Music Lessons For Adults – Just Do It!
If you’ve ever considered music lessons for adults, perhaps some of the following thoughts have come to mind: “My parents forced me to take piano lessons as a child and I hated it and never practiced. Now I really regret it.” “. “I would love to have a grand piano in my house, but I don’t know how to play it.” “When I was a kid, I always wanted to play an instrument, but I never made it.” “I played the clarinet when I was in high school and I really loved it.” People reminisce about his past experiences with music and make comments like these. Music teachers hear them all the time…especially from those looking for adult music lessons.
Adult music lessons are readily available for almost any instrument, and that includes voice. But there is not as much advertising and promotion of music classes for adults as for children. This sometimes leads to a common perception by the public that music instruction is an activity only for children. This article will cover some of the top reasons adults take lessons, how music lessons for adults benefit them, and ways to avoid some pitfalls when you decide you want to start taking lessons.
The first question that an adult should ask themselves before beginning music lessons for adults is: “Why do I want to do this?” Both the teacher and the student should have a clear idea of what all the objectives are. Just as important is the choice of instrument. How about that old saxophone kept somewhere in the house? What about the piano you inherited from your grandmother? Or is it your desire to go out and buy a violin because you really want to play that violin? No matter what you choose, there is an adventure ahead. Each instrument is different and individual in its own way, but there is a common set of rules for all written music, and that allows for good production and performance, which is, after all, the goal of performance art.
The “motherboard” of all musical instruments is the piano. All other instruments extend from the piano, and playing or singing music is fun and engaging no matter which instrument you choose. But in order to produce a good sound and be precise and artistic in your playing, even if “playing” is simply playing to yourself, it is necessary to understand the fundamental principles of playing and/or singing. It’s very exhilarating to be able to just be entertained or perform on stage in front of an audience.
Once you decide you want to start lessons, the next step is to find a teacher who is in tune with your interests and schedule. You must communicate his needs to the instructor. Is it pop and jazz for your own pleasure that you want to play? Do you want to form a woodwind quintet for classical music from the masters? You have to make it known. It will be utter frustration for both student and teacher to be in thrall to a Mozart sonata for several months, when what you really wanted to learn was how to play cocktail piano for a friend’s party. Those who take adult music lessons speak of the enjoyment and fun that comes from the flexibility of trying a wide variety of musical styles. Regardless of the style of music you want to play, nothing replaces learning the basics, learning the vocabulary and understanding the fundamentals, but these are simply tools to be used to achieve the desired results. The adult student beginning the lessons must remember that communication is the key. The adult learner is the client, and that learner will experience a real sense of accomplishment when he has a real desire to learn. A clear understanding between teacher and student of what the ultimate goal is will produce the greatest satisfaction. The ideal music instructor will nurture this process and structure the material in such a way that it is easy to use and fun!
Once you’ve found a teacher who meets your expectations, you’ll need to determine how much time you can devote to this exciting project. Keep in mind that music is a journey, not a destination. Even the most successful professionals never stop being mentored and seek feedback from their peers. Go into your lessons with the expectation of spending at least a few years mastering the basics.
There is never a time when even the most successful professionals stop being coached and receiving input from their peers. Music lessons for adults should be started with the understanding that you will spend at least a few years mastering the basics. Even more important, music lessons are most successful when there is time to practice. Thirty minutes per week is usually the actual lesson time. It is during this lesson time that the teacher will check hand position and breathing techniques, answer questions that may have come up during the previous week, demonstrate how to overcome trouble spots, and prepare the student for what lies ahead next week. week. The adult learner must be willing to commit to a few minutes of practice for the exercises and repetition of the material. Success will be directly related to the amount of time spent practicing, but for the recreational musician, an acceptable result can be achieved with half an hour of concentrated practice most days of the week.
There are well documented therapeutic benefits of playing a musical instrument. The pianos are found in nursing homes across the country. Age restricts many activities due to physical limitations, but playing an instrument or singing can be safe and fun at any age. Older adults often retire early to practice, so they can usually make noticeable progress. Playing music can be a good source of stress relief for the active working adult. A good teacher will be able to monitor the correct level of difficulty of the music to make the music enjoyable and a source of pleasure for the adult learner, and not just another chore added to an already overloaded schedule.
Playing music embraces the body and the mind, and both the brain and the hands connect precisely. Each finger has to be in a certain place at a certain time, and each note sung is a very exact number of vibrations per second. The science of this is precise and fascinating. A real euphoria can be produced by successfully overcoming a challenging passage.
Music lessons for adults are also advantageous in a social sense. Belonging to a community orchestra or choir, joining a band, participating in parties, being a member of a music-educated church choir—all of these activities are much more enjoyable when you have the right training.
Look at bulletin boards at music stores and local computer listings. They all show people looking for singers, keyboardists and all kinds of musicians. Music is a performing art, but playing at home or alone, with no one listening, can be a totally relaxing and enjoyable time. But, the music is unique in that it requires three entities to complete. A composer must create the music, a performer must perform the piece, and an audience is needed to listen and enjoy it. It is these three elements (composer, performer, and audience) that make a live performance a distinctively engaging experience between performer and audience, even if your audience is just the family relaxing with you at home! Keep in mind, however, that a good music studio will always give their students recitals to allow them to perform in front of an audience, if they so choose.
Dr. Diana Chapman Walsh, former president of Wellesley College of Massachusetts, gave a very inspiring and memorable speech while addressing prospective students. She encouraged incoming freshmen at Wellesley to delay declaring a major. The philosophy there was to keep all avenues of self-development open. Dr. Walsh advocated taking classes she had no experience in and classes she found uninteresting, because she might discover an aptitude she never knew she had. I like to compare adults taking music lessons to the Dr. Seuss character Sam, who discovers that after resisting them, “HE LIKES green eggs and ham!” This is great advice for people of any age! The point is made in a different way in Columbia Picture’s 1991 film City Slickers. Curley, a character played by Jack Palance, is a wise and weathered old cowboy, and his partner is Mitch (played by Billy Crystal). Mitch asks Curley what the meaning of life is, and Curley replies that it’s “just a thing.” When Mitch asks what the one thing is, Curley replies that it’s different for everyone, and everyone has to find it for themselves. No matter how old he is, it’s never too late to see if music might be his “only thing.”
One of the many beautiful aspects of music is that it crosses all cultural, ethnic, political, and religious borders, and is a constant. In an ever-changing world of electronic and digital technology, the details of how to play music remain unchanged, as anyone who took lessons as a child and starts anew years later will find. (Middle C will never betray you; it’s always where it was the day before, waiting for you to play it!)
Students who take adult music lessons come from all walks of life. A cross-section of adult students in my study includes a medical student seeking recreation and release from study, a retiree working on a piano sonata, a housewife who received a grand piano as an anniversary gift, a lawyer who wants to be able to help his son with his piano lessons, wife and mother of three who just turned forty and is taking singing and yoga classes to help himself, and a lawyer who wants to learn piano but has never played . There is another gentleman from the medical industry who has a complete sound studio in his house and wants to concentrate on theory to compose and record original music.
Once, when I hosted two gentlemen from the Ukraine overnight, I had one of the best musical experiences of my life. They traveled with an orchestra and choir across the US, staying in individual homes. They didn’t know a word of English and I didn’t know Russian. It looked like it was going to be a long night, until they brought out their violins. I got out a flute and the three of us played Bach trios all night. Communicating with words became unnecessary. We all understood the language of music, and that can be a very rewarding experience for anyone. As an adult dealing with today’s world of technological gadgets, Twitter, time, and traffic, learning music through adult music lessons can be a great outlet. Who knows, you might discover your “one thing.”
