I'm sooo happy! My parents finally allowed me to have music lessons in Australia but I've gotta get a job. I called up the teacher tonight and she's fine in taking me on for both violin and piano. The question is, I've already got a violin teacher back in Singapore and he marked out some pieces and Wohlfhart (sp?) etudes and Sevcik etudes for me. I'm wondering now if I should just let the new teacher work me out on her own or give her my previous things and let her continue from there. On one hand, it's good so that I progress on one track alone but the fact that she might give me new things to try is just too tempting. What should I do?

Piano-wise, I don't have a teacher, so I'll let her work it out herself lol.

Are you going to be going back to your other teacher some of the time?

Learning one instrument with two teachers can get confusing if they use different approaches or give you contradictory suggestions, but it can also be good to be exposed to different methods so you can see which things work best for you and get a wider range of input.
I would think that for a beginner or a young kid it would be more confusing, but for someone with a bit more experience and maturity it would probably be good.

I learn organ with two different teachers and have some supervision from a third (whose church I play at). What works well for us is dividing stuff up in a fairly consistent way, so everyone involved knows who's doing what - that way nothing gets overlooked and there's no un-necessary duplication. With one teacher I concentrate on "service playing" - hymns, choral accompaniment, etc. - and do some technical work (pedal exercises, trio exercises, etc) and some keyboard skills (sight-transposition, score-reading, etc.). With the other I do "exam work" - exam pieces, scales and exam-type sight-reading and will be doing some other keyboard skills (keyboard harmony, improvisation). Both do some other pieces with me and give me advice on technique, registration, etc. The organs they teach on are very different - one is a tracker and the other is electro-pneumatic, so that also gives me a wider range of experience. Before I play for a service, the guy in charge there meets me before the choir arrives and hears me play through my stuff, makes suggestions about speed, registration, etc and tells me what he wants for hymn intros, etc.

I think what makes it work well is having fairly clear 'territories' and the fact that they all know who's doing what. I think having lessons with two teachers where one (or both) don't know about the other, let alone about what they're covering, could get messy. You don't want your original teacher to feel like you've gone behind their back, or for your new teacher to feel like you've been hiding stuff. Also, if they don't know you're working on things with another teacher, they could get some inaccurate ideas about how you're getting on in some areas. Imagine one gives you a piece to try which you've already worked on in depth with the other - you're going to play it far better than expected and that teacher won't know which parts you struggled with at first, so won't know to work more on those areas of technique.

In my case, the teachers know each other (well, one of them knows both the other two and those two know each other by reputation at least), but I think it would work OK with teachers who didn't, as long as they were both happy with the arrangement. It may be best to work on different repertoire with each, but it would probably be a good idea to let each know what you're doing with the other - at least in general terms, like "we're doing pieces X, Y and Z and working on this technical issue".

Doing both violin and piano with one teacher should work nicely. I have one teacher for flute and piano and it gives us flexibility to concentrate more on one instrument in the run up to an exam, or to do just piano one week if I'm having a bad asthma day (like today!), or to do just flute if I've had no time to do any piano practice, or whatever. Also, she knows what my strengths and weaknesses are (some are instrument-specific, like beathing issues for flute and pedal-technique for piano, but a lot of the more general stuff applies to both). She also does all the aural and practical musicianship stuff with me (including aural practice for organ exams as it's more convenient - there's a piano to hand - and she's done those grades with me before for flute, so she knows which tests I need to work on and which I can breeze).

Have fun with it all,
T.

So do you suggest I tell her what I've been given in Singapore and let her do what she wants with it? I did tell her before that my teacher had done so and so and she said it was ok. Should I also tell her that she's free to use new stuff in if she thinks is good? I don't know if I could be counted as a beginner or amateur. I started in Feb last year and at around Grade 4 level now.

Anyway, I won't start till at least 2 weeks from now when I get a job lol.

I'd take the music you have from your teacher in Singapore to your lesson and see whether the new teacher wants you to continue with any of it.
It's uaseful to have some sort of starting point.