I think my piano teacher hates teaching me

[MankySnottyNose]

I’ve been doing piano lessons since Christmas. I’m 45 and my memory is turning to mush - I find it so difficult to remember stuff. I’m practicing daily but when it comes to my lesson you would think it was my first time seeing a piano.

I had a lesson yesterday and when I arrived he looked fed up but polite. He’s always patient but I’m pretty good at reading body language and I can tell he’s getting frustrated and fed up despite him trying hard to hide it.

I really want to learn and I don’t want to give up but I’m starting to feel like I’m stressing this guy out. I live in a village with no transport so finding another teacher isn’t an option plus I don’t think it’s him, it’s me. Starting to feel like a bit of a thicko 😞 why can’t I grasp it??

Get a better teacher.

You’ve been learning since Christmas? It sounds like you’re doing fine. Firstly you need to let yourself “get over” being anxious and worrying about mistakes. They are going to happen. I get paid to play and I make a bunch of mistakes. Secondly it sounds like you’re doing some good stuff, make sure you don’t always practice from the beginning that will really help you. Name the notes, don’t look at your fingers, follow the music as you play, read ahead, RELAX!

It sounds like you are a bit oversensitive to his body language (I can be too), and you need to learn not to give a shit. I don’t teach adults any more but they are the worst for performance anxiety issues. If you are enjoying it who cares how many mistakes you make! (who am I kidding though, I hate making mistakes).

Most importantly, if you want to be good at playing an instrument you have to persevere. There will be times when your practice goes well and your skills go up and up, and there will be times when you plateau (and in my experience I also had skill regression). All you need to do is get on that stool and play.

Music lessons teach so many skills. Not just how to play the piano, but discipline, perseverance, performing, not being so sensitive to how we think other people are feeling.

I've been learning since the COVID lockdowns after wanting to learn for decades, I had only ever done recorder at school. I was fine with reading simple music but boggled by more complicated stuff. I find the music theory really hard and learn a lot by ear and watching you tube tutorials.

After a couple of years I had a few proper lessons and the teacher seemed quite frustrated with me. He was making me feel very self conscious which of course made me go wrong more 🙄

I think some teachers are so used to getting kids through Grades that is all they can do. I'm not trying to be a professional pianist. For me, I just want to enjoy playing music, I'm not interested in getting Grades. The lessons were taking all the fun out of it and actually making me despise it.

I gave up the lessons after about 6 months and have just been teaching myself since. I can now play a lot of tunes quite well but reading music is still difficult. When I start learning a new tune I have to laboriously work out the notes for where my fingers go, then I scribble some notes on the music at the tricky parts to remind me what to do when I get there. After a while I'm playing mostly from memory so it doesn't matter.

I practice every day and find it very relaxing, I never could get the hang of mindfulness or other meditation but playing music works really well for me 😊

There will be times when your practice goes well and your skills go up and up, and there will be times when you plateau (and in my experience I also had skill regression). All you need to do is get on that stool and play.

This is very good to hear from a professional pianist@JustOnePersonNotAnOctopus !

In three months you don’t get far

but it sounds like you have a stress response - you can’t replicate what you do at home in front of the teacher

a good teacher should be helping you with this - it’s all part of it. They should be expecting this . as should you! But it will get better

and he could be bored cause you are the third beginner of the day and he’s said whatever piano teachers say theee thousand times a week - can you predict this? It often gets a laugh if you preempt and it might just be you haven’t gelled yet - patience - leaning an instrument teaches patience

Piano teacher here. Sounds as if you’re doing fine and your teacher is good. 2 months learning is nothing. Flash cards and note learning apps will help and look at the pattern of the black and white piano keys. Try finding all the cs, all the ds etc.

What about a bit longer between lessons - I remember having a written book so you had to draw in the notes -maybe that helps (this was 60 years ago though😂 )

If it helps: my mum is a piano teacher and she says pupils tend to be readers or memorisers, and she finds that memorisers tend to catch up on music reading in time but that readers often struggle with memorising.

Not sure how universally true that is but I was always a memoriser and I can read music pretty well now - I actually find the memorising much harder and it worries me! Like I’ve lost a skill!

OP there is a piano learning app called Simply Piano that I trialled for my son and me, it's brilliant especially if you are finding it hard to remember things.
Persinally i would ditch the teacher and learn using the app and then get the teacher back once you have mastered more of the basics, otherwise the stress of thinking he is frustrated is going to hinder your learning anyway.

Some ideas from a professional pianist and piano teacher:

• Listen to music while following the score (sheet music) along to help you become more fluent associating the sound with the dots.
• Use flashcards to practise note recognition. Sightreading gives you wonderful freedom and independence, able to pick up any piece of music and make sense of it.
• Ask your teacher for practice techniques - HOW should you practise? You could even do a mock practice session in your lesson. So much of learning an instrument in the early stages is learning how to practise.
• Don't use an app. Don't use a keyboard.
• He is a real person! Any number of reasons he might be feeling frustrated unrelated to you. Or maybe he is frustrated with you - use that as fuel to do more, try even harder and make him proud!
• Learning an instrument is constantly striving to do better, do more, stretch yourself as far as you can. Sometimes it's an easy journey, sometimes an absolute slog. Just keep going, don't give up.

You always have options of you are paying.

Stop giving him money its not a good fit.
Find a new teacher

You're probably doing much better than you think you are!

Pausing lessons for a few weeks while you work on the basics with an unintimidating app or independently is a suggestion worth considering if you're getting anxious about lessons. I had basic music-reading ability from when I was a child, and set myself targets - completing the OpenLearn course, being able to play a few scales and sequences reliably, getting to grips with playing very easy pieces with two hands, memorising three short pieces - before approaching a teacher. I didn't feel ready to start lessons until a full two months after getting a piano. Don't be afraid to use entry level children's books (there are always plenty on Vinted and the second hand book sites).

Learning how to make the most effective use of practice time is also a skill that isn't necessarily intuitive. Learn Faster, Perform Better by Molly Gebrian is currently in favour as an accessible book on the subject.

I didn't settle with the first teacher I had lessons with because he wasn't proactive about challenging me with pieces I might not have chosen myself and making me learn skills I might have put off repeatedly. The second one has been much better, and asked for a lot of details about my personal history with music before my first lesson.

Do you write the note letters on the music? Istr when my son started learning piano he did that for every note at first for quite a few months, then gradually cut down to the ones above and below the main stave lines, then just the odd one in a piece.

Unpopular opinion: not everyone can learn a musical instrument. It’s tricky - the combination of reading music, translating that to your fingers whilst being aware of dynamics, posture, timing etc. It’s not easy.

That doesn’t mean you are one of those people but I think accepting it’s hard, it might not be for you but just chill out and see how you go without the pressure of it being a lifelong dream.

A lot of it is drills. Scales, arpeggios, sight reading practise etc. those basics will help you with the pieces.

Have you looked at YouTube for practise hints etc?