Burwell, K., Carey, G., & Bennett, D. (2017). Isolation in studio music teaching: The secret garden. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education,1474022217736581.
What was interesting was the actual topic itself. Being isolated and how it can affect your music journey. I’ve never thought about the difference between all of different ways that you can be isolated. Many musicians, including myself, probably started out learning an instrument one - on - one. I’ve gotten the opportunity to also learn in a high school, smaller groups, and now with a studio teacher and also having master classes weekly. It’s interesting to me because I can see that each kind of environment that I was in, I was able to learn different things and to be able to help others or even ask for help with my peers.
An assumption that I had was that there was also this hierarchy in my head that I will only learn “better” with my one-on-one (private / studio) teacher. This was mainly because in my high school classes, my strings teacher would tell me to ask my studio teacher “what would he do at this section”. I got the impression that she didn’t know what to do, but it was probably to get a different perspective. And also vice versa. My high school teacher taught me skills and explained them a different way for me to understand.
Looking back at my past private teachers, I feel like I’ve been taught really poor music skills and techniques that they’ve learned when they were younger. . Although my foundation was relied on them. In the first half of the article, there was a quote that the writer also took which really stood out to me. “the master usually is looked at as a role model and a source of identification for the student, [while] the dominating mode of student learning is imitation” I relate to this quote so much because once I got to this school, the first month and a half was all about “fixing up” my skills. I’ve been explained skills, but never really understood why to play this way and why it’s bad to play that way. I imitated my teacher’s playing.
Something that frustrated me was that relating back to having private / studio teachers, other musicians who do not have this opportunity, has an assumption that you are “better” than everyone else. Though it should be like that, they don’t understand how not all teachers are able to teach techniques.
Comments