1.1 The effectiveness of metaphors
Using metaphors is a useful and important tool in piano teaching. There are commonly used by lots of teachers and music instructors. It is a strategy that helps a student understand the musical meaning of some parts of a particular piece in a more imaginative way, and sometimes more easy than with other traditional teaching strategies.
There are a lot of technical issues in piano that can be overcomed just by changing one student's mindset in order to deal with them successfully. Of course this changing of someone's mindset is not an easy task for any teacher and it works differently in every student. This is something that really has to be taken into account. Also we have to consider that not all technical issues can be treated like this, and not in all cases metaphors can be created. There are certain issues that can only be handled physically, because simply there is no other way.
In anycase, metaphors remain a powerful teaching tool and something that is really effective in many piano students.
1.2 The goal of using a metaphor
With metaphors, students learn more implicitly. ''Imagery statements use vivid, sensory details and often employ metaphor, used here as an inclusive term referring to figurative language that creates comparisons or allusions.''1
A teacher does not reveal in a literal way what he wants from the student, but encourage him/her to trigger their imagination, and in that way cultivate their musical expression by building solid images in their minds that makes reaching the musical goal easier for them. 2
''It begins with something familiar and ends as an explanation of something unfamiliar reaching into students' minds working through comparison, likeness, and the connection to things which they already understand or to which they have a reference.'' 3
1.3 Technique and musical expression
The issue of expressiveness though does not widely concern music teachers. ''Much of the musical instruction time for a young musician is allocated to refine areas such us posture, tone, rhythm and intonation, causing teachers of young musicians to spend less instructional time on coaching expressive skill development.'' 4
There is a consideration that musical expressivity is something that a student is gifted with, while technique is something that can be built through practice.
In my opinion, musical expression is also something that can be developed through time and practice and many students will be surprised by the musical depth they had and did not explore yet. By using a metaphor and removing a student's attention from a physical obstacle, a teacher can find the way of guiding him/her towards the goal implicitly and more easily.
So, as a conclusion, metaphors are a very nice example of how a teacher can find musical solutions in technical problems, and with this tool sharpen the imagination of students and prove that expressivity can be also developed, and it is not something that ''either you have it or you don't have it'' by nature.
Bibliography
1. Vandewalker, David W., Imagery and Metaphor: Effective wind band pedagogy for expressive musical performance, https://www.shsu.edu/academics/music/center-for-music-education/praxis/articles/imagery-and-metaphor.html, 2017 (last accesed December 11, 2022)
2. Vandewalker, David W., Imagery and Metaphor: Effective wind band pedagogy for expressive musical performance, https://www.shsu.edu/academics/music/center-for-music-education/praxis/articles/imagery-and-metaphor.html, 2017 (last accesed December 11, 2022)
3. Vandewalker, David W., Imagery and Metaphor: Effective wind band pedagogy for expressive musical performance, https://www.shsu.edu/academics/music/center-for-music-education/praxis/articles/imagery-and-metaphor.html, 2017 (last accesed December 11, 2022)
4. Vandewalker, David W., Imagery and Metaphor: Effective wind band pedagogy for expressive musical performance, https://www.shsu.edu/academics/music/center-for-music-education/praxis/articles/imagery-and-metaphor.html, 2017 (last accesed December 11, 2022)