 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: RWW
Date: 2003-10-22 13:42
I teach private lessons to total beginners thru High School and have great difficulty motivating them to practice. I am looking for ideas. Allen Cole gave me an idea in the "practice" thread of encouraging them to play by ear. My band director many years ago awarded a plaque at a concert to the student who had practiced the most. That motivated me. What motivated YOU to practice when you were starting out as a youth?
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Author: Synonymous Botch
Date: 2003-10-22 13:56
Duets, if and ONLY if, the student performs the less exciting passages with evident rehearsal.
If they can't play the scales, they spend the lesson drilling while you do something else.
FWIW - I keep my rates high to weed out the kids that don't really want to
take the lesssons (or offer the time to the parents)... you would be
surprised how the kids light up if Pops tries a few chromatic scales.
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Author: Tim P
Date: 2003-10-22 14:19
Threaten them " if you don't practice you will be a starving musician" or is that " if you DO"........No, wait a minute , I quess that won't work.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2003-10-22 14:38
My wife's grandfather volunteered to dry the dishes after dinner (which she hated), if she would practice piano until he finished. She always wondered why it took him exactly half an hour every night. . . .
She had great success teaching small kids. She said it was the only time many of them got to have an adult all to themselves. She kept them "well hugged and well yelled at," with the hugs first. Even in these paranoid times, a pat on the shoulder or the back is still possible.
Making a deal is OK. If a student will play scales for 5 or 10 minutes, they get to have you play their favorite song at the next lesson, and then have both of you play it together.
Gold stars can help. Parental concern is maybe even better. A large paddle is best of all. Kalmen Opperman used to have a sign in his studio: Schmuck! Go home and practice!
Best regards.
Ken Shaw
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Author: theclarinetist
Date: 2003-10-22 15:07
I think with young kids it's important to find some sort of music that interests them. From what I've noticed at the schools I teach at, the 6th graders spend 90% of their classroom time playing on their mouthpiece and the other 10% playing Little Brown Jug (which would make anybody, even a 6th grader, go insane pretty fast). I've found that by giving more a little bit more fun music (easy duets and stuff), they are more likely to practice because they want to improve and play that kind of music.
Obviously, you can't survive as a musician practicing and playing only music that you like, and it's important to teach the value of perfecting any piece of music, even if you don't like it. However, I think if you start early (6th or 7th grade), I think you can get them to practice for fun, which will show them that learning a piece isn't really that tough and that playing is easier and more fun when you practice, then they'll be more likely and capable to practice stuff they don't like also.
DH
theclarinetist@yahoo.com
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Author: sinkdraiN
Date: 2003-10-23 01:38
The number one motivator is the gig for which they practice for! It may be band class or it may be a chance to play in a pit orchestra. The speed at which you can play a Db major scale is pointless and a waste of time if you dont have a place to use it. Some teachers will only teach the players who already have outlets and therefore are very motivated. Some teachers need to offer the kid what they do not get at school etc... Maybe set up a big recital at a local church with a piano player. If you pick the right piece they will find out real quick why a Db major scale is so important
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Author: Jim E.
Date: 2003-10-23 05:08
The Atlantic City Public Schools in the 1960s required a daily record of practice time, and a parent had to sign off on it monthly. The schools requires a minimum of 30 minutes a day. My mom would not sign unless she had heard every minute I claimed! Mom had an attitude about my practicing. She had paid $125 for a new B & H wood clarinet for me and was paying $3 a week for my private lessons. Both were great sums of money when rent was about $60/ month, and weekly salaries for them were around the same.
When my brother took up the drums a few years later, she was a bit less interested in making him practice the full 30 minutes a day!
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Author: ron b
Date: 2003-10-23 06:15
Back in the "Olden Days" (I pre-date you by about a decade, Jim) some of us practiced so we'd sound better. I don't have permission to speak for the rest of 'em, of course, but sounding better was the great motivator for me. Did I miss something? I don't think so. I took some private lessons from a fine teacher and showed my appreciation by paying for the lessons, which MOTIVATED me not only to practice regularly but to go to work and earn some money 
- r![[cool]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/cool.gif) n b -
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Author: ginny
Date: 2003-10-23 15:41
My HS aged son practiced a half hour on clarinet each day after being told he must by his Junior HS band teacher. She had a parentally signed practice slip for each month. This may not work for HS.
He started piano at age 4 and always practiced at least a little. He has never known that you could go a day without playing.
I did what Ken Shaw spoke of, practice time was after dinner you could practice or clean up and do chores. I also limited TV, computer and Ninetendo time to a very minimal amount when they were young. They could earn more time by practicing or reading.
This year he's really caught fire, he practices piano through out the day in 10 to 15 min snatches. He spends quality time with his clarinet and has just completed one of the Rose books. The audition for solo on Rhasody in Blue really got him going, he spent time here asking about vibrato, he listened to a variety of recordings (including the earliest of Gerswin) and practiced the difficult bits. He can gliss up and DOWN and do diaphram vibrato now. And he got the solo.
But why did he catch fire? I think he gets a lot of respect and admiration for his playing. He also just enjoys playing, its pleasurable for him.
Post Edited (2003-10-23 15:50)
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Author: Renato
Date: 2003-10-23 16:02
I like Ken Shaw's advice.
Even so, I see nothing wrong with PLEASURE. That should be the motivation for playing music, and the more motivated they are to play more things and new things (some of which will probably also be more difficult as well), the more motivated they will become to practice.
I guess the "bait" must be pieces they really like, even if you have a collection of mandatory pieces to give and teach. I believe those favorite pieces will make them feel like improving their technique so they can pkay them better. It's been working with me (even though I'm an intermediate adult student, which is a different context), I improved a lot of things in my playing before I learned even the basic scales thoroughly. Things like breathing, embouchure, fingerings (even some alternate fingerings that worked for me), tone quality... Things as important as scales, arpeggios, legatos, staccatos...
My suggestion is for you to talk to them, show them easy pieces they could be interested in playing, and work from there.
Another thing that, in my case at least, made all the difference: play along recordings! It doesn't matter if I missed a lot of the notes, it motivated me a lot, it made warm-up much more natural and enjoyable... And I've always thought about a piece of music as "parts". I mean, I was always trying to find acessible, playable parts in the pieces I liked, even if the pieces as a whole were too advanced for me.
Good luck with your teaching and your students.
- Renato.
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Author: allencole
Date: 2003-10-23 17:32
For me, the bait was duets (played with myself via a cheap tape recorder), and things that I heard on the radio. Waltz of the Flowers, a snippet of New Orleans jazz from a radio station ID, and seeing Benny Goodman on TV with the Boston Pops.
Interest and curiosity is a tough one. It's a battle that I'm still fighting with most students.
Allen Cole
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Author: ClaRiNeT_CaNdY
Date: 2003-10-25 11:26
My friend was learning the clarinet the same time as me, and she learnt things really fast. i was motivated to be better than her, so i practiced 10 X harder.. and well, yeah, i'm better than her today.
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Author: Meri
Date: 2003-10-27 16:51
I find I rarely have problems with getting them to practice and quality of practicing. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I like to use pieces that students like and allow them to use their strengths, yet also encourage them to work on skills that they need to develop or improve. One high school student I taught last summer, to help her with her Toronto Youth Wind Orchestra audition had a lovely sound (once she got the air speed in order), a nice sense of musical style, and a precise sense of rhythm (she also studies piano to a high level, working on her Grade 9), but needed to work on her tonguing, especially staccato and learn her alternate fingerings. She mentioned that she liked music from the Classical period, and 20th century music. The piece that I found that allowed her to do that was George Belden's Star Fall. (any of you know this piece?) She earned a spot in the Toronto Youth Wind Orchestra; her high school music teacher (who was running the auditions; my student did not know until the day of the audition) commented on how much her sound improved, and how smooth her fingering is.
I'll use pieces such as Mendellsohn's Spring Song to encourage students to learn their chromatic scale. "Dancing Bears" from Paul Harris' Summer Sketches is a great piece to emphasize the importance of precise articulation in the early levels. "To a Wild Rose" is a piece I have found that several students like, whether they are adults or children; it's a great piece to work on expression and smoothness in register changes. Gonoud's "March of a Marionette" is great for developing staccato tonguing in 6/8, learning a few alternate fingerings, and also good for learning LR and RL combinations. Star Fall is great for developing staccato and learning alternate fingerings.
Perhaps it's because I teach them common practice strategies such as being able to recognize scales and arpeggios that they have already learned in their music when they are having difficulties in a particular section of the music, backwards practicing, isolating a difficult passage, and increasing the tempo of a challenging passage from slow to fast.
Incorporating scales and arpeggios into their warmup exercises for tone development, tonguing, and articulation helps them learn those patterns well by memory.
Duet playing is a huge motivator for most students. Exams and competitions help encourage high quality work. Currently, the "big thing" my students are looking forward to is the student concert I have planned for January.
Practice logs don't work for my students, although they may have worked for me. (My high school required students to use a practice log) I would not necessarily reward amount of practicing, but rather quality of practicing. For example, the parents of one of my 12-year-old students told me that it doesn't seem like he is doing much practicing. However, it's clear to me that he is doing extremely high quality practicing, because of the way he performs his exercises and pieces (or sections of pieces) at lessons.
So, be tuned into what your students like. Connect exercises and theory to actual music.
For other ways of motivating students, you may want to check out http://www.practicespot.com
As for what motivated me to practice, mainly, it was to be the best possible clarinetist I could be. I did not want to hide myself in the crowd in a sea of mediocrity, so I learned the parts really well, to the point where most of my conductors noticed. (It didn't make me popular with the clarinetists in the college band I was in a few years ago, however, but then, why waste time trying to convince people to learn what is really possible when they don't want to know?) Auditions helped a bit too. Liking the music is also somewhat important to me.
Meri
"There is a difference between being flat and sounding in tune, and being in tune but sounding flat. The first I can live with; the second I cannot."
Post Edited (2003-10-27 17:16)
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Author: wyatt
Date: 2003-10-27 16:57
have them pay for the lessons.
easy come easy don't
bob gardner}ÜJ
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Author: DAVE
Date: 2003-10-27 17:16
It never ceases to amaze me that simply paying for the lessons doesn't motivate many students to practice. Many times I hear parents who regularly pay me 80 bucks a month tell me their son or daughter did not practice. If I were paying that I would make my child practice or quit the lessons.
I was always interested in playing my clarinet because it came easy to me. My step father made some recordings for me with some excerpts of clarinet from various orchestral pieces. So there I was, completely captivated by the sound of the clarinet playing things like Premiere Rhapsodie, Copland Concerto, Peter and the Wolf, Prokofiev 5th Symphony(I really liked that one). I would listen to that tape over and over EVERY day. I wanted to play those solos SO bad.
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Author: Brenda
Date: 2003-10-27 17:42
These are great thoughts, good to use as a resource. For me, I started playing relatively late in my mid-teens, only because my brother and sister were playing in band. I just loved to play, and the only incentive to progress would be attending band class and also trying to win the challenges that I could initiate in order to beat out someone else for a higher chair. I've always loved to play. My parents didn't give me lessons back then and didn't care if I played or not.
Discipline came later on in the form of scales and arpeggios that were required for exams, for which I took lessons later in life. But the exams gave me another goal. I can begin practicing in a dark mood and I always end up feeling much better.
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Author: Pam H.
Date: 2003-10-28 11:41
My first year in 5th grade band I was pretty bad, but after that first "Spring Concert" when all the bands/chorus' 5-12 grades gathered and played the directors started handing out awards. Best Band Girl, Boy; Most Improved etc. Well, I wanted a trophy too! So the next year I decided I would go for "Most Improved." I did get the award the next year. Somewhere along the line I fell in love with making music and didn't really have a problem with practicing after that. I remember many times in high school having rehearsals for the last 2 periods of the school day and then bringing my instruments home and practicing some more. Part of that time I was playing bass clarinet in concert band and trombone in jazz band so not always an easy task!
Now, when my teacher (private instruction these days) has a student that doesn't practice they will have them fill out a chart showing that they have practiced at least a half hour a day, I think at least 5 days a week and signed by a parent. If the student is still not motivated then they are dropped and all concerned know this ahead of time.
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Author: Synonymous Botch
Date: 2003-10-28 13:00
Hey DAVE,
I think the notion is in having the KIDS fork over the dosh.
Amazing how valuable advice appears, when you pay for it yourself.
When a kid is willing to cough up their own allowance money, they're likely showing some committment.
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