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- Dealing with pressure:
All adults know that pressure is a regular part of our professional
lives, no matter what career we follow. Music students are in the unusual position of having to confront pressure at an early
age, and having to confront it often. And this early exposure to pressure is actually a priceless advantage. Why? Because
when these music students are adults, pressure will feel like a familiar adversary: they will have faced it – and defeated
it – in countless exams, concerts, workshops and lessons. They learn to have it work for them, rather than sabotaging their
best. And they learn to accept it as a natural part of doing things that matter.
- Responding to Criticism (without
taking things personally):
Despite music teachers’ focus on the positives, music lessons are often largely about reshaping
things that are not working so well. The end result is that music students learn at an early age to regularly accept advice
and feedback from people more knowledgeable than themselves. They experience first hand the value of implementing that advice,
and come back each week ready for more. In so doing, they learn the power of an age-old combination for self improvement –
hard work, and acting on the counsel of a mentor. Why is the process so valuable? It produces adults who are more willing
to consider the views of those around them, and who will know when to wisely defer to those who have demonstrated a greater
mastery of the subject at hand. They will consult more often, refine their ideas based on trusted feedback from others, and
produce better results.
- Persistence:
Music students have a LOT of preparation to get through in order to
be ready for a lesson or recital. Half an hour a day is actually three and a half hours a week. The thing to keep in mind
is that there is no way any student will feel like doing that amount of practice all the time. But when a recital is at stake,
most of them actually do the work anyway. The reasons may not be noble – fear of making a complete fool of themselves is often
a big motivating factor for getting the work done – but somewhere, somehow, a lot of work goes on that the student probably
does not feel like doing. The evidence for this is that despite all our gripes about pupils who don’t practice, most of our
students end up ready for their performances most of the time. At school, projects, tests and mid term papers are just other
performances to get ready for. They won’t feel like working on those either. But as their music teacher, I will have helped
them confront the reality that you just “Do It Anyway.”
- Multi-leveled focus:
In the course of even a short
piece a child will have to closely supervise hundreds of individual decisions: Which note comes next? How loud should I be
playing? How can I recover from that little slip I just made? How staccato should the middle section be? How long should I
hold this fermata before moving on to the next note? Have I already done the repeat or not? The room is silent, all attention
is focused on them, and all their attention is focused on the moment. It can be quite moving to watch, and makes you wonder
what else these children would be capable of. But what is most exciting is that the concentration exhibited in the performance
itself is actually just the tip of a much larger iceberg. For this performance to occur at all, the same child had to be still
and focused in dozens of lessons and hundreds of practice sessions. The audience never gets to see these, but we are talking
about many, many hours of intense application that would not have happened otherwise. So it’s not just that they know how
to focus – they also learn when. This helps ensure that they can not only deliver their best when it’s needed, but that they
don’t turn themselves into a nervous wreck in the process.
- Project management:
Preparing for a recital
doesn’t just happen. It is first planned long before the actual date of performance. Pieces are chosen, mini deadlines are
set, and a strategy for getting it all done in time is established. Quality control checkpoints are built in along the way
in the form of mock performances and workshops. The end result? Very young students are able to build quite epic events one
small step at a time, and become used to the idea that what they do today prepares them for tomorrow – and sometimes for a
tomorrow that could even be twelve months away. I don’t think I need to list some non-musical examples of how this will help
them later, and it makes a lie of the notion that kids are only focused on short-term gratification.
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