The Highly Sensitive Music Student

After a friend posted an article about how trendy restaurants are terrible for highly sensitive people (Why Restaurants are Hell for Highly Sensitive People), I started thinking about how high sensitivity affects music lessons. For those who haven't heard the term, a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) is someone who experiences acute physical, mental, or emotional responses to stimuli..Some google searching turned up this article: Teaching HSCs and HSPs to Swim, Drive, or Anything Else, which basically describes me and my own experience with learning skills like driving, music, etc.. and how I wish teachers would have responded.
For me reading about this brings up two questions.1.  How do I teach in a way that is productive for other highly sensitive people? 2. As a highly sensitive person, in what ways is my approach to teaching failing to cater to my less HSP students?

This post will address number one. I have to say that even as a private lesson instructor, I think private lessons can occasionally be too much for some students. Private lessons are obviously less environmentally stimulating and overwhelming than class settings, but can be very emotionally intense with so much attention focused on one individual student (especially highly driven students). As a student I often found lessons overwhelming (but I loved them anyway), except for with two of my teachers who I strongly suspect are also HSPs. I  think there are ways for a teacher to help a student be more comfortable and learn better. (I also wonder if there aren't better ways of learning than just private lessons that could be explored).
In terms of private lessons here are some dos and don't I found to be true for myself and suspect are true for many highly sensitive students (ones in bold are those I consider most important and also are most likely to go against what many music teachers believe or have been taught):

Do Not:

• (Especially for advanced students) Don't feel like you have to point out super obvious mistakes. I have ears and I know if I played an obvious wrong note or came in too early. Assume I heard it unless it happens again. When you point out even blatantly obvious mistakes it erodes my confidence and makes me think you think I'm either really stupid or not paying attention. 

• When you explain and demonstrate a new technique, make sure I understand it and let me try it out a few times, but please, please, please!! don't insist that I get it right before we move on. I might need to try it out on my own first. If you keep making me try it I will just tense up and develop anxiety surrounding the technique.

• Don't make me sing! (actually you can make the 33 year old me sing, but from age 9-about 27, nope). I didn't sign up for singing lessons and there are few things more nerve-wracking for a nervous music student than being made to sing in front of someone (if you are a voice teacher this obviously doesn't apply to you, but I'm pretty sure your students knew going in that there would be singing ;)). In my opinion the adage "if you can sing it, you can play it" is one of the most damaging ideas out there for music teachers (and not true, I can play a lot of things I can't sing, and I play a lot better in-tune than I sing).  There is nothing wrong with singing in lessons when it works for the student, but trying to make an already self-conscious student sing for you is basically torture for the student, and I can guarantee they will not learn from the experience. 

• Don't get freaked out if I cry. It's more likely than not nothing specifically you said or did, I'm just frustrated with my own inability to get something right or overwhelmed. It's possibly a sign that you have pushed to hard in the moment, just move on to something else. I'm fine, I promise. 

Please Do:

• Give me positive feedback and praise for what I do well. I'm not saying to avoid constructive criticism, but I need to know what I'm doing well or your criticism just layers on top of my own inner critic and can become overwhelming. Trust me, too much praise will not make me lazy and stop practicing, too much criticism might. I will work like crazy to live up to someone's positive opinion of me. Someone's overly critical feedback just makes me anxious about practicing and more likely to avoid it. 

• Give me an opportunity to demonstrate what I know. When possible ask a question instead of assuming I don't know or have never heard of something. Ask me what I heard and/or how I'm planning to practice something. Try giving me a chance to comment and/or ask questions before giving me your input. This shows me you trust me to evaluate my playing and understand what I need help with and what I can fix on my own with practice. 

• Whenever possible, allow me to play through an entire piece or movement once before commenting.  It's hard to get into any sort of flow when I know I might be stopped at any moment. (I think this is probably true for most students).

• Give me tools for musical expression, even if I don't have all of the basics down yet. I, in part, attribute my early struggles with rhythm to not having appropriate knowledge of the bow techniques (speed/weight/contact point) and phrasing to express the musical ideas I already had, so I played with the timing in order to play "expressively" (in my young musician mind). I think too many teachers think a student must get the rhythm absolutely correct before "adding" musical expression and dynamics, but I think many musically sensitive students need to express themselves musically from the start, and if they have the tools they will be more able to start playing expressively as they learn the accurate notes, rhythm, and technique. 

I'm curious to hear from those who might also be highly sensitive as to what in this list resonates (or doesn't ) and what you would add. Also, curious to hear from those who wouldn't consider themselves highly sensitive what you think about the suggestions and how they would or would not have worked for you as a student.

(Brevard Music Center-One of my favorite places in the world)

Itzhak: Concept of Sound

I finally got around to watching the film Itzhak, about the life and career of Itzhak Perlman. My favorite parts of the film are the little musical/philosophical discussions that Itzhak has with various people.
 There were several thought provoking observations about interpretation, but the one I have been mulling over the most is the idea that one needs to have a "concept of the sound in his mind, you need to be able to hear it, otherwise nothing comes out." As a teacher, I have observed students that from almost the beginning, seem to know exactly what kind of sound they want to get from the violin/viola and they almost naturally play with a good tone from their first twinkle variations. I had the pleasure of hearing a student get more shading and color than I thought possible from an inexpensive Yamaha violin and Glasser fiberglass bow (she has since gotten a better violin and bow and sounds even better), she just knew what she wanted the sound to be and she found it. On the other hand, I also have students that don't seem to have any inner sound at all. Some of them have a reasonably nice, pleasant tone, but the sound doesn't seem to connect to any sort of inner ideal, but is the result of good technique and imitation of recordings and demonstrations, all phrasing and dynamic shadings, have to be specifically coached and planned.

How does one teach or cultivate an inner sound? 

Photo: Nan Melville for The Juilliard School

Listening: I do think (and observe) that students who listen to recordings and go to concerts generally have a better concept of sound than those who don't, and that those who listen to a variety of performers generally have a better concept than those who only listen to the Suzuki CD, but I think there is more to it than that.
Expression: I think students also need to know that they can "say something" with their music and that their playing can be a form of personal expression. With the exacting nature of classical music, it can be easy for both teachers and students to get into the mindset of doing it "right" and thus performing become more akin to a math test with "right" and "wrong" answers than a way to express oneself or portray musical character or emotions.
Technique: Another barrier to sound is, of course, technique. Without an understanding of the relationship between bow speed, weight, and contact point, it is much more difficult to create a beautiful and varied tone. Although again, some students seem to figure this out with a minimum of instruction, while others can recite the three variables for tone/dynamics, but have to be guided almost note, by note to create any variation in tone or dynamics.
Self-Assesment: Related to listening, students also need to learn to listen to themselves. With so much to think about in order to play (posture, technique, music reading, etc..) students can sometimes forget to listen to what actually comes out of the instrument. Or are so focused on playing the right notes, that they ignore the quality of said notes. Guiding them to listen to a particular aspect of their playing or recording and having them listen/watch for themselves (thank you iPhones!), can help students to be more aware of how they sound.
Exploration: I have found (unsurprisingly) that students who spend more time playing generally have a better concept of sound. Even students who don't practice a lot, but play in school orchestra generally have a better tone, just from the act of playing more, and getting a better feel for the bow on the string and how the instrument works. I try (although I could do better) to encourage students to explore the instrument and try out different options for creating sound.
Teachers, How do you cultivate an inner concept of Sound/Tone?

Teaching vs. Performing

I recently attended a concert that was part of a concert series dedicated to a pianist/teacher who passed away a few years ago. Seeing and hearing his name reminded me of my interactions with him at a music festival early in college, where he was the coach for a piano quartet I was playing in for the week. I don't honestly remember much about his coaching or playing. I do remember that near the end of the week he asked me what my major was, and when I told him I was majoring in viola performance, he made a comment to the effect of "you could be a Suzuki teacher." While it is impossible to know exactly what he meant by that, I took it to mean he thought I wasn't good enough to be a performer and was hurt by his comment (If I want to give him the benefit of the doubt it could be he thought my personality was suited to teaching little kids, but I guess I'll never know).

I have thought a lot about this comment over the years and the problematic assumptions that this implies.
1. Being a teacher is a second choice career to performing.
2. You don't have to be a good player to teach.
3. Teaching isn't as important as being a good performer.

To attack some of the assumptions above: One: I know many musicians who always wanted to be Suzuki teachers and pursued that as a primary goal, others primarily pursued careers as teachers in the schools. I always knew I wanted to teach, but originally thought I would teach more as a supplement to performing rather than as my primary income, but have found that I absolutely love teaching.  I also prefer the relative stability of a teaching income, rather than waiting for the phone to ring for gigs. I have found the same to be true for many other teachers.

As for the second assumption that you don't have to be a good player to teach, while I would say that you don't need to be able to toss off Paganini caprices to teach beginners, you do need to be able to play some advanced repertoire with good technique (and I would say a good teacher should almost always have at least a Bachelor's degree in music). It is important in order to be able to demonstrate, and to have a plan in mind for helping your students progress to more advanced levels. Also, the skills of teaching, while they include skills of good performers, are unique to teaching. All good performers know how to hold the bow correctly and use vibrato, however, knowing how to do these things is very different from knowing how to teach a wiggly 7 year old to do the same things.

I think the last assumption, is probably the biggest problem in the music profession (and society in general). We tend to glorify those who can do something at the highest level (particularly the things we can watch),  and while that is understandable, we tend to forget the teachers and coaches that make these things possible. If you read bios of musicians in programs you often see teachers listed, however, these teachers are generally their college and grad school professors who they did not study with until they had already achieved a relatively high level of proficiency on their instrument. I personally think that musicians should all be required to list their first music teachers along with the impressive list of professors at good universities and conservatories. After all, no one gets into Juilliard (or even a decent university program) without years of lessons, and a high level of achievement mostly attained thanks to their first couple of teachers. The music profession really owes everything to the beginning private teachers and orchestra directors of the world, but we publicly acknowledge very few of them.

I am now primarily a teacher with 50+ private students and love teaching more than almost anything else I do, but I realized recently that I still subconsciously held some of these assumptions when I was considering my career and what I do. I do perform professionally, but not as much as many musicians I know, and my income comes primarily from teaching. I still occasionally find myself slightly embarrassed to admit that I am a "violin/viola teacher" and that I don't do a ton of freelancing (it's hard to play gigs and teach 50+ students). While I am working to find a better balance between teaching and performing (and everything else), I am also working on being proud of what I do and not apologizing for being "just" a teacher. My students play well and I think that what I do is meaningful to them and to the world.
And after all in what other job do you get to dress up as Mary Poppins and play the viola?

Progress Out of Sequence

I've been thinking a lot lately about acknowledging progress with my students. The other day I was finding myself slightly frustrated with a student who was "still" not playing with a full tone. She has been studying with me for two years so I was starting to question whether or not I had been doing enough to address this issue, and wondering why I couldn't seem to get through to her on this topic. 

Then, it occurred to me how incredible this student's progress has been in almost every other way. When she started with me two years ago, she had played only at school for 1 1/2 years, struggled to play early book one pieces, and could barely read music. She's now playing book 3/4 level music, can shift consistently to third position, plays with a nice vibrato and excellent intonation, and can sight-read well for her level. This fall she auditioned for two groups outside of school orchestra and was accepted to both. So while her tone still needs improvement, almost every other aspect of her playing has improved exponentially.

I think it is easy as a teacher to see the step-by-step sequence of learning the violin (or any complex skill) as a straightforward sequence that must be taught in order, but I am continually reminded that not all students will learn exactly step-by-step in the order I have in mind. With this particular student, she almost overnight figured out how to read music after struggling for over a year, and as soon as she took off there she was so impatient to move forward and learn more pieces that it was pretty much impossible to hold her back to work on tone, and in retrospect I am glad I didn't. One of the groups she now plays in and loves would have been completely out of her reach if I hadn't let her advance in repertoire more quickly than I normally would and had forced her to sit on old pieces and perfect her tone production. Will she eventually have to dig in and work on her tone? Absolutely, but I think by then, she'll be ready and have the maturity to recognize the importance of playing with a bigger and better sound. Until then, I'll keep bringing it up, but also acknowledge all of the amazing progress she has made in other areas. 

No Such thing as Talent? talent vs. hard work

The advent of the Suzuki method and Suzuki's philosophy of "every child can" marked a shift in thought about musical talent. Before Suzuki it was largely thought that you either had musical talent or you didn't and there was nothing you could do about it. Suzuki believed that every child, given the right environment, instruction, and hard work, could learn to play the violin (or any instrument) to a very high level. He argues that so called "talent" is largely a product of environment (explains why children of professional musicians often seem to become good musicians from an early age), and that if the ideal environment can be created (exposure to great music via recordings and concerts, singing in the home etc..) anything is possible.

I don't entirely agree or disagree with Dr. Suzuki's philosophy. I do believe that pretty much anyone can achieve a high level of playing if they work hard enough. However, I think that anyone who has taught a significant number of students would agree that some students just seem to "get it" more easily than others, regardless of the amount of practicing they do. I have a self-professed (parent confirmed) non practicer in my studio who has been able to progress almost effortlessly to the middle of Suzuki violin book 2 with pretty much zero practice outside of our lessons (she might practice perhaps for 20 minutes one day every other week). I have another student who has made similar progress with about one hour of practice per week. I also have a student who practices about two hours each week who has struggled much more than the above students to get to the same level in about the same amount of time.  These students are all approximately the same age and started their studies in very similar school programs as more or less the same time (with 2 in the same program). None of their parents are musicians or particularly involved in music or in their children's practice. So how do you explain the differences in their progress vs. practice? If I had just the latter two, one could argue that one practices more effectively and efficiently than the other, but how do you explain the non-practicing student?

I think in some ways we do students a disservice by equating more practice exactly with more progress. Does more practice generally lead to faster and better progress? Absolutely. However, some students will inevitably progress faster than others with the same amount (or less) of practicing.
While I would never put a limit on student achievement, I do think that acknowledging  the fact that some students naturally learn things faster than others can actually make students feel better about their progress. When students express frustration about their rate of progress relative to other students   I acknowledge that some things come more naturally to some students, I also let them know that in most cases, with enough hard work, they can achieve just as much as their more naturally "talented" classmate. 

Suzuki vs. Anti-Suzuki

I have a series of blog post partially written and waiting for editing and publishing. Reading through them, I realized that many of them might seem rather anti-Suzuki method. While I am sometimes critical of certain aspects of the Suzuki Method, I don’t want to give the impression that I am anti-Suzuki. I recognize the numerous wonderful things that are done in Suzuki programs and private studios around the world and I personally use many aspects of the Suzuki method and materials in my own teaching. In fact I have Suzuki training in books 1-3 and have plans to take more training. What I do worry about is that with the overwhelming number of Suzuki violin/viola teachers in my area. I think there is a danger in having fewer options for non-suzuki lessons. For one, not all students have parents able or willing to be the practice partner for their child. Also, for many students who begin at slightly older ages, say 9 and over, parental involvement many take away the ownership of the musical experience from the child. I think it is vitally important to question whatever seems to be becoming standard practice, which at least in my area, seems to be Suzuki based violin/viola instruction, to make sure that the standard practice is properly serving all students, not just those who thrive under a particular model of instruction. 

One of the things I absolutely love about the Suzuki method is the sharing of teaching ideas amongst teachers via teacher training, online forums, Facebook, teacher get-togethers etc... I really wish this were the case for all private violin teachers and that there were more public discussion forums and teacher courses for more non-suzuki methods. There unfortunately seems to be quite a bit of polarization between those teachers who are Suzuki and others, many of whom seem to be anti-Suzuki (if you can trust online comments). I think there is far more grey area between absolutely 100% supporting every aspect of the Suzuki method and saying the the method is useless and that "nothing good" has come from Suzuki instruction. For some reason, much of this discussion seems to be missing from public forums (although I am certain these teachers exist) the discussion seems to take place on Suzuki forums where teachers issue disclaimers about certain aspects of their teaching methods that are "non-Suzuki" by way of explanation. On the other side of the coin, when the Suzuki method or materials are mentioned on non-Suzuki specific forums (such as violinist.com) someone always seems to chime in with an anti-Suzuki comment. I wish there were a forum or class where it was more acceptable to discuss these things frankly in terms of how a teaching idea has helped a teacher teach a certain aspect of violin playing than being couched in "Suzuki" vs. "non-Suzuki" terms. We need free exchange of all ideas in violin teaching, not just those that follow the Suzuki method. 

Joy vs. Achievement

If you talk to almost any beginning music teacher, they will tell you that one of their goals for their students is to foster a "love of music," or "enjoy music" or any variation thereof. I certainly agree with this and would really like for all of my students to take away a real love of music and the violin/viola. One thing I struggle with, however, is how to balance the enjoyment factor with the very real and sometimes tedious work it takes to get posture, bow hold, intonation, rhythm, etc.. exactly right. I do think that enjoyment is ultimately more important than technique (if a student quits because they aren't enjoying lessons, it doesn't matter how beautiful their bow hold is). However, so much of what is truly fun about violin playing such as: playing in an orchestra, or chamber group, attending summer music camps, or playing really interesting and great music, comes only after mastering a fairly high level of technique. This doesn't mean that their isn't joy in playing Twinkle or Go Tell Aunt Rhody, just that to be truly hooked on violin playing often takes experiencing what is truly possible on the violin.
I had a conversation once with a colleague in which we both expressed that we wished every student would stick it out long enough to get through, at a minimum, Suzuki book 4 level. It is at this level that I think students really start to get a glimpse at what is possible on the violin/viola. By this time they generally can do vibrato, they understand the basics of shifting (and know that they can shift up the fingerboard to find more notes, make passages easier, and change tone colors), and are starting to use more complex bowing techniques and off the string strokes. While there is, of course, a world of playing that is far above the level of book 4, at this level they at least have a glimpse at what is ahead and can decide whether or not it is for them. This is also the point at which they have probably played long enough not to lose everything if they quit and want to go back to playing later. They can also possibly play in the 2nd violins of the lower level amateur orchestras, thus making it more likely that they will continue playing and enjoying music.
At the other end of the achievement spectrum are the students who have been bitten by the violin/viola bug and are passionate about achieving their musical goals. I worry about these students in a different way. Having been in this category myself, I know how easy it is to get caught up in the competition aspect of playing at a high level. To be so focused on the next Youth Orchestra, All-State, Concerto Competition, etc... that their is no time to truly enjoy playing and practicing. It is also very easy for more fundamental practice (Scales, etudes, truly polishing pieces in their entirety (not just the 1st few pages or 1st movements)) that long-term technical and musical development suffers (replaced by reams of youth orchestra parts to learn).
Something that I, and I think many teachers, struggle with is how to balance helping students achieve at a high level, without squashing the joy and passion that led them to choose the violin in the first place. Most of the students who truly wish to play at a very high level will often push themselves to achieve and seem to accept the grunt work as simply part of the process (and some even enjoy it). It is the students just below this level, who have the potential to be high achievers, but haven't yet been "bitten by the violin bug" and truly inspired to achieve that can be the most difficult to teach. These students seem don't seem to understand the work it takes to achieve at a high level or haven't really been exposed to higher level playing enough to know what is "out there" in terms of musical opportunities. Hardest for me, are the students who have ambitious playing aspirations, but their parents remain indifferent to their interest and force them to focus on schoolwork or sports instead of music.
Most of the students I have had who are driven to achieve on their own, are the ones who are exposed to, or seek out high level playing. I find that especially the students who attend summer music camps (just day camps are enough) seem to see a higher level of playing from students at or around their age, which can often inspire them to achieve more. Students who frequently seek out performances on youtube (or better yet live performances) also seem more inspired to achieve. I am always looking for ways to encourage students in this area, and may need to find more ways to bring these experiences to lessons, such as watching clips together, or spending a bit of time demonstrating more advanced repertoire.