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Struggling with my daughter's new harp teacher

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Home Forums Teaching the Harp Struggling with my daughter's new harp teacher

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  • #192449
    Biagio
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    Lada, I agree that if she teaches well a student should stay with her. I am also choosing to believe that what you mean is, “It is a good thing for a kid to want to please the teacher” as opposed to “Fear is an excellent motivator.” Indeed that is true if we are training an attack dog, but this is not the case here.

    I think that some teachers I have known would be quite shocked by your statement as written, including some of the best known in the harp world. Jocelyn Chang, Stephanie Curcio, Chis Caswell, Laurie Riley among others…very nice friendly teachers but no one would say that they produced lazy students with bad technique!

    Biagio

    #192515

    A student should learn to play in the best way from the start, if they have talent. That does not require torture or anything negative, just learning good position and finger action right away, instead of fumbling around and baby-stepping. If the student decides to pursue serious training, but then has to spend months or years correcting bad habits or acquiring good habits never learned, then too much valuable time has been wasted. It’s a very competitive world. And developing good practice habits along the way is also vital. Students grasp what they are able to, and some things take longer than others to assimilate, particularly with coordination. I probably said it before, but to assume a musical child will not ever pursue serious studies is to cut their legs off before they run. This doesn’t mean they have to practice their heads off, but they should learn to play well and learn high-quality music all along and not waste time. If you doubt me, just look at the competition repertoire for the American Harp Society competitions and see how difficult it is. It may be nearly impossible to suddenly catch up to those levels once the student is in high school. I know that I couldn’t. Unfortunately, competitions are not geared to students who start late.

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