GOOD AND BAD STUDENTS

[vincent-pierce]

I love this thread. It is so great for me, as a student, to read what a group of experienced teachers have to say about teaching their students. Hopefully I can work more toward the ‘good student’ description. I usually make good progress, though at times I don’t, and I definitely respect my teacher, but I think I could do better when it comes to practicing the way my teacher tells me to. Interesting insights. I feel like I’m eavesdropping on a faculty meeting or something! 🙂

[carl-swanson]

Vince- If you have a teacher in whom you have total confidence, then start by doing everything she says, without arguing. That’s how you will make the most progress. I would suggest also that you ask her for a written ‘report card’, an assessment if you will of how you are doing. I do this with my students about once a year, and it’s an opportunity to get away from the minute details of week to week lessons and look at the big picture. Here’s the type of thing I mean. This is for a fictional student I’ll call Dave.

Dave puts in serious practice time and comes prepared to his lessons. He knows the notes and rhythms of each piece he has prepared. His technique has steadily improved over the past year, and most of the technical problems he was dealing with over the past year are well on their way to resolution.

Dave needs to improve his practice techniques. The same trouble spots keep showing up week after week, and Dave doesn’t isolate these and fix them early in the learning process. The result is that he has learned these spots wrong, making it twice as difficult to fix them. He has to unlearn the mistake and replace it with the correct way of playing the spot.

Dave tends to work on too much material during the week. It would be better if he worked on less material, but brought it to the lesson much closer to performance level. Dave needs to think of each lesson as a performance and get as close to that level as possible in the shortest amount of time.

Dave needs to pay much closer attention to fingering. He can be very haphazard about working out or following written fingerings, and the result is that they cause him problems as the piece gets closer to final tempo. In sumation, I would say that Dave needs to be much more particular about getting all of the details right as early in the learning process as possible so that he doesn’t have to ‘unlearn’ these problems later on.

A report card along those lines gives the student a view on what the teacher sees over the course of several months or a year, and is a view of which the student is completely unaware. I would also like the student to issue a report card on the teacher so that the teacher can see the teaching process from the student’s standpoint. I think they would both benefit from a candid(but diplomatic!) assessment of the other.

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

Where does Dave live? I’ll give him lessons.

[unknown-user]

If a student comes to every lesson with the piece performance ready, why the heck do they need a teacher?

It is healthy for students to be working at multiple levels at once: sightreading, ‘exposure pieces’ to become familiar with a variety of repertoire, pieces to fill in technical gaps, and finally performance polish pieces. It is completely normal for students to come to lessons nervous, wanting to please the teacher, but flawed in some way. I’ll suggest that is the reason they are the student and not the teacher. Even teachers have room to grow. If i had a teacher who expected perfection at every lesson, i would not grow. Perfectionism causes emotional blockage. Striving for perfection is important for any artist, dismissing everything except perfection is wretchedly unhealthy. Also, perfection is a subjective term in music, so it can simply mean the teacher’s expectations.

The Socratic dialog helps students become their own teacher. This is the underlying goal for anyone who wishes a lifetime of success for their students. Let the student question, even challenge when it is done sincerely and in a desire to grow. If students across the board are not encouraged to question, then what happens to those who have the misfortune of an ill-informed teacher? Unquestioning obedience is a sure-fire way to lose yourself as a human being, and then what will you have to say as an artist?

[unknown-user]

Dear Julie,

What is the future for those of us who have, for years followed teachers who insisted upon unquestionalble obience, and only accepted their preception of perfection? We have learned not to ask questions, but to sit and listen to what our teachers have to say without being allowed to speak.

[unknown-user]

*cyberhug* for Cynthia

The human spirit runs deep and is incredibly strong. That you can recognize how life has shaped you is essentially proof that you have command over yourself as a person and your future. I am really glad you posted because other people reading these posts could go away with some hopelessness, which is definitely not intended. Knowing oneself as an artist is being able to recognize what life has done to us and then to share that with others. When we face hardships, that only gives us more means to connect with others who have shared those same experiences. You have something important to say through music and you will find a way. That comes through in your post with clarity. :o)

[unknown-user]

I’m not certain what the history of the piece is, but Valeri Kikta Sonata no. 2 “Bylina’s Scale” contrasts serenity with oppression. (i can give you info on how to get the score) The middle section is

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

If you have had strong teachers who “imposed” their view of the music on you, the purpose should have been to show you, by example, how to interpret music well. Having finished study, it is then your choice how you interpret pieces and your sense of how to do so should be stronger. I don’t know why you would feel so lost. Perhaps it has something to do with your concept of interpretation? Our purpose, if serious performers, is to serve the composers vision to the best extent possible, which does mean disregarding immediate impulses of doing this or that with a particular note, and trying to get at the core of the phrase. Popular music is well suited for doing whatever you feel like with it, so just let yourself go. If you apply yourself to that, I would think you would find what you are missing. I don’t know who your teachers are, but I woudn’t necessarily blame them, or see them as negative. It’s a process, and it doesn’t end when lessons end, and lessons are themselves a process.

[unknown-user]

Saul, i think your post creates an important counterpoint to mine. This topic is heavily determined by the specifics of a particular context. It is still worth addressing in more abstract terms which may or may not apply in a single instance.

Over the past century there have been many advancements in education, psychology, neuroscience, etc. For some reason music training relies more heavily on tradition and has not appeared to take full advantage of current research. It is important to see what aspects are valuable within a given system, but it is also important to question the status quo if it could be the source of problems. Student centered learning using the Socratic dialog is one of those advancements.

Because of the kind of emotional and financial wreckage so prevalent in our field, i have gone so far to make the choice to start a master’s in counseling in two days actually. :o) I’ve already invested so much time and money in classical music alone, and have enjoyed success and personal contribution, but am now convinced that the system alone is damaging to me as a person. This new focus is attempt to reclaim myself. It is not possible for me to give up music, and so i plan to do interdisciplinary research. My new dream is to use the harp to help treat Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, anxiety and depression, and abuse recovery always with a focus on expression and meaning. The cut-throat competition, harsh dialog, elitism, one-up-man-ship, name dropping, approach to life is not always healthy. There are aspects to our profession that could use improvement. Right now dominance in personality is at least an equally important skill to musical insight and ability. I don’t believe in blaming individuals, but the system which is flawed. I appreciate that everyone is only trying to survive. It’s why i mentioned in an earlier post not squelshing a certain degree of egotism if it makes the student strong to endure the harsh climate of our profession. It is like animals fighting over the last waterhole in a drought. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if pop music didn’t consume all the resources our society willing offers to the “arts”. (term used loosely folks ;o) )

[Tacye]

This brings up a point I have been thinking about for a while- what proportion of students, at any level, will go on to be professional musicians, particularly classical performers?

[unknown-user]

Did you mean to claim Socratic dialogue as an advancement of the last century?

hahaha Ironically yes. The pendulum forever swings back and forth. That philosophy is in line with student centered teaching in which the teacher draws out all the inherent potential that is within the student. This doesn’t mean they don’t model and direct, but that the learning process is molded specifically around the student’s unique mind and potential, rather than molding the students into a preset tradition.

The military breaks down the individual and then rebuilds them into their image. That philosophy is often seen in the arts as well, but is at odds with the Socratic method. The military needs individuals subjected to the whole. Individuals cannot be questioning orders and so it makes sense to subjugate them. I don’t see the strength of this philosophy in the arts apart from a desire to fulfil social control and dominance.

Here’s another quote that captures the same student centered ideology. A child’s mind is a fire to be kindled, not an empty vessel to be filled.

[carl-swanson]

Tacye-Making a decision at a much lower level on much younger students as to what sort of harp education they should get is as bad as assuming that all harp students are going to be great soloists. It pushes them into an area of playing that they may or may not ultimately want to be involved.

I think that the only thing we can do as teachers is make sure that each student has a solid technical and theoretical foundation. That means they can get around the instrument easily, and that they can read music, and understand the basics of harmony well. That way, whatever they ultimately do(play weddings, sing and accompany themselves, play jazz, classical, or whatever) they are not hindered by inadequate training. Particularly in the Pop and jazz fields, your arrangements and improvisations can only be as good as your technique allows. As the student advances, the teacher should look for, and be open to, preferences in areas other than strictly classical repertoire. If the student wants to do something else, like pop arrangements, the teacher should be willing and able to teach those or to help the student find a teacher in that field.

[Lisa McCann]

Amen, Carl.

I have said before on this column that music saved my life. It was my means of expression, my confidant, and my counselor. I had a piano teacher from age 5 until the day I went off to college as a full-scholarship piano major that I will never forget.

Sounds sappy, doesn’t it? My teacher wasn’t a trained counselor–what she taught me had everything to do with technique and theory, but that skill provided me with all of the choices I needed to control my own life.

Her teaching provided an amazing and needed counterpart to one of my parents, who, if they had been a piano teacher, would have been at the opposite end of the teaching spectrum. At home, I was a trained monkey–“I’ve set up an audition for you here on Wednesday, on Thursday you are booked at the Rotary Club, Friday you will provide background music at a private party, and next week we’ll be having friends over–will the new Rachmanoff prelude be ready?”

I’m trying to say that the teaching articulated above provided the most empowering counterpoint to everything else–and that made all the difference.

Lisa

[Lisa McCann]

The teaching articulated by Carl, not my parent!

L

[Lisa McCann]

Rachmaninoff….duh.

L

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