I normally relish playing in front of an audience and love to perform. However, I have a problem with one pupil - I literally cannot hold it together in front of this girl. She is absolutely lovely and is my most advanced student who also has a Grade 6 piano.

A little bit of background - she was playing piano to around grade 6 level when I started teaching her and I too was aiming towards a high Grade 6 level on piano. I have improved to almost being a completely different person playing the piano since then but when this pupil comes for a lesson I can't face even looking at the piano.

I do accompany her but no matter how prepared I am I literally feel sick and like my playing is not good enough (in my opinion) yet in an exam / concert situation I can easily pull off the accompaniment. The last concert (just at school) I accompanied with her went fantastically and we were both really pleased with our playing but it doesn't change this worry of being berated in lessons. Even though I know she'd never say anything ...

Any ideas?!

[quote name='Pixie*Porsche' date='Jun 28 2012, 09:18 PM' post='1156794']
I normally relish playing in front of an audience and love to perform. However, I have a problem with one pupil - I literally cannot hold it together in front of this girl. She is absolutely lovely and is my most advanced student who also has a Grade 6 piano.

A little bit of background - she was playing piano to around grade 6 level when I started teaching her and I too was aiming towards a high Grade 6 level on piano. I have improved to almost being a completely different person playing the piano since then but when this pupil comes for a lesson I can't face even looking at the piano.

I do accompany her but no matter how prepared I am I literally feel sick and like my playing is not good enough (in my opinion) yet in an exam / concert situation I can easily pull off the accompaniment. The last concert (just at school) I accompanied with her went fantastically and we were both really pleased with our playing but it doesn't change this worry of being berated in lessons. Even though I know she'd never say anything ...

Any ideas?!

I have grade 8 piano but would only accompany up to grade 6 level - you need to be well ahead of the level you are accompanying in order to feel secure. If the piano isn't your first instrument (it's not mine either) there is no shame in leaving it to a more able pianist for the time being or permanently. It sounds like you are achieving well, but it is probably always going to be quicker for the girl to learn a one-note instrument part than for the poor old pianist who normally has to put in alot more practise to play the same piece! If having grade 8 piano would make you feel more confident, then this might be worth aiming for. It sounds like you've done really well!

I think you've developed a phobia Pixie, based on feeling inadequate at the start of your relationship with this pupil. Tricky to sort out, but not impossible. You've got the positive reinforcement of knowing that it goes well in performance and knowing that you are a better pianist now.

I'd suggest you try putting an elastic band on your wrist. Each time you think of the situation with dread and with negative thoughts you snap the band hard. It's supposed to retrain your brain away from the negative patterns. Obviously, don't do it during the lessons and rehearsals! - only before - which is usually when all the dread and anxiety is at its worst anyway (in my experience).

Also, don't avoid playing the piano in lessons with her - in fact I would introduce a lot more - make yourself look at the piano for a start and then add in some casual stuff - improvise a few chords for a bit she is playing or just add in a few bars here and there. Any avoidance behaviour makes your brain think that there is something to be afraid of and reinforces the phobia.

Good luck.

I think it would help to remember and be conscious of the fact that you are not her piano teacher (I am assuming you are teaching her clarinet? correct me if I'm wrong...). She may not even be thinking of your piano ability - I have a grade 8 in piano, and when i was a horn student my horn teacher could only pick away at things on the piano. Trust me when we were in horn lessons and she was trying to accompany me, I wasn't at all thinking about her piano playing ability or lack thereof, I was thinking about how to play the horn!

Edit: In fact, thinking about it, I was impressed that she could play the piano AT ALL (no idea why I should have found that surprising but there we are...).

If I think my accompanying is going to be a bit shaky I advise the pupil that I'm going to deliberately try to put them off and they must keep counting and maintain the pulse for me to follow and not the other way round. That covers any slips before they happen and is good training for them too.

I agree that this can be beneficial for the pupils, but if I'm understanding this correctly you use this strategy to "cover up" unintentional mistakes (apologies if that isn't what you meant). Why not just acknowledge that some of the mistakes are not deliberate? I personally respect teachers more when they freely admit their own shortcomings.

Pixie*Porsche, I can empathize with your nervousness. I was in an oddly similar situation a few years ago when my piano teacher accompanied me for a competition where I was playing viola. My piano and viola playing levels were similar at the time, but I was more "sought after" as a violist because locally there weren't many people my age who were better, so I think my piano teacher got the impression that piano was closer to a "second instrument" for me. As such, I felt pressure to play well in front of her, which of course meant that I didn't Poor intonation, wrong notes, terrible ensemble skills... everything went wrong. I was terrified that I had ruined her opinion of me as a musician and she wouldn't want me as a piano student anymore - but of course this wasn't true. The fact that I had played viola poorly had no impact on my abilities as a piano student.

Similarly, the way you play piano doesn't affect your merits as a teacher. Think about it this way - what if you didn't play piano at all? Would you still have felt inadequate because your student could play an instrument that you didn't? Do you feel inadequate when interacting with other students who have second instruments which you don't play? If not, why should you be embarrassed about being at approximately the same level on piano as your student? Besides, it's extremely unlikely that your student would judge you negatively. In fact, I think it's inspiring for a student to have evidence that teachers are also learners, and that one can continue learning throughout adulthood. Of course, this would be true even if you were the best pianist in the world, but it's even clearer to the student this way

And another point...
Last year my teacher accompanied me in a concert. I had chosen the piece, which was one he didn't know, and he couldn't play it very well. He kept apologising for the mistakes he was making and promised he would find time to practise it before the concert but I told him it didn't matter if he didn't. (Actually I would have liked to ask him not to practise it at all but thought I couldn't really expect him to deliberately play badly). I found the fact that he was not "perfect," and just as likely to make a mistake as me, incredibly liberating since it took away my own self-imposed pressure to play "perfectly."