Intuition and The Art of Piano Teaching

Intuition. This is a hard thing to define, to put into words, something that is a gut instinct. It can be applied to many things in life, but something that is so important to use when one is teaching. 

As piano teachers we are so lucky to be able to engage one to one with a student musically: we can create a piano lesson and approach with each student that is unique to them and rely on our instincts as teachers to help a student accomplish a particular passage, make a decision about fingering and analyse why that particular student is finding something difficult. There really should be no teaching by the book. Each student is different and with experience one can trust one's feeling more about how to solve technical and musical issues. 

It is so exciting to watch a student develop, one student so different to the next, to guide a student and help them discover new repertoire, to watch them make discoveries and help them play better than they could even imagine! Many years ago I thought that teaching was very difficult, but suddenly over a period of time and experience things started to click. Teaching started to become very easy and flowing. My students progressed rapidly and they found things easier too, and that's because I started to use my experience instinctively to give me more insight into what was actually happening musically in my student's heads and how they were projecting this onto the piano. It's a very subtle thing. 

Similarly, when you are a pianist, preparing for a concert or an exam or just playing a piece, it's important to stop and be aware of how something feels instinctively: you may not be able to put it into words, but something doesn't feel right. That's the time to stop and think it through, take a new approach, change the fingering, practise it in a different way. 

When I was a youngster I now know why I didn't click with 2 particular piano teachers. Now I know that they didn't understand me, what was going on in my head, what my difficulties were - they were not following their instincts with why things weren't working, hence I was disengaged in the lesson and I didn't relate to the music I was playing. I don't think they were truly listening to me. However, my best teachers had insights which astounded me at times. I would come away from a lesson as if I'd made enormous discoveries, and this is why piano teaching can be so exciting when your teacher is following as well as leading your very particular step each step of the way.