“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” Originally written on Medium: October 31, 2016

What if piano lessons happened more often?

This was the question I started asking myself right before launching a new Piano Pedagogy program. In the Pedagogy program, I train my advanced students (15 years old to 18 years old) how to guide younger students and their parents by offering supplemental lessons between weekly lessons with me.

But this program launch led me to the next obvious question -

What if piano lessons happened daily?

Like school for piano.

How would that be designed? Is it even possible?

With 5 Teaching Fellows (from March 2019) to execute the learning plans I’ve designed for my students, I could create a daily piano lesson program that is accessible 7 days a week for at least 4 hours each day.

Over the last 4 years I’ve also learned so much about group format and see it as an integral part of this new model. This new daily model would include a classroom where 4 students would come to practice for units of 20 minutes (with unlimited sign ups allowed). They would have access to top-of-the-line electronic pianos, comfortable headphones and friendly teaching fellows or a teacher always available to help.

Ideally these students would complete 4 practice sessions in the class each week and have 1 or 2 private lessons to set and test more detailed assignments.

So why is this a good idea?

Well let’s take Student A “Adam” for example. Adam is what I’d call a high performance student. He needs a lot of attention and I currently cannot give that to him. So at his 45 minute weekly lessons I give him 10+ corrections and a detailed practice plan for the week. It’s a lot at once and as he has said, “it’s stressful all at once”. But he’s does it because he loves it. And because he respects and trusts me. But near the end of the week, if mom isn’t watching over him, practice can become disengaged and the practice time is probably wasted or potentially building bad habits.

My studio is comprised of about 20% of this type of student. I believe a daily piano learning model would allow for this type of student to have consistently focused practice time. Instead of having a weekly lesson and receiving 10 corrections and 1 weekly plan, they would have daily practice plans and daily corrections. And those plans would be practiced in a group practice session (each student on their own piano with headphones) while guided, regulated and assisted by trained teaching fellows or me.

Student A “Adam” would get better consistently while his parents could trust that this truly end-to-end piano learning solution would more or less guarantee a positive outcome. It works for him and others like him because it’s regulating the most variable element of his piano learning — practice time. And he’s getting more frequent feedback and detailed daily plans while still being independent to complete those plans.

But what about students who don’t practice often?

Every piano teacher has at least 30% of their students as non-practicers or completely disengaged practicers (and teachers just expect this is how it should be). If these teachers don’t have this then they’re working at a college or have collected all the top students and are “performance” driven. But these performance teachers are not serving the whole of piano education, they’re serving their piano performance vertical. And that’s okay, but it doesn’t solve the ridiculous dropout rate that exists in piano education which is masked by a never ending wave of new younger kids who become old enough to learn.

Going back to disengaged students, it’s very frustrating. Regarding practice, the parents are unhappy, the child is unhappy and the teacher is unhappy. But we all continue in the hopes that something will change. But in reality, it won’t, not unless a change is actually made.

So let’s take Student B “Bianca”, the disengaged or non-practicer. She’s a smart and nice girl, but she doesn’t want to practice. And she fights daily with her parents over it. She loves her piano teacher, but never wants to be by herself practicing at home. Her parents are busy and feel that Bianca should be able to practice on her own, “she’s 7 now”….🤨

Her parents do notice when you sit with her, she practices, but they “don’t know piano” and they aren’t sure if she’s doing it right. They usually resort to bribery — McDonalds works well. They practice the 2 days a week they can afford to sit with her (the day before her lesson and the 15 minutes before they leave for the lesson), because she just will not practice by herself.

“Play through all your pieces.”

“Do what your teacher told you.”

Neither of these suggestions work and this leaves the parent feeling helpless and annoyed. “I spend so much on piano…and she just won’t practice.”

It’s not Bianca’s fault, or her parents fault or her teachers fault. It’s the weekly lesson design which creates the result. So how would a daily lesson model help Bianca?

A daily piano learning model where Bianca could come learn in the presence of teaching fellows and her teacher for 5 days a week would be ideal. She loves coming to lessons and playing, she just doesn’t want to do it alone. She absolutely hates sitting by herself. She says it feels like time out, but worse because the seat isn’t even comfortable.

Obviously. As long as her parents were willing to bring her consistently to the class and it was as convenient and available whenever they wanted. She would love learning because it would be focused and clear. It would be social with teaching fellows, a teacher and other students. It would be like the “piano playground” where she came to play every day for 20 minutes instead of the “piano timeout” that she goes to at home. Kids have wild imaginations, but small tweaks change everything.

So for the 1 or two days a week that Bianca currently practices, is she getting better? Barely…and her parents are starting to think that, “Maybe piano isn’t for her.”

Sound familiar?

It’s every story I heard on tour for years about learning piano.

Random person:“Wow, you’re a concert pianist! So you perform piano all over the world?!”

Me: “Yes. I travel and perform 6 months a year and I’m off preparing 6 months a year.”

Random person: “That’s amazing. I wish I had finished learning piano. I quit because I didn’t want to practice and it got so hard.”

I heard this same story for 5 years every single week on tour until I decided that I was fed up and would fix the problem myself.

So I moved to Silicon Valley because it’s the second best education hub in the US and the most dense location for piano education in the country (by ratio of piano teachers and students to total population). The perfect environment to solve this piano education problem.

Back to the daily Piano learning model.

The model works great for kids like Adam and Bianca and their parents. But in my estimation, that is 50% of the piano education market. Another large portion is made up of Student C.

Let’s call Student C “Charley”. He’s a great kid. Smart and kind. He loves piano lessons and hates practicing (like most kids), but Charley has a big problem.

Charley and his parents are over scheduled. And this is very common and becoming more common. Music is a language and it must be practiced often. Charley practices piano with his parents at least once a week and they tell him to practice by himself on one other day. He can only afford two days of practice because he’s so “busy”.

Soccer three times a week, art class twice, hip-hop, Korean language daily, math tutoring on weekends, school every day and on Friday at 8:15PM his piano lessons.

When can he practice?

He can’t and because he barely does, he barely improves. He watches YouTube videos and just copies them because it “speeds up” his learning. Or so his parents thinks it does.

He’s set to eventually end up wanting to quit piano because it’s just another thing. His parents want to “check all the boxes” and Piano is “important”, but is he really learning piano?

I call this fake piano education. And it’s unbelievably common. I try to stop it, but it’s tough because the current system allows for it.

Do teachers want these students?

How do students like this feel coming to lessons unprepared each week and hearing it from teachers?

Are parents embarrassed and just drop off kids to avoid “the conversation” with the teacher about their child’s lack of progress?

A daily piano learning model would not be good for busy “Charley”. He would not be able to go often. But I think this is good. For Charley, his parents and for piano education.

This type of model would require parents to make a decision about the importance of music in their child’s development. Instead of choosing more and more activities, it forces parents to choose piano as something that really matters to their child’s education.

In asking more of students, you eliminate the busy “Charleys” who are making little to no progress because they don’t have time. They can’t attend this model and if you ask teachers their honest answer — they really don’t want to teach students who practice once or twice a week.

It’s not rewarding. And you feel bad for the kid the whole time.

So as I keep testing this model of daily lessons, I’ll eventually know how it will best help kids and how it will function. But from this first day of testing, what I’ve strengthened is my perspective and purpose. As a teacher, it’s not just my role to teach, I have a deeper responsibility to constantly question the practices and systems built before me. Because although these practices and systems are current, it doesn’t mean that they are right. And if there are so many unhappy students and parents then why isn’t anyone doing anything about it?

Surely someone else has noticed this. More on this soon.

The tortoise always wins,

JT