June 2010

V.com weekend vote: Who learns violin faster: adults, children, or both at the same pace?

June 25, 2010 10:57

I thought Beth Blackerby's blog this week -- about adult violinists being better practicers than young students -- was interesting.

So interesting, I think I'll go on a little tangent and make it into a vote!

Who learns faster, adult learners, young students, or do they learn at the same pace? Okay, vote first, then I'll tell you what I think:

poll by twiigs.com

I think they learn at the same pace.

Adults often bemoan that it takes them longer than it takes children to learn something like the violin. Children have that plasticity of mind that adults do not, so the argument goes. But often, as Beth notes in her blog and as personal experience shows for me, it takes a child just as long to reach certain milestones as it takes an adult.

Certainly children and adults draw on different strengths, but so also do people in general. I've taught some very open-minded adults, and I've taught children who were tied to narrow thinking and patterns and unwilling to try new things. On the other hand, I've taught children who were excellent practicers and intuitive learners of physical skill, and adults who neglected practice and had a hard time understanding how to work their bodies. These strengths and problems seemed to be peppered among both adults and children!

Whether one is an adult or child, the willingness to practice and the willingness to experiment have a larger effect on whether you learn quickly and whether you ever reach fluency on the violin.

What do you think? Please feel free to discuss this topic below!

12 replies | Archive link

V.com weekend vote: Have you ever had something Go Terribly Wrong at an audition?

June 11, 2010 11:12

I offer this poll in honor of one of my students, who took an audition last week and had one of those days.

At first, it looked like she had come at the wrong time, on the wrong day. Later she learned that she had been correct, but still, she took the audition thinking she'd somehow showed up at the wrong time. Then, the hair popped out of the tip of her bow, toward the end of her playing.

When her mom related this to me, I assured her, "It's not really an audition until something Goes Terribly Wrong."

Well, this doesn't always happen, but having taken more auditions than I can count, I can say that it happens pretty frequently. Sometimes it has to do with the environment, sometimes the fiddle misbehaves, and sometimes it's just some personal blunder that grows out of audition nerves.

For example, the audition where our "warm-up" room was 45 degrees F -- the heater didn't work! But no matter, this was the warm-up room and the jobs still went to the people who played the best (I got that one, yay.)

Then, there was the one where I accidentally drove to the wrong venue. Not good!

Another time, I remember a fellow auditionee, running from room to room, "Do you happen to have a spare A string?" Hers had broken, and she had no spare.

At another audition, they had a chime that played an A=442, right near the entrance to the stage. Just minutes before going before the audition panel, the proctor struck the chime, "You'll need to be tuned to this A," and I could see the unease as the auditionee in front of me quickly adjusted every string at the last minute.

I'm betting a few of you have some pretty good stories! Please vote in the poll, and then share:

poll by twiigs.com

14 replies | Archive link

V.com weekend vote: Are some people born with better pitch than others, or is pitch something that is learned?

June 4, 2010 21:33

Here we go, another nature or nurture question....

It's one I've pondered my whole life, though. When I was young, I puzzled over why some of my friends couldn't carry a tune, match pitches, etc. Why could I do those things and they couldn't? I figured I must have been born with a sense of pitch, while they weren't.

My views have changed quite a bit over many years of teaching. I suspect that my own pitch recognition came from early exposure to a lot of music (none of it classical, by the way!), and also an early urge to sing (which had me hiding under the bedcovers and singing all the songs from the "Sound of Music" every night before I fell asleep!)

I see that pitch recognition, the ability to match pitches and the ability to sing in tune are skills that come from a lot of listening, and they are helped by singing at an early age. Sometimes kids don't match pitches well in the beginning, but this can be because of a lack of practice, using the voice. It's also something that tends to improve over time.

This said, children are still given tests at a young age, to see their musical proclivities. Of course, stories abound, of kids who were tested at a very young age for a music program, cast aside for lack of musical talent and then later became famous musical artists!

Still, now and then I'll come across someone so talented, so young, I think they were just born "knowing."

What do you think? Are some people born with better pitch than others, or is pitch something that is learned?

poll by twiigs.com

19 replies | Archive link

More entries: May 2010