Building a strong foundation (intro)

In our fast-paced society, often students are interested in fast-tracking their learning progress because they want to reach a certain level in a certain period of time., and as a result, a lot of the fundamentals are often neglected. Nowadays, with the profusion of mobile apps, one can even learn the piano with your phone. So why bother spending time with building a strong foundation?

Let me use tennis as an example, because I'm a big tennis fan and I see a LOT of connection between sports and playing piano as they both involve technique, practice, muscle memory, and discipline. So if you like tennis enough to sign up for lessons, the coach would definitely focus first on your foundation, which might even include correcting and fixing a number of things in your game. This isn't nearly as much fun as playing the game, so why is it important? This is simply in order to play tennis well, you need good fundamentals and technique so that you can APPLY them in your game. 

We don't play games on piano, but for us, we also need a strong foundation to play the piano well. In tennis, those who have good technique can play with ease, and to be able to play the game well is the ultimate reward. In music, those who have good technique also play with ease. They can focus on the artistic aspect and the expression, and being able to play the music with STYLISTIC expression is the ultimate reward---I do stress the word "stylistic" because one can still feel the music while playing the piano at a very mediocre level, just like how you can whack the ball around on a tennis court and still have fun.