Dear Friends,
First, a quick update. I had minor surgery on my hand last Thursday, and it pushed my schedule back a bit. My hand is fine and I'm recovering well, but it means that The Art of Piano Scales will now launch on Thursday, August 27th instead of tomorrow (Monday, August 24). If you're on the waitlist, watch your inbox Thursday morning!
Also: thank you to everyone who has written to me over the past few weeks. I've gotten more emails than I can keep up with, and I have loved reading your stories. I'm working through my inbox and writing back as I am able, so if you haven't heard from me yet, please know I'm not ignoring you! 🥰
Now, I have a little story I want to share with you tonight...
Over the summer I started going swimming twice a week with my friend Susan. A few weeks ago when we were in the locker room, she suddenly turned to me and said, "I need to get rid of my piano."
I was floored. The Susan I know wouldn't want to quit the piano.
Susan loves music, and she especially loves the piano.
"Why?" I asked. "Don't you play it anymore?"
"No, that's just it. I play it too much and I'm not getting any better. There's just no point! I'm wasting my time and I should give it away."
"Well, how much time are we talking about here? How much are you practicing?" I asked.
"I'm practicing an hour and a half a day, and I should be using my time for more productive things," she said.
That didn't sound like my Susan. My Susan loves piano music. My Susan is not a quitter. After a high-profile career as a professional dancer, performing around the world as a soloist with one of the premiere American dance companies, she eventually made her way to Indianapolis, where she was my colleague at Butler until she retired two years ago, at the age of 80!
I figured she just needed a good talking to. I decided I would straighten her out.
"No, you don't," I started, using my best teacher voice. "Listen to yourself. You love music. You play the piano an hour and a half a day. That's clearly not a sign that you need to get rid of your piano!"
"But I'm backsliding!" she protested. "I'm embarrassed that I'm sounding so bad."
"Okay, but why are you playing? What do you like about it?" I asked.
"I just love the way it feels to play," she said after a pause.
"What else?"
"I like playing music because of all the connections to music I've had my whole life."
"Okay, good. The fact that you're practicing that much means you really have a passion for it. The last thing you need to do is get rid of your keyboard! If you really think it's a distraction, put it in the garage for a while and see how much you miss it."
Susan was falling into the classic perfectionist trap. Adults don't like to be "bad" at something. It can be especially painful for someone who performed professionally at the highest level and taught at one of the top programs in the country for her entire career.
She said she was "backsliding." It wasn't hard to understand why: her teacher had left four years ago and she never replaced him. Ever since, she had been unsure about what to practice or what to do next. So she kept playing, but without any sense of direction or progress.
By the end of our swim, I had an idea: would she be interested in meeting my incoming master's student who had just moved to town? I thought they might be a really great fit.
She said possibly, but that she thought she'd probably be too embarrassed to play for anyone right now.
Undeterred, I asked Sam, my incoming student, if he might be interested in taking on a new student. He lives just around the corner from her, and he said he'd love to meet her.
Well, they set a time for the following week, and afterwards they both texted me within fifteen minutes of each other, like two people who had been on a blind date.
She wrote: "Thank you for Sam, a natural teacher, put me immediately at ease. We are off and running. Need not reply, just excited."
And he wrote: "Susan's lesson went great! She's super kind. I know she was nervous but I'm hoping to encourage her and build her confidence. I have a good idea on how to approach her lessons going forward and what she needs to work on. Thanks again for connecting us. I think we'll both enjoy the lessons. ☺️"
I loved playing matchmaker! But here's what bugs me about this story:
Susan was practicing every day, but she still felt like she was failing.
She had zero problems with motivation or discipline. It was that she had been on her own for four years, practicing without any direction, and she had started to confuse "no direction" with "no ability."
I think many of us do this. When something isn't "clicking" at the piano, our first instinct is to blame ourselves.
“I'm not talented enough.”
“I've hit my ceiling.”
“I should be further along by now.”
But in my experience, the problem is almost certainly not you.
It's almost always something specific and structural: you need a different practice approach, or clearer goals, or simply an outside perspective from someone who can see what you can't see from inside your own playing.
Susan's fix happened to be finding a new teacher. (By the way, if you're on your own and looking for one, the MTNA Teacher Finder is a great place to start.)
But even if you already have a teacher, there's something here to consider. It took Susan one lesson to go from "I need to get rid of my piano" to "We are off and running."
The next time you feel stuck, before you decide the problem is you, ask yourself what might actually be missing.
👋 Happy practicing,
Kate