GUEST POST BY OISIN
LOOK LOOK LOOK LOOKLOOKLOOKLOOK!!!! IT’S NOT A BIRD OR A PLANE OR SOME GUY IN SPANDEX ABLE TO LEAP TALL BUILDINGS WITH A SINGLE BOUND! IT’S WAY BETTER THAN THAT! IT’S A GUEST POST FROM OISIN!!!* YES! REALLY!
Music Teacher Stuff
I promised a blog a Very Long Time Ago…. but there was lots of water that needed pumping under that bridge first.
Talking of “first”, the very first thing to note is that teaching music (one-to-one), whether it’s piano, flute, organ, theory (which I do) and ocarina, kazoo or bicycle pump (which I don’t), isn’t altogether about teaching music.
Does that make sense? No? Good! Now you are nicely set up for the rest of the blog. Try to stay with it …
It is devoutly to be hoped that at the end of any given period of time, the pupil will become more proficient at their instrument. In the intervening times, though (and they certainly will intervene), there is much else to be done. Take nerves and confidence, to name but a million: a Gibbering Pupil is seldom an Accurate one, let alone Musical.** Here we come to the first frustration: schoolchildren are sponges, and given a modicum of talent, progress can be made astonishingly quickly and with little or no nerves, even under exam conditions. However – to do this they Have To Concentrate. And they so often don’t, especially boys who have their daily quota of Macho Poses to strike. Girls, on the other hand, are swots (universally known, and attested by the News of The World). Adults, by comparison, are not sponges, but can concentrate like fury. Their other major attribute is that they often gibber at the drop of a hat, which rather spoils the effect. So dealing with nerves is an essential part of the whole music-teachery thing. You have at times to even get past the “but you know what you’re doing and YOU’RE LISTENING TO ME!” stage***, which mostly affects adults, but can affect children as well, especially if they have a nasty, but too-fashionable case of Low Self Esteem. Scraping off the ceiling may be needed from time to time, but the goal is to allow gravity to take its normal course, and keep them on the piano stool.
To this end, I use humour (as if you hadn’t guessed) a great deal. The pupils I have trouble getting on with are the mercifully very few who have little or no sense of humour. Quite besides putting pupils at their ease, I find that you can put many more serious points across with a smile. And for me, smiling, and even the occasional guffaw is GOOD! In the past I have inherited pupils from teachers who regularly reduced them to tearful messes at the end of a lesson, but I don’t subscribe to that. Apart from anything else, I would hate to teach like that, and if I hated teaching, I couldn’t do it. My purpose is primarily to show how much fun, enjoyment, rapture, or whatever, there is in music. The incentive to work at a craft or a skill, nine times out of ten, is the pull of the sheer pleasure of being able to play a particular piece. (To that end, I have often allowed a pupil to go for something that properly is out of their current league, on the grounds that they can haul themselves well ahead by the efforts they put in to master it). On that front, I know of many teachers who choose the exam pieces for their pupils. While it is true that you often have a feel for what would suit the pupil best, I feel that the choice of pieces MUST be theirs. I always play all the set pieces and let them choose. Sometimes, relatively rarely, they make a bad choice; this manifests itself in a firm declaration at a later stage – “I don’t like this piece!” Then we try something else. Another manifestation can be simple unwillingness to go anywhere near the piece between lessons – this brings up the whole unpleasant topic of Doing No Practice At Home.
No pain, no gain – yet another modern cliché, but, sadly, true. Playing an instrument is a skill as well as an art, and skills require daily development. Even adults have been known to succumb to the I-haven’t-done-any-practice-this-week-so-I’ll-cram-it-all-into-one-last-ditch-panic. With adults, there are often any number of valid excuses for lack of practice, but for sheer creativity you can’t beat an 8-year-old. The prize has to go to one child: as one lesson progressed it became increasingly obvious that she had done no practice whatsoever that week. I finally broached this delicate subject, and to her credit she capitulated at once, admitting the enormity of her offence. Mitigation (and fame) came in the elegant simplicity of her excuse: “my sister got a new rabbit!” No contest – surrender of fierce teacher …
The whole practice thing becomes ever more delicate, I find, in a low expectation both of achievement (that isn’t immediate and instant) and of input required. This expectation is one that is rife in our modern instant gratification world, and also in parental attitudes. No longer do the words “I’m very sorry, but at this rate you are wasting my time and your parents’ money” reduce the pupil to abject contrition, if not tears (the only good use of tears is in this situation). Blank looks and “oh well, I’ll stop lessons, then” are the most likely result.
Which moves us swiftly onto the Thorny Problem of Money. I used to trust people to pay me when they properly should. A turning point came when, 10 minutes into a lesson, I received a call from the parent: “little Johnny isn’t there this week”. The empty piano stool indeed confirmed that statement. “He’s had (!) to go to a party”. All bad enough, but the clincher came when the mother did not expect to pay for the lesson, as “little Johnny” had not had one on that day!
I now have contracts and stuff† – I still offer monthly terms, but if this is abused I join many of my fellow inculcators and demand payment for the term in advance.
I also get new pupils or their parents to sign a sheet that I have produced laying out my terms. These do cover things like payment and absences, but they also cover the aims of the whole operation: to develop as a musician, and to have fun while doing so. I set out realistic levels of practice, too, as I find that vague notions of 30 minutes’ practice a day fill the minds of some prodigies’ parents. Better to make it 15 minutes CONCENTRATED practice a day for at least 5 days a week, with as much fun playing on top as possible – progress will ensue. Anyhow, 30, or even 15 minutes is far too much in the early stages – there are only so many things you can do with 2 notes in each hand … This document also covers the expectation that a minimum course of lessons will be followed. Exceptions for severe cases of Beri-Beri and Bubonic Plague are almost guaranteed – never let it be said that I am an unreasonable man.
TO. BE. CONTINUED. YESSSSSSSSS!
* * *
* Hey. I couldn’t possibly make this stuff up. I’m only a fantasy novelist. Dragons I can do. Pegasi. Even unicorns. Music teachers . . . nope.
** Sigh.
*** SIGH.
† Especially stuff. You should see his studio. It makes my office look like . . . um . . . like . . . um . . . like they both came from the same Bedlam Planet.
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