Our music education
Blog
for parents and students.
Wow, what a year it has been for Vibe Music Academy! We have been SO thankful to be constantly surrounded by excellent music-making and students pursuing their craft to a higher level every week. It is easy to focus only on the qualitative improvements made by students, but here are some quantitative figures as well that describe what kind of year we’ve had.
With the recent 20-month hiatus that we took from keeping up with this blog (hey, man, there's been a lot going on), we thought it'd be a fun idea to share some of the cool stuff that has happened since Vibe Music Academy was first dreamt up in Summer '15. Many of you were there - and who doesn't love a good trip down memory lane??
Vibe Music Academy has taken on a very unique, yet very simple and logical, approach to music education. It's a system that organically progresses through three steps in what's called a "spiral curriculum," meaning the steps are revisited cyclically over time, with increasing degrees of mastery each time.
Here are the three steps to our spiral approach to music education...
I've had very smart, capable, naturally-gifted students quit private lessons after awhile because they refused to see their practice as anything but another homework assignment to check off the daily agenda. But I've also seen the opposite too. I've witnessed music students flourish who, frankly, I didn't initially think "had what it takes" to be a musician. And, after years of students of all ages, abilities, and commitment levels, I've noticed a trend...
Students who view themselves as musicians - at least in part - maintain a continual involvement in music. And students who don't...quit.
We’ve all heard the fairytale before. The one about the four year-old child who picks up a guitar (or whatever instrument) for the first time, and in some magical way, beautiful music flows out as if the two were made for each other.
I was the kid who tried to quit band for years to no avail against the seemingly-ruthless authority that I called, “Mom.” And years later, I’m glad she didn’t let me quit. Turns out, the reason I loathed practicing was because I didn’t understand the benefit of music or how it related to my life. Then, one day a few years later, as if a light bulb switched on, I stopped thinking of myself as a music student and started thinking of myself as a musician...
