A fairly new adult piano student has just had her sixth piano lesson with me. She came as a complete beginner (as far as I was concerned) but she is quick to point out that she did much studying of books and primers before starting lessons.

True - she knows the note names and values, treble and bass clef, staves, etc., etc., etc., BUT and it is a very big BUT

she came to me on her first lesson convinced that the piano keyboard was a mirror image of itself at middle C.

Do you get what I mean?

From middle C ascending the note names are CDEFGABC...........naturally, but from middle C DESCENDING she thinks they are STILL CDEFGABC - in other words in reverse!

and after 6 lessons, she STILL thinks in that way, and nothing I can say, do, or show will convince her enough to retain it at least until her next lesson. I think she has read a simple piano primer (Kenneth Baker Complete Piano Player) found out that the 5 right hand fingers start of with middle CDEFG and therefore,
before reading on she thinks that the left hand is the same with the same fingers.......have I said that clearly.

try drawing the whole 11 lines of the Great Stave, and put in the letters starting with A on the first space, up to G above the top line. This should clarify her thinking. It is fatal to start playing before learning WHY the letternames are where they are. The three octaves are those4 used by SATB, covering most of the voice ranges. Busylizzie

I've suggested a keyboard chart to place over the keys, but it still does not convince her.

Actually, it's all a bit bizarre!!

I'm NOT having a good week and its only half way through. I think I shall wander over to the "Scream Thread"

Maybe you could make some progress by getting away form the five finger position and doing some keyboard geography exercises based around the pattern of black and white notes. Move up and down over the whole keyboard playing simple repeating patterns on the black notes, then move to groups of white notes and naming the notes as you play eg CDE CDE CDE all the way up. You could build in a bit of aural work listening carefully to all the Fs, for example and noticing that they sound 'the same'.

Also try a bit of rote learning of a few fun tunes, to get away from the pressure of reading music and the attendant confusion.

Books I use for this sort of thing include Piano Adventures Primer and the European Piano Method (nobody else seems to have heard of this one, but it has great ideas for learning simple tunes by heart and making up simple accompaniments, and some lovely black note only pieces)

Good luck, sounds like a bit of a tough nut to crack!

PS Buzylizzy - are you having problems posting? - all I seem to see from you is quotes and then no comment - or am I missing something?!

she came to me on her first lesson convinced that the piano keyboard was a mirror image of itself at middle C.

From middle C ascending the note names are CDEFGABC...........naturally, but from middle C DESCENDING she thinks they are STILL CDEFGABC - in other words in reverse!

and after 6 lessons, she STILL thinks in that way, and nothing I can say, do, or show will convince her enough to retain it at least until her next lesson.

I once had a pupil, a young girl, who read the music backwards. She couldn`t read it forwards. I looked it up on the internet, and apparently there is a condition that involves reading backwards, (naturally, not as a trick), but I can`t remember what it is!

My daughter's first clarinet teacher showed her what I think was an old German book of piano music, where the lines ran vertically down the page, instead of across. So when the hands moved left the notes moved left. Has anyone else come across this. (I don't think I've explained what I mean very clearly)

are you thinking of klavarskribo?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klavarskribo

Are you SURE you've explained it properly?

I've often wondered why we have Middle C. Why not Middle D? D certainly has more of a feeling of being middling. Does anybody know the history of this? Is it simply because C has no black notes on a keyboard?

She "gets it" during the lesson but it's during the week period between lessons that she has a relapse. I'll have to see what happens next week and report.