Dear Mr. Chappell:

I have studied with different teachers, and they give me conflicting information. What am I supposed to do?

— Conflicted

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Dear Conflicted:

One teacher taught you one way, another taught you a different way. So how should you play the music, this way or that way? The answer is that you should be able to do anything.

Furthermore, you need to know why you are doing things in a particular way. If you knew that, you might not be asking this question.

You are doing things in a particular way in order to produce a specific result. Technically speaking, the way of positioning your hand, the direction from which it approaches the keyboard, the amount of curvature or straightness in the fingers, the speed at which you put the keys down, the sensation of heaviness or lightness in the arm, the amount of flexibility in the wrist, and each of these things combined in all of their varying degrees results in a different sound and a corresponding musical effect. Musically speaking, your choices regarding tempo, dynamics, articulation, pedaling, rubato, tone quality, and even fingering will project different shades of expression. When playing a piece of music, the question always is: what result do I desire at any particular time?

One reason that some teachers promote just one way of doing things is that they desire one specific result. But another possible reason is that they may never have actually made their own aware choices about what they are doing. I’m sorry to say that some teachers just teach what they were taught by their teachers, so their advocacy of how to do things is based only on a sense of authority.

Ideally, learning music is not a matter of following orders. The job of a teacher is to acquaint a student with options. The job of a student is to accomplish the ability to implement those options. Then the student can choose with awareness from a wide range of options in order to produce the results that they desire.

I would say that the only bad thing is the lack of awareness. As a teacher, I constantly want to know whether my students are doing things on purpose. Perhaps a student plays forte where the score is marked piano. Was that a decision based on personal musicality or scholarly research? If so, I can support the decision even if I don’t agree with it. Or did the student not notice the marking or not realize that they were playing loudly? If so, then my job is to awaken the student to what they are doing.

This is why I have no disagreement with any of your previous teachers, except when they didn’t explain why you are supposed to do things their way. If you are doing things without knowing why, then you can only repeat the trick that you have learned, like a trained animal. You will lack the autonomy to generalize your choices and to apply them in different situations. In that case, your human potential remains undeveloped. Developing that potential is the essential goal of piano playing.

By the way, I can say without having heard you play that there is nothing wrong with your piano playing. You already have the ability to do certain things, and that is good. All you need to do is to add more abilities.

— J.C.