The Sound of the Piano

Anyone with ears loves the sound of the piano and mostly everyone wishes they knew how to play piano. That’s why private piano lessons in Dallas exist.  As an adult musician, it’s easy for me to reflect on this, having played piano, played with pianists, and listened to all kinds of piano music. But it wasn’t always that way. As a kid, I used to play piano all day long, but my reasons for loving it were pretty shallow; mostly it just got me out of chores. Even though the main control of sound you have on a piano is how you hit the keys, piano is like every other instrument in that its sound is what makes it so special. Teaching this can be difficult because we can’t force our perception on a student, we can only expose them to good music and teach them how to play correctly and hope one day it clicks.

Sound Quality

Private music lessons are like little labs where the piano teacher and student can experiment with music and technique and all kinds of different concepts. The most interesting subject to me is always how to teach students to look at sound the way I do; or at least to teach them to look at sound in a way that gives them the same kind of fulfillment as it gives me. This is difficult though! I’ve gone through it with many students, and they really seem to take for granted the beautiful sound of the piano. What I’ve started realizing is that it isn’t something that can really be taught. They have to discover these things themselves, all I can do as a teacher is nudge and nudge until that one day where they say, “you know what Mrs. Krase? Piano sounds are cool. I love how this song sounds!” In these cases I have to just bite my lip and nod my head, but of course on the inside an explosion is taking place. Private in home piano lessons are a place for discovery, not forced opinion.

Nudging

How to nudge? Well, that’s just about the secret to good teaching. I don’t claim to have figured this whole thing out yet, but from I have learned, it’s all about the balance between talking and playing. I’ve had lessons where it seemed like a good idea to talk the whole lesson because of what was going on with the student, but I’ve always regretted them. Even if it seems like life and death with the student’s progress, talking doesn’t do anything if they don’t get to play. So how can I teach a student about how to pull the perfect sound from a piano? I can’t, they just have to play and find their own sound.
When they do finally play a passage really well where they seem to get it and feel it and truly understand what they are doing, we should all make a big deal of it. I think those are the times that deserve the highest praise and the hugest sticker. I save my best rewards, verbal and tangible, for those few moments. But sound is something they have to discover; no amount of explaining and showing will bring them closer to appreciating the magic of the piano. Ultimately, this is the beauty of private in home piano lessons, I don’t even know what their perfect sound is until they show me. Private in home piano lessons are more like a kitchen than a lecture hall, and it’s my job to constantly “stir the pot.” Contact us today and get the most out of private music lessons!