# of Students Taught: 4
Ages: 1 frosh, 1 soph, 2 juniors
Instrument: 3 tenor trombones, 1 baritone
Materials: scales, tunes, & ear training; audition music, etudes, recital repertoire
Fundamentals covered: polishing an audition piece, good time & rhythm, direction of lines
Memorable moment: I have a student who’s attendance at MN All State makes him eligible to audition for the All National honor groups, and we’ve been working on his etude for a few weeks now. He’s getting ready to record this week and send in his tape, and so today we really dug in on the finer points of a good performance. What I found most interesting was that, for as much musical flair as he gave the piece, his time was not ideal- a tendency to rush- and he didn’t seem to notice the places where it held him back. We spent the lesson with the metronome going, getting very accurate rhythm and tempo delivery in ever section. By the end he was playing so fabulously- all of the musical work he’d done now had room to breathe and remain under his control.
Takeaways: Good time is not an innate skill that everyone is born into. Although some might have an easier time keeping strict tempo or matching the beat, most of us work very hard to develop our timekeeping skills and must maintain adherence to that practice for our whole musical lives. I’m working on a theory that most of our musical problems stem from a tempo or rhythmic error. Music is an art that moves forward in time, and without accurate delivery, we change the meaning of the piece we’re performing. We also totally destabilize our brain’s ability to connect phrase to rhythm if our time is bad, and our brain can’t control the result if it’s uncertain where the line has gone. Lesson: put that metronome on. Listen to it. Count, clap, sing, before playing. Take it slow to decipher trickier rhythms. Make sure everything you hear is communicated in a musical fashion that makes sense to you.
Lauren Husting, trombone 