> Polyphony... counterpoint. Yes, sorry, polyphony was a bad choice of words. I'm not even talking about polyphony or counterpoint as musical concepts--you ca

> Polyphony... counterpoint. Yes, sorry, polyphony was a bad choice of words. I'm not even talking about polyphony or counterpoint as musical concepts--you can certainly get the gist of these without years of playing Bach--I mean it more like this: they put those four part fugues in the repertoire because it's an excellent technical exercise for student pianists. It's easy to just play the notes, but much harder to bring out the melody as it bounces around the four voices, especially as it goes into the left hand and the weaker fingers of either hand, and more so when the voices overlap. In fact the whole thing teaches voicing in general. > Improvising... is terrible advice. Vocal call/response is different. I meant that it's a non-starter to expect a five year old (or an average fifteen year old, by the way) to listen to a random song on the radio and just improv what they hear on a piano with no sheet music. Hell, I've been playing for like 27 years and it would take me ages to transcribe by ear some random Chopin prelude that I could otherwise easily sight read (well... one of the easier ones anyway). > If joy means informal pop songs... then start with that. This is what I mean; you don't start with even "songs". I'm a fully grown adult. Reasonably good musician, I think. Played piano my whole life, trombone in high school, picked up flamenco guitar on my own. A few years ago I was left alone for a few hours with a clarinet; do you know what I accomplished after like 3 straight hours of practice? I could barely get through "London bridge is falling down", and I considered that an achievement. My point is that you have to deal with the motivation problem well before you're anywhere near playing "Let it Go". And when you're ready to play a real pop song, trust me, your teacher will let you do anything you want if it'll get you to practice.