Blog Post: The Importance of Instrumental Lessons

A popular question I get asked on numerous occasions is "What do I gain from taking lessons with a professional musician?". So with setting up a new blog I thought I would take a shot at giving a detailed response. As many of you know I take regular lessons with renown euphonium soloist Steven Mead.

To give you a bit of background knowledge I picked up the euphonium at the age of 14 after playing cornet and was taught by my dad before attending lessons with Steve Cooper, who was an orchestral euphonium player and conductor of the City of Coventry Brass at the time before taking up lessons with Steven Mead on a very cold January afternoon in 2012.

Fast forward..... 4 years later to 29th August 2016 and following the completion of my degree I am still taking lessons. Many people would ask why, and the response is simple it a way of continued improvement.

During my time at university I found it important to study other professions to see what techniques they used to improve and develop, my aim was to adapt these techniques and use them within my own practice.

I spent a lot of time studying certain athletes, trying to find and understand what techniques were employed to improve ability. In most cases there was a similar theme, each individual seemed to have a number of people around them fulfilling certain roles everything from diet to lifestyle was controlled. However the key to the personal development of an athlete was the use of a coach who mainly set the training regime and acted as the driving force,

Obviously as musicians we cannot physically employ a team of people to help us progress on a day to day basis, however this is where I believe the importance of a good teacher lies. I remember being questioned during my time at university as to why I took lessons and remember that certain individuals thought that they did not need lessons and saw them as a waste of time. I used the following points below to justify why I found instrumental lessons to be important.

Lessons provide.....

1. An opportunity to refocus and direct your performance technique.

2. An opportunity to learn and progress.

3. An opportunity to access quality tuition.

4. An opportunity to be at the cutting edge of your instrumental discipline.

5. An opportunity to be encouraged and inspired.

You could write hundreds of reasons for taking instrumental lessons, However it must be remembered that tuition alone will not make you a star player, like a fitness program or course of medicine, private tuition should always be backed up by a practice routine. I always saw my lessons as a progress check, an opportunity to ask questions, to say what I had found difficult, to gain advice and finally to use the knowledge gained within the lesson to improve and develop my routines of practice with the overall goal of improving my performance technique.

To measure my own experiences of my lessons with Steven Mead would be impossible. I have been transformed as a Euphonium player through my lessons, I am convinced without this tuition that I would never have progressed as far. However my lessons continue to transform, push and improve my playing, they act as inspiration and continue to mold my practice and performance technique.

I think something overlooked is that music tuition with a world class professional has shown me a little into the world of a 'professional musician' which has given me positive role model to follow and develop myself from.

So to round up on a final note, I see tuition as a vital part of my internal makeup, it influence my practice routines and my progression. It pushes me to improve and consider different approaches. To end this particular blog post, having tuition inspires me to continue on my path of progression.