Disclaimer: if you are a sensitive individual, if sometimes you take what you read personally, if you ocassionaly become ever so slightly uptight about things you read, then please DO NOT read the following article. This article contains exaggerated opinions and harsh, disrespectful and informal expressions to facilitate an enjoyable read. Everything below should be approached with an open mind. All text is food for thought. No advice below is to be followed. The text below must not be read by people under the age of eighteen (18). Read at your own discretion. Before reading, you agree that have read our website’s Terms of Use and Disclaimers.

Bullying… who hasn’t received it or, dare I say, who hasn’t been one. Haven’t you been one? I’m sure you have been a bully at some point in this life of yours.

As far as I am concerned, I’m sure that I have been a bully at some point in my life, even though I can’t locate it in my memories, and also nobody has ever complained about being subjected to bullying by me. Well, I might even exercise bullying at this very moment towards you, the reader; since, the way I see my writing right now, is that it contains a scent of aggressiveness. Don’t you agree? I’m sure you do.

However, I have to confess, that I was, and am, a victim of mild bullying in my everyday life. I cannot come up with specific examples right now of how I am being bullied, but somehow it feels like bullying to me. So.

Now. According to a 2014 study by PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America), bullying has destroyed lives, but at the same time has benefited the bullies themselves. Unbelievable to some of you, but true.

To me, this was always the case! I knew that my colleague Alexander felt exhilarated when he repeatedly bullied another colleague of ours, Jonathan, on his preference in the vegan diet. It was so obvious that Alexander was enjoying himself immensely.

Those researchers at PNAS deserve a big THANK YOU. They did a great job, and their research produced concrete results to further understand the bullying phenomenon and pave the way to eliminate it in the future. Well done to them, once again.

So eventually, PNAS’s findings indicated that “Victims display long-term social, psychological, and health consequences, whereas bullies display minimal ill effects.”^[1]

I, the bully

So, here is where I reveal to you, that I have been a merciless bully. A horrible bully.

However, I haven’t been a bully with my fists or words, but with my piano playing.

I have tried to bully around many an audience with my piano performances. I bullied them hard with my peculiar musical views and with my eccentric interpretations, and I couldn’t care less. I forced them to listen to my dictatorial pianistic interpretations and I could sense their inner condemnation of my performances.

I’ve exercised musical bullying because I’ve learned, that it was the only way to make your mark in this “copy-paste” pianistic world.

And it felt so good. PNAS was right…

So much the audience found my performances controversial, that they were for once lead to believe, that there were indeed many interpretations of a piece, and not only worn-out iterations.

They were used to listen to carbon interpretations for so long, that my own interpretational choices seemed alien to them, and thus it naturally felt like a worst kind of musical nightmare; at least, initially.

What Is Musical Bullying

So, what is this musical bullying?

Musical bullying is simply a conscious effort by the performer to challenge their audience with his sound, be it live or in recordings, forcing them to experience his personal musical views of a work of music. The performer’s musical views bear the controversial denomination.

The performers often want to try and test their audiences and generally make them feel uneasy, uptight and vulnerable; they long for the audiences to validate their controversial musical choices, which are being considered taboo by the musical zeitgeist. Note, that the performer’s need for bullying doesn’t belong to the one-time occurrences. It will often repeat itself in big and small venues alike.

However, the performer’s need for musical bullying leads to addiction, and this addiction often causes them to purposefully implement distorted interpretational concepts in order to reinforce the effect of musical bullying to their auditory “victims”, and thus, reinforcing their own enjoyment.

Additionally, however, their bullying addiction can often lead to the misjudgment of different musical styles or even developing a permanent distorted view of how a piece should actually be performed.

The performers would also regularly see to communicate their immense satisfaction from the musical bullying; they will go about describing heroically their bullying performances to their colleagues in meetings, in order to receive more official, per se, gratification from their own interpretational shenanigans. That satisfaction could arguably be much higher than the one experienced from performing a universally acceptable interpretation.

Paradoxically or even masochistically, often, the audiences themselves would obtain pleasure from the performer’s musical bullying. They often want to be “tried” and experience new interpretational perspectives by forfeiting their own musical values to the bullying performers.

Those audiences would bend over backwards to express loyalty to current musical norms, but behind the scenes they won’t conceal their forbidden approval of the bullying performer.

Plead

So, I sincerely plead with you, as a music professional, to also be a musical “bully” yourself. Don’t be afraid of the “musical Judges” or “The experts” in music. Do your thing, within reason of course. Who can blame you if you play Chopin’s first study op.10 in half the currently expected speed? So, you’re not a virtuoso then? Who cares? Not Chopin, for sure! He, as far as I know, didn’t compose his piece on the grandiose Steinway model D, a piano that can handle today’s unprecedented virtuosity.  What about Handel? What about Bach! Who can point their fingers and claim with certainty that your interpretation of a Scarlatti sonata is a bit “off”? Not me. Not a couple of other romantics in the musical world that I know of, but the majority of the establishment is going to condemn you. Remember this. But then again, should you care? I don’t know. You are to answer this question.

If you feel the need to express your unique phrasings and pass on your self-indulging interpretations, do go for it. You won’t pass too many auditions, of course, but you will be a bold artist. An artist that cannot be chained into books’ rules and ancient apothegms.

But, when the dust settles, you’ll be the one who made their mark. Not the “copypasters”.

There’s no other way around that. Nowadays all performances sound the same. And I mean the accepted and the good ones. Because, amongst the ones that are considered “bad” you can find a huge variety of distinguishable ones. The ones that are considered good from the current musical establishment though, are to me often utterly yawning.

All the accepted pianists play alike. Their takes on the La Campanella is always the same, for instance. Well, not really the same, but the same, really. Who can deny it. I mean, ok, with a small variance on the speed, but it’s the same thing altogether. Is like making mashed potatoes by always using the same ingredients. Have you ever added rosemary?

I know what some of my honorable colleagues are thinking right now… “What is he talking about?” “I hate his style.” “I hate this guy!” Well, each to their own.

The Essence Of “Musical Bullying”

Innocently in this article, the eternal bullying phenomenon was, in a way, tested. However, let’s not forget that the actual bullying and its different types has made people suffer greatly over the course of our human history. Only recently bullying has been elevated to a major threat to our advancement as species. This bullying can never be joked about. Not in the least.

The didactic essence of “musical bullying” used in this article, is to simply challenge us, the performers. This type of challenge in not harmful, and can only lead to more meaningful things in our journey through music.

Musical bullying is not bullying in the conventional sense. It serves both as a reminder to “keep moving” in life, but also to remove us from our comfort zone, as they cliché-like say, and lead us to interpretational bravery, and consequently internal belief in oneself.

It also helps the audience emancipate themselves from the restraints of iron-fisted musical authorities, and give the audiences the belief that they, too, can contribute to the ever-changing dynamics of the musical zeitgeist.

^[1]http://www.pnas.org/content/111/21/7570

❦

©Nikos Kokkinis- 1st of December 2018

Many thanks to George Coletrain for the wonderful image used in this article. Please visit below for more to visit the artist’s website.

“If you always give, you will always have.” Chinese Proverb

A few years back my friend AJ experienced an incident so peculiar, that made me think deeply about the things that affect my priorities as a musician, and the space those things should occupy (if any), in my everyday musical and personal life.

As the song “Que Será, Será” implies, the future consequences from our or others’ actions are beyond our control. And we shouldn’t really think about it.

Now, you might ask how this story relates to practising the piano in the first place. Well, a notion that we often forget to appreciate and even fail to communicate to our students, is the importance of optimally prioritising the things we do in our everyday lives; it makes little or no sense, if we perfectly know how to practise the piano, but fail to actually sit and practise in the first place, due to bad time-management. Often, that poor time-management, derives directly from actions that we take upon other peoples’ requests. Those requests may be perfectly justified or they can be unreasonable. However, it doesn’t matter, because those requests do manage to have the same result altogether: Consuming our valuable time.

And thus, I decided to honour my friend’s misadventures by telling you his story.

❦

So, the story goes that AJ was innocently “lured” by the mother of one of his violin students to write a violin and piano arrangement to the tune of “Que Será, Será” for her and her son to play. She was an amateur pianist and knew her way around the piano, but the arrangement had to be of intermediate level for both her and her son to be able to play adequately.

AJ was caught off-guard after a casual conversation over coffee by the family’s indoor swimming pool, after their Sunday’s weekly lesson. Somehow, AJ felt obliged to satisfy the mother’s wish to write this arrangement. Though, he didn’t know why he felt so obliged to do it. Was it the high rates he was demanding for his lessons? Did the swimming pool and the surroundings play a role in his decision? Or, was it a simple inability to say no to a rich, powerful, and hospitable employer? He wouldn’t know at the time, but, rest assured, he understood later.

Only after hopping on his moped on the way back home everything begun to sink in. The issues that surfaced after he said “yes, I’ll do it,” were endless. Now, he had to follow an unexpected turn of events and write this arrangement!

He not only had to actually construct an arrangement from scratch, and everything such an endeavour entailed, but he also had to include in that arrangement the piano; even though he had done piano as a second study at college, this instrument and its world of notation was far from being proficient to him. At the same time, he had to pay copyright fees in order work on a piece that didn’t belong to the public domain. And, as you would expect from reading this so far, he was too proud to ask the parent to pay the fees. Go figure.     

Another problem was that he had to complete this task in a timely manner, because, as he confessed to me months later, “there was no point to say yes, and then deliver in a couple of years.”

In addition, he had to face the practicalities of diving into notation software for the first time in many years. He kind of knew his way around the Finale notation software, but he wasn’t certain that he could really tame this beast of a program, since the last time he really had to use it, was back in 2004, when he was notating the examples of his PhD thesis on Percy Grainger. And, of course, he wasn’t willing to give scribbles of a handwritten score to the family that was, basically, supporting him financially. He was doomed.

He parked his moped in the parking lot behind the O2 Centre in Finchley Road and took out a pack of Marlboro lights from his back pocket. He lit a cigarette up, took a deliberate drag and threw the remainder on the pavement. He decided that he had to act immediately. He eagerly looked up towards the O2’s cinema complex, but he knew that the film he was planning to watch on the big screen later on, was swiftly going out of the equation.

Immediately that night he started planning the “great escape” from his musical escapades; first, he had to secure that by penning his own musical arrangement he wasn’t infringing any copyrights. For that, he immediately emailed the copyright holders of the song and by Monday morning the company answered back, allowing him to do the arrangement. Then, he phoned his old friend Douglass from the Florida School Of Atonal Composition, to essentially reassure him that he could easily get back on track with the Finale. Douglass, a well-respected composer of micro-tonal music and an aficionado of Finale, had used the software for almost half a century now and he was the perfect guy to help my friend. Luckily, after hearing AJ’s distressed voice over the phone, Douglass, was also willing to edit the engraved outcome; it’s needless to say that this was a piece of cake for him.

But, for AJ, the problems were far from over; His unprecedented decision to accept this musical chore, forced him to having to overcome one of mankind’s greatest hurdles. A hurdle so steep, that even though it tantalised men from the beginning of time, it admittedly pushed some of them to achieve greatness: His Wife.

“What are you going to doooo?”

“Well, I….”

And that was the last sentence AJ would attempt to utter.

He was so scared of his wife, that he preferred to be enlisted to join the army, than hear that particular question from her again. He knew that every time his wife uttered this expression, there was going to be trouble ahead; he had to listen to a minimum of half-an hour lecture on why he was incapable of saying no to “stupid requests”, as his wife always used to say.

AJ was an honourable man. As with every human being, he had his share of weaknesses of course, but those were far below average in the scale of unimportant to serious ones. He was honest, compassionate, loved his wife wholeheartedly and never stole anything from anybody, except for that time that he snatched a Parker pen from the floor of one of the corridors in his gym. He just couldn’t leave it there. “It was so shiny and new”. He just took it in his hands and put in his pocket, naively thinking that nobody would really miss a pen. He always regretted that action.

He wasn’t going to let himself and the others down this time either; so he did what he had to do.

He spent the following week slaving it away, trying to heroically complete the arrangement, much to the disapproval of his wife. He stayed late at nights and phoned Douglass one too many times over the Atlantic, asking him to firstly forgive him and his infantile engraving demands, and then to help him out with engraving. On Wednesday he didn’t watch his favourite 50-minutes long episode of Poirot because, simply, there was no time. He also twice denied going out for drinks with his colleagues after work. He sacrificed so many things that week…

But then, on Saturday afternoon, as a most beautiful rose, his arrangement finally blossomed. Everything was up to scratch. He put the final touches on the score, typed his name as the arranger below the composer’s name, and then extracted and printed the parts. Ahhh, the feeling.  He did it, and it felt so good.

The next afternoon, after his violin lesson and with a big smile on his face, AJ presented his student with the copy of the arrangement. His satisfaction that he completed the task was immense. Both mother and son warmly thanked him and he felt important, but also blessed.

The following week he came back again, and after the lesson he keenly asked the mother if they tried his arrangement. She said that they didn’t really have time that previous week, and promised him that they would have a look at it soon.

Immediately after hearing this, AJ got the gist of the whole scenario. He knew what happened. He felt betrayed. He felt that his efforts were futile, and as much as he liked to do the right thing, the others would not repay him with the same respect that he gave them. He felt that they should have tried his arrangement, or at least pretended that they did. But, no. Not even a rehearsed excuse to keep up the appearances. Nothing. It was like he just handed them a squished packet of crisps from the off-license next door.

“But it wasn’t like that. I gave my all. My work is important and deserves to be suitably respected,” AJ thought.

That was a big life-lesson for both AJ, and for me.

❦

AJ learned the hard way that life is indeed about putting us and our interests first and foremost. Who can deny it? If we can’t keep ourselves both mentally and physically healthy, how can we ever satisfy our own needs? Because if we don’t satisfy our own needs and yearnings, we won’t be able to satisfy the needs of our fellow human beings, which in essence, goes hand-in-hand with our own interests. A broken man cannot fully heal his fellow man; that’s undeniable. One has to be at his best, to be able to be of service.

So coming back to the piano, this instrument DEMANDS. Demands not only our mental capacities but equally our physical strength.

So, say no to the everyday trivialities.

If you had practising to do, say NO to your friend when they ask you to pick them up after work because their car was broken. Let them take the bus. Your piano comes first.

Say NO to proofreading your cousin’s nine thousand-word essay, and instead improve that long-overdue cadenza.

Your personal time is paramount.

I mean, we all owe to be compassionate and all, but at what cost? Would you, the reader, be willing to be compassionate and care for your friend’s sick father for ten days in the hospital? No? Why? Are you not human? What are you? A robot? No, of course not; you are human, but firstly, you have your own life to attend to. A life that you must nurture if you want it to blossom.

The Que Será, Será Syndrome

In contrast to the didactic “Que Será, Será” song, the syndrome of the Que Será, Será is a common condition that we all suffer from, unfortunately. Of course, some of us less and some more. This “syndrome”, indeed, has nothing to do with the popular song and its positive meaning, and only by sheer coincidence served as an example, metamorphosing its positive meaning to a darker one, in order to assist my friend’s tale.

This syndrome is about our journey to make others happy in the expense of our own wellbeing. Often, the people who benefited from our sacrifices won’t know the troubles we went through to satisfy their own earthly demands, but even if they did know, they darwinically couldn’t care less. They will eternally feel the words and the music of the song, no matter what, and it is they that they’re going to reap the benefits from the song’s positivity and hey-ho dynamics. But not us.

It’s an innate human predisposition to want to make the others happy. It’s also innate, I’m afraid, our eternal incapacity to fully appreciate others’ givingness. Remember the famous saying that no good deed goes unpunished? This couldn’t be closer to the truth for us musicians, and for good reason.

So, we must put our “musical wellbeing” first, because music, is the essence of our existence in this life, at the end of the day. And so, we, more often than not, get punished musically on our good deeds, because for us musicians, music punishment is where it hurts the most.

❦

It was Christmas time. The house was covered in fresh snow and an exquisite, festive aroma of smokey chimneys was filling the neighbourhood.

Mother and son found themselves by the fireplace, waltzing to the music of “Que Será, Será”.

“That’s how life should be!” the mother happily exclaimed. “Just dancing, being happy and not caring about anything!”

“Yes mom, you’re right!” the boy replied.

“Whatever happened to that arrangement your teacher wrote for us a few months ago? We never came around to play it.”

“Oh, yeah. Um… I don’t really know mom. I think I’ve lost it.”

===========

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events and incidents are fictitious. The parking lot behind the O2 centre and cinema complex in Finchley Road, North London are real places, however, the events described there are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events and incidents is coincidental. By reading this you accept our site’s Terms Of Use and Disclaimers.

©November 1st 2018, PianoPractising.com

Disclaimer: if you are a sensitive individual, if sometimes you take what you read personally, if you occasionally are ever so slightly uptight about what you read, then please DO NOT read this article. This article contains exaggerated opinions and harsh, disrespectful and informal expressions to facilitate an enjoyable read. Everything below should be approached with a humorous aura. No advice below is to be followed. The following article is meant to be a humorous text only. Read at your own discretion.

How I acquired the diary

It was the 15th of September 1964. Early morning. I had just reached the summit, and the views where spellbinding. I could have lived there forever. But I knew that time was my enemy here, and I had to mentally drag myself to get ready for my descent as quickly as possible. I had to survive to tell my story. I couldn’t afford to enjoy a minute longer on this dream journey of mine. 

I hopped on my paraglider and begun my return, albeit reluctantly. The only thing that kept me going was the spectacular views flying down the white oasis. It wasn’t the same as savouring the sight from the world’s top peak, of course, but at least it was something; a reduced delight by the second. At about one-and-a-half minutes into the descent, I picked up on a shinning object, flat as a pancake, 20 degrees on the right, from where I was. It was sitting upon a massive chunk of white land, and I could see the footsteps of what was probably an earlier group’s descending path. 

The urge to grab the object was monumental. I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know why I went down and landed, trying to retrieve a seemingly meaningless artefact that attracted me like no other thing in this significant moment of my life. It didn’t make any sense. Was it going to take over my legendary journey up here, this impulsive thing I had just done? I didn’t know at the time. I just landed, grabbed the object, and flew down again towards the base camp. 

Two nights later, after tenths of hugs, hundreds of smiles, phone calls to family and friends and a few unexpected tears, I was at my hotel in Lhasa trying to get a grip of what had just happened. I had just conquered the world. However, in the corner of the room, on top of a wooden chair, the 6” x 4” little golden box that I had found, was starring at me. I had to open it and, once and for all, try to make sense why I almost jeopardised the whole thing for a vanity item. 

I slowly opened the box, and inside, folded in four, was an A5 beige page with some writings on it. The writings, however, wasn’t for me to apprehend, so a few weeks later, when I got back to my home in Port Talbot, I phoned the amazing editor of the legendary PianoPractising.com (I thought it was called like that anyway) website, to inquire. 

“Hello. Is this Nikos?”

“Who’s this??”

“It’s Howard Glockendoors, and I have in my possession something that might be of interest to you!”

“Really? Could it be a million pounds?”

“Um, no but…”

“So, what is it then? Could it be a lost episode from Blackadder’s fifth season?”

“Sir, I’m sorry to interrupt but this object that I have in my hands, has perhaps some sort of academic value to you, if I may say.”

“Urgh, I knew it. It’s again about the horrid piano, isn’t it? You just can’t give up you people! I know that I am an expert on the piano and the definitive authority on how to perform with one-centimetre fingernails, but that’s ridiculous.”

“So sorry sir if I made you feel…”

“Alright. What is this thing you’re talking about then?”

“Well, it seems to be some sort of handwritten rules, that a piano teacher had scribbled on a piece of paper! And then folded them carefully and placed them inside a golden box!”

“Golden box you just said? You must bring it to me at once! Um… I mean together with the paper in it of course, because I need to make an authoritative… um… academic evaluation… um… of the whole thing.”

❦

And this is how I acquired the rules that you are about to read. Well, I had to pay a hefty amount of money to Mr. Glockendoors for the box, but I made all of it back and then some, by pawning that golden box in Camden Town’s John’s Pawning Shop. 

Traits Of The Piano Teacher

1. You’re not teaching the piano to make the student LIKE it, but to make them PLAY it. It’s like you go to a movie director and ask them to make you like direction; that doesn’t make any sense, don’t you think? You normally ask a director to teach you direction because you like the passing of a story on screen, in the first place. In our case, students will keep liking the piano because you teach well and they see results. 
2. You’re not a psychologist or other self-appointed therapist. You’re not getting paid to treat and cure the psychosomatic issues of your pupils. You’re there to… um, let me remember… oh yes! TO TEACH THE PIANO!!! If in any amount or degree, the only way a student could be “treated” and “healed” is through your piano teaching. Your piano teaching in itself can teach valuable life lessons to your students through music; a student will hopefully be able to perform wonderful music and through their creating of this music they could potentially improve upon their personalities in a “subconscious” way. 
3. Do not ask personal questions. Ever. Personal questions and other similar “conversations” (so later on you can pick your student to pieces with your colleagues in a restaurant) are NOT allowed. Questions allowed are: “How are you?” “How was your concert?” “How was your practising this week?” “How did you improve this trill?” and similar. 
4. Swiftly accept that you might not know something asked. Delaying your response or forging a poor answer only increases your educational shortcomings by the second. 
5. Explain to each and everyone of your students that they’re all equal to you. You must explain this to them both in WORDS, but also by your ACTIONS. Don’t play favourites and give equal opportunities to each and everyone of your pupils. Keep saying this phrase to your students every now and then: “You are all equal to me.” (Your students should be able to hear this sentence for at least ten times in an academic year). Do not fall into the trap of thinking that an individual student might deserve better treatment or chances. All students deserve the same chances if they are willing to put in the practising hours. Accept from the start that not all of your students are going to credit your commitment to them in the future; especially the ones that you helped the most. 
6. Always check that you finished and started your lesson on time. Never finish earlier, even a second earlier. Even if “you’ve covered everything” and even if there’s volcanic lava coming towards you. If anything, finish later. Fashionable teachers may say something in the lines of, “But I just needed to finish what I’ve started, and didn’t want to leave my explanation incomplete and make the student wait until next time.” Nonsense – bad time management is called and not commitment, so do not try to excuse your incapacity to be a punctual teacher. A lesson will never be enough to cover everything, anyway. Laconic teaching is paramount. And students are more comfortable when they know that you are not holding them up from going to play with their mobiles in the café after the lesson.  
7. Only teach students things that they can take in until their next lesson. Do not overwhelm them with details they won’t be able to improve by the time their next lesson has started. 
8. Do not offer charitable lessons. For reason No 5 above of course, but also because you must show compassion for the teachers that are badly off,  and they cannot afford to be as “bighearted” as you. Okay? You must charge at all costs. 
9. Charge your lessons at very high rates. Firstly, because this way you educate the masses (the masses could include yourself sometimes, you know) that you’re doing something important. Secondly, because you teach yourself that piano is not your trivial endeavour. Then, because people will think, often gullibly, that you’re a good teacher since you’re charging top dollar, and lastly, because there are some teachers that are not as competent as you and they must also make a living by having to charge lower rates; let them survive as well.
10. Do not lure students into becoming musicians. When a student asks a piano teacher what they should do in their lives, that immediately means that they’re not sure if they want to become musicians. That’s not good news. Otherwise, they wouldn’t ask. Only the students themselves can tell you that they must become musicians, and then, if they express this explicitly,  you owe to help them. 

Copyright © 2018 by Nikos Kokkinis

❦

Many thanks to Solmaz Hatamian at unsplash.com, for the use of the image for this article. Visit the link below for more great images.