Do adult amateurs have special problems learning harp?

[unknown-user]

As an adult beginner (45 when I began), I can only relay my experience.

[carl-swanson]

Barb- With any student I teach, I usually ask them what they want to work on, what music they like, and when the student is ready to work on a new piece, I give them a choice of 2 to 4 different pieces that will accomplish what I want to accomplish and let them choose. I’ve learned the hard way that if the student doesn’t like the piece, you will accomplish nothing.

It’s really nice to hear that there are dedicated adult beginners who are willing to do the work that will achieve results. I didn’t mean to make a broad sweeping statement that “all adult beginners are awful to teach.” I was just relating my own experience with a few people and was trying to figure out the mindset that would make them completely ignore the valuable work that they had to do. Its nice to hear there are those willing to do it.

[alice-freeman]

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There may be something else going on here with adult amateurs. Carl is talking about a one-time lesson, perhaps at a conference, or associated with a workshop, not a student who will be coming back week after week. Adults usually want to get the most out of an experience and in some cases, I wonder if their desires get in the way of a realistic view of their abilities? They are either taking a one-off lesson because they want to take advantage of a master harp teacher, they do not have a regular teacher, or they want to work on something that their regular teacher has not offered them. Either of the last two reasons might explain why they show up with inappropriate music.

Adult amateurs are different from adult beginners. “Pro-ams”, or amateurs who play at a professional level, as Barbara Conable calls them in an Internet article on What to Do About Performance Anxiety, rarely suffer from performance anxiety. They play a lot of chamber music and there are no bad consequences if they do not play well, like loss of a job, scorn from colleagues and so on. I can see people like this getting out of touch with a realistic assessment of their skill levels. They may be “playing” more than they are “practicing.”

For me, I believe that the bottom line is the technical work is necessary and having a strong background in music before you start learning the harp is helpful. If you have a good regular teacher that you follow, and you practice instead of playing, it is possible to make steady progress, even for us “oldsters” who started harp after our children were grown and out on their own.

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