An important step in your musical development is how to be prepared for music lessons. Being prepared is more than having your sheet music ready, instrument packed, and your pencil sharpened. Being prepared is about understanding what you want to achieve from the lesson. About knowing where you are at in your studies. And showing your teacher that it’s worth their time to care about you.
How To Be Prepared For Music Lessons: Make Progress
It all starts before you even get into the room. You need to make a point to make progress in practicing the material. It’s fine if a couple of times you don’t get to it. But if you keep showing up every week and working on the same part / section, it looks bad on you. Trust me: your teacher notices. Once or twice they might not. But a good teacher that cares about their students is gonna be able to tell they’ve already spent time practicing that particular part. Mostly because a professional musician works out a part quickly and moves on. Especially because all you can do is keep practicing that part until it gets better. As a professional their instinct is to finish/master the part and move on. It ends up feeling like you’re being held back against your will.
How To Be Prepared For Music Lessons: Show Up Early
Another thing that stands out in how to be prepared for music lessons is when you show up. Being late or early reflects on how professional you are. And how seriously you take everyone’s time. Plus being late eats into your time together which becomes noticeable when the lesson suddenly ends. If your teacher likes to teach then usually they gain momentum as they start talking about music. To suddenly have to stop right at the height of the lesson is frustrating.
One of the best lessons I got on how to be prepared for music lessons was actually more of a general life lesson. It was “To be early is to be on time. To be exactly on time is to be late.” This means you should always be there 15 minutes before something is to start. THAT is “on time”. If you want to be early, you should arrive 30 minutes early. There is something to be said about being too early though. Showing up an hour before you need to be there can be bad because it looks like you have nothing else to do.
And sometimes people aren’t ready yet because they are not expecting anyone. They have lives/plans too. It can be distracting to have to accommodate someone unexpectedly. If that’s the case, make sure you go somewhere else and only show up 30 minutes before the scheduled start. It’s ok to hang out at the library or a coffee-shop first while you wait to be early.
Prepare Questions Ahead Of Time
Another way in how to be prepared for music lessons is making sure you know what to ask ahead of time. When you are practicing make a point to write down any questions you have. This way you can ask them first and those issues can be addressed.
Put In The Work
You only get out what you put into the work. If you aren’t practicing, then you’re not growing. Or challenging yourself and finding out new issues to ask questions about. In essence you’re having the same lesson every time.
This stalling of progress is a waste of everyone’s time: you aren’t learning, your teacher isn’t teaching and everyone is loosing interest. It doesn’t matter to your teacher if you end spending the first half of your lesson figuring out where you are supposed to be. You’ve already compensated them for their time. All you end up doing is wasting your time and money.
So how to be prepared for music lessons? Do the work. Show up on time. Make sure you are taking advantage of all of your teacher’s knowledge. You’ll know if you’re doing it right because you will grow between every lesson. Unless you just have a bad teacher.