Music Player, Writer, Producer, Author & Teacher
There have been conferences and talks I’ve attended where teachers and parents lament how enamored their kids/students have become with video games and online gaming. There is a common feeling that it takes away from their other activities – whether it be sports, schoolwork, music lessons or other more traditional activities.
I sensed that something was amiss after a wave of students, teachers and players came to me over the course of a few years wanting to learn to improvise. Many of them had taken jazz improvisation classes or gone to clinics/camps only to come away uninspired or confused. Several of them had worked out of books that presented certain patterns or pieces to improvise over or with. While others had tried to learn transcriptions and extract applicable concepts.
One of my favorite things about teaching is getting students ready for performances. Deep-down, every kid loves to perform. We just have to find it in them. And if we put a lot of work into practicing, why not share it with an audience and help them feel good?
It’s ironic how something perceived as strict and mechanical can help us learn to move a room with not only pulse, but musicality. Creative uses of the metronome help us play more loosely and musically than if we just keep the beat with it. As musicians and music teachers we should be creative people. How we use the metronome should be a creative art in and of itself.
I was once rehearsing with a multi-platinum record recording artist. I was given a few cd’s of music days before the rehearsal and jotted down keyboard lines, progressions, etc – whatever I needed to get through a two-hour gig of music I’d never heard before. There were no charts – just my transcriptions/notes. At some point the band leader turned to me and asked, “What are you looking at all that paper for? Music doesn’t exist on a piece of paper.”
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When I began teaching, I was caught off guard by how unreasonably frustrated (or even angry) some students would become when they couldn’t do something they were being asked to do. A couple of times a young student banged his forehead on the keyboard after being asked to do something for the first time – because he anticipated that he couldn’t do it. Other students would come back after a week of practice and not have something “perfect” and decide the assignment was too hard and give up.
In music lessons, getting stuck on the same repertoire can happen when practice routines and teacher expectations get out of alignment. This is a common scenario that can be worked through – as long as we recognize the signs and communicate game-plans effectively to students and parents.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all we can’t do yet with our music. I remember that feeling of always having to “get this down” or “learn how to do this one thing” before I was “ready” for some superficial level of musicianship.
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It’s inevitable that all of us are forced to take breaks from our instruments at some point – either for health reasons, financial reasons, life events or other reasons. These breaks often create a lot of doubt and hesitation about ramping things up once again. It’s natural to become overwhelmed by what we have forgotten, how bad and uncooperative our technique has become and how bored we will become in working back to where we once were.
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I think it’s important that music students and musicians only play what they want to play – all the time. At a time when kids have so many activities to choose from, I’ve found this to be key in maintaining and developing engagement with students. As a musician, it makes practicing and playing way more rewarding. The cool thing is that you can do this with any repertoire.
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