Help wanted from humble music teacher!
 

Hi all, I'm a music teacher looking for some advice for teaching adults better!

I teach (all styles!!!) both in schools and privately (violin/piano/general musicology) but am re-evaluating what I do with adults. Adults have a wider perspective of life, and therefore of music, but its not always easy 'marrying' what the adult student should know with what they also want to learn/know!

Given the open-minded comments in this forum , I feel I might be able to get some valuable feedback from equally open minded people here. I'm essentially looking for the opinions of people with little or no 'formal' music training who might be wanting to develop a particular area of music further.

To that end, would anyone be willing to discuss on this thread the following:

If you had 15mins with a music education teacher/coach, what questions would you ask? (Please consider music not only as something to perform but also something for composing, listening and sharing at a 'cultural' level (choose whatever is relevant for you). It'd be also useful to think at a personal level - what you would like in terms of your development in this subject (if at all) - maybe you're in a group, sing in a choir, go regularly to concerts, argue passionately about your musical interests, maybe you're a parent wanting to improve your skills to help your kids, etc. etc.)

Any comments would be gratefully received & will allow me to deliver better, more relevant lessons to my adult students whose needs appear to be changing as quickly as the world in which we live.

Cheers.

In 15 minutes, can you teach me to play sappy acoustic guitar nonsense that will get chicks to sleep with me? It can't be that hard since it all sounds the same.

Um... Idk. I'd probably show them my music in that 15 minutes and ask them what they thought.

And why should they care about your music? As a composer, I'd rather show you my music and ask you what you think. That way, I'd at least be able to draw upon your expertise to point out things that I could not hear, then go home and immediately implement your comments.

I live in the United States. The philosophy of education here is to generalize early in life, then maybe get specific later (this last part is not locked down). This, coupled with the fact that the arts are extremely undervalued, means that not many people get involved in music during childhood, or that they don't stick with it. People who come to study music as adults do so because they believe it to be personally valuable, and not because their parents are making them. That's nice: they usually have some drive and can think for themselves. The flip side is that they have the musicianship skills and practice discipline of a potato. They want to learn, but they don't know how. They really are starting at square one.

Luckily, music is a universal language. I had a professor who started every semester by singing a song from Zimbabwe and accompanying himself on mbira. He'd invite the class to sing the responsorial part, but he never pushed it if nobody sang. The songs sound happy to Western ears, so everybody would feel good at the end, and then he'd reveal that it was a funeral song. The dissonant relationship between the culturally informed positivity of the major scale and the negativity of death usually would throw the class for a loop. If nothing else, the entire act engaged the class and left an impression. How long does it take to do that, three minutes? Maybe four? Similar story here:



The facilitator at an open mic I go to warms up the room by making everyone sing short, dirt simple songs that everybody knows (Happy Birthday, Mary Had A Little Lamb, etc.). It helps to loosen people up and makes them more receptive. This sort of thing should be easy. Find a common denominator and exploit it. Music is about coming together as humans, delineating social groups and getting things done. Your job as a music teacher is not to teach the student what they want to know (because that's lazy and not even they know what that is), but rather to help them to fulfill the social expectations of musicianship, then work their personal wishes in there somewhere. Eventually, you can help them nail a solo or get a piece up to tempo. Those are big goals that need consistent effort, but for somebody starting out as an adult, it helps to have a tiny bit of instant gratification to assure them that they didn't miss the boat by not being a child prodigy.

"If you can walk, you can dance. If you can talk, you can sing."
- Zimbabwean proverb (learned from my aforementioned professor)

If I spent time with a music teacher, I would love to disassemble some song with them and look at the parts with music theory in mind.

Something like this :



Or it could be something simpler as well .. You know, why is this (ex. Ziggy Stardust) such a hit song?

The earliest music lessons I remember having involved being played a piece of music and being asked to list the number of instruments that made it, and then identify them.