Hear me now and hear me later.
I heard from a former student (15 years graduated) who said he still regularly references the lessons he learned from me. Honestly, that’s by design.
My hope is to model some of the musical questions in rehearsal that I want my students to be asking:
- How is the balance?
- How is my tuning?
- What else is going on?
- How does my part related to the other parts?
- What’s coming next?
- What will he fix when we stop singing?
- What is the analysis of this chord?
These and more are the questions I want them to ask during rehearsal and in future rehearsals, for the rest of their musical lives.
So I repeat specific phrases so they get stuck in my students’ heads. I ask the same questions so they’ll start to hear them even when it’s not me saying them. I choose my battles so they’ll keep fighting those battles for a long time.
If I do it right, someday they’ll hear my voice in their heads saying “Physicalize the rhythm” or “The only path to memorization is repetition.” Having heard me now, they also hear me later.