A common question my students ask is what adjudicators consider when evaluating a performance? This is a complex question because of the nature of performing arts and ambiguity of something we can call “correct” or “incorrect”. Music is vague because it is highly interpretive. One performance may have high technical standards whereas another has high [...]
Tag Archives | Teaching
What We Can Learn From Other Musicians « Nick Cutroneo’s Blog
Some of my students played today in the Collegium Concert at the Victoria Conservatory and having guitarists play next to string quartets and piano trios is just so good for them…See what Nick Cutroneo has to say about this…. I was actually very excited to work with the woodwind student, as everything that we would [...]
Developing Scales – A few leading questions
Some of these questions come from my experience teaching but I filled it out with a few from The Well-Tempered Keyboard Teacher (overpriced but great book). Presenting and developing scales: questions to consider for teachers and students: What type of legato: When working on legato scales what type of legato are you aiming for? Will it aim [...]
Having musical friends is just as important as practicing
It’s a myth that if you practice your heart out in the solitary confinement of a practice room you’ll become a great musician. Music is not a solitary experience (not all the time anyway). For the last three years I’ve been the director of the VCM Summer Guitar Academy (Alexander Dunn is the new director [...]
Go to concerts and learn to communicate musically
Just a short post this week as I’m on Spring Break and not teaching this week. I’ve been really working with my students on polishing this week. It’s all about phrasing folks. You have to combine your technical work with phrasing. If you can phrase well your music will make sense to any listener even [...]
My Week Teaching: Quality vs Quantity and Methodology
I had a discussion with a few students this week about practicing in a way that emphasizes quality vs quantity. Gettting into fancy theories about music and pedegogy is fine but methodology in music can sometimes take the student away from the primary goal of making great music. Here are some tips. Listen to yourself [...]
The importance of mental preparation in music performance
Jean-François Desrosby has a new blog section on his website, check out this post about mental preparation. As I drew a lot of information for my research in the field of sport kinesiology, it was quite normal for me to look to the athletes and their mental preparation to performance to see if there were [...]
My Week Teaching: Musical Layers
When I teach I like to think of layers of musical information and how those layers can be simplified to the student. Think of layers as slides that you stack on top of one another. One slide could be the sky, another the trees, another a person etc etc until you have an entire picture. [...]
My Week Teaching: Practice and Bach Videos
Just a short entry this week as I have to get working on some papers for my history classes at UVic (I’m studying Asian history at the moment) and need to get practicing for an upcoming concert I’m playing in with Alexander Dunn, Adrian Verdejo, and Michael Dias. Even some of my most accomplished students [...]
My Week Teaching: Presentation and Preparation
Presenting material and ideas clearly, confidently, and concisely is a primary problem of many music students. This is what I try to impart upon my students: Make clear goals: Prepare specific material, that is, pick a phrase or section and be determined to make progress on that section. Be very clear about what you’re working [...]
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