My wonderful colleague Clare McLeod and I got to talking a few weeks ago about the upcoming start of the school year and whether or not we had any “new school year resolutions” we were thinking about. The first thing that came to mind was trying to continue a habit of avoiding judgmental language as a default in lessons, based in part on what I learned from our spring bookclub book, The Inner Game of Tennis.
Gallwey’s third mental skill: learning to see “nonjudgmentally”—that is, to see what is happening rather than merely noticing how well or how badly it is happening.
Always looking for approval and wanting to avoid disapproval, this subtle ego-mind sees a compliment as a potential criticism. Once the standard of good and bad had been established, the inevitable result is divided concentration and ego-interference. By ending judgment, you do not avoid seeing what is. Ending judgment means you neither add nor subtract from the facts before your eyes. Things appear as they are—undistorted.
After reading this section of the book I became quite aware that, to my chagrin, I said “good” or “cool’ after almost everything my students did in a lesson—including all the most basic stuff. “Hey, you took your sheet music out of your backpack. Cool!” While certainly encouraging, this practice can lead to a number of unintended consequences: students might infer that if I don’t say “good,” for whatever reason, then maybe it’s in fact, “bad.” Even if that’s not my intention. Also, there’s just something that feels off about assigning everything we do, or everything a student does, a value judgement. If things are “bad,” it might discourage someone from trying; maybe, they might think, “I’m just bad. What’s the use?” And if it’s “good,” even a insignificant mistake might lead to an eventual downward spiral of “I guess it’s not good today,” to, “I’m having a bad week,” then, “I used to be better at this, I don’t know what happened,” to finally, “I’m not good at this anymore. I’m gonna go work at Google.”
Even though it may be temping to say, “nice try, that was cool” (as I often do), it’s easy to get caught in the cycles of that sort of judgmental talk, particularly when students are trying something new. I usually just want my students to give things a try in the lesson, not master the ideas or skills right away. Any level of achievement takes time.
So, I want to stop doing that.
But, there’s more.
This idea leads to another, more over-arching concept that came up in my aforementioned conversation with Clare: I want to talk less overall, and have my students sing more in lessons. If you’ve had a private lesson at any time in your life, it’s likely you’ve had some version of the following conversation with your private teacher: you make a sound that maybe isn’t perfect, so your teacher launches into a mini-lecture about why it’s not what they’re looking for, along with one or two (or maybe many thousand) ideas of how to fix it.
Student: sings.
Teacher: hey, that was good, but it needs to be louder.
Student: ok.
Teacher: because for this style of song, you really need to project your voice to the back of the room. Well, not this room because we’re in a little office, but imagine you’re in a big concert hall and I’m sitting in the back row. You want to get your sound back to me. Why is this a thing, you might ask? Well, the whole idea comes from a time before microphones—you had to carry your voice enough for everyone to hear you. Some think of this as related to projection, but there are many terms to describe it. You need to take a fuller, deeper breath. You need to resonate the sound in your mask. Do you know about the mask?
Student: eh…
Teacher: the mask is the space in your head kind of around your cheek bones, and if you can feel your sound vibrating in that spot it will usually create more overtones; it will effect your timbre. We call those overtones in singing the “singer’s formant.” Have you learned about overtones yet?
Student: no, who’s that?
Teacher: {big, inevitable lecture about overtones}
Student: …
Teacher: ok, well that’s our time for today. Think about all of that this week and keep practicing. Great job!
This is purely hypothetical, and I’ve never been on either end of this particular conversation (☠️), but it’s easy to imagine this sort of dialog happening in many lessons at many points in someone’s education. The teacher could have simply asked the student to try to sing a bit louder, maybe demonstrated what they were talking about, and asked them how it felt or how it sounded to them afterwards. All of that time listening to someone talk about abstract concepts, imagined scenarios, music history, and the physics of sound could have been used, and I would argue better used, actually singing.
Back to my colleague Clare. We got to talking about all of this, and, like the extremely helpful and organized teacher that she is, she went right home and emailed me a really cool article that explores this very idea. Turns out, through an admittedly small study that she completed in her own private studio, the Australian voice teacher, Adele Nisbet found that students get more out of singing in voice lessons than hearing their instructors talk. In Nisbet’s case, what she learned from recording her lessons and seeing what happened when she talked less, demonstrated more, and used more hands-on guidance, irrevocably and appreciably changed the way she taught.
Some of what Nisbet based her study on related to Dr. Katherine Verdolini’s five principals for motor learning. The basics of which are, “you can’t learn to swim without getting in the water.”
Five Principals on Motor Learning (my notes)
Motor learning belongs to a type of learning that is distinct from “book learning”
The clear implication from such experimental observations is that motor learning indeed belongs to a system, or type of process, that does not require awareness and specifically, awareness of the mechanical principles being learned.
Motor learning belongs to a type of learning and memory that occurs without awareness
What was interesting, and confirmed what many good singing teachers know empirically, was the inability of the students to hear or see their own improvement and progress but the teacher's confidence that a long range picture would reveal such progress.
“Education is ... hanging around until you've caught on.” — Robert Frost
“JUST DO IT".” — Sports
Motor learning appears to require attention to sensory information
There is little basis in the scientific literature to support the use of verbal instructions about the mechanics of singing or any other motor behavior.
Bruner, who identified the mental map, states that students will better understand when they first have hands-on experience related to the idea, so singing first, followed by any necessary explanation is the essential pattern for change
Motor learning is enhanced by learner effort
Motor learning does not involve “trying”
Probably the most difficult instruction for singers to give themselves is to let the body-mind do its job without trying or doing. Brown's instructions for the singing act— "Let–Trust" recognize this principle.
The learning environment is an important catalyst for learning. Students needs to experience in some manner the natural complexity of the real world.
Earlier, when I was thinking about habitual judgmental responses in my teaching, what I was trying to remove or reduce is what’s called augmented or extrinsic feedback. Intrinsic feedback is the physical feel of the movement as it is being performed. It is what is felt by the performer as they execute a skill or performance. Extrinsic feedback is provided by external sources, during or after a performance. And when it comes to developing motor skills like singing, intrinsic feedback has been found to be much more helpful. In fact, findings from other studies show that those who have practiced with extrinsic feedback often perform worse than those who have had no feedback at all. Extrinsic feedback seems to enhance performance, but not retention—it may even degrade learning. Students can start to use such feedback as a crutch only being able to play well at the instruction of the teacher.
Reflecting on the videoed lessons, I became more aware of my own use of language—in general there were too many words too often, diagnostic and critical and sometimes not specific enough to be helpful. — Adele Nisbet
If the research is so clear, why do we keep talking so much?
I think this may be less about the pedagogical efficacy of explaining concepts to students and more about teachers trying to prove their value. And of course, that’s probably pretty natural. It’s not just imposter syndrome to want to demonstrate that you know what you’re talking about. After all, why did we take all of those pedagogy courses, read all those books, and attend all those seminars if not to try to pass that information along to our students?
The pro is standing at the net with a large basket of balls, and being a bit uncertain whether his student is considering him worth the lesson fee, he is carefully evaluating every shot. “That’s good, but you’re rolling your racket face over a little on your follow-through, Mr. Weil. Now shift your weight onto your front foot as you step into the ball…” I too admit to overteaching as a new pro, but one day when I was in a relaxed mood, I began saying less and noticing more.
— W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis, pg. 4
When I’m feeling those self-conscious feelings creep in that make me want to over-explain, I try remember what so many educational thinkers have said: teach the student, not the subject. Back to Nisbit, “although a good teacher will hold a vast body of knowledge and an understanding of educational principles, the activity of each individual lesson is in response to the student.” I don’t need to tell them everything I know for them to improve. I don’t need to give a lecture in a private lesson to demonstrate that I’m smart (that’s what Substack is for). In an age when information is free, and everyone’s brains feel like maxed-out download folders, we are all simply being presented with too much and have too few opportunities to do the thing(s) we do.
Some might be shocked to learn how many hours a week a typical college music student plays their instrument for someone who’s actually listening to them (much less an expert). Spoiler, it’s probably only that hour a week in their private lesson.
So I say, “let them play (and have cake, why not?).”
This may be old news, but if you got this far you’re either a staffer at Foray or it’s been a good reminder that, as lessons are starting back up for so many of us, we should talk less and play more.
I think you’re super,
Charlie
PS. I didn’t even really mention listening, which of course is incredibly important too. One of my favorite quotes: “most of us listen just enough to respond.”
What do you think? I’m listening.