“For you to achieve your promise as a performing artist, you need a profound understanding of performance preparation.”
The Musician’s Way, p. 154
We music educators know how rewarding it is to teach instrumental or vocal performance.
We also know that teaching can be quite challenging.
Students come to our studios with wide-ranging backgrounds, for instance, yet they all need to gain the same core competencies.
Those competencies include, among many other things, practice and performance skills as well as technical and interpretive know-how.
The Musician’s Way Book for Music Lessons
The Musician’s Way provides teachers with an unrivaled set of tools that accelerate student progress with essential competencies.
And the book makes it far easier to impart crucial know-how than when we forgo using texts. It also empowers students to learn more effectively and independently than when they lack books supporting their lessons.
As an illustration, a portion of Chapter 4 delves into memorization principles and strategies. Teachers aiming to cover memorization techniques can assign the relevant pages and then apply the content in lessons. Because students absorb key concepts before lessons, teachers can focus on applications rather than explaining every detail of memorization processes. Students can then revisit the text to reinforce their learning.
Below are more ideas for using The Musician’s Way to companion music lessons. See the Related Posts at the end for additional teaching tools.
“The Musician’s Way provides teachers with an unrivaled set of tools that accelerate student progress.”
The Musician’s Way as Music Lesson Textbook
The Musician’s Way suits students in their teens and older, although it’s main target audience consists of undergraduate music students enrolled in university and conservatory courses. It’s effective with younger musicians, too, but teachers should assign shorter readings for such learners.
The book design allows readers to study any portion of the text independently – it isn’t necessary to start at Chapter 1 and proceed sequentially, albeit a sequential approach fits many learners. That adaptable structure enables teachers to assign varied portions of the text depending on their priorities. For instance, one week, they might ask students to study selections from Chapter 3 about solving problems. The next week they could delve into principles of collaboration covered in Chapter 6. Following that, students might tackle the health maintenance and injury prevention content in Chapter 12.
With new students, though, I recommend that teachers assign the first five sections of Chapter 1 ahead of initial lessons (pages 3-14) so that students will be prepared to organize, schedule, and be excited about their daily practice.
“Students come to our studios with wide-ranging backgrounds, yet they all need to gain the same core competencies.”
Tips for Teaching Music Lessons with The Musician’s Way
- Build Positive Practice Habits: Assign concise portions of Part I each week, and then review in lessons.
- Lesson time is limited, so work with manageable chunks of text.
- E.g., one week, we might assign pages 75-82, which cover practice breaks and restorative movements. In subsequent lessons, to apply that content, we’d take mini breaks with students and do restorative movements together.
- Instill Performance Skills: Embed on-stage skills into lesson activities.
- When students play or sing in lessons, ensure that they start and end according to the guidelines on pages 180-184.
- Periodically incorporate practice performances into lessons (p. 199-201) so that students continually refine their performance skills.
- If you teach studio classes, see The Musician’s Way for Studio Classes for useful strategies.
- Establish a Healthy Creative Culture: Students and pros alike experience high rates of music-related health problems. All students, therefore, should understand and live by health-promoting habits.
- To help students assimilate the information in Chapter 12 about the causes, symptoms, and prevention of playing and singing injuries, review the main concepts in lessons.
- Similarly, reinforce the guidelines in Chapter 13 regarding healthy sitting, standing and instrument use.
Tips for Music Students:
- Specify Goals & Learning Strategies: Determine precise aims for each lesson and practice session.
- To ensure that lesson goals are mutually understood, verbally review them with your teacher before lessons conclude.
- To start a new piece, let’s stay, choose an accessible solo in collaboration with your teacher. Then, at a slow tempo, practice it in sections using the guidelines in Chapter 3 for Starting New Material.
- In your next lesson, play the piece at a slow tempo, demonstrating the Habits of Excellence articulated in Chapter 2 (ease, expressiveness, accuracy, rhythmic vitality, beautiful tone, focused attention, positive attitude).
- To simplify your practice planning, document tasks on a practice sheet, and schedule daily practice sessions in advance, as shown in Chapter 1.
- Review Often: The Musician’s Way is designed as a guidebook you’ll tap for years.
- Read new sections multiple times, both before and after lessons.
- Revisit material periodically. After you absorb the health-promotion content in Part III, for instance, go over it again months later to ensure that your self-care habits align with the best practices listed in the book.
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The Musician’s Way is the only book to delineate strategies for aspiring musicians to gain the inclusive skills of expert performers. It’s available in print, e-book, and translated editions.
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Related posts
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