The non-musical benefits of music lessons are vast and varied. And they stretch far beyond the ability to read music and produce a pleasant sound on an instrument. Music lessons are like weekly workshops where people learn important life and employment skills. They are also a time of personal development providing individuals with the time and space to learn how to deal with an array of different emotions and life situations. Music teachers become mentors gently steering and guiding students towards a life of success. But how can a thirty-minute lesson once a week achieve all this? Well, let’s break it down a tiny bit.
Important Life Skills
- Coping with pressure
- Dealing with criticism
- Develops focus and concentration
- Coping with authorities decisions
- A mistake is a mistake
- Appropriate Risk Taking
Learning to Concentrate
Learning an instrument is usually accompanied by an array of activities including opportunities to play in ensembles, perform and sit exams. With each of these comes a certain level of pressure that students must learn to navigate. The preparation process alone teaches students how to focus and concentrate. Not to mention let alone the intense concentration required during a performance.
Managing Criticism
During each lesson students, in order to make progress must also learn to deal with criticism. They need to accept the advice of their teacher, a person who is vastly more knowledgeable in the area of their instrument than the student. This produces adults who are considerably more willing to listen to other people’s views. It sets them up to be able to not only receive but to give criticism in a constructive and appropriate manner (Johnston, 2004).
Healthy Risk-Taking
Each performance involves a level a risk-taking. Will, I wear my emotions on my sleeve and play expressively even though the audience might not like it? Will I perform this piece by memory? Improvise a solo? Learning to take appropriate risks is rewarding and has a very high pay off for the individual.
Acceptance
Music being a highly subjective field also teaches the art of gracefully accepting the “referee’s” decision. Each exam produces a series of comments about the student’s performance. While the examiner is highly qualified they are still human. This provides students with the opportunity to learn that opinions are not truth or reality and that peoples’ decision may be respected whether we agree with them or not (Johnston, 2004).
Good Mistakes
The process of learning to create music is riddled with mistakes. Mistakes are how we learn – they are even encouraged. We make them so we learn how to deal with them in performance, how to accept them and not get frustrated. We learn not to let them rule our lives.
Character Development
- Respect
- Humility
- Self-discipline
- Self-esteem
- Patience
- Conquering Fear
- Diligence
One of the important steps to growing up and maturely functioning within society is learning to become independent, self-motivated and tolerant of others. The relationship between student and teacher helps to impart and demonstrate the value of respecting your elders. If students don’t listen to and respect the advice of their teacher, progress becomes slow and far less enjoyable. Ensemble activities also require students to respect their peers, they learn to take turns and value other people’s ideas.
Ensembles also surround individuals with students who are both more advanced and less experienced than themselves, which is a humbling and inspiring learning curve. Students learn patience as they wait there turn to play and hear the reward of everyone playing together. They learn to conquer their fear by performing solos and become self-disciplined individuals who are diligent and ‘do’ instead of simply observing. The self-esteem and self-worth attained through these situations last a lifetime.
Employment Skills
- Creative Thinking
- Problem Solving
- Project Management
- Teamwork
- Time Management
- Public Presentation
From lesson 1 to lesson 4570 and beyond, students are constantly problem-solving, exercising creative thinking, time management and project management. If this method of practice doesn’t work what can I try? What can I do to produce a better sound? How should I interpret the emotional content of this piece? They learn how to cope with deadlines. Performances and exams provide both long and short-term goals as well as opportunities to develop public presentation skills.