The Character Traits of Musicians
NOTE: This blog is entirely derived as an excerpt from Chapter 2 of Making Musicians: A Teacher’s Guide to Emotionally Intelligent Music Instruction.
It is written to a music teacher audience.
What is the endgame of learning music?
When you are teaching, what purpose do you have in mind for your students? What goals outside of the curriculum are you trying to accomplish? When you imagine the futures of each person you work with, what role does music play in their personal or professional development?
I’ll be the first to admit that this may be an in-the-clouds question to ask busy teachers in the middle of the daily work of teaching. It may be that your immediate answer to this question would be something like, “My endgame is getting these kids to show up to class with their music,” or “I need to make it through the concert at the end of the year.” The philosophical “why” behind music teaching might feel pretty esoteric in the workaday moments of our lives.Nonetheless, these are crucially important questions to ponder. As you journey down the road of music learning with your students, knowing where you want to go is essential to being able to tell if you’re getting there.
Packing for the Journey
Have you ever taken a trip with kids?
If you are a teacher in a public school, you have probably taken field or performance trips that required you to coordinate travel for a significant number of students. You know that the amount of work and preparation required to take a group of kids anywhere is exhausting.
Permission slips or liability waivers, for a start. Getting them to your students may not be that much of a problem, but getting them all back? Good lord. Then there’s there money—where is it coming from? Who needs to be paying it? How can you make the financial piece less of an issue for low-wealth students?
And then there’s actually getting there. If you’re a college professor or a high school teacher, longer trips can require you to figure out lodging, dining, transportation from place to place, and maybe chaperonage. If you teach younger students, then you absolutely will need more adult help, which requires so much communication, background checks, and on, and on, and on . . .
The energy cost of moving a a group of people, especially young people, from here to there is shockingly high. It’s easy to see how having done it once, you’d vow never to go anywhere ever again.
Unless, that is, the destination is important to you.
It may be that without that trip, there’s no way for your students to experience performing in unique contexts. They might not be able to experience working with other musicians outside of their programs or to be directed by professionals they would otherwise never have the opportunity to meet.
The price that we teachers pay to give our students these experiences is high. However, we willingly pay it because the value of the journey and the destination is much higher than the cost.
Let’s be real for a second. Learning to make music is hard. It’s not only difficult to learn how to read and interpret; the process of learning how to move your body is uncomfortable. The cost you pay to be good at making music is high.
And sometimes, it doesn’t seem worth the cost. There is always someone better than you. It’s lonely in a practice room. It’s frustrating to know that practicing means making lots of mistakes, over and over again. No wonder people quit in droves!
But what is the upside to all of that misery? What is the destination you are trying to reach? Is it worth the high cost you pay to get there?
These are the questions that we teachers all have to answer, for our students, for their families, and for the people who pay us to teach. The internal spaces of harmony and expression that can be reached through music are worth the effort. They are unique to music, and go way beyond what other disciplines offer.
So, where does music take us, and what does music give us?
As discussed in the previous chapter, music is at the heart of what it means to be human. Learning music allows people to better connect with themselves and the people around them. But beyond even that, musical endeavors are often the beginning of the path to general human success. Search the internet for “scientists who are also musicians,” for example. When you’re done reading through that mountain, try “entrepreneurs who are also musicians,” “politicians who are also musicians,” or any other descriptive noun you associate with a successful person.
Many, many successful people have music in their backgrounds. The traits that are cultivated in the music-learning process naturally create the kind of people who are successful. These traits of success are the endgame of music education. They should be the destination that we as music educators keep in mind when we are working with our students.
So specifically, which traits am I talking about? The full list is beyond the scope of this blog. For now, we will focus on:
Bravery
Confidence and Humility
Insatiable Curiosity
Feeling and Empathy
Imagination and Vision
Enjoyment
Community
Passion
These traits are the building blocks of a full and successful life—and musical study unlocks all of them.