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Jack's
Music Support:
Use
the Internet Search engines to learn more about your instrument, its invention,
history, development, acoustics, traditions, inventors, manufacturers,
sales outlets, famous musicians, folklore, jokes, sub-culture, conventions,
local teachers, college programs, advanced high school gifted programs,
summer camps, specialty magazines, clubs, fellow musician's web pages,
music chat rooms, players from major orchestras around the world, new developments
in playing and instrument making, famous concertos and sonatas, CD's, etude
books, computer programs involving your instrument, MIDI accompaniments
for solos, fingering charts, circular breathing, perfect pitch, jazz on
your instrument, jazz improvisation method books, music accessories to
enhance your practice and learning, music accessories to enhance your performances,
hard cases, gig bags, music stands, and much, much more. Find a global
web search engine which can search multiple search engines at one time
such as www.dogpile.com or www.ceoexpress.com. If you are searching
with more than one word, put the multiple words in quotation marks, i.e..
"clarinet reeds". Keep a bookmark of any web pages that are helpful
to you. Let your friends know. E-Mail them to this webmaster.
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Jack's
Advice
To Private Students:
A fellow
student at the Eastman School of Music once said, "Thank God for music.
Music is my whole life." I say Music is not life. Music is a part of life,
but for many people, music is as basic as health, faith, exercise, fulfillment,
recreation, and creativity. Music is not about winning contests, making
money, becoming famous, becoming rich, selling products, promoting causes,
making your school proud, winning football games, impressing people, or
showing off. Music is about aesthetics. Aesthetics is the study and
philosophy of beauty and art. Most music is about art. Art
is about the mental visualizations that all humans possess in the visual,
physical, auditory, mental, and spiritual arts which allow humans to create
new ideas and expressive ideas in new ways that bring enjoyment, appreciation,
and satisfaction to both the creator of the idea, the performer of the
art, and the audience or recipients of the art. This is what makes
us human and different from the animals. Don't play your instrument
and practice just to compete at solo competition or to become
the best in your school. Practice to become your personal best so
you can always perform at your highest level, giving your audience high
quality art and expression from your own soul. Feel the personal growth,
the being part of a higher purpose than just yourself, and the joy of creation
and accomplishment that comes with playing and practicing your instrument
for the right reason. The more your music is about the music, the
audience, and the art and the less it is about you and your ego, the better.
See the big picture in your life. No person, on their deathbed, says
"I wish I had practiced and played my instrument less than I did.
I wish I had never played. I wish I had quit when I was young.
I wish I had played more poorly." No. Most adults wish they
had played, practiced, performed, and achieved more with their music.
Adults, who quit playing their instrument back in Junior High or High School,
almost always tell me they regretted the stopping playing. They made
a decision to stop while too young to see the big picture. When they
achieved some maturity, they immediately knew they had made a mistake.
Music is a part of who you are, now and when your life is over. I
once went to the funeral of a 19 year old trumpet student who had tragically
killed himself. I really was broken up when I entered the Funeral
Home and saw the closed casket with his trumpet sitting on top of it.
He was not a great trumpet player, but the trumpet was a major part of
who he was. Music is also who you are. Nurture it (the
music inside of you.) Grow it. Support it. Dedicate time,
energy, money, space, effort, and importance to your music. When
you give music the time, energy, money, space, effort, and value it requires,
you are giving resources to yourself. You and your music, your instrument,
your practice, your performing, and your art are all the intertwined.
You are your music. Your music is you. You are also a lot of
other things. You are made up of many parts. However, music
is the one activity you can participate in which affects more parts of
who you are than any other activity. Music affects all parts of who
you are. It greatly affects all parts of your brain, your body, your
soul, your spirit, your emotions, your self-esteem, your self-image, your
self worth, your life's destiny, your enjoyment, your recreation, your
entertainment, your expertise, your skill, your creativity, your reason
for being alive, your culture, your beliefs, your worship, your faith,
your patriotism, and your legacy to pass on to your children. I wish
you life. I wish you music. I wish you a long life. I
wish you much music for the whole length of your life.
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Jack's
Advice To Music Parents:
Successful
private music lessons bringing your child into the exciting world of music
performance with creativity, art, self-confidence, mastery of a difficult
skill, and joy and appreciation for the whole family is the goal of almost
every parent. However, as with all aspects of child raising, there
is no handbook or owners manual to follow to bring that about. Most
parents do the best they can, but often fall into one of several traps
along the way.
1. TOO HIGH EXPECTATIONS: This would seem to be a good thing.
Have high expectations for your child. What is wrong is that it focuses
on the outcome and not on the process. Only the process of music
education with parental support, good teachers, a challenging curriculum,
a cooperative student, and a positive atmosphere of problem solving aimed
toward reaching the attainable goals will bring the goals to fruition.
As in our present national debate on education, just raising the goals
(harder tests) will not provide better education or help the students to
attain more success. Reasonable expectations together with the tools
to attain them can achieve results.
2. TOO LOW EXPECTATIONS: No one should take up playing an
instrument with the assumption that they will fail, be a terrible player,
or hate it. However, some parents have just that attitude and pass
it on to their children. "We will rent the instrument for several
years because you will probably just quit anyway." "No one in our
family plays any instrument, so we don't have any musical talent in the
family." Students need to have their parents believe in them and
to give them the tools to help them succeed. Those tools are emotional
support , financial support, time investment, problem solving support when
there are problems to be solved, and positive expectations of successful
outcome, and a gentle reminding to practice and do their best when the
student has a bad day.
3. DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY INTERACTION: My first parent teacher
conference went like this: "Joey likes the trumpet, he likes you the teacher,
he likes band, he like practicing, and we feel you are doing a great job
with him. However, his mom and he got into a fight last night over
cleaning his room, so we've decided to take band and the trumpet away from
him as punishment since that is the thing he likes best." If there is any
dysfunctionality in the family (and what family does not have some), it
will come out during the music learning process. Music learning takes
time, effort, problem solving, performance mode, accountability, goal setting,
emotional stability over a long period of time, habits and attitudes about
a lot of issues, money (sometimes a lot of money), parental involvement,
postponed gratification (for parents and students), and quite a bit more.
These issues are like lightening rods attracting debate, conflict, disagreement,
power and control situations, and arguments. Music greatly affects
our sense of value and all of our beliefs about art, culture, and the passing
of it on to our children. The music student and the parent often find themselves
acting out, during discussions about music lessons, the internal conflicts
they haven't resolved in a lot of other areas. They need to see that
usually "music" or "music lessons' or "that darn clarinet that we paid
so much for" is not usually the real problem. Once they see that,
they can try to solve the real problems and let the music practice take
care of itself. Parents never get the results they are looking for by yelling
at the student, "We are paying all this money for lessons and we never
see you practice." Better to sit down quietly, map out the student's
schedule and block in possible times for the student to practice. The expectations
should be reasonable. Little kids should not be asked to practice
more than three or four times their age. (ten years old =30 min.
to 40 minutes) The lower number is best unless the child is self motivated.
4. EGO INVOLVEMENT AND STAGE PARENTS: Just like in Little League
Baseball, the parents often use their child's success as some kind of ego
projection. This can be making up for one's own past failures to
bragging rights to other parents. Music lessons should be for the
child, for their lessons about art and performance, for their experience
with aesthetics, for their sense of growth and accomplishment, and for
the ultimate good for the child. It is not about the parent except
for the parents' sense of being a good parent and providing the best opportunities
they can for their child be it music lessons or sports or culture or great
emotional support.
5. OVER BOOKING-TRYING TO DO EVERYTHING-ESPECIALLY LOTS OF MAJOR
SPORTS: Several times a year, I get a call from a mother of a young student
who wants to take private music lessons. The mother asks a few questions
and then proceeds to state, "You know my child is on two school sports
teams plus a travel team, then there's confirmation class, chess class,
judo, tap dancing class, horseback riding, and after school theater class.
I have no idea when you will be able to schedule a private lesson and no
idea when we will be able to find time for my child to practice for you
and do all the other things." I usually say, "You called me.
I can't solve those fundamental family problems for you. We all have
to make choices. Your child can do anything he or she wants to, but
not everything. There have to be choices made using a good value
system." There are many variations on this theme, but they
all show how little free time for non-sports activities many kids have.
Most sports teams and their coaches require 5-6 days a week participation,
3-4 hours a day, and all the energy the kid can supply. The quest
for a winning team consumes all the sense of balance and all the perspective
of what it means to be a child in today's world. There is no time
or energy for music lessons which takes only 30-45 minutes a day, 4-5 days
a week. Along with all the other scheduled events, there is no time
for the kid to be a kid or do kid things. Certainly, not enough time to
do private music lessons justice.
6. TREATING PRIVATE MUSIC LESSONS WITH THE SAME VALUE WEIGHT
AS JUST ANOTHER ACTIVITY AFTER SCHOOL: I know I'm biased in favor
of music, but look at the research that's been done in the last twenty
years. Taking music lessons has been shown to greatly enhance a student's
grades in academics, increase scores on intelligence tests, aid in emotional,
cultural, social, and personal development, expose the music student to
friendship with some of the most mature, intelligent other students in
the school, and greatly promote true self-esteem, self worth, and self-image.
The list actually goes on and on to involve doing better in college, getting
better paying careers later on in life, and having better social relationships
and marriages than equally bright students who were not seriously involved
in music study. Instrumental Music Education is the single most valuable
activity in which a young student can participate. Therefore, parents and
students should not skip their weekly lessons for an activity after school
which does not provide all of these benefits. Once the decision has
been made to take an instrument, the commitment to daily (5 times a week)
practice and the weekly lesson should almost be sacred for the duration
(which should be long term and open ended). Except for emergencies
or sickness, lessons and practice should not be skipped in lieu of stamp
club or such. There is no better way to invest in your child's development
and growth, now and in the future as private music instruction and participation.
7. TOO STRICT OR TOO LENIENT CONCERNING QUITTING: Sooner or
later all things come to an end. In the perfect world that I would
create, all music students will continue playing until they are great grandparents
or older. In the not perfect world, students quit at any level.
However, many adults have told me that they wish they had not quit music
lessons when they were young. Their parents gave in to their first request
to quit by letting them. Now that they are adults they regret that
action. Every music student in the world has asked to quit
at least once. Even I did once after a long Christmas vacation.
I asked my mother to call my piano teacher and stop the lessons.
She told me she would not. She said I would have to. I said,
"Never mind, I'll go to the lesson." The rest is history, about fifty years
of history. It takes eight to fifteen years to become a really good
musician. To attain that goal, every student and their parents have
to realize that there will be good days and not so good days. There
will be days of absolute love of the instrument and days when quitting
is the path of least resistance. This war goes on 52 weeks a year
until death or quitting (whichever comes first). The good parent
recognizes this and helps the child or adolescent through the rough times
and the down times. Quitting should never be the easy way out.
Every student can benefit from music lessons. Very few kids should
quit. Only after a lot of mature discussion, soul searching, and
examining the problems should "quit" be considered an option. Then,
only after a serious discussion with the private teacher, should any action
be taken. For many music students, quitting is terminal. Once stopped,
the music usually stays stopped. Make a valiant effort to prevent
quitting, at least until all other options are explored. Music Lessons
take care and feeding for the long term. It is like giving your child
a puppy for his birthday. The excitement will wear off and the good
parent will then have the opportunity to show that the care of the puppy
goes on 365 days a year for up to fifteen years, whether the child feels
like it, has other things to do, or has lost interest. Young people
usually do not have any big picture awareness or historical perspective
concerning their lives and long term activities like music lessons.
That is why God created parents. Be a good parent and help your child
through the down time and provide the adult view of the Big Picture.
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Jack's Advice
To Potential Music Majors:
Sooner
or later, the subject comes up concerning turning one's favorite activity
into a life's work. "I think I want to major in music in college."
If this statement comes before 9th grade, there is plenty of time to deal
with all of the ramifications (music theory, piano, career planning, exploring
music colleges, discussions about the pitfalls, keeping other options open,
achieving a higher than your state standards of performance and practice, developing
professional level practice habits, developing self-discipline, delving
into the teach or play question, etc.). Easily, 50% of music majors
who start in their freshman year do not complete the degree program for
many reasons. I used to be upset with that statistic. I would
vigorously try to talk students out of going into music with the understanding
that if I could talk them out of it they probably would not have made it
anyway. Still, more than 250 of my students have gone into music
study at college in some form. Public school music programs do not
provide enough basic music instruction and experience to set a student
up to play for life except at a very amateurish level. Even my private
lessons can only go so far by 12th grade. I now believe that college
music study should be the goal of many students. This can range from
playing in the band at college, taking a few music classes, taking private
lessons, starting their own performing groups, being a music minor in conjunction
with some other major, taking a music major matriculation in music therapy,
music education, music composition, music business, recording industry
study, to a pure music performance degree leading to a Masters or Doctorate.
The degree of participation and the direction of career path can be almost
infinite. There is not one way to go and not one way to get there.
My own career path has demonstrated that. My complaint is that so
many students wait until their Junior or Senior year to contemplate being
a music major. That usually means they haven't taken enough private
lessons on their instrument, piano lessons, theory classes, and other activities
to adequately prepare themselves for a life of music 16 hours a day for
the next five years. Start early immersing yourself in total music
with a variety of activities. (See Comprehensive
Musician) Talk to your private teacher first. Really talk
to the other teachers and performers you most want to emulate to see if
the life you seek is really the life they live. Visit music colleges
and talk to the students. What is life like for music majors.
Whatever you do, plan to continue your own music education for the rest
of your life, in college, after college, and into retirement. Music
should greatly enhance your life for the next 80 years. The better
prepared you are, the greater the enhancement.
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