A Letter to Piano Students' Parents

Dear Parents and Students,

There are so many piano teachers, but I was often questioned why my piano teaching is different from other piano teachers. Let me explain to you what I have seemed, or what I have tolerated transferred students’ bad discipline, unruly pianism and even some rude remarks that my Spartan piano dexterity training is boring, stringent and overwhelming. 

Beethoven said that you have to learn all the fundamental before breaking its rules, or creation and innovation simply only happens when you have mastered all the fundamental skills and knowledge. 

I taught my students how to show that they are different from a monkey, “When you step in my piano suite, you have to act like a human being, not a monkey which can’t identify learning time and playtime!” This denotes that they have to identify the differences between work and play to challenge our education system that emphasized on learning through playing.

Piano learning is a feat that involved both, eyes, mind and hands (fingers) coordination and dexterity. My instructional program works in such a way to train dexterity in advance so that a student can use his mind and eyes to control his dexterity, if a student is not trained in this manner, his progress will be hindered by bad coordination between his mind, eyes and dexterity.

Siwen Wong’s Piano Instructional Design was under a phase of experiment when I first taught in Brunei on 1991 to a range of international expatriates and local students. It proved the system worked, within 15 years staying in Northern side of Borneo, I had fostered the most diploma-students and diploma-teachers in its record. 

ABRSM and TGH exams were not so easy to achieve during early the 90s, e.g. I witnessed how an examiner failed the whole Sarawak state diploma students except our 2 candidates who luckily survived, and the examiner was very please, he told me I was the only piano teacher who he seemed know how to teach Mozart properly.  I kept this secret to reveal today as I am no more teaching in such vicinity. 

I also witnessed the drop of ABRSM and TGH requirement and standard during two decades time in order to please the “modern days” students who rather spend more time on computer keyboard than a piano keyboard. However, I respected some ABRSM and TGH examiners who hold their high standard individually.

A successful music school must have its own instructional system, a piano teacher shouldn’t teach his students based on what his ex-teachers taught him without a research, analysis and written record, piano teaching shouldn't base on memory entirely through aural or folklore-kind inheritance from one generation to another! If his ex-teachers never gave him ear training, the piano teacher also wouldn’t give his new generation of students’ ear training as well. And he would send his own son for Suzuki method because he thinks it is a better system to train his son’s ears. As a piano teacher, he never knows what is called instructional design and he won’t spend time to analyze the loophole of another teaching system, when his son acquires something new, something old was omitted at the same time! He simply doesn’t understand how feasible music education works.

In my instructional design framework, I integrated professional pianist’s dexterity and aesthetic performing training, It evolved the old school instructional method by adding what it often ostracizes or ignores by most music professionals, as dexterity training is never (or hardly) designed as a unit standard/course in any tertiary music institution, also, if you have all the piano professors who are prodigies, they wouldn’t realize the importance of dexterity training, they simply kicked out those audition candidates who were not good out of their sights, but if you are like me who taught student from age 4 to 70 with no authority to refuse anyone in order to survive, I had to come out with a feasible instructional design to make sure during the phase of teaching and learning, these students could progress fast enough, safe enough not to develop any occupation injury,  to make them achieve and realize the differences of what they were trained. Of course I also noticed a group of students who didn't like to share their secret feats to their "enemies" or their own peers, but in contrast, I witnessed how those generous hearts who were willing to share with their friends and classmates, they ended up graduating their PhD in the highest world class institutions like Cambridge, Oxford, Yale or John Hopkins, they are successful CEOs, top-notch medical specialists or professionals.

At the moment, the dexterity training is greatly lacked even in our worldwide universities’ piano department, although the French masters like Isidor and Long talked about the techniques so often but most piano graduates actually never heard of these two French school techniques masters’ name! 

There are also some piano professors who know that dexterity training is very important, but they simply don’t know how to teach them effectively within a short frame three months period, or they simply don't have enough experience to teach enough stereo-type kids (most music prodigies look out for professors to teach them) to write out what the general "poor kids" need.  

There were/are only two known American piano professor Adele Marcus and Nelita True who trained freshmen college piano students’ dexterity, while the rest would be rejected by Julliard or Eastman School of Music if your precollege piano teachers didn’t do a good job on your dexterity and techniques. Dexterity training is a dangerous job to impart on a student if you are not sure of physical and science side of human body, you may hurt your piano students instead of helping them,  a feasible dexterity training should not let your students suffered any occupational ailment like joints pain, back ache or arthritis.

On year 2000, my first dozen of ABRSM piano students that I taught since they were young, more than half of them had won more Distinctions than Merits, the youngest student at that time who won the Gr. 8 distinction was merely 10. On 2006, another underage exam student proven our standard has reached international recognition, when our 16-year-old student was chosen blindly by ABRSM examiners, she was chosen among thousands of exam candidates worldwide to win ABRSM international scholarship. 

Siwen Wong’s piano instructional designed program is a well-rounded and balance program, it is not known internationally due to it was hidden in a small town in a remote Borneo.  Under this instructional designed program training, the end of the day, a student can play all genre of music, their ears are trained to control the timbre within a phrase through their fingertips, their rhythmic feel is immaculately accurate, they all can follow metronome due to they were trained to listen (many music major can’t even follow metronome), their ears are trained to listen, if they don’t have the perfect ears at least they were trained to detect relative pitches.  

Some students are born can sight-read like the perfect-ear gifted students, but if a student was trained by his piano teachers on the first day by looking up and down from the music scores to the piano, back and forth only made him a bad sight-reader, I have come across so many transferred students with this problem as well.

While some international known piano instructional methods are emphasizing on playing piano based on listening, I have my great doubts! During past 3 decades, I have many of students who were first trained under such listening instructional method transferred to me, they failed to sight read, they failed to feel rhythm, they played piano like they have never been taught by a piano teacher, quite a hurting remark which my famous Polish piano professor gave me after she heard my piano playing during the audition, she was once a president of European confederation of musician. She was right, I once played piano just liked these students who came to me, but I don't want them to suffer like me when they reach 22 years old!

I noticed this phenomenon of students who transferred to me who went through S method. If I played an excerpt of music, if such students were not born with a recorder kind of ears, they wouldn’t be able to play an excerpt from memory upon hearing it, I noticed that they actually learned to play piano not much from the ears, but actually they used more of their eyes and memory to play piano in an act of “monkeys see monkeys do” imitation. 

My “little sister” who could only read 5 music notes but she won her school talent quest two years ago by playing Chopin’s Minute Waltz, but she could do it better than those students who went for the school which teaches piano playing through ears, she won due to she has a set of dexterity that those other school of students don’t possess.  The secret was I paid some of my ex-staff members to train her fingers since she was two!

Will the untrained ears and dexterity hear the best timbre out of a piano? Aural training doesn’t mean to be only able to hear the relative pitch if you don’t have a set of perfect ears, but a piano student has to be trained in listening the sound within the sound, he has to be trained to listen the timbre out of a piano sound. 

It is one of the requirements during the process of piano learning. When the old generation piano teachers who taught based on how their ex-piano teachers taught, they neglected to write out a feasible instructional method for their piano schools. When they didn’t give aural training to their beginner students but only during ABRSM exam, you never blame your ex teachers but you blame an old piano teaching method of no aural training, so you enrolled your children for a school that learned piano playing by listening. 

After a year or two later, they probably could play many songs by memory, but how many songs are played with a good standard. And worse, they can’t do sight-read and feel rhythm by the conventional method of teaching, they thought they have learned something new, yet they lost something the old school taught! What a bad instructional design or simply no instructional design selling in our open market like hawker stall and fast food chain. Remember, learning piano does have the 6-stars fine dining restaurant!

Piano learning experience with me could become one of the best memories happened in your life, this remark was mentioned to me so often when I met my ex-students, who are now mostly successful professionals. 

Scientists said that we only used 5% of our brain, but through my Siwen Wong's Piano instructional designed program's fingers strengthening process, you gradually able to use your mind to control your fingers instead of the other way, from the phase of learning your brain will be evolved, you also being conditioned to be more discipline, you will find out both your dexterity, EQ and IQ have improved. 

Improving in piano learning also indirectly helps to boost your confidence, this in turn will begin to help you in school work if you were not a good student through dexterity and mind agility, e.g. it could take you 1 minute to take a book out of your bag on the table, but after the training your trained dexterity help you to become a faster person, your mind and muscles are coordinating much better than before.

If you are under my care to learn piano, in order to ensure the best achievement during the time you learn under me, please abide the following rules and regulations to ensure success in learning.

1. Please don't simply find excuses to miss your piano lesson.

2. Please don't eliminate your piano teacher without advance notice, a minimum one month notice is required. What do you feel if I inform you that I am going to stop teaching you piano on the eve of piano exam? Ethical standard is a requirement between parents-student-teacher relationship.

3. You must learn to discipline your practice hours at home, your brain must be conditioned to develop a control over this issue, it is an EQ training to make yourself practice piano for an hour time frame without moving away from that bench for a single second. untrained mind is like a yo-yo, an unruly mind like a messy mind-shelves. Our school system has emphasized too much on play and learn method, children are conditioned to learn with this method since young, are they flexible enough to adopt any new form of learning like a chameleon? Children whose learning prowess are adapted like a chameleon are the most successful candidates to any institution according to my past 30 years observation. Some were taught and encouraged by their parents, some were disregarded and dismissed by their parents. 

4. Always full of positiveness and encouraging, only hard-working students have hopes, if you use your aging age standard to judge your children's physical and mental stamina, you won't have a successful kid. I can't give lazy students who indulge in good life for a good feedback due to many bad disciplines the minute out of my once a week "piano lesson jail", I have tried my best within a short 60 minutes lesson to help a student, I tried to feed you the essence, you have to swallow it and digest it.

5. Most ancient way of imparting knowledge was done in a very selfish way, but if you come to me, I am a self-less teacher, I will teach you every thing I know of.  I learned everyday during the teaching, from any kind of students, even the worse behaved students, thus my teaching skills and tips could be improved, accumulated or discovered through teaching, assessing and observing.