Thanks @Pallas . Hopefully my schedule will align with my current teacher closely enough to continue with him in the fall.
So the subā¦ how to explainā¦. Well, first of all, as some of you know, although Iām an āadult beginnerā (as in, I began as an adult) I have been playing piano now for 25 years (yikes!) and although I consider myself solidly intermediate, I generally play long pieces with a fair amount of musical complexity (relatively speaking). As for the sub, apparently he primarily teaches children. He has a music-related masters degree, but itās in something like orchestral scoring. And hereās the real issue: he doesnāt sight read well enough to look at the piece Iām playing (which heās never seen before), play the parts I canāt play yet, and show me how to play it or demonstrate his advice on fingering and so on.
My regular teacher has a PhD in piano performance. My last two teachers (who I worked with each for a short time online during the pandemic ) were jazz players who both were classically trained and were also actively performing musicians. Before them, I worked with a teacher for a year who had a PhD in piano pedagogy. And my teacher before him was a university piano teacher with a masters in piano performance. Oh and the two piano teachers I had while I was in grad school were both connected to the university and both had piano-related PhDs. (Yes, Iāve had a lot of piano teachers, over the course of 25 years of playing, either I move or they do! š
Anyway, with all of these teachers, I could bring in whatever I was working on, and with the exception of one of them, they never knew the music (because they were classically trained and I was bringing in music from contemporary composers). All of them were able to look at the score and play it pretty much immediately. Even the jazz guys, although we generally worked with lead sheets instead of my regular pieces.
But with yesterdayās sub teacher, he couldnāt do that. He clearly had a lot of musical knowledge and we talked a lot about phrasing and voicing which was sort of helpful. But when he would try to explain something about voicing, say, he could not demonstrate it because he was looking at the score and couldnāt get his fingers where he wanted them. And he even said, āI canāt sight read.ā So although he was giving me advice about how to bring out the melody line or how to voice the LH part, when I couldnāt tell what he meant, he couldnāt show me.
Also with my regular teacher, usually we work on three pieces in one lesson (I have 45 minute lessons). But with this guy, he talked too much and we only got to two. The third piece I just started and one of the biggest challenges for me is that although the music itself isnāt hard, itās pretty fast. So when it was clear we were out of time, I mentioned that and he said something like āwell with a fast piece, my only advice for you is to practice it slowly, so we donāt really need to look at that anyway.ā Are you kidding me?
Ugh, Iām committed to two more lessons in July and two in August with him before my regular teacher comes backā¦ Iāll have to figure out what to do but I donāt think itās a good use of my time, or money, to have more lessons with him. :/
It was disappointing, to say the least.
Also let me say for the record, I donāt think a teacher necessarily needs to have a masters or PhD in piano, but I think the difference is, their training means they have worked through soooo much piano music, nothing Iām brining them is challenging beyond their ability. With this teacher, I suspect piano is just one of his instruments, and I could be wrong, but he probably teaches as a side gig.