Friday, November 11, 2022 by Bonnie Synhorst | Practice Tips & Tricks

Casually chatting with a teen violinist about a month back, the comment was made that “I’ve plateaued on violin and want to branch out to other instruments”.  I understand the excitement of learning new instruments and the wonderful rush of success when things are easy, but I’ve been pondering this statement for roughly the month since it was made and soul searching whether I also use empty excuses to justify my lack of progress or inability to move forward and achieve higher levels of playing. During my thought process, I came down to the bare bones of the problem:  Excuses.

How do we use excuses to justify not doing what we know we should and how does it limit us?  This morning, a student told me “it’s hard”.  Yes, playing an instrument is extremely hard!  But when we use it as an excuse, we give ourselves a pass to quit working when we fail.  Taking this attitude, allows us to only get so far and not discover our true potential.  Which makes me wonder about elite athletes as well as professional musicians, or even top professionals in any field:  science, law, technology, etc. One thing I observe with all these amazing people is that they don’t give up when they run into hurdles.  For every amazing success, there are hundreds and thousands of failures.  The proof that it CAN be done is their success.  And it should be a testament to all of us that we also can achieve anything given that we put in the effort and the work.  We only fail when we stop trying.

Through the course of the pandemic, I was just so happy that students showed up for lessons and it seemed that they often didn’t have the motivation and pure will (in some cases) to push themselves to work and push themselves when things were hard, because life itself was hard.  So in turn, we accepted mediocrity and subpar work.  Now we need to reverse the trend or our future, which is in the hands of our upcoming generations, does not look promising. 

In the studio, I ask and encourage students to do more than they think they are able.  Failing happens often on the road to success so we MUST fail in order to improve.  If we are NOT failing, we are not trying to do hard enough things.  

Oftentimes, I question how this appears in my studio to the outside world when they hear less than polished pieces and/or wrong notes.  Then I realize that those instances may very well be representative of my own struggles with failure and need to continue to work harder to help these students to succeed and not give up as they have these experiences (that I myself had as a student).  

A few days ago, I heard the statement, “the master fails more than the student ever tries.” This brings me to conclude and sum up my thoughts in the following key points:

• Try hard things

• Don’t give up

• There are no valid excuses; merely rationalizations for why we did not do.

• Fail, reflect, learn, and fail again!

Monday, August 23, 2021 by Bonnie Synhorst | Practice Tips & Tricks

Now that we are a few weeks into school, routines should be settling in and the newness of everything wearing off.  Of course, your music teacher wants to hear excited voices proudly proclaiming how much they are practicing and enjoying their new routines with music included.  But more often than not, we instead hear that the students are just too busy.  While this is partially true, too busy (more often than not) is just code for ‘music practice didn’t make the short list’. 

We want the most out of our lessons and, more importantly, we want children to develop good habits and routines along with their genuine love for music. Maybe we think the best way to do this is let them choose how, when, and how much they will practice, but in reality children are always looking to adults—parents, teachers, and mentors—for guidance and approval.  So the challenge then becomes how to encourage without nagging and how to set routine without a feeling that practice is punishment.

I think it’s important for parents to realize that all the child’s actions and reactions to how they address their music practice is a result of what we model and how we encourage (or sometimes don’t encourage).  Remember that children want support and have a very strong sense of what’s fair or unfair.  They are burdened with many responsibilities and, however small we think they are, they weigh heavily on small minds.  Although we can’t take away the stress of children having to complete too much homework, we can model for them the sense of satisfaction we get when completing difficult tasks and conversely, let them know the ramifications of our bad decisions when we procrastinate.  Sometimes we think these adult problems are not for little ears, but the way we address them can serve as a model of good or bad behavior and decisions that little eyes are always watching.

Rather than allow your child to simply go to the instrument and practice whenever they feel the urge (often they won’t with so many other options for fun and distractions), help them to establish a healthy practice routine.  Now—-when I say practice routine, this is not to mean that the child must sit and be tied to the instrument for 20-30 minutes or more.  Routine simply means scheduling in time to practice.  For some students, this may be 5 minutes in the morning before walking to the bus, or 15 minutes after they have their afterschoool snack.  The important thing is to establish a time for the activity at always takes place.  Maybe they always practice after eating dinner.  If they never skip dinner, they also would never skip practicing if the routine is tied to the non-skippable activity.  And thus, practice becomes part of the other activity—-dinner is always followed by after dinner music.

Alongside with routine comes encouragement.  Think for a moment how motivated (or not) you would be if you were always told how bad you were at something or how much better you’d be if you worked harder.  Yeah—super unproductive and discouraging for children to hear.  Now think for a moment of a favorite relative or teacher telling you how much they enjoy and appreciate how hard you worked on something regardless of the results or outcome.  Did you continue to try, even if only to impress the adult and get more kind words and praise? Of course you did! So why is it that we are so quick to point out our children’s shortcomings and how short they continue to fall from our goals and aspirations for them?  Now think for a moment about the goals and aspirations you have for yourself that you are modeling for them (if you aren’t, maybe you should), and how hard you work for people that continuously tell you how bad you are at something.  

So how can we help our children rather than hinder them?  Well, let’s start by being attentive and kind, and then compliment their efforts.  When they are practicing, rather than noticing and calling out every wrong note or rhythm, instead only find the things that were good.  Even if it sounds something like “your creative application of rhythm made that piece super interesting!”  This, at the very least, indicates that you were listening, but also supports their effort.  Now a good follow up to that would be, for example, if they use the metronome and the piece’s rhythm improves, let them know that you hear progress—-“ Wow, you are working so hard and I can hear the improvements in the rhythms!  It sounds like what your teacher played!  I’m proud of you for trying so hard on this difficult thing.”

Be mindful on what it appears children are giving up in order to accomplish practice.  Help them by not giving appearances to them that they are missing out.  If your other children are all watching tv or playing video games while the musical child practices, of course they will soon resent this practice time and want to do the ‘fun’ activities instead.  Consider that practice time for one child is an excellent time for other children to engage in productive tasks as well, such as studying or reading—-adults are NOT to be excluded from this! You can also read or engage in study or exercise during these times to further model productive activities. 

If children want help during practice, by all means give it!  It’s also important to show them and let them know that you can’t because you didn’t continue lessons or never took lessons, but do sit with them and encourage them to keep going when it’s hard.  Never ever tell them they can’t do it! Everyone can do it with hard work.  Some days, engage in listening activities together when practice is discouraging.  But most of all, enjoy your time shared with your child in their musical quests.  They will then work harder to please you as well as create happy memories and an enjoyment and love for music!