>Yes, every pianist has to play Bach--even if you hate Bach--because it's instrumental to learning about polyphony.
This is nonsense. There are near-infinite varieties of non-Bach music to teach polyphony. Even the "chopsticks" song demonstrates polyphony. If you meant counterpoint instead polyphony to demonstrate the left and right hands playing two independent melodies interwoven with each other, Bach may be reasonable. It depends.
>And improvising or playing "by ear" is a complete non-starter. That's the kind of thing you attempt after years of experience, not as a beginner.
This is terrible advice. It's misguided. You can have any student at any young age explore "playing by ear" in the first 10 minutes of the first day of the lesson. When a 4-year-old preschooler listens to her mother hum a tune and is asked if he/she can hum it back... that is playing by ear! The child's ears heard the notes and the child's vocal cords hummed it back. With a piano, it's fingers instead of vocal cords. Deliberately delaying any joy of playing by ear until a later "advanced" lesson has no basis in pedagogy.
> "all fun, all the time".
I don't claim that all invested time into skill building is fun. My emphasis is that joy of the activity must be used as the gateway drug to the mundane drills and boring classical pieces. If joy means informal pop songs or the simple intro piano to Frozen's "Let it Go"... then start with that. If the student is happy and motivated, the door can then further be opened to Bach, Chopin, Art Tatum, etc.
Yes, sorry, polyphony was a bad choice of words. I'm not even talking about polyphony or counterpoint as musical concepts--you can certainly get the gist of these without years of playing Bach--I mean it more like this: they put those four part fugues in the repertoire because it's an excellent technical exercise for student pianists. It's easy to just play the notes, but much harder to bring out the melody as it bounces around the four voices, especially as it goes into the left hand and the weaker fingers of either hand, and more so when the voices overlap. In fact the whole thing teaches voicing in general.
> Improvising... is terrible advice.
Vocal call/response is different. I meant that it's a non-starter to expect a five year old (or an average fifteen year old, by the way) to listen to a random song on the radio and just improv what they hear on a piano with no sheet music. Hell, I've been playing for like 27 years and it would take me ages to transcribe by ear some random Chopin prelude that I could otherwise easily sight read (well... one of the easier ones anyway).
> If joy means informal pop songs... then start with that.
This is what I mean; you don't start with even "songs". I'm a fully grown adult. Reasonably good musician, I think. Played piano my whole life, trombone in high school, picked up flamenco guitar on my own. A few years ago I was left alone for a few hours with a clarinet; do you know what I accomplished after like 3 straight hours of practice? I could barely get through "London bridge is falling down", and I considered that an achievement.
My point is that you have to deal with the motivation problem well before you're anywhere near playing "Let it Go". And when you're ready to play a real pop song, trust me, your teacher will let you do anything you want if it'll get you to practice.
This is nonsense. There are near-infinite varieties of non-Bach music to teach polyphony. Even the "chopsticks" song demonstrates polyphony. If you meant counterpoint instead polyphony to demonstrate the left and right hands playing two independent melodies interwoven with each other, Bach may be reasonable. It depends.
>And improvising or playing "by ear" is a complete non-starter. That's the kind of thing you attempt after years of experience, not as a beginner.
This is terrible advice. It's misguided. You can have any student at any young age explore "playing by ear" in the first 10 minutes of the first day of the lesson. When a 4-year-old preschooler listens to her mother hum a tune and is asked if he/she can hum it back... that is playing by ear! The child's ears heard the notes and the child's vocal cords hummed it back. With a piano, it's fingers instead of vocal cords. Deliberately delaying any joy of playing by ear until a later "advanced" lesson has no basis in pedagogy.
> "all fun, all the time".
I don't claim that all invested time into skill building is fun. My emphasis is that joy of the activity must be used as the gateway drug to the mundane drills and boring classical pieces. If joy means informal pop songs or the simple intro piano to Frozen's "Let it Go"... then start with that. If the student is happy and motivated, the door can then further be opened to Bach, Chopin, Art Tatum, etc.