DoubleBlade said:
sorry to talk about Yamaha again......
have u personally experienced this delaying antic demonstrated by your present/past teachers? it would be prudent to hold your tongue, especially if it's only hearsay.
on a separate note, i support yamaha and their music syllabus because i think it's well thought-out, well-planned, and really gives the learning pianist a good foundation. a pity that most kids lack the self-motivating interest to take an active role in sitting down to study and try to understand their course material. i'd say a larger percentage of them are there in the class because their parents enrolled them.
i was previously enrolled in JMC(junior music course) and JCPC(junior classical piano course). great way to start. from JMC i learnt how to play chords, and how to fit in the chords to a song by ear. from JCPC i picked up music theory, sight reading skills and exposure to masterpieces. these courses were only offered to kids up to age 9 or 10(grade 3), but it made a great difference to us students. even though most of my classmates stopped playing music a few years after due to sheer lack of interest, i remember that almost all of us(who were enrolled in the same time slots for both courses) could play by ear, and none of us ever got anything less than a merit grade for our ABRSM exams.
this, compared to other friends of mine who went down the private teacher route since grade 1 and some could actually fail at grade 1 or 2 (which is really quite impossible!), and can't play anything if they don't have scores in front of them.
group lessons also help to provide a more interactive learning environment, which makes lessons less dull, especially in the beginning stages. however, for personal development into more advanced stages, individual lessons would be better. private also good, esp if the teacher is of quite some calibre.
overall, my stand is that yamaha offers good courses, and if anyone were to ask me for recommendations, i would say my preferred choice of music education is in yamaha music school.
