Choosing a Music Teacher
Jun 18, 2018
Many music students I know are not happy with their teacher. This is very unfortunate since the teacher is the most important figure in the development of a classical musician. The relationship usually lasts for years and the person you choose to study with can propel or hinder your professional development, so the importance of making the right choice cannot be overstated. I’ve noticed some thinking patterns that can lead to a choice that may not be right for you and decided to write them down, hoping that you might find them useful.
False signs
Students want to study with great performers. But being an excellent performer does not automatically mean that one is a good teacher. A good teacher must be able to identify what is stopping his students and know how to help them move toward greatness, technically as well as musically, and this requires a different skillset than playing well yourself. What works well for that musician may not be right for his/her students.
How well their students play is also not automatically an accurate predictor and needs to be carefully assessed.
Wait… what? Doesn’t the level of the students reflect on the teacher? Not always. It is possible that these students played really well even before they began studying with that teacher. It is possible that the teacher is building on great foundations that were laid down before him.
Also, some teachers are good for only a certain type of students. This most commonly happens with teachers who cannot effectively get you from A to B but are full of ideas about B. Teachers who used to be prodigies are often teachers of that type. The memories of how they learned to play has been long buried. They can give you ideas, but they won’t know how to help you get there. For students who know how to practice and don’t need too much guidance it can be a great fit. But for most students, it isn’t.
This is especially risky since players who were prodigies are often famous, and students want to study with famous musicians.
Karate Kid
Most students are not at a stage where they have mastered their technique and are looking for teachers who can help them get better both technically and musically. One of the most common ways teachers handle new ambitious students is by going through a training phase where pieces are neglected in favour of scales and etudes. Ambitious students are more than willing to go through this phase - you feel like the kid from the “Karate Kid” movie, painting the fence on your way to become a master. Since students going through this phase don’t expect to get better in the short term, teachers who don’t know what they are doing can get away with faking it for a very long time.
Which leads us to another surprise: Asking the students about their teacher is also not an accurate predictor.
Students at this phase don’t always know if they are making progress, but they like to believe that they are, so they say so. This can get to an extreme level: Charismatic teachers can make students feel like they are improving even if they aren’t. I am still not sure how that happens, but here is my best guess: Teachers tend to make their students play like they do, even when it doesn’t suit them1. Students try to emulate the teacher and their improvement masks the fact that it used to be better before they went on this pointless mission. Things that used to be easy and happen without thinking about them are now tough and don’t flow as naturally. By the time the student realizes it - if he does at all - months and sometimes years have passed.
Thinking about what is unique about each student and trying to foster the student’s own style takes a lot of effort. In fact, a class of students where every student plays well - yet in a different style - is one of the best signs of a very good teacher.
Counterintuitive
It’s no wonder many students regret their choice. If a teacher plays well, his students play well, and his students say he is a good teacher, you would naturally assume he is good for you. But that’s not always the case.
If those are not reliable criteria, what is?
As a start, when you are considering a new teacher, find out first hand how they are teaching. Register to their masterclasses and try to take a lesson and if possible, more than one. This can tell you a lot. But beware - most of my friends who study with teachers they are not happy with, did take a lesson before deciding on who to study with. They just didn’t pay attention to the right things.
The right things?
Lead measures
Good teachers are surprisingly good. I had a masterclass where within thirty minutes I figured out things I couldn’t figure out before in 10 lessons or more. To this day the few lessons I had with that particular teacher2 resonate with how I play. How did she do it? How do good teachers generally do it?
Here are some patterns to watch for3 :
- Using simple metaphors that work (especially if they are not from the usual set) is a sign of a thoughtful teacher.
- Changing what you focus on while you play in a way that makes a substantial difference.
- Noticing details that other teachers haven’t noticed ( e.g “Of Course you can’t make that passage when your left thumb is so stiff.”)
- Making you see the music in a new light.
Lag measures
What we really want to know is how much students improve when studying with a particular teacher over a period of time. Waiting and gathering this information requires years of data so it can be tricky, but there are some hacks.
If someone is really good and he studied with the same teacher since the start or for many years - you know that he got there thanks to that teacher. Also, Youtube and the web are at your service. Competition results and concert hall brochures are public and resumes often include a list of teachers.
People will probably write about who their most recent teachers are, but that is less interesting since these can be of the “Here are many different versions of B” type. What you really want to know is who did they study with in their early teens. Once you find out - contact them and ask to take a lesson. Good teachers have been around for a while so they know who the other good teachers are. Even if a teacher won’t accept you, they might be able to recommend you to someone else, and it is unlikely they would recommend someone who isn’t good. They have been in the industry for long enough to know who is bad but unless you are very powerful, the price of saying it publicly is just too high4
Teaching is the readiest and safest source of revenue for musicians. Unless one is playing in a very good orchestra ensemble or is a world class soloist, one simply has to teach to make a living solely from music. So it should not come as a surprise that you are likely to study with someone who isn’t very good at it. If music is important in your life, you owe it to yourself to invest the time and effort to find the best teacher possible to suit your goals.
1 A friend of mine once said about a teacher: “I know he is considered to be good but I don’t like his style and I am afraid that he will convince me that I do”.
2 Miriam Fried
3 And here is an old video about tennis
4 There is a story that one of the most appreciated violinists and violin teachers in Israel once told a whole group of students who studied with the same teacher and came to take a lesson, one by one, that they should all leave their teacher. The teacher later came to complain that he is destroying her source of income. He told her that she should switch professions.