The piano players here can attest: There are some really nutty piano teachers out there. You get them, or you don't. It's a matter of luck for some.

And let me tell you that I was, and am, a very lucky piano student.

My first horror teacher was when my mother decided to drop her twins off in piano class. I can't remember for the life of me when did I turn to my mum, with the sweet innocent 4 year old face I had then, and say something that went 'Mummy, piano! Piano!' or 'I piano!' or anything like that. Mum claimed that she enrolled us in because we wanted to play the piano.

Maybe we did - but definitely not under that teacher I had. She was bespectacled, she had no ruler but was stern, strict, and almost dictator-material. No wrong note missed her, and she made it a point to correct every single note. Every single note. It was no wonder she scowled - the twins, and the little sister that followed along one day, were absolutely hopeless.

It came to a point in time that the lessons stopped - I believe the teacher had enough of us and told my mum to stop the lessons because the girls couldn't play under her anymore.

Then there was a new teacher for me, 3 years later. She had started teaching my elder sister, and my mother thought of putting me in too. I used to follow to the teacher's mansionette of marbled floors and leather couches, and watch my sister play under the teacher. She was a bad player (and still is), and the teacher didn't seem so fierce. I decided to try again - and what a terrible time I had. The first piece I got under her was 'The Music Box'. I had barely touched the piano for 3 years, I had practically no experience under me, and the notes on the left hand ultimately did me in. I never made it past the first few bars. I had little to no co-ordination. I started to dread going to class - my teacher was no help either. She loaded me with practice homework, which was never chiseled into my then 9-year-old brain. I left the teacher after feeling too demoralized.

Fast forward to now, with training in the electone/electronic organ to Grade 8, and I'm in Berklee. I had no way out from playing the piano seriously. As the lecturer who auditioned me said, "No way can you avoid this here in Berklee. We have the best teachers here, so we're giving ya the best education. You have to learn it!"

So I went in to see my teacher, and he was better - and worse - than my previous teachers combined.

He wasn't angry when I admitted that I didn't practice (I said 'I couldn't practice' that day, and it was true. I was getting used to the schedule then.), but he had a cunning way of putting a threat across. In the middle of that lesson, he went, "Tell you what, this often works for the students who make many mistakes. For every mistake you make, you'll owe me $10."

That put me into a panic, and I really messed the rest of my playing then. He sat behind me in his office chair, laughing, "I'm going to be rich! Jeff's gonna get a free cuppa joe at this rate!"

He was not a piano teacher. He was a devilish character.

If anything, he made me feel bitter. And when you translate such an emotion into work, it gets you places. I went to his lesson one day with a fully memorized score in my head and decided that if he hated my playing, then I might as well stop learning under him and get a new teacher.

I knocked on his door, customary to Berklee instructors preferring their students to knock on time. 5 minutes passed before I rapped the second time. Then a third time 10 minutes later. This being a half-hour class, I thought of giving up and going back. Little could be done in 20 minutes, and I was angry that he had chosen to ignore me. Maybe he hated me that much.

The door opened and he asked for a few more minutes to wrap things up with the other student in there before me.

When I finally got into the lesson, he then asked to hear the piece.

I played what I could.

The teacher didn't sit next to me and listen. He got up and walked about, checking his email, admiring the room and the photos in the room, sitting behind me in his office chair and such. Today, when I finished the piece, he was standing at the window, scratching at his jeans and what seemed like... underwear. Eww.

He turned to look at me, "What do you think?"

Another shot at degrading me? All right. "I think it needs work."

He broke out.

"THAT WAS BRILLIANT! I LOVED IT!"

... what just happened?

He sat down right next to me, "Yeah, it could do with a little work, but you're already there! It sounds nice and solid, little to no mistakes! You really have surpassed my expectations of you!"

As he kept babbling on with something about my parents and emailing them personally, I wondered what were his expectations of me in the first place. Probably low, slow and blundering, but that... that expression of his freaked me out.

From then on, the work got much, much harder. Now I'm playing a jazz standard with very weird chords, moved into all the different keys in the scale, and he expects certain playing techniques from all of them to be demonstrated to him in class next Monday. I haven't been up to his standards again, and I could tell his patience is starting to run thin again.

Then maybe he'll burst again with excitement once I get it.

I really am a very lucky student.

-<dd>