We teach piano lessons, violin lessons, guitar lessons, and voice lessons here at the Willow School. And generally our students like to practice! Why?
Well, for starters we offer a higher-quality of music education than can be found at just any old music store. Our faculty are professional musicians who care about learning. That means they care about kids. (And adults! We teach adults)
The focus is on improvement rather than some imaginary criteria of “virtuosity.” We want our students to be better than they were when they started. While we work for steady, rapid improvement, when something is interfering with the learning, we’ll take gradual improvement until something changes.
What does it take to want to practice?
It could be that the student hasn’t matured in the right way yet for lessons. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be taking them, only that it’s unrealistic to expect mature practice from them. What gets someone to mature practicing?
A lot of times it comes about as a result of seeing their own progress over the period of time it took them to get better. Once my students get far enough along that they can tell the difference, when they can really tell that they can play, read music, improvise, then they begin to understand that it was their own effort that got them there. Conversely, it was their own lack of effort that kept them from getting there faster…or so they decide.
And then steady, effective practice sets in.
What else?
It might be that there’s some emotional or intellectual block. Even trauma. Something that’s creating more noise than the voice inside their head than the practice-reminder.
Sometimes students are afraid of failure…so afraid, in fact, that they’d rather not try. They have to fail, and fail big, before they realize that failure doesn’t kill them. It just makes the terms of success easier to see.
Some students are actually very successful when they start: good readers, good improvisers. Guess what? They don’t want to try hard, because at some point they discover that there’s a limit to their inborn talent, and they’ve never had to work at it.
This isn’t really a problem if the teacher talks to the student about it. “Hey! You’ve had a great run as a genius, but now you’re going to have to work like all my other students, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all.”
Does there have to be a reason?
No. Sometimes it’s just age. Or the transition between the parents making them practice and them making themselves practice.
The point is that our teachers know all of these possibilities. We’re there to help the student through them, even help the student see them. Taking shame out of the equation makes the decision to practice a much more practical one.
“No need to be ashamed you didn’t practice. You just won’t get what you want this week. Here’s what you want, and here’s how to get it.
“Now go practice!”