Seeking Serious Piano Teacher for 7yo Prodigy/Savant
I'm looking for a new piano teacher for my nearly 7 year old daughter. She has been playing for 3 years already and has perfect pitch. Reading has been a struggle under her current teacher and we had to involve a music therapist to get the reading up to par. Does anyone know of a teacher that has perfect pitch themselves and is open to using different teaching methods based on the students' learning style, strengths and weaknesses? The music therapist is using Alfred books. I've gone through the archives and have contacted a few teachers, but perfect pitch isn't always advertised.
May 13, 2019
Parent Replies
Suzuki method uses recordings and books of music, so the child can both learn to play somewhat by ear and somewhat by reading. Piano is a percussive instrument, so unlike strings or singing, good intonation is not necessary. If you hit the key, it will play the right note. I have known 2 musical prodigies in my life, one became a member of a professional string quartet, but is not famous. The other one stopped playing, and I do not think she even plays for fun anymore.
My first reaction to your post is that you do not need a teacher with perfect pitch to teach a child with perfect pitch. None of my teachers had perfect pitch, and they were graduates of Juilliard and Moscow. Perfect pitch does not correlate with musicality, as there are plenty of world class musicians that have an amazing relative pitch, which is truly what is necessary for musicality and also even more necessary when you play in ensemble, as perfect pitch can then become a curse. However, the point is not to argue whether perfect pitch makes a musician. I think you are asking about teaching methods, and I would venture to say that the real underlying issue is that because playing by ear comes so naturally for your daughter, there may be less motivation/desire/necessity to learn how to read music. This is because your daughter must pick up things very quickly, which is absolutely wonderful and quite a natural gift. Ask yourself - do you want your daughter to learn how to read music? If so, then find a teacher who is creative with getting kids to learn how to read the musical staff - that teacher does not need to have perfect pitch themselves, but can have had much success with teaching struggling students how to read. Maybe you need a combination of teachers - like a music reading tutor and a piano teacher, with the latter teaching your daughter the mechanics of the piano and essentials of musicality, while the music tutor helps supplement with more practice at reading. Or else, you could also think about composition teachers. She would not be too young to start learning how to compose, and you'd have to find the right one who could teach children composition. Children are naturally creative, it just takes a teacher to know how to guide that inclination. Hope that might generate some ideas for you.
We started out with Suzuki method and found it to be a bit of a curse because she already had perfect pitch, Suzuki just made the resistance to reading music worse, so that is not a road we want to go down again. We then switched to a traditional teacher who used Faber books and kept the Suzuki song book for more difficult pieces. This teacher did not understand the struggles of someone with perfect pitch. She always talked over my daughter’s playing, interrupted her, insisted on a metronome at times even thought it was horribly distracting, wrote all over her sheet music to the point it was no longer legible (for a child who struggles to use her eyes over her ears). She didn’t get it. So yes, I’m looking for someone that is versatile and sensitive to the struggles of having perfect pitch, uses more effective learning strategies, is conscience of making noises while she’s playing, and still is able to bridge her playing abilities with her reading abilities.