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Greetings. I am starting lessons again after a year-plus break. I changed jobs, and we moved twice. Now my grand has its own room and I am excited to start lessons with a church music director here in Rochester, MN. Looking forward to conversations in the forum!

Welcome to PW!
If you look around the ABF, you’ll find there are four quarterly recitals and four themed recitals. There is also MOYD— where you commit to play every day, and report online when you miss a day.

Welcome 😊

Moving & changing jobs is tough. Takes time to settle down.

Last year I spent almost half a year out of town with relatives. Flying out was a big decision due to pandemic lockdowns in many places. Finding flights to fly back was just as difficult. I've decided to get a small keyboard for travelling and I had the option to connect with the teacher through Zoom. I've been taking lessons for a while and don't have a piano for practice when out of town. Took a portable instrument along for practice and connected with the teacher from a different time zone.

Good luck.

Welcome back DDobs! Have you started to practise again in preparation for your first lesson? What piece do you work on?

I stopped lessons with an exceptional teacher last february. Part of the problem was that she expected me to prepare an increasing amount of material and it stressed me out.she would say you don’t need to prepare a lot,but prepare one piece perfectly. It was all too much. I’m working on grade three rcm and I just turned 63 and the idea of playing anything perfectly just doesn’t do it for me anymore.

Anyways I’m starting this week with an online teacher-not the most ideal way to study but her fee is affordable and she has great reviews. I’ve started preparing yesterday-the lesson is on Friday-this is after not touching the piano since late February. I find myself getting very frustrated. I can breeze through the right hand,even hands separate work great,but unlike last February I just can’t put the hands together.

I spoke with a teacher in another city a few months ago and she told me music should always be fun. I so badly want to do it that way.

Alans
Don’t get frustrated that playing with hands together is elusive after your break! It will come back to you — maybe just not as quickly as you would like. Your new teacher just wants to know where the two of you need to start work— there really will not be any judgement for what is a problem.

Take it easy on your self

+1 for DogPerson’s post. Don’t stress about a lesson. The reason to take lessons is to grow. Your teacher just needs to see where you are.

And AlanS, I agree with you. It should absolutely be fun and enriching.

I also had a very good teacher that I stopped taking lessons with. She was not demanding, like your teacher, but she kept on giving me tasks during the lesson that I could not perform. For instance, in a piece with three voices, two of them in the right hand, as an exercise she wanted me to play one of the right hand voices with the left hand, and the other voice with the right hand (and not play the third voice). This is a good exercise, but I could not do it during the lesson, and I got very confused, and lots of precious time was lost while I hopelessly played the wrong keys.

I switched to a teacher who was a bit less expensive, and when she gives me a task that I cannot perform, instead of us suffering my horrible performance during the lesson, she says: you can do this as an exercise after the lesson. It is a great relief!

Thank-you both of you. Your support helps.