3 minute read
How Performance-Based Music Education Benefits Budding Musicians
by Dave Marsh & Rik Alison, Expert Contributors and Instructors at the School of Rock Main Line
Thinking of learning to play a musical instrument? Or might that be something one of your children or grandkids is considering? If so, you should be aware of the many benefits of a performance-based music education program compared to traditional music education. The typical weekly music lessons that previous generations took — and many music students today still take — have them learning music theory and concepts with no specific “end game.”
That traditional way of learning a musical instrument relies on repetition and short-sighted goals. Students go to their weekly lesson, go home and practice what they learned, and then return the following week, to have the instructor check on their progress. It’s the same routine week after week, and somewhere down the line, students often wonder how much did they really learn?
Performance-based music instruction gives students the opportunity to immediately demonstrate what they’ve learned about “how music works” during each lesson. Students learn to play songs made popular by actual bands such as Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Stevie Wonder and Frank Zappa. A perfect example is Led Zeppelin’s song “Black Dog,” which uses a minor pentatonic scale.
Instead of an instructor just talking about and showing a few minor pentatonic scale patterns that students then play a few times, students experience first-hand how various music scales and concepts are actually used within a song or style of music. The fun that comes from performing such real music can significantly speed up the learning curve.
In performance-based music instruction, groups of about 25 students work as a team throughout the year, practicing and playing many songs that they then perform live in shows and concerts. This gives each student the opportunity to play their musical instrument in front of an audience while taking part in a small band made up of different combinations of students.
So, over the course of the season, each student typically plays in at least one band with each of the other students. In this dynamic performance-based environment, students also benefit by learning life skills such as cooperation, teamwork, communication, public speaking and goal-setting. As students achieve their goals for performing all the songs for each new show (about every three months), their self-confidence grows exponentially. Within a few seasons, students who started out too shy to even go onstage seem to become “rock stars.” This increase in their confidence and self-image with their music instructors and fellow students often follows through into their regular lives as well.
In this way, students learn songs not simply for the instructor’s satisfaction; songs are learned to entertain live audiences, both in-person and through streaming video. Performance-based music instruction may seem revolutionary, but it’s not really if you think about why people felt the need to create musical instruments and the wide variety of musical styles: To share the joy that music adds to life!
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