Second Lesson Reflection

I recently had take 2 of my ten minute lesson on Bach.  I did the lesson on fugues just as I did the first time.  When the ten minutes was up, my first thought was:  “That was horrible.”  It didn’t feel great while I was doing it, and it felt even worse in the couple of minutes afterword when I reflected on it.  When my time was up I quickly packed up my things and went to my computer.  I didn’t write my actual reflection then.  Rather I just wrote the first few things that came to mind.  This was what I wrote:

Did a worse job

Messed up the color

Not clear

Crappy teacher

Got distracted by people laughing

When I hear someone say it’s making them nervous that can’t be a good sign

Obviously I’m hard on myself, but this was truly how I felt.  I was very nervous before my first lesson, but it ended up going alright, and I was ultimately proud of myself for getting through it.  This time though, I felt it was a borderline disaster.

The main thing I wanted to change was to make the lesson a little simpler in the sense that I wanted fewer facts.  I really wanted to focus on what a subject was and what the exposition was, and to not get bogged down with getting too much deeper.  The first time around I definitely talked too much, so I wanted to have a bit more of the class doing something.  One idea that I decided to try sort of at the last minute was to teach the class the subject vocally.  I had them sing it back to me in a few different sections and then had them sing the whole thing.  I realized that this was going to be a big challenging because it’s a fairly complicated melody to have to memorize on the spot like that, but I thought it was worth giving a try anyways.  The main thing I wanted to accomplish was for the class to get the subject in their head and become familiar with it.  It didn’t really matter to me if they couldn’t sing it perfectly.  I also decided to bring my bass guitar because that’s the instrument that I’m most comfortable with.  (My piano abilities are extremely limited).  I also wanted to play the beginning of the fugue with a student rather than just have them play the subject on his or her own.  This went all right, but I embarrassingly messed up a couple of notes because I let some of the laughter and comments of the rest of the class distract me and throw me off. 

            The other change I made was to split the class up into four groups for the listening/visualization part.  Rather than having everyone simply call out the color that was playing the subject, I assigned a color/voice to each group and had that group stand up when they saw/heard the subject.  Unfortunately I mixed up the color of the tenor voice with the alto voice, which led to confusion.  We tried the exercise again, but I felt it was too late to try and correct the colors at that point, so it only went moderately better the second time.  One interesting thing that happened was that everyone started singing their part along to the video.  I let it continue, and I’m still undecided if this was good or bad.  By singing were they getting more or less out of it?  Were they doing it seriously or as a joke?

            Overall the whole thing just felt uncomfortable to me.  I thought my tendency to be inarticulate came out, and I got a few laughs the first time, which didn’t happen this time.  Thinking about it now, I think getting people to laugh a little bit is a useful way for me to feel a little more comfortable.  I guess it’s a way of realizing that the people I’m talking to are really listening to me and are semi interested.  However, the only way for me to really use humor is for it to be spontaneous.  Quite often when people laugh at things I say it’s borderline unintentional.  In any case it didn’t happen at all this time.

            As I watched and participated in the other lessons I started to feel even worse about how my lesson went.  I thought for the most part everyone else did a great job and showed a lot of improvement on their first lesson.  On the other hand it felt to me like I took a step back.  It’s too bad because I thought all of the changes I made to my plan were quite good.  It’s just that it didn’t really come out when I was actually doing it.  

Luckily I didn’t have to wallow in my own self-criticism.  Professor Schneider actually gave me some very positive comments and told me that it was a big improvement compared to the first lesson.  Not only that, but I even got some nice feedback from a few of the other students in class.  This was very nice to hear.  It says to me that sometimes I really shouldn’t trust myself.  Maybe I did a better job than I gave myself credit for.  I did do a good job with stream lining the lesson, I got everyone singing more and doing a bit more, and I got everyone to learn the subject of a Bach fugue.  I still can’t change how it felt to me, but I suppose that in the end I did improve on my initial lesson.  Regardless of how well or bad it went, doing these lessons as well as seeing other people’s lessons has been a valuable experience.  I look forward participating in the rest of my classes’ lessons on Monday

Audiences

There are really only two ways I can think of to build an audience.  The first way is by promoting.  This can be through advertising, word of mouth, or by playing concerts outside of school in a variety of settings.  I’ve never actually had to do any of this.  I’ve been in many bands over the years, and I was never really the guy that took on the promoting and marketing of the group.  This is probably because most of these bands were groups that I wasn’t completely invested in.  In any case, promoting a musical group, be it a rock band or a high school jazz band, is something that I have little to no experience in and don’t know a lot about yet.

The other way I can think of to build an audience is by being both really good and interesting.  If your band plays at an exceptional level, then most likely more people will attend the next concert.  Even better than just being good though, is to play something that really grabs people’s attention and that everyone will remember.  If the band is unique in some way, then it’s more likely to build a following and get a bigger audience.  I would guess that the school bands that attract the biggest audiences are the ones that have a special identity, that play a lot outside of school, and that even have a name they go by other than “Such and Such High school Band.”

I’m not sure that it’s always necessarily important to build an audience as a high school band or orchestra director.  The most important thing is for students to get lots of experiences performing in front of an audience period whether it’s an audience of 30 or 3,000.  Preferably, students would get the chance to perform in front of audiences of greatly varying sizes.  In fact, playing in front of a small audience can be a valuable experience.  I’ve had many gigs where there were only about five people actually listening.  I sometimes had to remind myself that I should care just as much about playing well as if I was playing in front of a huge crowd.

I remember that in “Teaching Music With Purpose”, Peter Boonshaft says that rehearsing is much more important than actually performing.  I guess I disagree to some extent.  I think they’re both equally important in different ways.  The whole point of being musicians is for other people to hear us play.  If we just play for ourselves, then that’s great, but what have we really accomplished?  What’s the point in playing if others can’t hear us ultimately?  It’s sort of like the tree falling in the woods with no one there to hear it expression.  Performing in front of an audience is a form of practicing.  It’s the practice of being comfortable on stage with people watching, and the practice of not just playing the right notes with the right musicality, but having good stage presence and being a good performer.

Do we need competitions to motivate bands?

I only know of one way to create a love for music and performing in students.  It has to start with the teacher having a love for music and performing him/herself.  The teacher then has to have the ability to convey this love of music to the students.  The teacher may have all the enthusiasm in the world, but if he/she doesn’t express it, then the students aren’t going to see it.

One example of a teacher showing his/her love for music is simply taking it seriously.  I recently watched the movie “Chopped.”  It was obvious that the jazz band director Ace Martin from the movie had a love for music because of how seriously he took the band.  After he had conducted the auditions, he made a comment about how he was just hoping that the band would sound good and that they had enough talent.  He cared deeply not just about music, but about performing music at a high level and making it sound great. 

As I watched the movie, it became clear that one of the reasons why Martin was so serious was that he was working toward getting to and playing at The Essentially Ellington competition in New York.  When he told the band that they had been accepted, everyone was incredibly excited.  The band became more focused and worked harder.  Everyone cared about maximizing the potential of the ensemble and playing as good as they possibly could. 

This competition was the basis of the film.  It’s clear that competing in New York was a major motivator for all of the schools involved and pushed all of the bands to sound better.  This seems like it could only be a good thing, and yet the idea of competition in music as well as any art bothers me.  I realize that band competitions are a reality that I must live with, but the whole concept just doesn’t sit well with me.  I suppose it’s human nature to be competitive, but why do we have to give trophies to winners?  How does one “win” in music?  Isn’t the desire to sound great enough motivation?  Apparently not unfortunately.

In the second half of the movie when some of the bands were shown performing, my feelings were even more amplified.  I realize that the bands had to qualify to be there in the first place, but I found myself wishing that the competition was just a performance only.  All of the bands sounded great.  I would think that for the students, hearing great bands from other schools would be a valuable enough experience.  Why does there have to be a winner and a bunch of losers?

I hope that when I get my first job, I won’t have to participate in musical competitions, because I don’t know that it’s in me.  I hope that I‘ll be able to get an ensemble to take music seriously without an extrinsic motivator like a trophy.  I don’t know exactly how I’ll do this.  I know it starts with having a love of music, which I know that I have.  I guess I’ll see.  I realize that this is probably all wishful thinking, but at this moment, before my teaching career begins, this is how I feel.