Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: benefits of music, brain development, brass playing, how to have fun making music, learning music, music lessons vermont, performance attitude, practice strategies, SAT standardized tests, short term memory musical performance
Often, students arrive at their first lesson hoping to be told how music they play in band goes, in order to please their band director and place better in band activities. Their focus is obviously geared to specific band pieces. How do I play this? Perhaps, students and parents feel that if those pieces can be played well, they will get the music experience do better in school and move on to other things later.
This is at best a recipe for a bad relationship with the private music teacher and at worst an opportunity for failure in school band programs.
The lesson of music cannot be accomplished over a summer. It is not well suited to short term immersion learning, nor is a student a beneficiary of music and all it has to offer, with this attitude.
In fact, music skills are inherent as aptitude, that is an ability to discriminate sounds. However, those skills are latent and not usable in music performance without necessary muscle and mental development. Growth understanding music skills, such as rhythms, tones, connected or separated sounds, is a function of process, or several areas of learning over time. Reliable performance is available to a player only with practice over several years. Thus, talent comes per forma, or through the form, as muscle and mental development occurs: over long term investments of time and effort.
It is through this experience, that students develop the skills and understanding that music is famous for giving us: discipline, determination, diligence, respect, reliability, responsibility, correction, construction and creativity, social acumen and time management.
The investment of lessons only pays off over a long period of time. Short term expectations are like short term investments of any kind. Please do not put your private music teacher in such a position: it is unfair to your child.
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I hope you’ll check my blog post today on left brain/right brain function.
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Comment by drtombibey September 14, 2009 @ 1:43 pmThanks. That is the kind of thing music helps us with, isn’t it? Have you read Musicophillia, or any of Daniel Levitin’s books?
Comment by octavemode September 14, 2009 @ 3:40 pm