Studio3Music Blog

Practice is necessary to learn to perform a skill. According to Daniel Levitan in This is Your Brain on Music, It takes 10,000 hours of practice to reach virtuoso. That is a lot of practice.

I actually figured out all my hours of teaching Kindermusik to see what that really looks like.  I have only taught 5,480 hours of Kindermusik!  I added on my years teaching right after I graduated from college:  7,240.  If I add the hours I was directing during that period (which was just teaching with a performance at the end instead of a test) I climb up to 7,752 hours.  I tossed in my 800 hours of teaching pre-school and that brought me up to 8,552 hours of teaching.  Unless I go all the way back to elementary school when I taught all the neighborhood kids how to read before kindergarten, I have not taught enough hours yet to qualify as a virtuoso.  That is amazing! I’ve been a teacher since I became a grown up and the time that I have spent sleeping in the last 20 some odd years has knocked me off the virtuoso pedestal! 

Wolfgang in gala costume, probably painted by Pietro Antonio Lorenzoni, 1763. The costume was a gift of the Empress Maria Theresa.

So, then I wondered how long it would take a student to gain the virtuoso level if they practiced the typical amount suggested by a piano teacher, which is 30 minutes a day.  It would take 55 years.  Not kidding! I did the math twice to be sure and then had my husband Michael do it, too. And then he did it 3 times.

This thought process sheds a new light on the Mozart phenomenon.  He started practicing at age four.  He practiced hours at a time, not because he had to, but because he wanted to. This is the magical part of the equation.  A four year old wanted to practice the clavichord and the violin for hours at a time!  So, he more than likely hit the virtuoso stage much younger than other musicians.  And considering how young he died, I’m thrilled he dedicated his youth to practice, otherwise his brilliance may never have been realized. 

-posted by Miss Allison, who knows that her students probably won’t reach virtuoso in the near future.  But she’s willing to hand out chocolate to mark the beginning of the journey!”

I feel I should explain why I offered your child chocolate kisses in exchange for practicing their glockenspiel.  It’s kind of off the beaten track for me.  I’ve never required that the kids do their homework, or fill out the work sheets.  As a matter of fact, I still don’t really care if they do their homework. We go over that stuff in class.  They learn to read music and count rhythms without doing their homework.  They learn to associate a particular pitch, and pitch names and note placement on the staff without doing their homework.  They learn everything they need from class except how to actually play the glockenspiel.  That requires practice.

Practice and homework are two different things.  Homework, in the musical world, is very often some kind of written work that reinforces or teaches the intellectual concepts and skills required to do a certain task.  Practice is the physical act of doing a skill in order to gain proficiency. When I studied voice in college, my homework was the paper where I analyzed how the music related to the state of the character during the scene in the script.  Another part of my homework was to learn the lyrics, the melody and the correct rhythm patterns, and then develop blocking and choreography that supported the character, the script, and the historical time period of the piece.  I could do all these things without actually ever singing a note.

However, in order to actually perform the piece, even just in the classroom, I had to practice. I had to go through the physical act of signing the song, practicing supporting the notes and how to place them, and how to make the blocking and choreography work while singing the song.  Sometimes for difficult pieces, I had to practice the song over and over again.  Every minute on stage usually requires an hour of practice.  Not homework, actual physical practice. 

So, I don’t want your children to do their homework. But, practice can really help them to become better musicians.  And, if they can learn the benefits of practice, they will be better students in general.  After all, a rough draft is practice, and so is a string of math problems.  The payoff to practice is, of course, skill improvement and takes a while for that to happen.  A little chocolate sweetens the journey and gives the student something to accumulate while we wait for the mystery of practice to pay off.  

It was really fun for me to hand out those kisses and to hear the radical improvement a couple of weeks of dedicated practice could buy.  I was really shocked at how much better “Lucy Locket” and “Bell Horses” sounded.  I loved hearing them sing “Mouse Mousie” on pitch while they played the F/C ostinato.

-posted by Miss Allison  who’ll buy chocolate kisses by the thousands to hear the joy of success at the glockenspiel.  She knows that this practice will lead her students to understand how to be successful at whatever they chose to do later in life.