I'd be really grateful for some help with this conundrum. I'm new to teaching and have two pupils, one adult and one teenager. My instrument is singing which of course I can demonstrate with no problem, however, I feel that a piano accompaniment is helpful for both exercises and the songs themselves. No matter how much I practise at the piano when it comes to the crunch the problems I have are:

- having to concentrate so hard on what I'm playing that I can't assess what the pupil is up to or,
- listening critically to the pupil and so being unable to provide any more than the right-hand of the accompaniment.

Do any other singing teachers have this problem? If so how do you overcome it satisfactorily? At the moment it is increasing my anxiety about teaching no end, and spoiling my enjoyment of the teaching. When I stop playing and just demonstrate I feel so much more confident, but particularly my younger pupil loses it completely when I don't play.

The result is that I seem to spend hours preparing for lessons on the piano, and even then my pianistic ability can't be relied upon to come up with the goods. I so want to do this well and it's colouring my perception of the whole process.

Help!


Singing Nurse

Why not just play with one hand?

A woman in my year last year who was also a singing teacher in training (unfortunately failed her ALCM(TD) so is no longer doing the course) Anyway, she is terrible at the piano, but the scary thing is, she thought she was quite good - so good in fact that she has decided to start teaching beginners. Considering that she probably hasnt had a lesson herself in decades, and never got beyond grade 2 standard herself, I would send anyone for lessons with her. Not only that, she was just plain stupid most of the time. She asked me what a suspension was 1 week before our grade 8 theory exam and thought that mozart wrote the messiah.

She should be hung!!

Well I suppose at least I know I'm terrible and actually got grade 7 many years ago! I wouldn't have any pretensions about playing the piano, but I do think I have something to offer as far as singing goes but my inadequacy with keyboard skills is holding back the quality of my lessons.

You surely can't be terrible if you passed grade 7! My piano teacher says I am between grades 7 and 8. When I first started teaching singing, I could just about play Where is Love? (Oliver), but not every note! LOL Now I can get my fingers around most things except the very fast pieces for the higher grades. I STILL make errors though, but just have a laugh about it. One student sometimes says - come on Les! (as in Les Dawson)- he's studying for a diploma, so some pieces are tricky. I agree that the problem is playing both hands, watching the vocal line AND words, AND listening to and watching your student. Especially if teaching a piece I am not familiar with. But I do, and I get by (the student has to take preference over the accuracy/detail of the piano), but I don't accompany students in exams or concerts - I leave that to the professionals!
The thing is, the more you do the better you will get. I look at it this way - some days I do six hours of practice! Six years ago one adult student couldn't undertand why I got a pianist in for her exam. (So I couldn't have been THAT bad). After the rehearsal with a relatively easy piece, she said - "No offence, Ann, but I can see why you get J in now" (all with a huge laugh). Last concert she was doing a piece with a particularly difficult accompaniment, and said "I'm looking forward to hearing all the notes when J plays it" (again we laughed). When that happened, she said "Well, it wasn't THAT different!" I must have improved!!
I once went to a VERY eminent vocal teacher for a consultation. She coached the likes of Lesley Garrett, and she couldn't play as well as I could then. There are many teachers who don't play as well as me (this comes from our accompanist). I used to worry about it, and even feel embarrassed, but now I'm confident in my improved piano skills - I can play grade 8 sight singing accompaniment for students to practice, and many of the aural tests, albeit with a mistake here and there.
So my advice is do it, and don't worry. You are being paid for your skills in singing and teaching it. Your piano playing will improve in time. You'll be surprised how quickly it does - as you are teaching you are practicing. Good luck!

How about finding a pianist who'd like singing lessons - you could swap some accompanying for a lesson....

Your sight reading will get loads better with practise, but I do quite understand it must be very hard to sight read or play and listen critically to your singer.

Many singing teachers with limited piano playing have their own regular pianist for all their lessons - not only for exams and concerts. I used to do quite a lot of playing for lessons - some for rather eminent and/or expensive teachers ( the £75 an hour 20 years ago variety)
Of course, I learnt a huge amount of repertoire as well as plenty of tips on how (and how not) to teach.
A student accompanist might be glad of the experience, and fees could be negotiated.
Also, I think it's important for all singing teachers, however fluent their playing, to get up from the stool from time to time - have a listen, check the student's posture from another angle, let them sing un accompanied etc. ( I am very guilty of playing too much myself, just because I can)

Could you use CD's as backing from time to time?

All brilliant advice so far. Just to add, have you heard of Smartmusic? Not sure if its any good for singers, but its pretty good for woodwind. It has lots and lots of piano accompaniment parts and you can change the tempo, focus on specific bars etc... There is a list of repertoire on their website, or other singers who've got it might be able to advise more.


This is so true. It does take a while, even for a really proficient pianist, to get used to playing their part and listening out for what the pupil is doing too. But it does get easier the more you do it. My philosophy when I first started doing it, was to accept I wasn't going to play every note on the music but make the tune a priority and anything else after that was a bonus!

.

Your job is primarily to teach singing. Anything you can do to help your pupils gain an idea of the accompaniment then fine. I play the piano, and accompany, and my job is to make music with the singer. I may make comments (tactful ones!), but only in as much as it impinges on the music, not their singing technique. I don't know in detail about breathing, posture, sound production etc. That's what they pay you for!

A few teachers played the piano very well. Most had some keyboard skills. Some didn't play at all - these spent most of the lesson on warm-up exercises and without a note or two I wasn't convinced of what key I was singing in.

I have a firm opinion now on what I need from a singing teacher in terms of piano skills. I need to be able to sing along to a warm-up of a scale or arpeggio in a few keys. Left hand accompaniments are nice too. Also I need at least the bones of the intro bars of whatever I'm singing. I need to be able to work over the notes of the melody - especially when it gets tricky I need to hear how it's meant to go.

I can see that being able to play the accompaniment is very useful but it's not essential. It sounds like your're being a bit hard on yourself - Singing Nurse. Some piano skills are all that are needed.

I wonder how much of it is a confidence issue? If you've done grade 7 you must be reasonable on the piano!!

Maybe if you could give yourself permission to just play the RH of accompaniments and to make a mistake or two you would relax a bit. Accompanying is a very different skill to playing and I do agree with folks who say it's your ability to teach singing that is far more important. So maybe if you bear that in mind you'll feel better about it, AND maybe relax enough to put the bare bones of accompaniment in without getting too distracted by it. Maybe practise necessary accompaniments as just the bare bones instead of trying to practise the whole shebang and feeling stressed about it...?

Not sure this makes any sense, but just my thoughts. For what it's worth, I've had teachers of instruments with many different levels of pianistic ability, and I'd choose a good teacher who was shaky on piano than a brilliant pianist who wasn't delivering the teaching goods ANY day!

Thanks everyone, the replies have been so helpful. I have my adult pupil tomorrow and will make a big effort not to be embarassed about my keyboard skills. If I can relax about that hopefully I will enjoy the whole teaching experience a lot more. Interesting what was said about instrumental teachers - I never expect my viola teacher to accompany me, so why do singers expect it? Perhaps I'm too influenced by my own singing teacher who although at times a Les Dawson, actually seems to be able to play virtually anything, plus criticaly analyze what I'm doing. In future I will concentrate on the pupil and not get so anxious about the accompaniment.

What a great thing these forums are!!

I think (and my experience in singing lessons is small!) that it's a lot easier generally for a novice instrumentalist to stay roughly in tune without accompaniment, plus also one has an instrument to hide behind. Whereas singing is rather baring one's soul rather intimately, so in terms of staying in tune and just being scary, I think maybe that's what makes one wish a singing teacher to play along!

Thinking about stuff like warm-ups, I wouldn't dream of making a flute student play along with the piano week in week out doing 5 note scale patterns, but on the other hand if my singing teacher expected me to sing 5 note patterns throughout my range without some piano support I'd be quite nervous about going off key

Make any sense??! (Though again, I am not a singing teacher - this is just my take on it!)

That said, the accompaniments she plays and the exercises she plays along with don't have to be perfect/two-handed to be beneficial and give me, as a novice singer, enough support

Good luck tomorrow! If you can just decide "s/he's not here to hear me play piano, but hear to learn to sing!" then it will be a lot more fun and a lot less stressful - AND, you may surprise yourself with the piano playing when you're not worrying about it (but it doesn't matter if you don't )

On the other hand: Singing a-capella trains the ear more, because singing along to the piano makes lazy

Of course I give my students harmonies when I do warm-ups etc. But sometimes, I even train them to just sing without any accompaniment at all. The effect is very good, they concentrate more on what is happening. The body tension in singing has to be good enough to stay in tune, even with no accompaniment. Difficult thing, but possible.
But it is true that songs at some stage need the full accompaniment (or at least something very close to it) to give students an idea about what the "whole package" has to sound like. I can accompany easier things myself or simplify them. Where this is not possible, we have so many other possibilities these days, it is really no problem.

To be able to equally concentrate on two things (piano and teaching voice in this case), you have to be equally good at both. As soon as you are weaker in one of the two, you will automatically concentrate on the weaker part, and that won't be fair on the students. And this is exactly why I stopped bothering about the piano and keep it as simple as my abilities allow.

Another thing: You can take pressure of yourself if you make clear straightaway that you are not an accompanist. I always tell this every new student staightaway, so they don't have wrong expectations. Maybe that would work for you as well?

Wholeheartedly.

Oh yes, I totally agree BUT it is, in my experience as a novice singer, far more scary (especially when one is just beginning) than playing solo on another instrument, and much easier to go out of tune.

To a lesser degree the same is true of strings, that it is in some ways easier to play with a piano for reference and a bit scary playing alone if one is in any way shaky about the pitch.

Tis not by any means an argument against a capella singing (or any solo playing) which I think is very valuable

I was just positing a couple of theories as to why playing along was so much more common in singing lessons than in other lessons for many people.

This reminded me of when I was at the Royal College some years ago. My singing teacher was a very eminent chap and very highly respected. He could not play the piano at all and I was expected to pay and find an accompanist for each lesson or he would refuse to teach me anything other than a quick warm up!
I could not often afford to pay anyone as my grant was pathetically small so I missed two thirds of my paid lessons every term. I felt very short changed!

I think if you have grade seven you will get there as your confidence builds up. Not all songs have difficult accompaniments so it might be worth having a look at some different songs and only teach ones that you are comfortable with. After all, there is a huge repertoire out there!

Backing tracks can be very helpful, i make my own for my pupils to practise to. You might find that you could do that if you weren't under pressure of having the pupil there. Failing that, you can get very many pre recorded ones.

Perhaps you could talk to a local piano teacher and see if they have any advanced pupils who would like some accompanying experience? It would be cheap and you could incorporate the cost into your fee.

Just a few thoughts...

My singing teacher isn't confident on the piano either, she gets around it by singing in harmony with me which is lovely!

SO FAMILIAR I started teaching singing about three years ago... and have had similar problems as you. But my playing has improved dramatically over this time. I've always attempted to play as much as I can and I now find that I can play more of pieces than I could even a year ago.I don't accompany for exams but,thanks to a thread on here,will probably attempt one or two this session.
My pupils are used to me making mistakes and actually I think it helps them to learn to keep going whatever. I often get them to sing parts, or the whole song,unaccompanied if something needs working on....or just with left or right hand. There have been some pieces that I made no attempt to accompany.... Over the Mountains... Quilter...I couldn't do up to speed... so taught it without and then found a recording so that the pupil would hear and get the feel of the accompaniment. Seiligkeit...I can't play the intro at speed so play left hand and sing the top... my pupils love it.
There is always a way...Iused to feel embarrassed especially with adults...but I know I am good at what I do and they keep coming back....so.
Keep at it... it does get easier...a year ago I wouldn't even have considered accompanying an exam...and I'm almost there.
Good luck and be confident

Being a piano teacher, not a singing teacher, I find it hard doing aural tests. I either concentrate too hard on the pupil and lose my place in the music or concentrate too hard on the music and forget to listen to the pupil. Happy days!

How lovely!