Unless you have an extra person handy

I'll never forget the day my dad decided to "save money" on a tuner by poking around inside my beloved piano with various tools...

My old music teacher used to go on about "you either have good pitch or you don't." It's as well I did otherwise she might not have bothered with me! I've found to the contrary though, that with practise a good ear can be acquired, so you'll be pleased to hear I don't take the same attitude with my own pupils!

My very first pupil was unable to sing back notes in tune/recognise higher and lower pitches only a year ago. This year she passed a school aural test well enough to be given a flute

xxxx

Gosh, interesting points there Jod.

What an interesting thread this has turned out to be. Each instrument is unique and special and we should all acknowledge and respect this.

Yes a few of my pupils tell me oboe is difficult at first. I'm always impressed when the young ones take on the likes of french horn - that must take a lot of patience if you're little.

Also - no fewer than three of my young 7-8 yr old pupils have taken Cello lessons at one stage and given up. Could it be the size of the instrument that put them off?

xxx

I'm getting a little weary of all the posts in this thread that accuse me of saying the violin is the hardest instrument to learn. It's not actuallywhat I said at all. This was the original context:



So actually it was inanswer to jazzfan's post about jazz musicians: .

I assumed he meant jazz pianists, guitarists and sax players because that's what you'll mostly find in the jazz world. I too have come across quite a few excellent self-taught jazz pianists, guitarists and sax players but I've never come across a really good violinist in any sphere who was self-taught. Or if they were self-taught folk fiddlers they tended to be good in first position but weren't able to play in the higher positions. I'm teaching a self-taught folk fiddler right now - he's a good banjoist and has already worked as a folk fiddler but got stuck with his technique - faulty bowhold, frying pan hand, you name it - and found himself unable to move on to more advanced repertoire, hence the need for lessons. You'll find the virtuosic folk fiddlers usually had classical lessons when they were children, gave that side up long ago in favour of folk, but only after they'd already established a really good technique.

I've just scrolled back through this thread to find what I said that riled so many people here and it was probably this:



By 'the hardest of all here' I meant violin, guitar, saxophone and piano. Aaaargh! Not the other instruments - just those! And I also meant in the early stages - but unfortunately I didn'tmake that clear until later.

I was also asked this by Manek:



Well for a start - here we go again - I didn't say the violin was harder than anything other instrument - and I would never say that. I said it was harder than guitar, piano and saxophone and I meant in the early stages. Neither did I say he did so well in his exam with little or no effort. My actual words were:

OK here are the bare facts: he took up sax at the age of 9 (nearly 10). He had a weekly 45-minute lesson in term-time for 5 years and then took his Grade 5. He started out practising for about half an hour 3-4 times a week, but this tailed off as he grew older to more like 2-3 times a week. In the run-up to the exam (a couple of months) he stepped his practice up to 4-5 times a week again and focussed on the scales, arpeggios, pieces and impro. I know for a fact that in most cases it takes a lot more than that to get to that stage with the violin and do so well in the exam. I was pretty startled when the result came although I was sitting in the waiting room at the time and did hear how adept and confident he sounded (what a relief as he had been quite nervous before the exam). So look, I didn't say he made little or no effort, but to my mind it didn't look like the kind of effort necessary to do that well at the violin at Grade 5.

Violinia

Also I'd like to mention to Miochy that I have absolutely no doubt that Sarah would be able to recognise when a saxophone (or any other instrument for that matter) is in or out of tune. I spent a whole afternoon about a year ago playing music with her and listening to her play, and she came across to me a very musical person as well as a lovely, sensitive and talented player in her own right, both on the violin and the viola and also on the flute. She intonation was excellent and she very quickly and instinctively started learning to improvise, all a testament to her (in my view unusually) sensitive aural skills.

Violinia

Thanks V

I would say that two years was average for Piano aswell, yes you do get somepeople that will do it in a year or even less. It took me two years before I took Grade 1, this time allowed me to develop OK technique and put me in a good position before taking exams. This meant there were no technical difficulties in any of my exams.

I did it after 9 months ish, having started at about 10 - I already read treble clef. Looking back, I think my teacher saw it as an opportunity to get someone on to the higher grades quickly as I could already read music, and thought I'd cope as I was slightly older than a lot of beginners, but I felt terribly rushed. I did grades 2 and 3 a year and two years later, never came close to feeling confident or doing myself justice in a piano exam, and promptly gave up the piano for 13 years

Probably a vain request... but this thread has been in parts very interesting and informative... if we could keep it like that and lighten up on the snottiness that keeps getting dug up, we might get to keep talking in this interesting thread, the way it's going it's going to get deleted and all the good stuff gone with the bad ...

Anyway, past my bedtime.

On violin you pluck, or bow a string and you get a sound, albeit a very good sound. The piano here is being made out to be easy, press a key and hey presto, you're playing the piano. There are lots more aspects to piano playing that are mentioned in the above quote, 1/2 pedalling, 1/4 pedalling, 3/4 pedalling.

I could have totally misread the quote, but...: if you actually read what it says, Ben, Perlman is suggesting the difficulties are different. Pedalling etc are additions to get the music out of the phrase, whereas bowing and shifting and fingers and intonation have to be in place just to get the correct notes on a violin. He says "You _have_ to *deal with music*immediately", and he has a point. The sound a piano makes if you simply press one of its keys is not especially exciting - it takes a lot of skill to turn the rather plain sound of a hammer hitting a string (which has no possibility for vibrato, can't be made to crescendo unless it's hit again, etc) into a beautiful Rachmaninov concerto... that's quite a feat. The violinist has a different set of difficulties in making the sound in the first place - once he has his beautiful sound, it starts beautiful; a good violinist can get a huge amount of variation just out of one long held note in terms of vibrato or not, tone colour, dynamics - and he generally only has one line of music to manipulate. The pianist has only a set of fairly homogenous percussive sounds which have a similar sort of attack and will naturally start to die away in the same way each time even if one holds the dampers away from the strings. He's got to manipulate those samey sounds very cleverly and very musically to make something people will want to hear!

Think about it: if Brendel played a plain middle C, and I played a plain middle C, you'd struggle to tell the difference, or at least it would not be mindblowingly obvious - I'm not a great pianist but I can play a damn fine middle C . Substitute the violin and Vengerov, and his middle C would blow mine out of the water!! However, even to play an extremely simple piece on the piano well (hey, even Frere Jacques), you'd _very_ soon see the difference between me and Brendel... (trust me on this )

I think what Perlman is saying is that the difficulty on the piano lies in taking that plain sound, and combining it with many others in an amazing way and making it sound beautiful, and that because of the relative ease with which one can produce a note on the piano, and the difficulty of making a plain sound with no possibility for expressive intonation/vibrato etc, beautuful and flowing, the pianist must immediately deal with music, and as he says, "turning a phrase" to make that music beautiful... rather than so much in producing the sound in the first place - a violinist's only worry for a long time is producing a sound that doesn't leave the neighbours screaming and running for cover. Yes, the piano is _relatively_ easy in terms of tone production - anyone can press a note - but I don't think that's his point at all, and I'm sure we've all heard people playing lots of notes in very clever orders on the piano and totally missing the music. (I don't think, by the way, that playing complex pieces on the piano is easy... I certainly can't do it!!) Playing a series of notes on the piano IS easy - playing them with a beautiful flowing legato line, or with a clean crisp staccato, or with a complex articulation, playing them with a nice even tone - that is all hard! But Perlman is saying that is all music, rather than tone production, and that a pianist is forced to deal with it from the start.

You may or may not agree with him on that one, but one thing he isn't saying, if you read the whole quote instead of ripping his comment about touching the keys and producing a sound (and note, he doesn't say music, he says sound) out of context, is that the piano is easy. He isn't saying that at all. Or if he is, I missed it!! The violinist and the pianist don't have easier or harder jobs, or more or less difficulty - they have a totally different set of difficulties. The problems posed by the instruments are simply poles apart.

Personally I'll have to think about what he said & make sure I understand it before I can decide if I really agree or not... but I certainly think he makes an interesting point about the different difficulties the pianist has. And I definitely don't think he's trying to make out that the piano is easy.

If you ask me they're both hard, in utterly, totally different ways: the two instruments I've been playing the longest and still easily two I consider I have so far from mastered it ain't funny.

Anyway I'm only on because my computer randomly failed to turn off and I was tempted to check the forums when I came to investigate what the noise was in the office so I am going to bed.......

I'm with Violinia on this one. I'm a pianist myself, but I don't have anything like the musical qualities of either of my two daughters and my wife who are violinists. The quality of ear required is so much keener than that needed for piano. All the others in my house can spot a slightly off note a mile off. I can't. I rely on sight reading.

Sorry if I'm overgeneralising, but I don't buy the "self-taught" war-cry for anything apart from a small handful of prodigies. This is after all the ABR[u]Schools M. The whole thrust of the medium on which we are posting is teaching! N'est-ce pas?

LR

No, Perlman wasn't saying the piano is easy, but then that was never the issue! I never said it was easy either, ever - obviously it isn't. But what he did say is this: 'Violinists have a harder time to make pure music than pianists'; he means a violinist has to know how to create a beautiful sound before he can even begin to make music.

The very fact that he said: suggests that he is attempting to say more of the work (of making the sound) is already done on the piano because of the very way it's constructed. I think he's right. No he's not trying to say the piano is easy -but nor is anyone here either - but he's speaking about a subtle difference.

The fact remains: in the early stages it is easier to make a tolerable sound on the piano than on the violin. In the more advanced stages piano has its own totally unique challenges - of finger dexterity, pedalling, touch etc etc etc, you name it - this goes without saying and I'm eternally sorry if I failed to make this clear in the beginning. Sheesh!

Violinia who also ought to go to bed.

For some pupils, 2 years is not generous.....it's average - some pupils can take 3 years before they get to a confident grade 1 level.........(and one pupil never reached grade 1 even after 5 years, but that's another tory - something to do with never practising!! )

The voice of common sense - thank you Sarah-flute - I agree entirely. I'd better save your other lovely post before it is annihilated!!

You've changed tack again, here. First violin was definitely harder, then it was definitely harder in the early stages, and now it is harder to make a tolerable sound in the early stages. Which do you mean?

My personal opinion is that the challenges are different, even in the earlier stages. Before Grade 1 on violin, you have to work lots on technique, intonation, etc. (as you've said); before Grade 1 on piano, you still have to be able to read multiple lines of music, operate hands independently from each other, vary your touch and so on. I suppose which is the harder set of challenges depends on the person learning.

Back at the begining of this thread there was a real issue (before all the personality stuff got in the way). I'm interested to go back to that and forget all this other mud-slinging.

Regardless of how hard violin is relative to any other instrument (and frankly I don't care about that), it does need the basics in place in terms of posture, intonation and other technique issues. Not to have these sorted means that the music made will sound awful most of the time, and bad posture can lead to injury.

I'm sure that the same can also be said to with every instrument, and therefore that Violinia's point about getting an enthusiastic teenager to go "back to basics" is an important issue for all the teachers here.

Can we move back to discussing that and forget the other rubbish?

Yes, I was just writing something along those lines myself when you posted yours.

If people want to talk about the technicalities of individual instruments, without the controversy, perhaps somebody would start a thread where comparisons would be banned. It would then be interesting and informative without being offensive to anybody.

And the original topic, as katyjay says, is worthy of further comment without being submerged in this major digression.

I think that is the essence of it all DIFFERENT --
added to that I think it has been said often that to play ANY instrument WELL is DAMNED HARD WORK involving technique,posture, breathing (for wind of course), psychological and mental attitude,performing, musicality, practice.... loads of things.

And those were the interesting parts of this thread - as KJ has said.


keep on track!!

Hear, hear!

Hear, Hear, Hear!

Fantastic post as usual Sarah, but this was my favourite bit:

I am longing for the moment when we get back to sanity - and I hope it may be before this thread is removed!!
It's not even a question of CARES which is harder.... I repeat (almost) what I said earlier - I think the essence is they are DIFFERENT.
To play them well, they are ALL difficult. To H*ll with 'in the first stages' etc. [ I have just read this again and it might seem I was disagreeing with you Dulciana - no intention of that at all - sorry.]

I repeat: please come back on track!!


Sarah, I should LOVE to hear your Middle C one day, please. I will even pay for a front row seat!

I was most upset to discover yesterday that (according to my daughter's piano teacher) in French there is no particular name for "Middle C."
(It follows on from there that obviously playing middle C on a French piano is going to be harder than on an English piano as it will be harder to explain what note you are trying to play in the first place).

Nice one Kerioboe
a good reason to fly over and bring your daughter to Sarah-flute's performance of Middle C !!

Yup - back to "it depends" again!

A hearty amen to that!




I'll have to practise and make sure it's perfect

kerioboe: oh no - I'll make sure it's an English one

Here's hoping the sanity prevails......

I had this vague thought that it would be really great to copy all the relevant info from this thread over to a non-controversial new thread (or two) about the topics that have been covered in between times, maybe it the thread survives I shall but I'm far too shattered today unfortunately! At any rate I'm very glad V found a way to give her student the requisite kick in the posterior.

Now hold on, Sarah.....

perfect?? pitch? in tune with itself? perfect for you? or me? .. This could be a lifetime's work, Sarah. You are going to need an agent to handle this...

Oh no, what have I let myself in for???????????!

So much for sanity.....

*runs away for she gets lynched for extreme silliness*

...sorryyyyyyy........ *fades into distance*

Light dawns.
Several people have already said that ---



Ho hum - don't run away.... please
Haven't you noticed the times folk have said "sensible" or "good post" when it's got your name on it?

don't go...

But what's wrong with a discussion? It's what make the forums interesting. There's no reason to curtail a discussion if people want to participate - the discussion will come to a natural conclusion when either people agree to differ or come to a common viewpoint. Certainly, I don't think anyone has the right to demand that people agree to differ, or cease discussing issues which are of interest to them.... No one has to read the discussion, so let those who are interested discuss .

I think that it's quite difficult to instil in players of any instrument why basic technique is so important, if they have started learning on their own and picked up bad habits through no fault of anyone's- if you can play the notes you must be doing it right, no? Of course not.

I was self-taught on piano for a year, then had lessons for a year and a half and did grade 4 within a year and grade 5 the second year. Nobody ever taught me about technique; I ended up with RSI and wrist problems which I am sure was a result of poor technique as my playing with my new teacher is already better than it was after a long time with my old teacher and I've only had 3 lessons! Also, I used to have to look at my fingers all the time when I used to play; now I'm much better when I read the music.

But I got to a good grade 3 'standard' with no lessons and bad technique.

My friend did similar with clarinet, she was self taught and had awful bad habits to correct when she got a teacher. But if you can play the music, and it sounds ok to you, in your mind it's hard to see WHY you should change your playing, as you've got so far already...

It sounds like Violinia's pupil literally needed the discussion about why the good technique is so important for what he wanted to do. It's not just a case of saying 'if you do this, I will let you do this', it's a case of the pupil understanding WHY he needs to do it, and being motivated to get it right, because the basics of anything are usually the 'boring' bit!

For what it's worth, I do understand what Violinia was saying and I know she didn't mean it to be a 'violin is much harder' debate and she didn't mean it to be offensive but it's so hard to explain... but I do get it.

I don't learn or play any musical instrument nor have I ever had the desire to do so. During the time I've looked at this Forum, from what people have said and from observations of my own child, it has become quite obvious that differant people will find a particular instument easier than another. Someone else will flourish at that hard instrument and find it easy.

From personal experience I have also seen how easy it could be to ignore technique and plough on with Grades/harder pieces on any instrument. If someone has an inclination towards something they will want to be challanged and moving through studies, scales will be the last thing they want. Lots of teachers don't explain the significance of particular exercises to their pupils particularly well, also those of us who have teenage children will know how difficult it is sometimes to get the point over of something they don't want to hear.

Violinia I didn't see anywhere in your post that it was implied that your communication with the Pupil had broken down. The very fact that you were looking for ways to get your point across to your pupil and had their best interests at heart reflected your good relationship with them. Whatever Violinia said about anyones instrument to make personal judgement on a situation which we have no first hand experience of is not right.

I'm glad that you found a way to motivate the young man in question. I also agree with whoever said that teachers are always learning. If anyone disagrees with this then they should hang up their instrument.

There is no easy instrument it all depends on how much you are prepared to put into it and of course what your previous experience is.

I find it really unpleasant when people start insulting one another, there is no need.

Agree with you all the way. Thank you.

For someone who doesn't play an instrument and has never had the desire to do so, you are remarkably 'in tune' with things. Very balanced thoughts indeed.

Spot on, jazzfan. That's pretty much what I said to this boy the other day and he really did take it on board. He's just begun formulating the idea of starting a gypsy jazz band with some friends and has now accepted how proficient he's going to have to be. I think he really could go far - he's so musical and learns so quickly. He likes to learn pieces by the aural method (the way the gypsies learn) so I play a phrase to him, he learns it and memorises it, then we do the same with the next phrase and that way he learns a whole piece by heart very quickly. He plays with expression like you wouldn't believe, and comes up with new pieces he wants me to teach him pretty much every week. A star pupil really, as long as he gets his technique together!

Violinia

V you seem to have answered your own question. Are there ways that you could incorporate the scales used in Hungarian Folk Music into his technical work. From my limited knowledge the Augmented second is a widley used interval, and getting the intonation of that right can be very difficult. It appears that this pupil has got very strong ideas over what he wants to do as a violinist, which is great. I have singers who have strong ideas over what they want to get out of their singing too. There is a method of teaching where the teacher is the senior learner. I believe this would work very well in this case. You have the experience of building his technique, he wants to learn in a certain manner.

I have a small son who is going back to learning the violin after Christmas. I accept that the sound he produces at the moment sounds like cat's claws on a black board... but when I started playing the oboe I sounded like the Queen Mary was about to come in to port. My pianist do take an average of two years to get to grade 1, mainly as it takes them time to grapple with two lines of music.

Both of us teach. Both of us are hot on technique. I'd love you to sit in on a lesson, as I encourage my pupils to develop their own musical personality from the start. What you have in your pupil is a well rounded musical personality where you have to sneek in technique. Please don't break him, yet equip him with the skills he needs to perform the music he is so passionate about.

Exactly. And that's why I asked the question in the first place, because I hadn't yet found a way to get him to improve his technique without him sort of sighing and going 'yes yes but isn't this all a bit beneath me'. I'd already given him Middle Eastern and gypsy scales to learn but he wasn't practising them! What he really needed, I see now, was to stop and think about where he wants to take his violin playing in the future, and how good he's going to have to be to achieve those goals.

The very last thing I'd ever want to do is break him as he's such a special, almost dream pupil in so many ways. He spends hours and hours playing his violin when so many other teenage boys of his age spend hours and hours playing computer games. His parents never need to remind him as it's what he chooses to do with his time. He also spends a lot of time listening to CD's of all this gypsy stuff and brings in tracks for me to help him work on. He's a prime example of what you'd call an 'intrinsically motivated student' and the very last thing I'd want to do is anything that might kill that motivation..

Violinia

PS It probably doesn't help that he's seen gypsy violinists with frying pan hands. I've had to bring in pictures of top gypsy violinists with excellent posture to get him off that one!

That's what I was trying to say when I was talking about adapting teaching styles and teacher being senior learner. You're going to have to be devious V so he doen't notice you sneeking technical things in, but stick to your guns. He does sound rather special. Does his interest in the Accordian come from a love of Eastern European Folk Music too?

Sounds like he ought to go to Womad!

He's as sharp as a razor so not one of these people you can sneak things in with without them noticing! Yes you've hit the nail on the head re his interest in the accordion as well. He doesn't go to Womad as far as I know but his parents take him to lots of gypsy-type gigs; he's also got loads of CD's of this type of music which he often brings in to school so I can help him work out the tunes on them.

All the others in the String Group at that school have got interested in all this stuff too, so I've added quite a few Eastern European tunes to the repertoire plus spaces where the ones who want to improvise can do so. It's all quite a hoot really.

Violinia

The reason its taken me so long to reply is that I had to give serious thought to your dilemma. Have you thought of building technical exercises from the difficult passages in his pieces. For your sanity write them down, but that does not preclude you from teaching them aurally.

Although I'm not a string player, I had to write a string quartet for my degree, and I consulted with as many of my string playing friends as I could over bowing directions etc. It was very educational.

Surely there is a way of using the pieces to develop bow control, changes to pizzicato playing mid-phrase and other gems. Forgive me if I'm talking rubbish... it was just an idea.

Thanks for putting thought into this - much appreciated.

Yes I've been there, done that. The trouble is he'll turn up to the subsequent lesson looking slightly bashful and telling me that rather than practise the technical exercise I set him the last time (on top of the last gypsy piece), he's found another gypsy piece he wants to play and has spent hours working on that instead. Yes one could get cross but at least this is a student who puts the work in - he just doesn't always put in the work I've asked him to!

I think it's because he couldn't see the point of the technical exercises as he'd seen gypsies with frying pan hands and thought he was doing fine without all that. The fact is - he wasn't. He was playing some amazing stuff but with lots of technical flaws that just have to be sorted out if he is to realise his dream of playing in a band.

I sent him away with a couple of piece-related technical exercises last week and he promised faithfully to practise them; I really think he will this time as hopefully something seems to have clicked.

May also take in a tape recorder next time, but shall only use it on him if he still hasn't practised his technical exercises!

Your suggestions are excellent but this boy will only do something when he totally sees the relevance of it. I think we're getting there.

Thanks again

Violinia

Would it be possible to compose a technical excersize in a gypsy style?