I am inaugurating a new series of short posts and updates on a variety of topics that I have dubbed PA Shorts. Today’s PA Short concerns appropriate correcting of students. Enjoy!

This week I read two great posts on correcting student errors- one from Fran of the Cross-Eyed Pianist and the other from Geraldine in a Bottle. They spurred me on some to some self examination because, while in a perfect world, I would never interrupt my students, I am forced to do so more often than I am comfortable. So, I got to thinking about why.

During a half hour lesson, there simply isn’t time to play through a longer piece and then work on it in detail. The way I generally solve this is to work through sections only in earlier lessons- essentially dividing one longer piece into smaller ones. This works well with a student who is diligent- not so well with those that aren’t. The less diligent student will only practice the section for the week and thereby lose all the valuable work done on previous sections.

Gradually, we put the piece back together into larger sections. Often I take notes and give them to the student to save time. Once it is whole, I will hear either all or a specific section during the lesson. The weak link here is students who have trouble applying a correction to other places within a piece. I often have students use a colored pencil to mark all similar spots before they leave me (sometimes at a table during my next lesson).

I do my best not to interrupt but in cases of total piece meltdown, persistent inaccuracies, less than 10 minutes left, or other musical crisis, I must intervene. Mostly I wait until the end of a main section and say something like, “let’s stop there for today so we can work in detail.” Actually, I think that when I interrupt it is so shocking to the student that a strong point is made. I try not to abuse the privilege though. I’ve found an extra lesson or two is the only true solution to lesson interruptus.

Share