Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mithridates]

Let's say you're living in Seoul and you have the means to take six months off and just practice the piano. What's the best way? Let's also assume for the moment that your goal is to become good enough within six months (you already know the piano pretty well) that you can gain recognition and not teach English anymore. What do you do?

This isn't the situation I'm in, by the way. I wish. Just wondering...

[tzechuk]

You'd have to be extremely talented to be able to do that, Mirth. Plus you'd have to pay loads of money to one of those top professors/concert pianists to teach you. They charge an extremely high fee. I asked as I wanted to continue with my piano study - I was quoted around 500,000 won PER HOUR with one of the top professional concert pianists in Seoul!!!!!!! The next level of a lesser top professional (i.e. *B* list rather than *A* list) said she would teach for 250,000 an hour. I paid 100 quid once for an hour with one of the top sopranos in England and I thought that was expensive (considering a normal lesson with a semi-famous local teacher/public performer is around 20/25 pounds)

6 months isn't really that long a time to recap on what you learned before and to brush it up enough to become a professional performer (or are you thinking of more being a teacher?). There are many, many talented musicians here in Korea, most of them have masters/phd degrees in their chosen iinstrument(s) - although why it is really needed I would never know.

Anyway.. why do you want to know? Are you thinking of becoming a professional pianist?

[tomato]

I know it is possible to become very good in that time.
In the United States, I knew a proud teacher who said that an adult student came to him, not knowing how to read a note. He practiced 5 hours a day--from the time he got home until the time he went to bed.
In 6 months, he was able to play Chopin nocturnes which I would never attempt.
That would not qualify a person professionally, though. For that, one would also need classroom instruction in music theory and music history.

I wonder what I could accomplish if I could take 6 months to study Korean.

[Tiberious aka Sparkles]

My second year in Korea I was offered a cameo in a domestically-produced porn film. I leapt at the offer (if you ever rent Whoriental Vol 113, I'm jajangmyun delivery boy number 3. Check for me!).

3 years on and I finally have a starring role: My Sassy Man-Girl. It's gay porn available only on the blackmarket, but, hey, Seoul wasn't built in a day, right?

Maybe it's because I just finished watching Billy Elliot, but I say "let those fingers fly! Let them dance!"

I hope your incorporeal friend realizes his hypothetical, quixotic dream.

Sparkles*_*

[Zenpickle]

I was considered "pretty good," and I studied piano and music composition when I started college. What I saw over and over again was that if you are at a certain point, no teacher can help you. You are on your own to study and practice music and push yourself. I never learned ONE THING from my piano professors in college. If anything, they stifled my musical growth by trying to turn me into a music-playing machine with no soul.

Later, after I quit the music program, I got together with my old music major friends, and they felt the same way I did. They mentioned that I still played with a lot more emotion than they did because the music professors squeezed the joy out of music, even though they were by far more proficient.

So anyway, if you asked me or any of my former classmates, tell your friend to find some music that he loves that is challenging and learn it. Play it. Love it. Then get some more.

A piano teacher will make no difference.

[mithridates]

I think Zenpickle's right...or at least I hope. When I learned the drums I spent the first year or so at a private school taking lessons and became pretty good at reading music, learning all the rudiments, getting all my limbs coordinated with each other and learning to do just about anything, and after that the only thing left to do was to pick up song after song after song...that was in jr. high, right before the internet started so we had to actually order song books from here and there though the place I took lessons at already had quite a bit. I took some time off but then decided to go back to the school to work on my jazz and fusion because I didn't know that sort of music so well and I had developed a lead foot from playing too much heavy metal.
That guy from the pianist, Adrian...something, plays the first track by himself and seems to be all right, but the last track (with the credits) is just... like that.
Tzechuk, if I were in a magical fairyland where I had six months off to do whatever I wanted I would want to work on the piano because 1)being a drummer the only music I've made so far has been toneless, 2)it's good for one's neural development, 3)knowing an instrument is cool.

[Zenpickle]

I hope you do get around to learning more instruments. Piano, guitar, heh, even a harmonica are good intimate musical instruments. The best moments of reflection have been when I've sat down with my keyboard or guitar in the still darkness, playing random chords or melodies. It's hard to describe that feeling.

[seoulmon]

You need insperation. If it's in your head, eventually the sound will come out your fingers. But if there is nothing up there on the second floor, well, nothing ever is going to come out no matter how much money you pay.

So speakith Seoulmon.

[seoulmon]

I'd like to get back into the piano....it was my major in college but then I completely stoped when I came to K.

Mostly I'd like to focus on jazz....