Building confident musicians who enjoy performing their music is as important as, if not more important than, building good technique. What purpose does it serve if students can play well, but don’t enjoy doing it in performance, or get stagefright and other kinds of stress about music?
This is a big topic, so I’m going to address one aspect of it in this post, and continue in other posts. I look forward to your insightful comments; please add them at the bottom. Thanks to those who added such interesting comments to my earlier post, Parental Expectations.
The idea is to identify some key elements for teachers to think about in order to encourage students to enjoy performing. I will also mix in some of the experts’ ideas about how to avoid stagefright. After all, stagefright is, in a way, the flip side of the same question. (See my earlier post, Is Stagefright Taught?)
First of all, we need to think about how to instill confidence and pleasure in the playing of music. One essential part of this is to get students to appreciate the bigger picture. I have one student who has taken quite a while to be able to play through a piece of music regardless of note errors. This is an essential skill for performing. Keeping the problem spots in mind without stopping allows a student to learn to play with continuity. He can then go back and fix those problems in context. Students need to think of something bigger than avoiding mistakes. This particular student’s previous teacher used to hover over every note and stop him if he made a mistake, which instilled in him more fear than confidence.
Of course, getting the notes right is important, but it’s only one task among many, and it’s essential for a student to think about what he/she gets right, not just what’s wrong. If continuity and timing are right, for example, then it’s very important for the teacher to value that accomplishment, even if some notes were wrong.
Breaking a difficult passage or skill into manageable tasks can be the key. It’s well worth trying to get one task right (timing, notes, phrasing, fingering) even if at the expense of another. If a student gets the fingering right that you’re working on, but messes up the timing you worked on last week, it’s important to recognize this week’s accomplishment and not bug them for “forgetting” what they did last week. Maybe they can get the fingering without the timing, and the timing without the fingering. That’s a great start. Now they have the new task of doing both.
We don’t want to have a student accomplish goals only to feel nothing is never good enough. The goal is to give students the confidence that if they address a problem, they can solve it. And it’s good to remember that no accomplishment is complete without a bit of admiring.
I think you have to see that there are three different conversations here: first, that of playing music in and of itself; second, that of performing for another; and thirdly, that of entertaining another.
The first one does for oneself alone – for the pure joy of playing, of organizing and creating sound in an intelligent way.
Performing we do out of generosity; you want to share your music with others. Then, when you receive praise, that is, the acceptance of others, you think; “Hey, this feels much better than my job over at the factory.” And you decide that you could make a living from performing and your gift degenerates, out of need, into a career.
Now you are a salesman selling your wares from door to door, and after a few days without food, you take the final step to full degradation and become an entertainer. You put on your clown suit, find a crowd and you entertain them. If they throw tomatoes at you, you go back to the factory where you are assured a decent meal.
But, if you are indeed able to entertain them, then they throw their money at you, sometimes in such great volume that that it becomes a burden to you. And now you need them, and they own you. What was once you sharing your pure soul has become exhausting, as you attempt to make people feel better. You are now responsible for how others feel and you must go out, night after night and make them feel a certain way. Anything else and its tomatoes and back to the factory.
You find that the greater you humiliate (humble) yourself in from of others the more they pay you, so you find the biggest audience you can and become an embarrassment to common decency. You will be very rich, but with all sense of self lost (Think of Britney Spears, or Michael Jackson) You are now a slave, at the beck and call of the crowd.
I write this partly out of experience. I have chosen to teach music for my money so that I can keep my art pure. As a music teacher, I teach the language of music, and the skill of musicianship. I make no requirement to do it with any skill or perform for anyone. Children will work hard simply for your praise and maybe to get a sticker in their music book. It’s their parents that are the tough ones; they expect little Johnny to perform Beethoven in Church, and do it well, so that they can feel a sense of pride. In other words, they want to make up for their own lack by expecting little Johnny to earn the acceptance of the crown. They should just praise their child regardless of skill or talent. But this is a rare parent (I always say that parents should never be aloud to have children) So to keep mom and dad happy (and paying) you’ll have to bring some talent out of their child. This can be very damaging to Johnny, but if you explain that they have to play the game a bit they will understand. Mom and dad won’t though. (Dealing with parents’ expectations is a whole other thing)
Adult students are much easier; they have other income already, so they don’t need to play those silly games with me. They come to a lesson because I offer a refuge from the need to please others. I accept their lack of discipline and talent; I don’t give them a hassle for not practicing. I have no expectations of them. I accept them as they are, and give only encouragement. This takes a lot of my energy, as they often show up quite damaged from the rest of their life. So I accept them and encourage them, and as long as they pay me, there is a spot for them in my schedule. We play guitar because I won’t listen to their sad stories of pain and misery, and they don’t have to tell me. We do as little talking as possible; only enough to play. We just play.