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they do on their own is merely practicing. Even if you are a trained musician with a formal music education, that doesn't necessarily mean that you can be your own teacher successfully.

A teacher serves a dual role. They offer the objectivity that one can never find in oneself. Studying piano is not unlike studying anything else: there comes a point when one can no longer be objective about one's own work. One cannot always recognize their own mistakes, interpretation problems, phrasing problems, wrong notes, and most of all, incorrect fingering.

A piano teacher is more than just an instructor. That teacher is a mentor and a source of inspiration. The teacher is the chief motivator, motivating a student to do that which one can and will ignore, forget or omit. I am grateful to all the piano teachers with whom I studied. Each one of them shaped my musical life, education and future more than they will ever know. The benefits I reaped from my piano lessons and other music instruction will forever outweigh anything I ever did or will do on my own.

Outgrowing one teacher shouldn't mean the end of musical instruction for anyone who studies piano. A music teacher is like a coach. Just as an athlete always needs a coach, so does any music student. Professional musicians often need and use coaches. My father coached many young musicians, both professionals and students alike. He also had and used coaches at different times during his career.

As a professionally trained musician, I know that no matter how long I took lessons, no matter how many teachers I had, how long I practiced, what I played, how often I performed, I never ceased needing a teacher. A teacher was like an extra pair of eyes and ears for me, seeing and hearing things that I would inevitably overlook. My teachers always helped me understand the complicated technical issues and musical issues that were contained within every piece I played. There was never a time when after working on any given piece with my teacher, whichever teacher it may have been, that my playing didn't sound significantly better.

As any piano student knows, one of the most important parts of instruction is the technical areas. That would include scales, arpeggios and other technical exercises. My own experience taught me that if left to my own devices, I would often deliberately forget to do my technical exercises and scales because quite frankly, working on that stuff over and over again can be downright boring. Without the oversight

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