Precision Targeting

How many times have you heard your child practice a musical passage and struggle with the same spot time and again?  We all have, and without some focused attention on the problem it rarely improves.

Consider this:

After a few attempts on a troubling passage, make a game out of having your child work only on those measures that are troubling.

Follow this pattern

Slow it down

Repeat it ten times perfectly

Put it back into the music with the measures before and after – in tempo.

This is called “Precision Targeting” and it works very well, however, to insure their participation be prepared to give something in return.  Offer a spurt of your time and enjoy playing with them!

Have fun and watch what happens.

Carolyn Biggs

Steps and Skips

Tips for the Developing Student

If They Can Do It, So Can I

I am a huge fan of allowing your student to watch other’s perform in their field of interest, especially young students near their own age.  The principle is simple – if they can see someone like themselves performing with excellence, then they just might grasp more of a vision of their own success on their instrument or in their sport. 

That is why performance without competition is an important developmental experience.  When we had our Ivories and Ice Cream event in June I was amazed at the width of musical presentations.  We had some students in their infancy performing their pieces to their absolute best, and then we had more experienced students performing to their best abilities on more challenging pieces.

It boils down to this – “If they can do it then I can do my own version of it.”

Be sure and expose your student to great video clips and live performances as often as you can.  Great role models model.

Carolyn Biggs

Steps and Skips

Tips for the Developing Student