“I’m struggling to play my piece at 92 to the crotchet.”
The pupil sits on the piano stool and waits for me to fix this. I look in the notebook and see that I did indeed ask them to prepare their piece at 92 to the crotchet. I call this a “target”. The target was to play the piece at that tempo. And the pupil has just told me they are “struggling” to do this. In other words, they can’t do it, and they know they can’t do it.
So, first of all, I can’t fix it. That’s bad news, right? What’s a teacher for, if not to fix things? I look at the pupil and I see failure written all over their face, their despondent posture, their dejected expression…
This is not why anyone signs up to learn to play an instrument. No one wants to feel like this.
Here’s my solution: Never fail. Only succeed.
Before you throw the piano out of the window and cancel all your lessons with me, let me explain: you start, as all good learners do, by reading your notebook to see what I’ve asked you to do. And you read (something like) “Next time: play the piece at 92 to the crotchet.” This, remember, is a target, not a tactic. You are aiming for this, but you are starting from a very different place. There are two elements to this target, “the piece” and “92 to the crotchet”. Let’s break both of them down. Start with one bar. Or two bars. Or one line. You decide. Start with 80 to the crotchet, or 60 to the crotchet or 60 to the quaver. You decide. If any of this “fails”, break it down further. Slower tempo. Smaller chunk. Hands separately. Counting aloud. No metronome. Check fingering.
These are your tactics.
Set mini-targets, e.g. two bars at 80 to the quaver. Or one line at 60 to the crotchet. Or whatever. Build it up, bit by bit, bar by bar, line by line, notch by notch on the metronome. (I call the different metronome numbers “notches”, because the old-fashioned pendulum metronomes, which I love, have a notched metal rod.)
Now we not only have tactics, we have a strategy. The strategy is: Break It Down, then Build It Up.
If you don’t know the difference between tactics and strategy, have a look here.
The strategy will help you achieve your goal, and the tactics allow the strategy to succeed.
But perhaps one week is not enough time to succeed in hitting the target. At the end of using the correct tactics, the pupil may have succeeded in learning to play half their piece at 72 to the crotchet. That wasn’t the target, was it! Has the pupil failed? They can’t play the whole piece at 92 to the crotchet, so they’ve failed, right?
No! Because they’ve succeeded in playing half their piece at 72 to the crotchet. So that’s success, not failure.
I look at the pupil, and tell them to rewind to the start of the lesson. Instead of “I’m struggling to play my piece at 92 to the crotchet”, I ask them to tell me their success.
“I can half the piece at 72 to the crotchet!”
“Bravo!” I cry. “That’s great.” And I write a new target in their book, because I have also learnt something. I’ve learnt that I set an unrealistic target for that pupil during that week. I now ask them to prepare the second half of the piece at 72 to the crotchet. After that, we’ll move forward again. Success breeds success. The pupil will use good tactics again.
And they may come back next week with a different outcome again! Perhaps, “I can play all the piece except for the last two bars, and I’m at 60 to the crotchet at the moment.” That’s fine. That is success. The pupil has told me what they can do, not what they failed to do.
To summarise:
The Goal: Success (not Failure)
The Strategy: Break It Down, then Build It Up
The Tactics: There are many, so here are just a few – small chunks, slow tempo, hands separately, check fingering, smaller chunks, ask for a recording if that will help understand the rhythms, count aloud if it helps, even smaller chunks, break it down, break it down, break it down!
The Mindset: Tell me what you’ve achieved. Not what you haven’t.