Teaching Musical Skill

Teaching Musical Skill explores the most significant factors for musical improvement, and the teacher’s role in enhancing student practice and performance skills. Knowing how to practise is the most important skill for musicians. Types of repetition, identifying patterns to simplify learning, practising in small portions, and slow practice are core.

This course explores the most effective methods of teaching these concepts to students, including explanation for understanding, observation to collect feedback, and physical and metacognitive modelling. Teaching Musical Skill focuses on how we teach students to practice effectively by developing their mindset and motivation. Michael takes us on a journey which covers how the brain develops as a result of playing music and that musicians are the super-athletes of the World.

Use of repetition is a key feature and Michael suggests many ways of approaching this and teaching students so that they understand how to work in their own time. Learning to practice slowly and making sure that mistakes are not embedded in the learning progress is vital.

Demonstrating and observing how both teacher and student practice is an important part of the mutual learning. A really interesting point is that asking the student if they understand an explanation usually results in them saying yes but not really properly understanding it, so it is important to link understanding with action otherwise it is useless.

There are many useful tips in each unit and the course would be invaluable for instrumental teachers as continuing professional development.