Practising Piano With Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness in Music Learning

It was another piano lesson for Ivan. The teacher was very enthusiastic as usual.

I have been helping Ivan to improve on his Scales and Arpeggios for the last one week. Ivan was not willing to follow my advice. I was worried but to no avail.  For some reason, in this lesson, the teacher stepped in to guide Ivan on improving his Scales. God must be listening. Thank You! He emphasized on playing with clarity, evenness, with no wrong or double notes. It was exactly the same expectation I had given to Ivan.

The teacher’s approach to guide Ivan was quite impressive. Instead of pin-pointing his mistakes, he asked Ivan to grade the playing as either Excellent, Good, Average or Fail.  Then he went further to explain what is to be expected at each grading.  After that, he asked Ivan to grade his own playing.  The teacher did it with such ease and relaxed pace that I thought, “Yes, patience is the greatest virtue to impart better education.”  Ivan knew he could do better in his playing, and he said so. 

Often than not, many children just hit the keys on the piano without putting much care and thought into it. I have been wondering why Ivan cares less about the quality of his playing.  All he wanted to do is to quickly hit the key to get over the routine.  I was a music student before, and I was serious in my practice.  Why isn’t my son behaving the same as me? Maybe age is the factor?  Or is it the gender difference, girls are more careful and articulate.

After the scale, the teacher asked Ivan to play the three ABRSM exam pieces.  After he played the first song with five or six mistakes, the teacher asked Ivan to grade his playing, either as ABCD, with A as excellent – no mistakes, play with right expression, right tone, right notes etc.  B for good but a few mistakes, C for 5 or more mistakes, D for fail. Ivan graded himself B. With a smile, teacher said he would grade it as B- or C+.   Then, he asked Ivan where the areas he can improve are.

So, instead of spoon-feeding Ivan with correction to be made, the teacher asked Ivan to evaluate his own playing.  The teacher tries to promote self-awareness in him, asking him to judge and improve their playing on their own instead of relying from judgement from others.  Self-awareness in music making helps a great deal in self-improvement to create the music you really want from your playing. It also plays a large part in music appreciation. It enables one to be pro-active and therefore more in control of music learning. Self awareness also encourages creating learning in music, and provoke us to think on how to improve our playing for better music production. 

Self awareness also involves knowing ourselves better; when we know ourselves, we learn to trust ourselves and rely on our own judgment rather than the judgment of others in producing beautiful music.