Androgony for the Autodidact Piano Student

Ms. Bellamy, my high school classic spinet 1953 Baldwin Acrosonic, now for sale (San Francisco)

Many modern piano teachers seem to emphasize the neccesity of learning improvisation.

Well and good, for those who revel in what to me and many, are uber-anxiety producing. If I don't have a concertizing or public performance goal, why would I want to engage in that? Believe me, I have engaged in many other experiences that stretched me and my preferences to the limit, and I'm over it, now in retirement. I'm in it for the love of the piano and music, specifically from the Romantic Era.

I attended my first Death Cafe last week. The first senior among us 25 in the audience, wondered how she could deal effectively with the emotional fear of death? My hand shot up and my first answer was "I don't brook fools." I had to repeat myself because my statement seemed irrelevant at first. It was all about not wasting time if one finds oneself on the last third of the runway. I went on to describe piano teachers who have attempted to shame me into playing Mozart and Bach when I simply don't like their compositions and don't want to waste one minute playing music I don't adore.. I can't name one piece of either that I truly like, but ask me to names pieces from the Romantic Era and I'll wax poetic forever.

Not for nothing did I choose one of my three or four careers, to be trial lawyering. There is nothing more comforting for me that a rules-based profession with hardly any improvisation, especially when it comes to trial work where the only unregulated thing tends to be the personality expressed by the lawyers. Back in my lawyering day even the outfit of a female trial attorney was tightly proscribed to emulate men's attire, although no one ever told me what to wear. It was patently clear from the start back in the mid-70s to 1990 when I practiced.

Even so, there are some outer limits of what is acceptable behavior in court, although under No. 47 apparently lying in written briefs and when questioned, or becoming so obtuse as to avoid answering the judge's questions, seems to be de riguer for Dept. of Justice lawyers these days. Or I should say, for the half remaining after the recent or intended resignation of 69 of them.

There was an interesting discussion about autodidacts online in the Piano Forum. The question was, can an autodidact learn advanced piano technique by themselves?

As I've blogged before, I've gone from piano student last in February 2024 to autodidact. I don't want another piano teacher from where I stand right now. I do want coaching and problem solving, but in a partnership paradigm where teacher-is-student and student-is- teacher in a horizontal teaching style. In that sense, I'm not a pure autodidact.

The style I desire is more than most teachers can manage, and I suspect like me, many seniors find typical piano lessons intolerable and quit them sooner if not later. I did.

The assumption of the Piano Street question I suspect, was referring to an in-person teacher, but I'm not sure. Most of my lessons have been on zoom because they commenced in the first year of the pandemic and after lockdown in March 2020.

What I found was exactly as one commentator summarizes:

"Unwanted outside information) can often be interrupting and irritating to the autodidact who is more confident solving something on their own. This doesn't mean they're arrogant; it means their cognitive process is self-motivated and they value internal understanding over external authority. The autodidact can actually see you as an adversary if you don’t respect the way they’re processing and learning on their own. You don’t do them any service by trying to redirect their approach, in fact, you risk alienating them and yourself in the teaching process if you do that. They much prefer if you walk beside them and scrutinize their approach, but only when they feel their progress has stalled. Getting in the way before that does no good for the teaching situation.

Other commentators point out that different people learn in different ways, not a novel concept:

When an autodidact feels like they’ve solved something or are well on the way to doing so, they often can share their approach with others since it is a topic of great interest for them. This isn’t usually because they want advice, but more because they’re interested in what others think, kind of a celebration of their success and the path they’ve taken. It’s a way to reaffirm that their learning approach works. (--or at that point appreciate feedback and options to improve or errors pointed out like using "midget"!)Sharing like this also helps them feel less like an imposter. If others resonate with their ideas, it provides some social validation that their way of learning is valid.

A particularly enlightened teacher wrote:

I have taught a few who preferred if I commented on their experimentations rather than suggest alternative approaches, and it has been quite interesting that through critiquing their approach and highlighting its limitations, they often find better alternative pathways themselves. So the distinction between critique and redirection is important; autodidacts dislike unsolicited redirection and prefer critique focused on their own approach."

Not right or wrong to be sure, but I suspect this is more how a returning older student prefers that her or his lessons go. As Paulo Freire says in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a horizontal method of teaching vs. "the banking method", involves teacher-as-student and student-as- teacher. The banking or top down method is just the oppressor carrying out oppression by another name.

I'm sorry all but my first two teachers followed the latter approach which definitely was not my preferred way to learn.

Another commentator exactly replicated what I experienced (emphasis added):

"Once upon a time my teacher complained to me, saying something like this: 'Whenever I tell you to do something, you ask a bunch of questions (I used to always question, seeking a practical reason or doing something this way or that) as though I'm not making sense, then you go home, and at the next lesson you come back and say you're doing something that sounds a lot like what I suggested but expressed completely differently. To her that was a problem, to me it is just how I learn. I take input, question it, chew on it for a while, translate it into language that makes sense to me, and then work with it."

Almost every time I came back to one teacher after a week off, and I got it right -- it miffed the teacher who took credit! It "would have been quicker had you just done what I said." But I was not in it for "quicker-faster-stage performance."  He never really "got" that -- or me.  

The writer continues on about his teacher:

"She knew a lot about the piano, but I'd spent years teaching myself all sorts of things, a bunch of foreign languages, mathematics, epidemiology, and I was an expert on how I learn. She was very helpful for some years, but after a while the difference in how she wanted to teach and how I wanted to learn ended up being too big, and we split up. I really think the things you learn solidly are the things you've worked to figure out for yourself; hints and tips from a good teacher are great, but you have to do the work yourself."

Then an enlightened teacher says:

"I meditated upon it and it really didn't take long to realize it wasn't dissidence but rather an essential part of how they learned and processed.

"Sometimes their questioning pushed against my ideas, but instead of forcing the issue, I let them demonstrate their approach which often turned out to be elegant and well suited to their level. I have never been a teacher who demands things be "correct" all the time and really do encourage those iterations toward 'perfection'. I really believe there is so much to learn from what process works, and it's a key part of my teaching philosophy."

Let's hear it for "meditation"!

Speaking of...I just learned that meditating subjects (20-30 yrs. of age) in one brain study, demonstrated less mind wandering when reading than the non-meditating subjects. That seemed like an oxymoron to me because when I mediate using TM, I purposely try to quiet my mind and limit specific thoughts. I try and just let them come and go, much like mind wandering!

Makes me wonder how I will wander through my piano playing to test out brand-new super great tuning of my Duchess just today!

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