“If you have a passion for music, I hope that these pages will be a beacon on your journey toward limitless artistic growth.”
The Musician’s Way, p. vi
To succeed at university-level music studies, newly enrolled students require skills to practice and perform, maintain their health, collaborate with peers, communicate with teachers, and excel at academics, to name a few.
Do freshmen commonly do well at all of those things?
Given that roughly 13% of music freshmen don’t return for their second year, even at top institutions, along with the high rates of occupational health problems among musicians, vast numbers of students evidently don’t receive the support that they need.*
Freshman Music Seminars Equip Students with Key Competencies
Well-designed and well-taught applied music seminars offer proven solutions to the chief problems that undermine student success. Hence, they dramatically increase student retention and achievement.**
Meeting once per week throughout the fall semester, such courses empower students with essential competencies while ensuring that all students have equal access to learning opportunities.
Without such seminars, private studio teachers typically become the sole sources for students to gain practice, performance, occupational health and other applied skills. Realistically, though, the time constraints of lessons and studio classes prevent applied instructors from covering those topics in any depth.
Plus, some studio teachers address such subjects while others don’t. And that disparity spawns vast learning inequities among students, all of whom need the same fundamental knowledge and competencies.
Clearly, then, the most efficient and equitable vehicle for delivering instruction in universal applied subjects is a required class, not individual private lessons.
In tandem with applied music topics, seminars can encompass student life and academic integrity issues, familiarizing students with the range of support services available to them that bolster their success.
“The most efficient and equitable vehicle for delivering instruction in universal applied subjects is a required class, not individual private lessons.”
Implementing Freshman Music Seminars
The most straightforward avenue for universities and conservatories to implement applied freshman music seminars is to adapt existing models. One such model is the seminar in place for more than 15 years at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, which uses The Musician’s Way as its core textbook.
In fact, The Musician’s Way makes it easy for instructors to devise learning goals, assignments, and activities. Across 14 chapters, the book explores the music-related content that music students should assimilate to flourish in school and beyond.
Actually, The Musician’s Way is the only book that can function as an inclusive applied music seminar textbook. And I wrote it to serve that purpose as well as to anchor lessons, studio classes, and independent study.
With The Musician’s Way in hand, starting from their first seminar meeting, students can grasp crucial know-how to succeed in their lessons, classes, and ensembles. They absorb ways to optimize their practice, understand the causes and solutions for stage fright, improve collaborative skills, ignite creativity, promote their health, and access help. There’s even a section on communicating with applied teachers.
The book structure allows learners to study any portion of the text independently. As a result, teachers can assign varied portions of the text depending on their priorities and the needs of their students.
The free downloads posted on this site further help students plan their practice, organized their schedules, and track their progress. Seminar instructors can then review each student’s documented plans and progress, advising as needed.
An LMS such as Blackboard or Moodle boosts student learning even more, enabling students to post, discuss and learn from and with each other.
“The Musician’s Way makes it easy for instructors to devise learning goals, assignments, and activities.”
For additional teaching tips, both in freshman seminars and other contexts, see the Related Posts below.
References
The Musician’s Way is the only book to articulate comprehensive strategies for music students to gain the knowledge and skills of expert performers. It’s available in print, e-book, and translated editions. Author: Gerald Klickstein. Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780195343137 (paperback); 9780195343120 (hardback).
*Figures pertaining to freshman persistence can be found on individual school websites. See the Wellness page at MusiciansWay.com for links to musicians’ health data.
**The University of North Carolina at Charlotte implemented a freshman applied music seminar using The Musician’s Way that resulted in large increases in student retention, satisfaction and GPA. Student success rates rose such that average time-to-degree dropped. Data collected during the initial years of implementation were presented at the 2011 College Music Society National Conference by the UNCC Music Dept. Chair: Grymes, James A. “Building Student Success through First-Year Music Seminars.” Panel Presentation, College Music Society National Conference, Richmond, Virginia, Oct. 22, 2011.
Related posts
The Musician’s Way Book for Music Lessons
The Musician’s Way for Studio Classes
The Musician’s Way Study Guide
Teaching versus Showing
Teaching with The Musician’s Way, I
Teaching with The Musician’s Way, II
© 2025 Gerald Klickstein
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