With a diverse music studio in ages and abilities, I often ask myself how I can keep improving as an educator for such a wide range of minds. What’s next? How can I level up the student experience and the student’s skill, while still helping them build a real relationship with music? That question is exactly why I keep coming back to piano lesson diagnostics.
Most music teachers eventually realize that parent involvement matters. I use parent involvement in lessons, studio events, recordings, and monthly performances to motivate kids and help them discover the clear value in studying music. (If you’re reading this as an Oclef parent, this is also why we put so much emphasis on visibility and follow-through, not just “showing up once a week.”)
Piano lesson diagnostics: the real problem is diagnosis
My biggest challenge lives in diagnosis.
Diagnostics are not just for medicine. They’re something music teachers, and teachers in general, do all the time. Piano lesson diagnostics is simply the act of identifying what’s causing the result you’re hearing and seeing, not just correcting the symptom.
At the root of piano lessons are lots of symptoms and questions. Some are subtle. Some are multi-dimensional. But they’re always important, and they must be addressed by someone or through some process:
Why doesn’t the student know how to connect their correctly clapped rhythm to their playing of the notes?
What is the best way to explain expression to a six-year-old?
What is this student doing (or not doing) at home that causes them to play like this in lessons?
As a teacher who inherited the bulk of my students from other teachers, I find it incredibly difficult to diagnose and rebuild students who have years of conditioning. Some habits and mindsets are inefficient, and some are even detrimental to physical health (tension, poor hand position, and more).
Piano lesson diagnostics and the “Black Hole” between lessons
Diagnosis isn’t only difficult with incoming students. It gets even harder in what I call the Black Hole, the space between lessons.
Each week we send students home with the processes we know will help: practicing slow, practicing in sections, separating hands when needed, and so on. Yet some students still manage to come back 167.5 hours later with a handful of issues to resolve.
(Quick math: 7 days × 24 hours = 168 hours. Subtract a 30-minute lesson, 0.5 hours. 168 − 0.5 = 167.5.)
So what happened in that span of time?
How can this mysterious time be optimized, or better yet, illuminated?
Parents come to the lesson, but they’re usually on their phone. And even when they watch, they often only remember a small portion of the information. They’re busy. That’s normal. It’s our job as educators to secure the transfer of knowledge.
The usual tools (helpful, but not the whole game)
Teachers try a lot of methods to “close the gap,” and many of them absolutely help:
Writing it on the score (or covering the score with post-it corrections)
Having the student write it down in a journal
Having the student explain the corrections back to you
Recording the lesson
Writing a practice plan for the coming week
The list is infinite. And the more of these you do, the more incrementally successful you become.
But the real success is when you can correctly diagnose the source of the problem. That’s the heart of piano lesson diagnostics.
Piano lesson diagnostics uncover what’s really happening between lessons, so practice stops drifting.
Common causes hiding under the surface
Sometimes the issue isn’t talent. It’s the practice system.
Maybe the student never practices in sections, or never repeats a section a second time to improve.
Maybe the student doesn’t ask themselves how they can improve a play-through.
Maybe the TV or iPad sits next to the piano.
Maybe the student practices before bed when they’re tired.
Small habits during practice can be the difference between jumping three levels in a year versus barely making it through a single level.
This isn’t only a pain point for frustrated teachers. It’s also painful for students who start to feel inadequate, so they keep effort to a minimum. Then parents feel their kids aren’t putting effort into something they pay thousands of dollars for each year. That vicious circle can be unavoidable (over-scheduled kids are real), but sometimes it can be diagnosed early and solved through a sit-down with parents and students to clarify purpose and process.
Where this is going (people + technology)
For my own professional growth, I’m aiming to become the best possible problem-solver through diagnosing student challenges and errors. This is where I see the future of music education, and the future role of the very best music teachers.
Developing powerful diagnostic tools for teachers and parents to better oversee the learning process will revolutionize music education.
It would be nice to simply have a software algorithm help students during their practice between lessons. But I think the better near-term answer is a symbiotic relationship between people and technology: teachers diagnosing the real issue, parents supporting the environment, and tools reinforcing the plan day-to-day.
Until next time,
JT