What If We Taught Language Like We Teach Music?

What If We Taught Language Like We Teach Music?  

Think of a language… name a few. Did you mention music? They say that music is not only just a language, but it’s the “Universal Language”. If that is so, why do so many students lack fluency? If so, why is it so hard when speaking your first language is so easy? Should playing music come as natural as speaking english.

Consider your first language, and how you learned it. In the beginning, did your parents pay to have you take an english lesson once a week? Did they struggle to make you practice English 15 minutes a day 4-5 times a week? Did your teacher give you a book or an article to read, and expect you to be able to talk after reading that book? How about recitals? Do you remember your first English recital? Of course not, that’s absurd.

So how did you get so good at speaking english? The key word is “Application”, and a ton of it. You learned to speak by speaking. And you didn’t just speak with your peers, you spoke with adults, and you started off with one-syllable, hardly intelligible words grouped with random noises, and it probably was cute, and your parents barely corrected you… in fact, I see many parents start to actually mimic the way their child speaks.

The main point is, we learned to speak by having conversations with other people that were better at it than us. We learned by jamming with professionals!

So what does that mean for us as music teachers? Here are a few tips that can be integrated in our instruction that can lead to a higher fluency of playing music.

1. Encourage Your Play – just play music, and if they ask what, just respond: “Play”. We call this “Jamming Out”. Encourage your child to experiment with they sounds they can make on their instrument, play a beat or a rhythm for them, and let them decide what they can do to compliment what you are doing. Then talk to them about what worked and what didn’t, let your students point out errors and successes. You do not have to be a musician to have this conversation with them.
2. Take advantage of time for your child to play music with other children – Group lessons are perfect for this. If you only have private students, you can even team up with other teachers’ lessons for 5-10 minutes just to give them the opportunity to play.
3. Encourage parents and siblings to jam at home –  They might also find this pretty awkward at first also. You might want to mention in passing, “You should try jamming with little Johnny from time to time, I think that would be beneficial to his progress.”, or encourage your students to ask their parents. We even have many siblings taking lessons, learning different instruments, they should be jamming at home as soon as they their first lesson.
4. Encourage parents and siblings to jam at home –  If there is a room open, and adults in the studio, students that are old enough to be left in a room by themselves are free to schedule practice times and jam sessions with other students. WE LOVE WHEN STUDENTS DO THIS! As long as a teacher is not needed, we do not need to charge for this time.