Practicing the Fundamentals Leads to Increased Success
Earlier this year, I attended the funeral of my high school piano teacher. Mrs. Gunning, as her students called her, was a masterful teacher, pianist and organist. In addition to running a private studio, she taught at the university level, served as a keyboardist for the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, was the accompanist for the New Mexico Symphony Chorus and was the organist for the church I attended through high school. Mrs. Gunning and I continued our friendship after high school until her death at age 79. As such, I was one of a handful of former students who had the pleasure of calling her Maribeth.
When I began studying piano under Maribeth, I was already a rather accomplished pianist for my age; at 14 years old, I probably had a big chip on my shoulder. At the time, Maribeth seemed overly fastidious and unyielding. She insisted on all students dedicating 30 minutes of each weekly lesson to studying music theory — practicing melody, rhythm, counterpoint, harmony, tonal systems, history, scales, tuning, consonance, dissonance — what one might refer to as musical book learning.
