Most of our students at Lessons In Your Home are roughly between the ages of 6-12. However, often enough, we do give adult music lessons to students who are interested in taking lessons with us. We absolutely love teaching adults music lessons and feel that they can benefit in many ways from these lessons. The approach to teaching adults can be a little bit different than teaching the young ones.
It’s Not Abstract
One reason why I love teaching adults is because they understand musical concepts much more easily. Music can be a very abstract thing to teach, but adults usually do not have a hard time understanding concepts such as time signatures and the difference between a half step and a whole step. Because they understand these concepts more easily, we can move quicker past basic understanding straight to playing and applying these concepts.
Adult Music Students “Need It Slow”
Because adults pick up on new ideas so quickly, it is our tendency as teachers to want to progress with them as fast as possible. Sometimes we forget that they are still students and just learning! That’s why as a teacher, I have to always remind myself to slow down with adult students. While they may understand something, they need time to practice the material as much as any other student. Understanding the material and being able to correctly play it are two very different things!
Pay Attention To Detail
Adults also have an easier time with basic motor skills. As a drum set teacher, this is one of the big hurdles for me when teaching children. For example, the proper way to hold a drum stick is very important to overall success on the instrument. And of course, if you learn how to hold a stick the wrong way, then it becomes much more difficult to change the technique later on. Adults understand how difficult it is to break a bad habit because they have learned this from multiple life experiences. Kids just want to hit stuff. So when it comes to the way they hold the stick, they adults will pay much greater attention to it than the kids will.
Don’t Think So Much
However, greater attention to precision is not always a great thing. I love the fact that my adult students care so much about the way that they play, but often times, their movements will result in being a little too calculated. There is a stiffness that we as adults develop that younger students have not yet learned. Sometimes, this will get in the way of allowing the body to be free to play what it naturally wants to. This like anything else, will improve with practicing. The more the body gets used to a new habit, the easier it will become to play relaxed with proper technique.
Adult Music Lessons
Probably the greatest reason why I love working with adults is that they made the decision to take music lessons to enrich their lives and fulfill a passion of theirs. I have a lot of respect for adults who make this choice for themselves. Some adult students may have played as a child and want to learn again. Some of them have never picked up the instrument in their lives. In any case, these students are doing something for themselves simply because they want to play music, and I absolutely love that. I can actually relate because I myself am still taking lessons as an adult. I am able to relate my experience to theirs and the result is something that both the teacher and the student can learn from.
