Are you about to take trial music lessons? Is it for a private teacher or a university teacher?
Taking trial lessons is a must when finding a new teacher, especially when it's for a music school program. And so we need to take trial lessons to decide on a teacher.
And that is exactly what I was doing when I was auditioning for a music school. I ended up taking trial lessons with 12 different teachers (from 4 different countries!) and through those lessons I had multiple eye-opening experiences and realizations.
So if you are about to go through the trial lessons process, or you're just interested in the process, or if you just want to know what I learned, let's sit back, relax, let's get into it.
For more fun, helpful, and inspiring music content, sign up to get Confident Musicianing emails! Click here to sign up.
If you liked what you heard, or if you want more content about trial lessons and auditioning, let me know! You can either email me at eleanor@confidentmusicianing.com or DM on Instagram @eleanor.oboe.
Are you about to take trial music lessons? Is it for a private teacher or a university teacher?
Taking trial lessons is a must when finding a new teacher, especially when it's for a music school program. And so we need to take trial lessons to decide on a teacher.
And that is exactly what I was doing when I was auditioning for a music school. I ended up taking trial lessons with 12 different teachers (from 4 different countries!) and through those lessons I had multiple eye-opening experiences and realizations.
So if you are about to go through the trial lessons process, or you're just interested in the process, or if you just want to know what I learned, let's sit back, relax, let's get into it.
For more fun, helpful, and inspiring music content, sign up to get Confident Musicianing emails! Click here to sign up.
If you liked what you heard, or if you want more content about trial lessons and auditioning, let me know! You can either email me at eleanor@confidentmusicianing.com or DM on Instagram @eleanor.oboe.
Taking trial lessons is a must when finding a new teacher, especially when it's for a music school program, and that is exactly what I was doing when I was auditioning for a music school. I ended up taking trial lessons with 12 different teachers and through those lessons I had multiple eye-opening experiences and realizations. So if you are about to go through the trial lessons process, or you're just interested in the process, or if you just want to know what I learned, let's sit back, relax, let's get into it. Hey there and welcome. I am so glad that you decided to hang out with me today. So let's dive into three top lessons I learned from taking a bunch of trial lessons with not only teachers from different schools, but also from four different countries, namely the US, the UK, ireland and Germany. So let's get into it.
Your host, Eleanor:
Number one I learned how to take what I needed and let go of the rest. Let me tell you what I mean by that. With a bunch of different teachers saying different things, it was so easy to become overwhelmed. For instance, let's say one teacher said that a passage should be, you know, quiet, and then the other teacher said, no, there should be a crescendo here. And then maybe another teacher said, no, the whole thing should be loud. All of a sudden you're like, oh my gosh, what the heck is going on. I don't really know which to choose and it can feel really, really, really overwhelming. So I learned to take what was right for me and let go of the rest, especially when, for me, the British and Irish and German short scrape players gave me advice that didn't go as well on my long scrape read. So I am playing currently a long scrape read and I have lessons with short scrape teachers and some of the things they said were really really, really insightful and really helpful. But some of the things they were like, try it this way, and I was like it doesn't really translate well on a short scrape or sorry on a long scrape and they were like, okay, well, maybe we could try it this way and that way. And it ended up for a lot of the lessons being a really, really really inspiring collaborative space and that was really really cool. So through it I learned how to take the things that served me, take the things that I needed and maybe let go of some of the things that maybe weren't the best for me at that point.
Your host, Eleanor:
Now I'm not saying don't do something a teacher says just because you don't feel like it. What I am saying is carefully consider everything they say, try it with an open mind and maybe even try it for a while, like a week or so, and then decide. And all of the things that I didn't end up doing, I still wrote them down. I still took track of them, because a lot of them were specifically about short scrape reads and I knew that I would need that in the future. If you don't know yet, I am actually going to be transitioning from a long scrape read to a short scrape reed.
Your host, Eleanor:
This year. I am moving to the UK to study Oboe and I will be focusing on making that change. I am a dual citizen I am an American and also a Brit, and so I will be moving back to the UK and I am, to be honest, so extremely excited about it and I hope that you come along. I can't wait to take you with me on this journey. I will be documenting it with the podcast, with the blog, with emails, with all of the exciting stuff, so I will be sprinkling that in as well. So I can't wait to take you along with this journey of moving to the UK and studying in the UK. Oh my gosh, I am so excited about it. You can probably tell.
Your host, Eleanor:
Number two we got keep a lesson journal. It is so important. After every lesson, I took about 20 to 30 minutes writing down all the key takeaways from the lesson, not only what they said, like the tips they gave me on each piece, but also my thoughts about their teaching style and how well we worked together. That way, when I was deciding on which school I wanted to go to, I went back through my notes and I was like, oh yeah, I remember I really, really, really enjoy working with this teacher, as opposed to maybe, oh yeah, this teacher. Our style, our teaching and learning styles didn't really mesh very well and it was really, really, really helpful for when I was making that decision, just to go back and read all of the notes that I took right after those trial lessons. So I highly, highly, highly recommend doing that.
Your host, Eleanor:
Another thing that you can do with these lesson journals is you can go back years later and remember what the teachers told you. I actually did this with a lesson that I had about a year ago and it was with Stephane Rancort from the Royal Northern College of Music, who is a wonderful player and a wonderful teacher, and I remember we talked about some things, but I didn't really remember the specifics and I really wanted to go back and, I guess, re -remember those things. So I got out my lesson journal and I literally just read all of my notes from that lesson and all of a sudden it was like I had that lesson yesterday. I could remember all of the things that we talked about and it was really, really, really refreshing and just extremely helpful. So I really, really, really recommend doing a lesson journal. I cannot recommend it enough Because.
Your host, Eleanor:
Number three is there are so many ways to approach playing the oboe and also playing any other instrument and also just doing about anything in life. This one really, really, really opened my eyes Because before then I was playing on the long scrape read and I have been mainly learning things one way, which, don't get me wrong, is a really good way to play oboe, if that's or to play anything, if that is what you want to do, if you just want to learn something one way and really focus on it and get really good at it, that is an amazing strategy. But for me, I want to transition from the long scrape to the short scrape read and I was really, really, really, really nervous about that because I didn't know if people could do that. I didn't know if that was possible. It is completely different ways of playing the oboe and I reached out to different professors. I had trial lessons. I also just had conversations with different short scrape playing professors and they said, yes, this is possible, you can definitely do this.
Your host, Eleanor:
And the thing that I learned really, really impacted me from trial lessons is just that everybody plays oboe differently and they all try and get to an end goal. Right, we all try and get to that end goal of sounding good, but everybody has their different ways of getting to the end goal of sounding good, and I think that that really, really, really opened my eyes, because beforehand I kind of thought, you know, there was one way to do it because that was the only way I had learned. It was kind of, to be honest, kind of like a closed-minded situation, but this really, really, really opened my mind. All of the trial lessons that opened my eyes to really see that, oh my gosh, there are so many different ways of playing the oboe and it really gave me such a huge relief because I was really worried about will this work? Short scrape or sorry, long scrape to short scrape, will this work? And having tons of trial lessons with different people from different countries, from different backgrounds, different ways of playing the oboe, really opened my eyes to, yeah, this, you know there are different ways of playing and everybody's a little different and that really, really, really helped me to realize yes, I really want to transition to a short scrape read.
Your host, Eleanor:
If you are planning on doing any trial lessons in the future, I wish you the best. They are, to be honest, really, really, really fun and I hope you get the most you can out of them. If you want to know more about trial lessons, for instance, learning how to do them, how to reach out to people about them, all of the different kind of tiny things that you need to do for trial lessons. Please, please, please, let me know I can make more podcasts and more content and blogs and emails or whatever about trial lessons if that's something that interests you, if you want to let me know that. You can email me at eleanor@confidentmusicianing. com or you can DM me a e. All of these things are going to be in the description in the show notes, but anyway, I am so grateful that you hung out with me today. That is so kind of you and I hope to see you in the next episode.
Your host, Eleanor:
, bye, bye, thank you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you. So that is it for today. Thank you so much for watching. I am so grateful and it has been so lovely to hang out with you. If you find auditions and music and performing and anything in between, really, really interesting or even a little bit interesting, please do consider subscribing, and if you have any thoughts on future episodes or future videos, please let me know in the comments. I love, love, love to, and that is it for today. Thank you so much for hanging out with me. It was lovely to hang out with you.
Your host, Eleanor:
If you find auditions, music, performance, anything in between, really interesting, or even a little bit interesting, I do. Thank you so much. That is it for today. Thank you so much for hanging out with me. That is so lovely of you and it was so lovely to hang out with you.
Your host, Eleanor:
If you find auditions, performances, music, anything in between, really interesting, or even a little bit interesting, please do consider subscribing. And if you have any other thoughts about maybe future episodes or future videos, please, please, please do let me know in the comments. I would love, love, love to read them and find out what you want to know. All right, well, that is it for today. Bye-bye, we got to the end and that is it for today. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. It was absolutely lovely hanging out with you. If you find auditions, performance, music, anything in between, really interesting, or even a little bit interesting, please do consider subscribing. And if you have any recommendations or any thoughts on future episodes or future videos, please, please, please do put them in the comments. I'd be so grateful. But that is it for today. So thank you so much for hanging out with me and I will see you in the next video. Bye-bye.