think I would be able to find a teacher that would a) allow her a lot of leeway on what she wants to play and b) put up with sporadic practice when it can be fitted in and c) won't make her do scales (although I know she needs to).

But I know she ought to be having lessons...... I think I will have a word with the JD and see if they can sort out something really really low key.

I don't think it would be impossible to find a teacher happy to work with that though it MAY be difficult.

For what it's worth I'd let her enjoy what she's doing on piano herself.
She had lessons to start off so has some idea and her experience on violin will have helped to train her ears as to whether things some right and will probably also mean that she instinctively plays musically.
She may not always be using optimum or consistent fingering but if the result is ok I wouldn't worry too much as it's not her chosen instrument.
There may come a time when she feels or accepts the need to formalise her piano learning and if it's going to be difficult and potentially put her off for good then why push it now. If and when it matters to her any issues can be addressed then and as it sounds as though she will only want sufficient keyboard skills to cope with things like harmony exercises and trying out parts of accompaniments she most likey won't need the same sort of proficiency as a first study pianist.

Could you not find a teacher who was prepared to see her on a very occasional basis - you could offer it to her as a 'trouble-shooting' session for anything she is finding difficult, and as an opportunity to explore some other ideas - get the teacher to suggest some things she might like to try. At the same time, teacher could be checking that she isn't getting into any horrendous habits and alert you if any serious problems seem to be brewing (seems unlikely but would put your mind at rest).

All that aside, why is she so worried about people knowing that she plays the piano? What does she think is going to happen? Is it just the performance side that bothers her?

That's a very good idea if I can find someone who can be flexible (a performer maybe?)

In answer to your question, yes she is afraid of giving a performance that she does not think is up to her own standards and so she lacks confidence. And she worries that if anyone finds out that she plays, that she will be asked to perform. On the violin she is the opposite and desperate to perform at any opportunity. It is herself being critical and comparing herself on both instruments.

It has everything to do with the hours put in to date of course and nothing to do with her aptitude towards each instrument, in fact, on hours put in she is probably far ahead on piano.

I sympathise. My daughter only started piano rather late relative to her other instruments and, despite having made good progress, always refuses to perform. She did play a couple of times at relatively informal school "instrumental evenings" when she first started, but the performances contained what she regarded as major errors, so she has refused to do the same again for the last 18 months or so. Since she is only really learning piano for fun, and in case she should suddenly decide to take music seriously (!) nobody has pushed her to perform and she continues to play happily in lessons, at home and in exams (which are different, apparently). She doesn't always like the attention in lessons, it's true. My daughter is only likely to be asked to perform on piano at school, and there are always plenty of other pianists eager to do their stuff. Is there no way to convince Claudia that no one will expect her to perform on piano until she is ready eg because they would rather hear her play the violin, or because (as there must be at junior conservatoire) there are lots of more experienced pianists around who will grab the opportunity?

I think this is a good idea. She does not have to perform if she does not want to.
It would be really worthwhile checking out keyboard requirements for music degrees at different places. Of course not all places ask for piano but Manchester Uni for example want grade 6 piano for admission to BMus for any other first study instrument. Oxford ask for grade 5. RAM want to hear a piece performed on piano at audition.
Perhaps she could be persuaded to check out some of these places to make sure she is not limiting her choices at 18 if she does want to pursue violin studies. She might then be more keen to go to piano lessons for the sake of her beloved violin!
I think it would be very difficult for her to reach anywhere near grade 5 or 6 piano without a teacher.
I did not want to learn piano as a youngster but my parents and violin teacher firmly told me that if I wanted to study violin at a higher level I would need piano to satisfy the entrance requirements (at that time, nearly all places wanted grade 6 piano) and also that piano would be very helpful for more advanced theory work.
I have grown to love the piano and did not go on to further music study as it happened, but I am grateful now that I was "made" to go to piano lessons.

[quote name='Halka' date='Jan 16 2011, 10:57 PM' post='1022795']
[quote name='Claudia's Mum' post='1022708' date='Jan 16 2011, 07:08 PM']

Is there no way to convince Claudia that no one will expect her to perform on piano until she is ready
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I think the problem stems from the fact that her previous teacher made everyone perform however unprepared they were.

I would really try to find a teacher who understands and is happy to treat piano as a less pressured instrument and just fit in with your daughter's needs.

We have done similar, although in our case there was never any aversion to piano lessons, playing or performing. My daughter initially took up piano purely because she realised she would need piano skills if she were ever to go for a conservatoire. Her first teacher accepted that it was very much a second instrument and that it was a means to an end, and helped her reach grade 5 in a year and half.

However, they never really gelled as far as personalities and teaching style goes, so my daughter found herself another teacher who is perfect for her. He accepts that piano practice is not a priority, although she does try and usually manages some a few times a week, and is hugely supportive of her first instrument - he is also an experienced accompanist and knows a lot of her first instrument repertoire. At times when it has seemed more important, her 'piano' lesson has been spent with him accompanying her on her main instrument.

She has now passed grade 6 and continues lessons because she enjoys them so much and enjoys piano playing more than ever. They are not formally working towards anything in particular, but are exploring repertoire and playing whatever my daughter wants, rather than her feeling restricted to anything. She has now received conservatoire offers and is confident that while she will never be the best pianist going, she should be able to keep up with whatever is needed keyboard-wise at college. She is even talking about trying for grade 8 in the next couple of years.

I agree with other posters, there is no need whatsoever for your daughter to ever play piano in public if that is not what she wants, but a good teacher who is sensitive to her needs and likes will help enormously and should help sustain her current love of piano.

Uni requirements... agree with all the above that general requirement seems to be Grade 5, with a few (e.g. Cambridge, KCL) asking for Grade 6.

One view is: don't despair, unis may well take you without Grade 5/6 - young people we know have been accepted without any or with only rudimentary piano skills, even for courses apparently demanding Grade 6.

But that's not the end of the story. Because, as with all these things, there's a reason they ask you to have piano skills: you have to do keyboard-based study... e.g. harmonizing at sight. So if you don't already have good keyboard skills, you'll have to work at them once you're there (when you're surrounded by first study pianists to lower your morale!). They can be v v generous with help (extra classes... but that eats up study time, and also means extra practice... yet more time). And this is on top of everything else and makes for a heavy workload, which could have been avoided with prior planning. With the crystal clear benefit of hindsight, I'd say if and when your daughter decides she can face piano, go for it and don't worry about fitting in the practice - they seem to find time somehow (and I'm allowing for junior conservatoire practice schedules). It could make life easier in the long run.

That's assuming Claudia goes for music: she might decide to do Anglo Saxon or train as a chef or become an astronaut, in which case she can blame you for encouraging her to learn piano (unless she learns to love it for itself, that is)

This is excellent advice. However many first study pianists who can play wonderfully well from a score will not have spent a lot of time, in my experience, developing their skills in harmonising at sight. As so many others have said, choose a teacher carefully who can develop the right attributes in your daughter and who won't assume she wants to follow the usual well trodden path.

This is very much Emsoboes situation with Piano teaching. She perhaps doesn't love it as much as your daughter but realises they are skills that she needs. Teacher understands and is happy to accompany her whenever he can.

Claudia will need Piano if she intends to study music further at degree level. It's better to get on that track now as you can always get off if she decides music isn't for her. It's very difficult to make up for lost time if she decides it is for her.

Thank you all so much for your words of advice and encouragement. I do really appreciate it. I will start a search for that understanding teacher.

Best of luck and let us know how she gets on.
Don't forget to tell her that it is something she needs to do for the love of her violin and I think she will understand and accept that.

For what it's worth, my six pennorth...

I had piano lessons for about a year when I was 7 and HATED it mostly because the teacher was old and stuffy, hit my fingers with a pencil if I played a wrong note, and we played from a tutor published in about 1930 which had no tunes I knew or even liked.

When I was older and wanted to study music, my mum refused to let me have lessons because "you did it once and gave up so I'm not paying again". So I taught myself.

Now as a (not piano!) teacher, I have the most appalling piano technique and so am really limited in what I can do in the way of accompanying etc. I'm trying to correct my faults and would love to have lessons again, but at the moment my life is too chaotic to allow for the regular practice that I would need to put in. I wish almost daily that I had learned properly... why can't days have 36 hours each????

I wish I had learned piano as now I can see the use for it. I don't want to be a piano performer, I want to accompany my higher grade pupils, play aural tests much better, make backing tracks, understand jazz harmony better... If Claudia currently has no "use" for the piano apart from her own enjoyment of it, she may not be as motivated to have formal lessons. If she can see the "use" of it as an adjunct to her violin career, then possibly she can see it as the means to another end rather than an end in itself, and think of it almost as an extension of her violin activities.

Sorry this is a ramble, I hope you can pick some sense out of it!

For what it's worth:

I had piano lessons from the age of 7-10. I didn't practise as much as I should have, took no exams (I don't even know if my teacher did them) and learnt only the one-octave scales, single-handed, which had white keynotes.

My father was a musician but was away from home for two years and then we moved so that he could take up a school teaching job. By that time he had shown me how to pick out some chords to harmonise tunes I played by ear, so I enjoyed doing that, and I think my reading wasn't bad, but I had no good technique to speak of (I remember nothing at all being taught to me in that respect, but it was over 50 years ago!)

He gave me two lessons after we moved - I was sort of just sub-grade 1, I'd guess - and we squabbled all the way through them, it was like trying to teach your wife to drive, and he said he found me unteachable, and didn't give me any more.

Not piano, that is. He did teach me enough general musicianship in six months to get me through the LCM General Musicianship grade 4 with honours when I was 10 - so I couldn't pass a piano exam, but I could take simple music dictation and play you a plagal cadence in B flat.

I learnt the cello; I sang alto, at sight, in the church choir, where he was the organist; I took grade 5 theory, with his tuition, at 12; I busked through duets of Mozart Symphony arrangements with him; I sang Lieder and British songs reading over his shoulder at the piano. But no more piano lessons.

Meanwhile, as we had a front room with a piano and nobody else used it much, and there were always fresh piles of usually second-hand piano music appearing out of nowhere, I played for myself for about 5 years; I played hymns at Sunday school on the organ and on the piano in school assembly - at 14 I wielded great power because I feared flat keys, never having learned them, and transposed tunes in E flat and A flat into E and A, thus making the whole school sing a semitone higher and I composed songs and anthems at it.

I played for an average of about 90 minutes a day. I could read anything. My fingering was dreadful, my touch was thump and I never did any scales.

I took a very early A level (15) and as it was then decided I would try for university eventually, we thought I had better get back to having lessons again. My teacher put a Mozart sonata in front of me and read through it, well enough to show that learning it would be no problem.

It's a grade 6 piece, she said, you could do grade 6, you have grade 5 theory (actually I think by that time I had grade 7 or 8 theory and was working for grade 8 singing)

"Now are your scales?"

Non-existent. Luckily in those days it was assumed that if you were doing grade 6 you'd already learnt them in all keys so you only had to offer one group of three keys. We chose the "simplest" group.

The first week I had to do C major ONE octave with both hands going the same way. I'd never done it! I thought it would kill me.

Week 2: three octaves. Put my thumb under my FOURTH finger? Do people do that?

Week 3: C minor, harmonic AND melodic. I could write them with no effort. Never had to play them.

Week 4: E major AND both minors. Groan, sob.

Week 5. And 6, 7, 8, etc. A flat major. Start a scale on a black note. I thought I would never, ever master it.

I did, years later, actually learn to love playing scales on the piano.

Meanwhile my fingering was rationalised and my touch improved as I was encouraged to listen to myself better. I played in a lot of festivals and never ever got a good mark for solo work, though I got on well in duets and accompanying.

I still played for enjoyment, though I suspect the amount of "practice" I did was less than I was doing when I wasn't having lessons. It was always my second study anyway, my first being singing.

I don't think my time away from lessons did me any harm - perhaps if I wanted to become a professional player at an early stage there were one or two finer points of technique which were missing, but mainly I was using the piano as a music-making device.

My only other lessons, once I left school, were one year at the RAM, after I'd done my degree, with a teacher who only ever got to teach second-study pianists. I failed my piano exam (oh the shame) but learned heap more about technique.

Now at 63, after a very variegated career in and out of school and on and off the concert platform as a singer, I've lost my voice but love my piano teaching practice which has everything from promising 4-year-olds to a woman my age who seems to have done at least grade 3 when she was young but who has forgotten ALL of it and is enjoying re-learning; I have late teenagers who are "ticking over" - don't want to work for an exam but want to keep up playing; adults who have just discovered the joys of music and willingly do a theory question each week but often find another week has gone by without practice.

I'll take them all on. The piano is DIFFERENT from any other instrument: if you take oboe lessons it's because you're going to try to perform on the oboe, either in an orchestra or as a soloist, even if you have no professional or even advanced aspirations. Not so the piano. It's what some people use as a doodle pad for their musical expression, or a back-up for their main study, or a place to work out their music theory or the frustrations of the day. It's complete in itself in a way in which few othyer instruments can hope to be. It's a vehicle for learning musicianship. And I take all that on board when accepting a pupil. You'd be surprised how many parents will be prepared to pay the going rate just to keep the interest alive in their kids while they are concentrating on something more academic, with limited time to practice hard.

So - depending on what you expect your piano playing to develop into, I'd say that if you're following plenty of other musical experience, a spell of a few years just playing and exploring for yourself will probably do you no harm at all. When the time comes for you to take the actual performing side of it more seriously, you will feel like taking

Lovely post, linda.ff

I really enjoyed reading this - a lovely story, beautifully told!

I loved reading your post too Linda, thank you.

I support Organistin's comments. I have recently acquired a 6th form pupil who is looking at various music courses at uni. When we began lessons in Sept it was just to get her to be able to play piano. (She's a grade 8 flautist as well) Then last week, out of the blue, the prospect of having to get Grade 5 piano surfaced. A bit of a challenge in 12 months, but we'll have a go.

(Have just read down later posts, and see you're going for a piano teacher. Excellent news, and I hope you find an understanding one.)