Practicing the Piano in Beijing

I am keeping up with my practice while in Beijing. I am not allowed to use the pianos on campus because I'm not a music major here so I have to rent a practice room from the piano stores around here. The piano practice rental fee is reasonable ranging from 5 yuan to 10 yuan (USD 1.20) an hour.

Practicing has been a challenge because I have to walk about 15mins to get to the practice venues. Taking a bus there is also possible, but I still have to walk about 10 mins to get to the bus stop. The place I am regularly practice at is Song of Songs Piano City next to Beijing Foreign University close to the 3rd Ring Road. (In case, google brings this up.) I am not at the best piano practice facility around this area. There is some air circulation occasionally and the pianos are in okay shape. Some keys may not work and the pedals may not work. There are only 8 rooms here. There is a much better place near the Haidian Huangzhuang subway station, on the southwest corner, on the 5th floor above McDonalds. I tried their pianos there yesterday and was pleased with the quality.

Practicing in the piano stores have allowed me to observe piano pedagogy and piano practice habits of the students there. I am not sure which to be more frustrated at, the lack of air circulation or hearing John Thompson & Hanon being horribly practiced at the room next door.

I had the misfortune of being kicked out of my practice room on Tuesday because they don't schedule their teachers in. The story gets better when a 10 yr old kid had just snuck into the room with the best piano and I have to wait for him to finish his practice session. I stand at the door like a piano vulture and take the opportunity to observe his practice habits.

He started playing a junior version of Hanon (everything in crotchets/quarter notes) and this is no. 1 of book 1. Every note had an accent on it so I watched his technique. Lots of stress and pressing ... hahah I know. Also I realized that he kept getting lost in the note reading. It is obvious he has not been taught to recognize note patterns and poor reading skills.

I watch him practice other pieces and he played about 5 different pieces. They were mostly correct as far as rhythm and notes go, with occasional inaccuracies. John Thompson book 2 was what he was playing out of. I don't think he had any concept of five finger patterns in the different keys he had to play in. He also did not notice errors aurally immediately. His practice was the usual play through like most students, me included. During his practice, there was no attention to dynamics, tempo or phrasing. Musicality was absent in his playing.

I watched some lessons there too and I can't remember how many times the teachers would actually correct finger positions. I see a lot of John Thompson and I heard that Bastien is now used. I haven't seen any Hal Leonard or Faber method books here either. I talked to a teacher about using technology in the lesson and that is a new concept to them to. I think technique is a great asset to piano playing but it is not the end all. I wish my technique was better but I don't think I put people to sleep in the practice room.

Well, maybe I can try and give a seminar or a lecture before I leave Beijing. If I do that, I want to be paid. That's for sure. Ok, enough venting, time to go practice now!