Author: mschmidt
Date: 2007-02-08 22:02
I can't help reading between the lines, here, suzan, that you may be experiencing a certain amount of frustration. I certainly felt frustration many times as a student, but most of that was when I was rather young and tended to accept that it was all my fault, or at least that it was unchangeable. Now that I am older, and a teacher myself (a different sort of teacher--a chemistry prof as a opposed to an instrumental music teacher) I can see more clearly how the direction of a class or lesson can go in many directions. If I went back to taking oboe lessons as an adult I'd start by discussing just what I wanted out of lessons, and quit or change teachers if I wasn't getting that. Not that I would dictate completely--it would be foolish to insist on working on articulation if what I really needed was work on intonation. But I would be clear with myself, at least, that "what I want is for you to tell me what I most need to work on." And if I started doubting the instructor's judgement on that, based on the judgement of other musicians I know and respect, I'd quit or change teachers.
My most positive oboe lesson experience was less than a year's worth of lessons from Leslie Starr of Baltimore. I was 27 years old, an adult amateur with clearly no professional ambitions, and so she had to ask me just what I wanted to accomplish. I said I wanted to work on reeds. We worked on reeds. My reeds are much better. She noticed problems with articulation. We worked on articulation. My articulation is vastly improved. She thought to perhaps work on expression--I played a slow movement expressively and she decided that wasn't what I needed help on, that the technical problems of producing what I wanted to produce was the problem, and we worked more on reeds and articulation. Ultimately we came up against the limitations of my oboe and my time, and I quit. But 18 years down the line, my playing today wouldn't be half of what it is without those months of lessons--even if only because we clearly identified the oboe itself as one of the major obstacles (which I finally remedied last year).
I think oboe lessons (at least for the adult who isn't planning a professional career) is a lot like therapy. It can do a lot of good if you have some pretty specific goals, but it can just drag on; some people just get in the habit of going to lessons every week just like they would go to a therapist every week. I'm not an expert on psychological therapy, but my understanding is that back in the seventies and eighties some therapists started deciding that traditional therapy wasn't really helping people, and that what was needed was "brief therapy" that just focused on just fixing one specific problem or behavior and then ending it. I think the adult musician sometimes needs "brief lessons."
Mike
Still an Amateur, but not really middle-aged anymore
Post Edited (2007-02-08 22:07)
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