My Teacher Is Really Pushing Me

I noticed this, he is really piling on the exercises and reading. I'm not complaining about it but I wonder why he is pushing me so hard? So far I can keep up, but some has been quite difficult. I do notice one thing, based on what I show him from week to week, he will come up with sets of exercises to do. It really looks like he is zeroing in on my weak areas and bypassing the stuff that I can already do. For example, he made me read some grooves and play them, I told him at first I thought those were pretty hard for me, but I played through them with nary a mistake.

Anyone have any experience like this, where a teacher is making you fly through exercises? My gut feeling is he is a great teacher, I feel like I am light years ahead of where I would be without the lessons.

Maybe he's gauging your limits, but in the end he's pushing because he cares about your progress, he can see your potential and he can see that you're up for it.

He's setting you challenges and it sounds like you're rising to meet them. Sounds like a pretty good student/teacher relationship to me. Don't stress it. Pat yourself on the back and just enjoy it!!

I had a teacher like that. It got to the point where I got so mad at the guy, I practised my ass off so when I came to him the week after, I nailed everything. I guess his technique worked ;-) after that, instead of hating the guy, we became really good friends, he knew I worked hard, I knew he wanted me to. All the signs of a great teacher.

He wants you to be practising everyday and working hard. If you're not then what's the point in spending money to see him?

Good luck

This is a good thing.

Sadly very rare in this day and age.

If your teacher is bypassing the stuff you can do, it probably is because you already know how to do that and he wants to teach you more things. I am sure there's all kinds of different rudiments and beats and stuff(not sure what the terms for everything is yet). My take is if you already have something down its time to learn more things, while not abandoning the things you have already learned.

Isn't that why you would be seeing a teacher in the first place? To get kicked in the a$$ every time? Otherwise, why are you taking the lessons? I'd be angry if I paid somebody money to learn how to play only to find out I didn't learn that much, especially after knowing I could handle the work load.

Be thankful really! It's so rare to find a teacher like that nowadays, that you should consider yourself lucky

As a teacher it is really hard to push a student as much as I would like and you sound like exactly the type of student I love to teach and would like more of.

Get your ass kicked every time and realise your flaws and work on them for the next week. You will be so much better for it.

Dave

He really points out my flaws and as soon as he sees one, or a bad habit he always gives me a little exercise to tighten it up. At first it was my grip, he even took a picture of it for reference. We started with a reading book and I've done the first 8 chapters, through whcih I learned almost all of the combos of notes and rests from whole through 16th, but the best thing about that, he taught me a sticking method that I am now hooked on.

We are going into triplets, 5's, etc next and he said he will teach me a couple of alternate ways to stick those.

One of the most useful things is he exercises me on about 15 grooves, 'money beats' and I said I need to start learning fills, so he just took the reading exercises pointed at a page of them, and told me to play 3 bars of grove and use one of the bars of the reading exercise as the fill. worked like a champ.

I guess I am lucky, he's done wonders for my timing and feel, in under 2 months.