Hi all,

I have got a dilemma with a 8-year-old male pupil of mine. He learns his notes pretty quickly and recently has started learning and memorising some of his elder brother's repertoire on his own (to my amazement!) However, he is not concerned with producing a good tune on the piano and often hammers out the notes mechanically, completely disregarding dynamics and phrasing. At times when I stop him to ask him if we could make his music sound better, he usually ignores my request and continues to pound his way through till the end of the music. When I talk about dynamics and phrasing, he gets bored and restless and says that his playing sounds alright to him. He also dislikes me to demonstrate for him and often pushes my hands off the keyboard while I am demonstrating. I'll tell him off and he will just repeat this again the next lesson.

It has gotten to the point that lessons are becoming like an uphill battle for me, with me trying my best to emphasising the importance of playing music and not just the notes and him launching into yet another round of pounding on the piano. He has also ignored my choices of music for him, prefering to learn elder brother's music on his own, which are are way harder for him.

I want to let him learn music that he likes, but I am more concerned to build a proper foundation and am also worried that he gets his way too much, he may view me as a pushover. How do I teach him to appreciate a good tone and learn to play musically without him getting bored and restless? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Funny I have a little boy of 7 who sounds like your pupil!

The thing is he's so keen and is at a very good standard, and has progressed with sight reading at a fantastic rate. When I set him a piece he will come back the following week with it learned hands together, and the music he's playing is getting to be around grade 1 standard.

I've found with little boys especially that they feel the faster and louder a piece is played the better

I've decided not to be too hard on him just yet in this respect as he is still very young, but we have been working on very simple concepts of soft and loud, although I wouldn't go so far as to say he's "expressing" the music just yet.

Things like "I bet you can't play this quietly" seem to have worked so far, but now I've entered him for a festival so he can hear others play. His 2 pieces are contrasting so I'm making a big deal of the fact that they must not sound the same!

In scales we have practised doing a crescendo and he seems to like that.

Like your pupil he gets a bit fidgety when I demonstrate, so I make any demos short. He just can't wait ot get back to playing himself you see, but the message is getting through slowly. I know his mum reads his notebook so I put lots in there about dynamics, and I know she's likely to ask him about that when she hears him practise, so it gets reinforced at home too.

Another thing that made him listen was to ask him to work on the same piece for another week before I let him move on. "You've got all the notes, excellent, now we can polish it up this week!". He seemed a bit annoyed the first time I did that, as to him, the piece had been learned already and why on earth would he need to keep working on it! "You mean I've got to play it again?!"

Perhaps you could make use of some recordings for him to listen to at home - what about some film scores that he might recognise eg Harry Potter - you can point out the variation in dynamics.

Encourage his parents to take him to hear some live music - the festival is an excellent idea - perhaps he will get a comment about dynamics from the adjudicator that will reinforce your advice.

Play to his strengths - give him some loud exciting music to play. What is it about big brother's music that attracts him - is it the style / difficulty or is it a sibling rivalry thing?

Can you make playing quietly a bit more interesting for him by talking about the soft pedal and exploring the inside of the piano?

Good luck!

Sue

Maybe try recording him - if you have this facility (I don't). If you can persuade him to play something with some degree of expression, and then let him play it again - pounding away in his usual fashion - he might hear and appreciate the difference when it's played back, whereas listening properly to tone etc when one is playing is less easy.

Thank you all for your replies!

Agree with you ad_libitum, my pupil sounds very much like yours. Think he might do better if I try putting it across to him as a challenge instead of a suggestion.

I have tried to work to his strengths by giving loud and rhythmic pieces to play, but he very much prefers his elder brother's music, which he says "sound nicer and more grand!" His elder brother is on the other end of the spectrum, prefering to play pieces way easy for him with all the musical aspects in, but that's another story

I am a bit thrown off by this pupil of mine, because he's the first to ignore my suggestions and dislike me demonstrating parts to him. I used to love my teacher demonstrating during lessons when I was younger and most of my students do too, but I guess every child is different.

I think too recording is a good idea, I do it for myself but the idea of doing for him didn't occur to me till now. I shall try it, hopefully he will be patient enough to listen to his own recorded playing. Thanks all again for your replies!

Oh .. this sounds rather like my son .. the faster the better when he was 7yrs. Ride it out -- I agree this seems to be a facet of small boys. My son is now 14yrs old, doing his diploma and plays with great expression so they do (hopefully) mature out of it!!

I had a pupil like this for a couple of years. Although he'd been originally taught with the Suzuki method - he came to me when he was about 8 - he wasn't the slightest bit interested in expressing the music! All he wanted was for me to give him really fast pieces to play - the more semiquavers the better. Everything else I tried to give him was 'too boring' or 'oh no not this'. It got very tiresome. I wasn't able to change his approach no matter what I tried or did, and was frankly somewhat relieved when he moved away to boarding school.

I did try the approach of giving him what he wanted in the hope he'd become more interested in exploring the subtleties of music as he got older, but even for that he wouldn't put in the work, ie everything was presented to me in sloppy fashion. He'd play a piece as fast as he could, a lot of it quite impressively, but with numerous wrong notes and some of it out of tune! When I tried to point any of this out he'd argue with me and say it was fine!

I hear he's now training to be a champion tennis player where he can indulge his love of speed to his heart's content. If he's famous one day - which he may well be, as he was already one of the top national tennis players of his age group - at least I can say I once 'taught' him.