Why is it that most piano students are taught to only play a piece in one key?
Learning to play a tune/piece in only one key is a very popular piano method. People learn in different ways but I find that I get a lot of understanding when I practice it in other keys as well. Transposing is very important to me. I analyse and feel the music when I transpose it. Standard piano lessons never really works for me. I want to understand the music I play.
Why is it that most piano students are taught to only play a piece in one key?
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I don‘t think that this depends so much of the education level of teachers or the education system like Stretto says. But theres some truth in it, there are actually teachers - generally - who are good in just one subject and transport their knowledge without seeing behind the horizon.
There would be great benefit in the task to transpose a piece in other keys. (But this shouldn’t be done by just using the same fingersettings and moving the hand some intervals up or down.)
I’m convinced that a didactic of more experience in transposing would help a lot for better understanding a piece and playing music in general.
Why doesn’t this happen?
Because any other method wouldn‘t fit with the expections of the students, their parents who probably pay the lessons and also the teachers themselves.
The goal of most people is to learn as many pieces as possible in a short time, and not the goal of seeing through and internalizing fully a piece.
And not every teacher would be able to control whether the student is playing correctly.
Of course there are other points like the key characteristics, the respect of the authority of the composer, the availability of sheet music in other keys, the lack of fantasy or insight of the benefit of transposing, improvising and transfer learning!
But the main problem seems to me that people want to reach a goal direttissima and don’t see that there would be a short cut what looks like detour at first sight.
A good piano teacher should apply different approaches and use a large variety of methods: transposing, formal analysis, improvising, comparing pieces are just some. A lot of this happens unconsciously. What is unconscious should become aware.
Poor education. It's really simple as that. Once you become self-teaching and accumulate enough knowledge you will realize how poor the education systems really are, generally how poor your education was. You are really not asking a question about music but a question about education and hence off topic. But I will respond in detail -
Our governments set up education systems with the lofty goal of educating the masses. When initiated, this goal has worked quite well in bringing the level of education up in many ways(and down in others). But over time many borderline people ignorant/intelligent become teachers and go on to teach the masses(usually the lower educated the teacher the more they teach uneducated people). At some point this starts perpetuating ignorance rather than intelligence. Overall the system can succumb to such things if it is pushed heavily, which it has been in the last 60 years because, essentially the government has become one huge jobs program. How do we know this(because many will want to deny these facts out of their own ignorance)? We look at the testing, mechanisms, behaviors, and results of what has happened. Given that technology has allowed for education to grow an order or two of magnitude in educative power, we would expect society to grow in proportion too. Has it? It clearly has none. We can model all this statistically without too much difficulty but it is not hard to get a feel for what has happened.
Many educated people in the early 1900's could speak several languages(latin being a common one), they had a high degree of intellectualization, and were very logical. Many people could play some musical instrument, and were very competent in some skill. What happened? Well, like all things - dilution. This is just the statistical nature of the problem when you combine two different types in to one. E.g., we had an intellectual class and an nonintellectual class and the government tried to combine them, this lifted the nonintellectual class and diluted the intellectual class. Also, in the past there was an extreme adherence, compared to now, on conforming. This has pros and cons, one of the cons, most of which are obvious.
I am not saying that what the government did is good or bad, just stating the facts that what it has done is to reduce the intellectual quality by "spreading it out". Hence, most teachers are not actually teachers, they are just workers who teach. A certificate or degree of teaching doesn't make one a teacher no more than any other piece of paper makes anyone anything. Real teachers have extensive knowledge and experience not just in their preferred subject but in many subjects and with the ability to pass that knowledge on to others.
How does this apply to your question? Well, in fact, we should be learning all pieces in all keys. This was a thing in some teaching schools of the past. You were required to be able to transpose the score mentally to any key. Some people can still do this. BUT the difference now is that it is not pushed as relevant BECAUSE the quality of teaching is so poor now. Teachers(on average) do not push for such competence in all areas because they generally only want to push for some limited degree of competence rather than competence. Again, most teachers are not competent teachers. It's just a fact. Typical people want to believe that every teacher is somehow special but that is far from the case and it can be proven. Most teachers simply wanted an easy job the could collect a check and benefits from, this is no different than most people.
Ultimately when you become self-learned you realize how poor teaching is and you learn to judge knowledge for yourself better(you have to accumulate enough though). You learn from teachers but you do not let them constrict you in to a mindset of ignorance. While there are a few really good teachers, chances are you'll never find them. All you can do is glean some knowledge from each one and throw it in your basket and build on it yourself and do what you do with it. It will shape who you are. If you want to be ignorant then you will ignore everything. If you want to be a conformist then you will conform to the majority view, if you want to be wise then you will try to learn everything you can, etc...
So, ultimately, you have to decide what you feel is right or wrong or good or bad. If you think learning to play every tune in every key is a good thing and you do it then either it will help you or hurt you. I will tell you that it will do both as a matter of fact, ultimately you can choose to take it as fact and interpret it in the best way you can. I will explain it to you though in case you don't understand these things but are capable: One can say it as this "Everything has good and evil in it". Interpreted - If you spend all your time learning to play every piece in every key then you are not doing other things you might need to do to become actually better overall. OTOH - If you spend all your time never learning to play any piece in any key then you are not doing other things you might need to do to become actually better overall - This concept is otherwise known as "balance", the "Goldilocks principle", etc. Learning balance comes from experience, this is what most teachers lack and why they are such poor teachers(again, they are not true teachers, they are just regurgitators of limited knowledge).
Ultimately it is simple as this - You must learn to develop your own compass of what you think is right or wrong for yourself. Do that and you will become wise. If you are always following the heard then your compass is broke because you are just following everyone else with their broke compass. [If you want a proper analogy think of it as a bunch of sheep with compasses following the magnetosphere lines with one "sheep" having a powerful magnet leading them off a cliff - But in all their minds they are all going in the right direction because everyone else is!]
Ultimately it has to do with logic and experience. I would say this: How bout you try to learn just one piece in 24 major and minor keys and then ask yourself the question. I will say this too: I can play any piece in any key, it takes some work but I can figure it out without issue. It is fun, specially when changing the mode of a piece. It gets easier with time, like all things... but it is also time consuming and don't expect to be able to do it overnight or by cramming it. You have to learn to think differently, else you could already do it now. Try it and see if it is your cup of tea, if not do something different. The ultimate point of life is to enjoy it, if you can do that then nothing else matters, specially what you think you should or should not do.
I think it depends on what you’re going to do with the piece. Personally, if I had time to learn the piece in more than one key then I think I should have chosen a more difficult piece.
It might take me 3 - 18 months to learn a piece. After that, I’d rather learn something else than learn to play the same piece again in a key different from the composers original intent.
But, I mainly play classical piano. Accompanists for musical theatre, jazz pianists, and some other genres quite often are asked to sight read songs and transpose on the fly. Those professionals aren’t exactly learning pieces in different keys, they are just playing them in a different key. If you would like to play like that then there’s nothing wrong with learning the same piece in multiple keys and/or learning to transpose on the fly.
In the classical world, the key in which a piece is written is an important, intentional choice. I’ve never heard of a classical work being professionally performed in a key other than the one it was written in, although I expect it may have happened from time to time.
And now I’m reminded of a slight contradiction to my first paragraph, which is that I’m currently learning the jazz standard “Autumn Leaves” in a different key from what it was written in to make it easier for me to play the melody on clarinet (for which I’m only a beginner).
So in summary: in the classical world, transposing pieces is rare, probably because that would make it a different piece (in the classical mind). In the musical theatre and jazz genres; transposing is very common, but often the pieces are not learned in different keys, merely transposed on the fly (an important skill). In pop and rock transposing happens for covers and less commonly originals. For example, as Ozzy Osbourne has aged, he has lost his ability to hit some high notes, so some of his most popular songs, like “Crazy Train” have been played in a lower key in live shows.
To my knowledge, most piano lessons (at least ones given to children) are oriented around playing classical music. For classical music, playing according to the written score is important, and deviations from the score are treated as mistakes.
As Todd Wilcox mentions in his answer, keys of classical music pieces are chosen intentionally. The notion that a classical piece of music must have an overarching key is so important that they are often labelled with their single key each in their name (e.g. "Minuet in G Major", "Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67"). Entire cycles of preludes and etudes have one piece in each of the major and minor keys - changing the key of any one of these pieces is seen as sacrilege.
Sheet music isn't cheap. As illegal as all my piano books said the practice was, all my piano teachers photocopied my repertoire and gave the photocopies to me. I strongly suspect my piano teachers were not alone. I don't think they're about to bust sheet music transposing my repertoire.
One more note: piano repertoire for young children is often in keys with few accidentals such as C Major, F Major, and G Major, probably for readability's sake. Good luck convincing piano teachers to change the keys of those.
Your question seems to telegraph the expected answer: the teaching is focused on recitals and advancing through graded methods. That kind of teaching isn't concerned with understanding why things happen in music.
EDIT
I wasn't going to add this initially, but there seems to be a lot of interest (disagreement) on this topic of transposing.
Recently I started working on Bach's Two Part Invention in C Minor and I simply did not want to memorize it. I've done that before with other music, and eventually I forget the stuff.
I decided to take most of the expository material and break it up into two beat units which I then practiced by sequencing the stuff up and down by step. I also inverted the parts between the hands. I made myself a sort of shorthand score of what I was doing, like this...
...the double notes at the end of phrases are supposed to show the continuation by sequence up/down. Fingerings above/below are RH/LH depending on how the hands invert. I don't expect anyone else to read this, but I think the basic idea should be clear enough.
Now I've moved on to playing each hands separately, but I play it in various keys. The music itself modulated up a fifth so you can just repeat the exposition and keep going around the circle of fifths. After working through a few keys and getting used to the changing "topographical" feel it seems I can play it in any key comfortably without practice.
I'm not done with the piece yet, and certainly this take more time than just memorizing it in C, but I definitely feel like I'm learn much, much more this way. My hands move more freely and I better understand the actual tonal content of the music.
At the very least, you aren't the only person that thinks transposing is a useful study method.
Like you, I have a hard time getting something to work properly without a deep knowledge of exactly how it works. My driving teacher spent hours repeatedly explaining the sequence of steps required to drive a manual transmission and I just couldn't get it. Later, when I looked up the internal mechanics of exactly how a manual transmission works, it immediately clicked and I could suddenly drive a manual without issue.
So I too have an insatiable need to understand exactly what (and why) I am playing in order to play it properly. When I decide to learn a new piece, I carefully analyze each chord and passage, trying to internalize the technical structure and decipher the composers original intent. I also take time to gain an understanding of why exactly the composer chose the key that they did; oftentimes this also involves some study of why they didn't chose certain other keys.
This often comes down, largely, to fingering and technique. As you get into more advanced pieces, certain keys just don't make sense and may be nearly impossible to play. At the end of the day, classical composers had a very deep understanding of music and their choice of key was not arbitrary. Figuring out why a piece is in a particular key may well give you more insight and understanding than figuring out how to play it in other keys.
Now, to actually answer your question: why are piano students taught to only play songs in one key?
The main point of piano lessons is to learn proper playing technique, not music theory. Naturally, some theory must be taught, but it is usually secondary and supportive. If additional knowledge of theory is desired, one must seek out other sources, like online tutorials, music theory dictionaries, college courses, or this site (obviously).
(Alternatively, you can do what I did and try to find a teacher that loves theory as much as you do so you can lure them into spending the entire hour session in a deep theory dive! That is, until your parents find out that you have been spending most of your lessons chatting and not actually playing anything, so they get mad at your teacher who explains to them that you are "advancing" into jazz improvisation for which you need a solid foundation of music theory, after which your sessions are split between discussing theory and screwing around on the piano...yup, he was by far my favorite teacher!)
The ability to transpose, either in advance or on the fly, is a practical application of music theory, not a physical skill. A steady progression of the student's skill and ability is the closest thing a piano teacher has to a deliverable "product", and is therefor the easiest way to demonstrate to the student (or their parents) that they are getting their moneys worth.
Lastly, as alluded to before, most pieces, especially more advanced ones, are intentionally written in a key that provides a stable structure for proper technique. For example, pieces that require the thumb to frequently pass under the other fingers are often written in keys with lots of sharps/flats to make this motion easier and more fluid. Practicing it in a different key can make it more awkward to play, and can even result in picking up bad habits, negatively impacting the advancement of technical skill, thereby undermining the very reason for taking lessons in the first place.
To give a counter-example, The Russian School of Piano Playing encourages teachers and students to introduce transposition right from the beginning:
„From the outset of musical training it is important that the pupil be
taught to transpose. Such exercises promote the development of ear,
memory and keyboard orientation.“
As a specific example, on piece number 20, a simple one-line melody piece, the instruction says:
„The pupil should play the exercise in different keys […].“
So I would conclude that there is at least one piano school which recognizes transposition as an important concept of piano lessons.
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