by Sean Stone-Ashe
As a teacher, my ultimate goal for my students is for my teaching to eventually become obsolete. It takes many years, but every musician must one day be able to learn, practice and perform music without the routine guidance from a teacher.
This blog will discuss some of the key steps to becoming a truly independent musician.
- Complete Fluency in Music Reading
In order to become an independent learner of music, it is imperative to become a completely fluent reader for your instrument. This means not only do you need to know what each note is when you encounter it on the staff, but you must also know how to play that note on your instrument.
For some instruments, this is more simple than others. For instance, on piano each note is found in a singular location. But for the guitar, there are certain notes that may have three or four commonly used locations depending on what else is happening in the music. Therefore, it’s not enough just to read the notes. You must also understand how to read instrument-specific notation that can help you place certain notes in the correct position.
- Complete Understanding of Technique for Your Instrument
Every instrument has a correct way to play and many incorrect ways to play. Over the years, your teacher has likely pointed out many of these elements to you in an effort to help you improve your technique.
It is important to understand exactly what you are looking for as you play your instrument – how it should feel, and the sound it should produce.
For myself, I certainly did not leave music lessons with perfect technique on guitar. However, by understanding what that perfect technique is, I have been able to work increasingly towards those goals over years.
- Strong Self-Monitoring Ability
Your teacher will always let you know when you’re doing something wrong! They don’t hesitate to micro-manage and make you play that same part in your piece again and again! Sometimes it can get old, but your teacher is helping you every lesson by intensely monitoring your actions, and showing you what to do and how to practice.
Those same good practice habits have to find their way into your daily practice by yourself. I find that this element of learning music independently is the easiest to acquire. It doesn’t require deep intellectual knowledge or skill. But, it does require that you be intensely honest with yourself and how your music is going every second of your practice, and adjust constantly as needed.
- Self-Accountability for Daily Practice
I find for many people one of the most important elements of music lessons is the accountability they engender. Having to check in weekly with a teacher who will be able to tell if you did an adequate amount of work last week helps keep people on their best behavior (though undoubtedly many people still fail to practice enough!).
However, there is no purpose in becoming an independent learner of music if you can’t convince yourself to ever pick up your instrument again once your teacher is gone! Eventually, the only person who will insist that you practice is yourself, and your will power to keep going is your strongest resource.
- Benefits of Independent Learning
The most important benefit of becoming an independent learner of music is that you are free to learn whatever piece you want at any time. Having this independence secures your ability to enjoy playing your instruments for the rest of your life!
However, there are great benefits to gaining independence even while you are still a student with a teacher. For instance, as you get more comfortable reading music, you can learn pieces faster, freeing up lesson time to discuss more elements of musical expression, technique, or whatever else is relevant.
Learning how to play the notes of a piece is incredibly time-consuming for people who are not strong learners or readers, and this can mean spending nearly 100% of lessons just making sure you have your music learned for the upcoming recital. However, there is much joy to be had in discussing musical nuances that separate the amateurs from the professionals. Having time for these topics relies on the student’s ability to adequately prepare their music on their own to some degree.
I know the ideas presented in this blog are not attainable in a short period of time, but it is important to keep the ultimate goal of music lessons in mind everyday when we practice – to one day be a self-reliant, capable and expressive musician!
