 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: johng ★2017
Date: 2011-12-19 02:09
I am wondering if anyone has experienced a style of private lessons where the teacher provides a set of compositions, exercises, and etudes and allows the student to chose what they will play each week and then the sessions work like a master class with the teacher assisting with the music the student prepared and introducing related topics from that music. Other than actual group master classes I have only experienced private lessons where I was given specific selections to practice for each lesson.
If you have had lessons with this style, I would like to hear how they worked or didn't work for you.
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2011-12-19 16:04
I'm sort of doing that now with my teacher.
His travel schedule has made it impossible for us to have our regular weekly beatings, so I've been picking things to work on.
Actually, it sort of sucks. I work for a few weeks on a piece or two, and then they get reviewed. He sight reads with more expressivity than I've created in my playing over all those sessions.
In almost every case, I leave the session with marked up manuscripts to work on until the next session. Those will be part of the next lesson to be certain that I've "gotten it." At the following "master class," I'll read the sticky spots left over from the prior session, and introduce the new rep.
I think it works ok --except for the embarrassments. It also leaved me to decide what "maintenance" work (scales, etudes) to do.
AND, I just might slip the Rossini in on him at the end of next month.
Bob Phillips
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Author: johng ★2017
Date: 2011-12-19 17:04
Rossini? Go for it, Bob! Thanks for your comments.
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Author: justme
Date: 2011-12-19 18:45
Bob said: " His travel schedule has made it impossible for us to have our regular weekly beatings."
Wow, you must have a strict teacher! ![[happy]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smiley12.gif)
"A critic is like a eunuch: he knows exactly how it ought to be done."
CLARINET, n.
An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments that are worse than a clarinet -- two clarinets
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2011-12-19 19:22
@justme --its the mental anguish more than the whippings that hurt!
Bob Phillips
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2011-12-20 15:46
>>Bob said: " His travel schedule has made it impossible for us to have our regular weekly beatings.">>
Good one -- but readers familiar with old-school Russian teaching methods might not recognize that as a joke! Half a century ago, my husband's violin teacher, Mischa Mischakoff, used to whap him with a fly swatter. Mischakoff was a Russian immigrant who probably enhanced his inclinations by working as Toscanini's concertmaster for 17 years. He used to keep a row of Kleenex boxes lined up on a shelf in his practice room. Each box had a student's name on it. Kevin and his family loved that man anyway and still remember him fondly. They've kept and cherished a postcard he sent to them when he took my husband (who was about 12 then) to Chautauqua with him: "Thank you for the salami. Someday I may teach your stupid son to play the violin."
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
Post Edited (2011-12-20 15:47)
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2011-12-20 17:26
Lessons with my most recent teacher worked a bit like that.
There was a regimen of fundamentals to progress through, but beyond that, I was expected to be working on one piece of rep and one etude at a time, of my choice.
The preferred lesson format was for me to come in with something to play or some issue I wanted to work on. Attention might be focused on what I brought in, on some aspect my teacher noticed while I was playing, or some random tangent (like the lesson that turned into an exploration of harmonic glisses due to a few notes I noodled at the start). Each lesson was treated as an independent exploration; "how far along are you on ____" was used only as a last resort if we lost momentum. The expectation was that I should have something interesting or exciting or perplexing to bring to the lesson, rather than a weekly check-in progress report.
"That just needs more practice" was also never a valid comment. Even something completely new to me, we'd work out issues on it. The lessons served as an opportunity to get the most out of the hour, every hour, from wherever I happened to be.
I don't think I could go back to the "practice this for next week" format.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2011-12-21 03:49
EE
I'm currently enjoying wide latitude in bring problems to my teacher. But earlier, like Janlynn, I had to take on things that I'd have never brought to the top of my priority list --like the Poulenc sonata.
And, also, he guided me away from things (like the Rossini) that he thought were "off track" for me at the time.
I like this --with the emphasis on musicality, rather than drills.
I do get the "that just needs more work," critique on occasion, but when that happens, I'm expected to bring it back the following week in better shape.
Every lesson, I show some fundamental weakness (weakness in a fundamental) that requires focus --support, tonguing, "balletic" finger motions,...
Bob Phillips
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Author: bethmhil
Date: 2011-12-21 05:12
This is interesting. I have two teachers, one who gives me grades, and one who doesn't. The professor who gives me a grade for lessons takes a variation on this approach, but since he gives me grades, he has to assign material for me to practice.-- Bob, my professor takes this exact approach that you discuss in your latest post. It's great, and I have grown to really enjoy his teaching style.
My other teacher is not a professor and does not give me grades (though, her husband does!). Since I am her only college student and I practice quite a lot without her prodding, she never "assigns" anything from week to week. We very rarely look at the same things from week to week, and I basically get to decide what we work on... it's refreshing. We usually work a little bit on fundamentals at the beginnings of lessons, and sightread through some duets at the ends of lessons, but everything in between is never the same from week to week. I think this approach is good, because it doesn't hammer on the same things all the time, and it particularly does not hammer on the same things that I learn from my professor.
But, this is for an older college student who is on the road of mastering the instrument. For younger students, I don't think this approach is appropriate. I have observed that my non-professor teacher keeps tabs on what she assigns to her younger students.
BMH
Illinois State University, BME and BM Performance
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2011-12-21 06:00
I think a lot of it is contingent on the level of the player, and also the enthusiasm. This was grad school for me, so the expectation was that I should know what I want to do, or else what the hell was I doing there.
The lack of "this needs more work" was the most refreshing aspect of it for me. If it needed more work, it was obvious to both of us and didn't need to be spoken. However, the need for more work was never a reason to not tackle some aspect of it on the spot. On multiple occasions, looking at a section that "needs more work" together for 15 minutes cut the amount of "more work" needed by a few hours.
This was the biggest benefit of these kinds of lessons for me. Every lesson was treated as an opportunity to get the most out of something as a joint exploration, no matter where I was. If I wasn't as far along on something as I'd have liked, it wasn't sent back with a prescription of "just keep working on it," as had been my prior experience. In retrospect, I regret that I didn't realize this for quite a while and treated many lessons as the more familiar semi-adversarial checkpointing-style.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: johng ★2017
Date: 2011-12-21 13:00
The reason I was thinking of this is because it seems to me that it would be a good motivator to an advanced student to be more a part of the learning process. Who knows, they might even practice more this way. I agree with Beth that beginning students need the solid, progressive style of teaching by using a method book and definite assignments.
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2011-12-21 13:51
I'm an amateur musician and have never taught music myself, but as a piano student in days of yore, I found the "This needs more work" approach valid only up to a point. With some compositions, I could tell I wasn't going to improve past a certain point. Although my piano teacher (Arthur Eisler) was a gentle, kind man and an exceptional teacher, for some reason I just didn't feel comfortable saying straight out to him, "I'm not getting anywhere and I don't want to work on this piece any more," or, "I hate this piece so much I can't stand to listen to it." (The latter happened with some mid-20th century serialist music.)
What I did instead was stupidly passive: out of frustration, I'd just quit wasting practice time on that piece. I'd go into the next lesson and play it horribly. He'd say it needed more work, he'd make suggestions (the same ones week after week) and he'd reassign the piece for the next lesson. Sometimes it took months of weekly lessons before he'd give up and move on to something else. Since he assigned me several pieces per week, I did continue to make progress on the rest of the assignments, but the time we wasted in lessons on repeatedly running through music I hated or just couldn't play satisfactorily could have been much better spent otherwise.
My suggestion for teachers is that if you've given a piece to a student for more than two lessons and it's stalled, *ask* whether there's a problem with that piece. Don't just accuse the kid of not practicing it, because the kid will probably lie. (I would have lied at age 12 or 13; by 18 I probably would have told him the truth.) But do try to find out if there's some reason why this particular music just isn't right for this particular student.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
Post Edited (2011-12-21 13:52)
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2011-12-22 04:46
Key point in your post, Alex: the fact that some cogent help from the teacher can really move the student ahead.
Often times, a pretty simple change or change of approach has really accelerated my progress. My teacher seems to know, for example, what's going on inside my mouth and torso better than I do.
My music lessons are amongst the best investments I've made in my lifetime.
Bob Phillips
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Author: speedyclarinet
Date: 2011-12-27 10:03
Hi Johng.
There is something called www.playwithapro.com which provides masterclasses with some outstanding teachers from Juilliard( Charles Neidich), Colburn( Yehuda Gilad) etc. Even though it doesn´t exactly do what you are asking for it provides pretty good insights I would say- it´s not a one on one class, but plenty of useful information for sure and sometimes it comes with the actual music.
Hope this helps just a bit...:)
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Author: annev
Date: 2011-12-27 15:24
My teacher uses this "master class" style of teaching, although I never recognized it as such. As an adult amateur, I find it a great way to learn. We start with any technical questions I've uncovered - things from scales, thirds, arpeggios, etc., which are part of my daily practice. Those questions can cover anything, from fingerings, to articulation, to tone production, and so on. Then we usually go through an etude that I'm working on. I chose the etudes based on what area it feels like I need to build on - often there are specific things I can identify, but if not then I make sure to alternate them around - different key signatures, tempos, musical styles and so on. Then we look at whatever repertoire piece I've brought (usually I have two or three of these on the go so we chose one to look at) and we often finish with a duet. The duets are probably the only thing I don't self-select - we're just sequentially working through Voxman and there are lots of lovely duets in there.
At first I was surprised that my teacher didn't assign specific music to work on, but I actually really like it. I usually have a pretty good idea of where the (numerous) holes are in my learning, and I can feel how things develop and build. I think it helps in terms of supplying knowledge where the student is open and ready to receive it.
I've noticed that my teacher uses a more structured version of this with his high school students. He assigns specific music (etude, repertoire, duet), but is also open to having them bring in something they are struggling with from school band or elsewhere. Sometimes the lesson will "derail" completely into whatever learning issue they bring from this outside music. It's a semi-free form version of what I recieve.
Like Bob's comment above, the lessons are probably the best musical investment I could ever have!
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