I’m teaching my daughter to tie her shoes right now. She’s successfully avoided learning for quite awhile, owing to flats, crocs, and other tie-less shoes. But the time has come.
It occurred to me that the skill of tying your shoes is a lifetime skill – learn to do it well and you never have to relearn it. It’s like riding a bike. Or juggling, swimming, and so many other skills. Once they’re locked in, they’re locked in.
Other skills are one-time skills. Learning to work effectively with a specific collaborator will work as long as you are collaborating, but your next collaboration might require very different skills. I told a student the other other day that each piece you compose requires developing its specific harmonic, melodic, rhythmic palette, and learning to work with it. Once you’re on to the next piece, that one-time skill is of limited use.
What worries me, occasionally, is that in ensemble classes we are likely to spend more time explicitly teaching one-time skills rather than lifetime skills. Making a piece performance ready is a one-time skill; learning how to interpret a new piece of music is a lifetime skill. Sight-reading is a lifetime skill, but rote learning is a one-time skill. (Though there’s plenty of use in using rote learning!).
How do you balance teaching one-time and lifetime skills?