Music Monday - Practice

A couple of weeks ago I was shocked when a tertiary singing student confessed to me that she had never done any singing practice. Never. Not in the 15 months I have been teaching her and not at any point during her secondary schooling, which is when she started formal singing lessons. What was even more galling to me was that I hadn’t realised. This student is naturally talented and learns new song repertoire easily. She had recorded her lessons with me, including exercises to teach and reinforce new aspects of vocal technique. In my turn, I had observed that her progress with new vocal technique concepts was slow; however her strong natural instincts for ‘selling’ a song, as well as a naturally robust vocal instrument had enabled her to get away with it to a certain extent. Her confession came in response to my observation (at this particular lesson) that she was taking a long time to develop a secure head dominant mix.

In our frank discussion which followed, the student confided that she had always had a lazy attitude towards work, but more than that, no one had ever told her how to practice. That really set me thinking.

With my young beginner singers, I always make explicit instructions- “do this exercise 5 times each day”, “sing through the song then go over the problem phrases”, “check in the mirror to see that you are….”. The younger students have a journal in which to write instructions and record their practice times and at each lesson there is discussion about how they have fared since the previous lesson.

With tertiary / adult students, I have, until now, verbally suggested the recommended number of repetitions of new exercises and techniques, but I have assumed that these were practised at home. Clearly this has not always been the case. 

Since that lesson, I am now quizzing students in more detail. Instead of a generic “how has your practice gone since the last lesson?” I am asking, “How many times did you do the … exercises?” etc.

And what of the student who started this? Well, in the past week she has practised in detail twice. Not yet ideal, but baby steps towards a more effective artistic practice routine.

Music Monday - The importance of repetition and practice.

A few weeks ago I wrote about what I was revisiting about early learning as a result of having our 3 year old grandson living with us for a couple of months. Today I am pursuing a few more of those thoughts.

It is many years since I taught (or parented) pre-schoolers. These days I teach a mix of adolescent age groups, plus tertiary aged students and adults of all ages. 

But living with a pre-schooler reminds me of some important lessons:

1. Kids genuinely love learning and exploring new ideas. William and I have been playing around lots with the concept of beat and rhythm – both in music and language. He loves to move to the beat. He loves to tap and bang the beat. He fits nonsense sounds to a beat. But beat doesn’t have to be confined to the times when we are consciously doing music activities. Last night his Mommy formed a family conga line as we chanted and stomped him into the shower.

2. Little kids are way more capable than we sometimes think of making connections. William often says, “That’s like the….”. 

Of course, as a doting grandparent it is much easier to observe these moments. But as teachers we need to be switched on to moments of student connection – and we need to practise finding the right questions to stimulate the connections.

1. William loves the iPad (and other devices) and – like most of his generation – amazes us with his facility on a device. But he also loves to explore all of his environment – and so many everyday activities can be used to reinforce rhythmic and musical concepts. Yesterday he found our jar of coffee grounds and was curious about how we scoop out the coffee for the plunger. This started a game of scooping coffee from the jar to a bowl. I observed him muttering ‘ta-aa, ta-aa’ as he scooped – in other words making a rhythmic connection. He was having fun but subconsciously that important beat concept was being further internalised. We started to fit words and melody to the beat and a simple song emerged.

All this time spent with William has reinforced yet again my huge respect for what primary  music teachers do for the children in their charge. 

It is such important work!

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