Learning Dyads

People sometimes ask me where I learned to play the piano. Usually, I tell them “it’s complicated”. Piano and I have a mixed history. I started out taking formal lessons and hating it. Only when I came back later and taught myself without worrying about formalities did I actually learn. My experience reveals the flaws in traditional education. As I later learned, formal teaching has an awful tendency to highlight rules and restrictions, whereas informal teaching can help students learn better because it lets them see the possibilities.

I started my formal education in the 1^st grade when by beloved parents, hoping to raise a well-rounded individual, signed me up for lessons at Andrews University and gave me full permission to utilize the grand piano we kept in our living room. My instructor was a Chilean pianist named Marcello who played at our church every week. By all logical assessments, he was the perfect teacher, having won several awards in his home country, as well as being beloved by all my fellow Presbyterians each Sunday.  And despite the fact that his thick Spanish accent often caused him to mangle my first name (“Avon” or something like that), I thought he was okay as well.

However, there was one thing about which my feelings were clear: playing piano.  More precisely, I couldn’t stand it. To my seven-year-old self, piano lessons seemed like torture. From my point of view, learning to play required one to obey many ridiculous rules about posture and proper thumb placement. I was bored out of my mind using only one hand to start with, all the while listening to Marcello remind me to “kap my wrists op ”. I found it all so frustrating that I almost never practiced. Really, it was only a matter of time before I quit playing. After only a year, my parents told Marcello that we were no longer interested in piano lessons. I never moved past the beginner’s book. For over four years, the grand piano sat in our house unused, serving as a constant reminder of my failure.

Everything changed late in the summer after my 5^th grade year. For whatever reason, be it a desire for redemption or just shear boredom, I sat down on that old wooden bench and began pressing keys.  Sure enough, I sucked. The amazing part was that I didn’t care. Using my two pointer fingers, I would press down two keys simultaneously. Sometimes, this produced quite a pleasing sound; yet other times, it made me cringe.  I must have sat there for at least an hour puzzling over this. Then, my father walked by and witnessed my experimentation. He smiled and informed me that the pairs of notes I was playing are called “dyads”.

Over the next several years, I took part in an informal, relaxed education. I moved past the dyads, learning piano and music theory all at once. Ignoring all the rules made it fun. Sometimes, I would twang the strings inside instead of pressing keys, or I might do both at once. I began writing little songs, then medium-sized songs, and later, full-fledged musical compositions with a chorus and verses. My family was delighted that I was becoming interested in piano, but several times I threatened to stop practicing if they enrolled me in lessons. Now, people enjoy my playing enough to ask me where I learned it.

All of this begs the question: “Does structured teaching actually work?” After all, I had only begun to improve my piano playing when I began teaching myself. It is very counter-intuitive to think that structured teaching can actually prevent students from learning. 

Formal education seems have a tendency to focus on rules and syntax, which bores students. As a result, they have trouble remembering. Rules can be important in many areas. In science, for example, the metric system is required because it allows easy communication between scientists. The important thing is to avoid becoming too caught up in the rules. When students are presented with a list of restrictions and limitations, they become apathetic toward that subject area, much in the same way that I became apathetic toward piano playing early on.

Beyond being incredibly boring, this formal method of instruction is not reflexive of reality. In the real world, humans do not know everything and there are still many possibilities in all subject areas. Imagine if instead of memorizing the Pythagorean Theorem, students “discovered” it by investigating the relationship between the sides of a triangle. What if students, instead of looking at Moe’s Hardness Scale in their science book, collected minerals and tested their relative hardness by rubbing them up against each other? When people figure things out on their own, they learn much better. It seems that all the best teachers understand this simple notion.

To be clear, I am not saying that teachers are useless and academic doctrine prevents students from learning. Honestly, I can see a place for both formal and informal schooling. Formal teaching has helped me develop many other skills like playing the trumpet, spelling words, and deciphering algebraic equations. In addition, even though I learned piano playing better without formal lessons, my informal approach has some setbacks. For example, I cannot score any of the music that I compose, because I never learned to read or write piano music. Also, I cannot effectively use the pedals. Still, I am glad I sat down at the bench on that summer day all those years ago. If I had not, I never would have developed this skill that has become such a beloved hobby.

Looking back, maybe the important change was not in the way I was learning piano playing, but in my attitude toward it. When I began to think of it as an inventive skill instead of a highly structured one, piano playing started to represent a creative outlet. When I no longer cared if I sounded horrid, I could simply enjoy experimenting.  Teachers must learn to focus on the possibilities inherent in their subject areas as opposed to the rules or requirements to which they adhere. They need to make their students want to learn.

This methodology can be applied to writing as well. I need to think of it as a canvas instead of a doctrine. It does not matter if my writing is awful. I’ll just keep experimenting, learning the word combinations that sound pleasant, and those which make my readers cringe. In other words, I may be “writing dyads” now; but, I hope to be able to write in symphonies later on.

All in all, recognize the dyads that people are playing all around. Encourage them. Let them learn. My piano playing improved only when I let myself make mistakes. Don’t hand out answers. Students remember much better if they figure things out on their own, perhaps with a subtle push from a talented instructor. Above all, remember that although rules are important, they should not be the central focus of any course. Focusing on restrictions instead of possibilities does any subject area a great injustice.