I have this great student.
I have loads of them actually, but today’s column concerns one in particular.
My friend and colleague Dave Flynn works across the corridor from me in Strandhill, so we often hear snippets from each other’s lessons. He stopped me one day and asked about what he had just heard coming from my room. It was the piano solo from Vince Guaraldi’s O Tannenbaum, recorded in 1965 as part of the soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Christmas. A jazz piano version of O Christmas Tree.
“Are you learning it?”, he asked me. “No”, I said. “Actually well yes”, I clarified as I realised that in order to teach it, I firstly had to learn it myself. But when I told Dave that what he had heard wasn’t me but a 15 year-old, his jaw dropped.
“Never mind”, he said. “All you have to do is stay one step ahead of him”! Thanks Dave.
All joking aside, I love when students like this come along. I don’t know where the music comes from in the family, but it’s certainly there. His older brother is similarly talented. Their musical choices always interest me. And often challenge me too.
Because in order to teach this solo properly, I have to break it down. And that involves knowing it inside out. Part of this process is to send on a video of me playing the solo. Slowly, and in time with a metronome.
One day at home I had put a solid hour into the first few bars of this piece. I took a short break and asked my wife to take a video so I could send it on.
But I couldn’t play it. It was no more than 5 minutes later but my flow had gone. What had been smooth and coherent was now rough and jumbled. And certainly not fit to send to a student.
So I tried to figure out what had happened. And I thought of how I often advise students that 15 minutes practice every day is better than an hour the day before the lesson. Why? Because spaced repetition is the key to proper learning.
What I had done was some musical cramming. Spend an hour on the material, then try to reproduce it a short time later. And I couldn’t.
When I went back to it a day later however, although I couldn’t play it perfectly, it didn’t take me an hour this time. The day after it took a shorter time again. And that’s the smart way to learn things. Not all at once, but reinforcing at regular intervals. Spaced repetition.
His next choice, by the way? Stevie Wonder’s Don’t You Worry Bout a Thing. I knew this one – phew!