9 Skills Your Music Lessons May Be Missing
Do you ever wonder what all the other students out there are getting that you're missing out on? Here's a list of things you might want to talk to your teacher about:
1 - Repertoire
It can be extremely important to know the most significant songs for your instrument. If you tell someone you are a pianist, but can't play "Heart And Soul" with them or haven't heard of "Fur Elise", you'll instantly lose credibility. If you say you are a guitarist but don't know the first line to "Stairway to Heaven", people are less likely to think the song you wrote is inspired.
2 - Scales
Torure. That how most people describe them. If you quit piano lessons when you were younger, the part you hated most was either scales or your teacher's breath. Or both. And scales are not really that important until they are extrememly important and you will wish you had already practiced them for months or years. Scales are the "wax on; wax off" of piano. Stupid, boring work that does not pay off in the short run.
3 - Chords
Overlooked by many classical teachers, this is the quickest way to sound like a pro and have fun on your instrument. I assume teachers skip this either because they don't really understand how they work or perhaps it's fear: many students who get into chords have so much fun, they never go back to the 'serious' study of their instrument. Chords are just groups of notes that sound good together. Memorize about 10 of these groups and you can be ready to fake your way through almost any song in world.
4 - Ear Training
Ear training is the skill of being able to just sit down and play something after hearing it. It looks like magic, but it's totally a trainable skill. This comes in many forms: intervals, chords, rhythms, and ultimately, tying them all together for transcriptions.
5 - Sight Reading
Sight reading is the ability to look at a piece of music and play it perfectly without ever having heard it or seen it before. This is a skill that teachers usually emphasize way too much or way too little. Entirely or not at all. Depending on what you plan to do in music, you may need this skill anywhere from constantly (presbyterian church organist) to never (rock star). If you hope to make a living in music, you'll probably excercise this skill at least a little.
6 - Improvisation
Making up a song on the spot is not nearly as much talent as a learned skill. It is true that people who enjoy creating and are not afraid of making mistakes generally pick up this skill faster, but anyone can learn it if the teacher knows how to teach it.
7 - Theory
Theory is the study of how and why music is put together the way it is. This usually inovlves a lot of talking and analysis. Theory is extrememly helpful in speeding up the learning process. In the same way that categorizing what a vowel is and how it works helps a kindergartener learn to spell faster, learning about keys and time signatures and chord patterns helps students learn all the other skills and connect them more quickly.
8 - Technique
Technique is really disaster prevention. Bad habits like improper fingering will not be a problem until songs become more complex and faster. By that time, a bad habit will halt all progress for weeks or months or may be too daunting an obstacle for the student to see a reason to continue. More likely they'll just decide they're "not good at this" or "not talented" or that music just "isn't my thing".
9 - Style
Most music is a blend of classical, jazz, blues, and some cousin of those and each style has its own skills and perspective on music that might really add a great new element to your playing.