What is Excellence in Instrumental Teaching?

It's a word that is often bandied about in reference to teaching and learning an instrument: excellence.

What defines "excellence?" What does it look like and what outlines the goals to achieve it?

Is "excellence" about you and/or your approach or is it tied to student outcome?

"Excellence" is defined differently for each of us. It is a slippery term that can reference a high student level or commitment to achievement, technical skill, musicianship or student placement in orchestra and other competitive environments. For clarity, I define "excellence" in this article as a teaching quality that lends itself to facilitate all of these outcomes. "Excellence" includes the compassionate connection between teacher and student that motivates and inspires holistic growth. Holistic growth nurtures the student's "being" in the world that integrates all that he/she does, including learning music. Through such learning a student embodies what they experience in a way that nourishes him both as a musician and as a human being. 

So, don't we already know this? Sure, but HOW to do it needs some thought. Here's an example.

How many of us embodied music in our earliest beginnings on the instrument? Perhaps you were drawn to music because it was played in your home or it provided you with the escape that calmed your mind. Maybe music sparked your imagination and took you places that touched your soul. Imagination and sensory stimulation gives way to response: movement, visualization, dramatic re-enactment, and story. When music reaches down into the very depths of our being--and we are moved by it--it becomes embodied. That experience is not only somatic,  or intellectual, it is spiritual. Not religious or dogmatic, but something that speaks to the essence of our highest selves. 

And then, we are handed a violin, placed behind a keyboard or sat down with the cello. What then? In learning the skills necessary to play the instrument we often dis-connect for that which we know. We KNOW music and we know ourselves through music. But this object represents something else...something that requires correctness to play and unfamiliar gestures to perform. Some of us have bridged this gap by bringing together the necessary technique with the embodiment of the aesthetic. But for most of us, there still remains after many years some schism between skill and soul. That integration is of which I speak.

To attain excellence as a musician demands learning the requisite skill to create sound that reveals what is embodied. To do that requires a kind of learning that links and fuses sensory information with imagination, movement and embodiment from the very beginning. It isn't the layer that you add on top of skill but instead evolves with it. 

Most of the children entering our studios for the very first time have little or know familiarity with music or the movements necessary to play an instrument. They haven't yet embodied what they hear. Assuming we can teach a bow hold without adequate preparation for the ear, eye, hand and spirit of the child renders it irrelevant. Teachers must allow a child the opportunity to come to it at their own pace through many, many formative and carefully sequenced experiences. This involves much of what I lay out in my Musical Minds books, but most importantly it requires attunement to that child. Where are they musically? Psycho-emotionally? Physically? Can they discern between sounds and respond appropriately and creatively to what is heard? This fall I plan to offer training for teachers on this very stage of development through observation and discussion of my own pre-instrumental classes.

Is it "excellence?" I believe it creates the opportunity for excellence.

As a teacher you create an energetic connection within a supportive environment for your students. The somatic requirements are safety, security, being seen and being comforted. For some children this takes several lessons to establish; for others, it is secured within minutes. But it is fundamental. Without it, "excellence" may be elusive no matter how hard you try.

Once you establish these somatic requirements, play becomes available. We all learn best through play. Play includes sensory response, imaginative response, movement, inspiration, experimentation, investigation and immersion. Through play concepts and skills become more meaningful to a child. My approach is movement-based, though I use language, art, dramatic play, singing, chanting, and folk materials to encourage and facilitate aesthetic understanding. By taking movements that are familiar to children, such as twist, turn, push, pull, bend, straighten, swing, sway, rock, shake, walk, run and so on and accompany them with music, the task is simply honing those movements into gesture toward the instrument. Then, a bow hold becomes relevant to a student, having experienced the sensation, somatic association, and musical aspect of it already. This integrates the learning into knowing, bridging the gap between what is embodied and the necessary skill to achieve it. It links the left brain with the right. Such learning breeds excellence, for "excellence" in this context is not quantitative. It is relative to the nature of that child. As a teacher you are extending and widening a child's experience in ways that are meaningful to his whole being.

Imagine: By approaching students in this way, giving careful time and consideration to the period BEFORE starting the instrument, students create for themselves the flexibility to negotiate through challenges that support their own spiritual and holistic growth. No imposter syndrome. No anxiety or fear of being good enough. No attention to "correctness" as an independent concept, but one that is grounded in its relevance to aesthetic creation.

What a wonderful thing that would be!