skuni

I am taking on a student and I am looking for suggestions on how to organize a weekly 30 minute lesson. Any help appreciated.

Thanks,
Steve

rowuk

Skuni,
I do not think that 30 minutes does justice to a lesson. It is a great way for music schools to pack a lot of kids into a minimal amount of time.
30 minutes could barely cover breathing, slurs and long tones and maybe an etude. No time for explanations or individual attention.

The best way to move kids forward is exposure to good players. The teacher has to set an example so if you play first and the student plays back, 30 minutes is 15 minutes each, if you need to explain anything, the student only plays 10 from 30 minutes. That would be just the warm up!

et_mike

I agree with rowuk... however, as a private instructer for a local high school, I understand your delimma... the key is time management... I will share with you how I go about my 30 minute block... I have two hours to teach 5 students twice a week, so I understand time constraints!! ;)

I think everyone here would probably agree that the warm up is one of, if not THE, most important part.... you should already be warm before the lesson, that way you don't waste any of the students time... then spend the first ten minutes helpind the student warm up... play some long tones and warm up exercises with them, but spend most of the time just listening and helping them, only play when you think they need to hear it. Then spend a couple of minutes explaining the next exercise... I usually go into some technical exercises that incorporate tonguing and fingering... the few minutes you spend explaing gives the students chops a rest, then play the exercise for them and let them play it back to you... at this point you should have eaten up a good 20-23 min. I like to spend the last few minutes doing something fun, a good duet book is a great way to end your lesson, pick something smooth and low and you can use this as the cool down too... It might not be the ideal situation for practice... but it is better than nothing at all!!

Young Trumpeter

To add to skuni's question:
i'm a high school student who's also starting to take on students of my own (through the school's music honors society). In addition to the original question, what books and materials are recommended? Inexpensive is obviously preferable - both for my sake and for the students'. I suppose particular series might be a good idea, but i'm not very knowledgeable in the whole topic. From what i've learned and done while studying with various players, i know that duets are generally a good idea. I'll probably be teaching mostly elementary and middle school students.

Thanks in advance!

JustinSmith

Robert Getchell - First Studies for Cornet & Trumpet

Book descrition - These books are good for beginning students or advancing students. I still play through these books, also on piccolo trumpet, and play through them at different transpositions.


The beginning of the Arban's book also has lots of good stuff to work on for trumpet players of all levels.

Patric_Bernard

For the First lesson, I'd say just give them some stuff to play and sightread. Find out how good they are and what you have to fix before moving onto anything more complicated so you dont hammer in bad habbits. Fix bad habbits, and make sure they know that These lessons will not neccesarily make them better. It will only give them instruction on what to work on in there own time, and the amount of time they put in is what will make them better.