Teaching the Cello

Teaching is, in my opinion, one of the most important things a musician and performer can do. Not only does it provide the potential for a reliable source of income, but it is also as informative, if not more so, for the teacher than it is for the student.

When learning an instrument from scratch, especially at a young age, the student has little option but to do what he is told – he has no prior experience, and so the main way of understanding how to do it is by listening to the teacher. The teacher, however, is able to combine what he has been taught with the experiences he has had, and then review all this information from the position of someone who already knows how to do it.

One of the hardest things about teaching is finding the best words and images to explain something to a student. Teaching should, ideally, be tailor-made to each student, and so this complete re-evaluation of technique enables the teacher to look at technique and the playing of the instrument from a whole new set of angles, and thus come to understand it all in a much more detailed way.

As with all things, the more different ways you examine something, the more you understand it and are able to reapply it in a different context. This is especially the case with those students where it is their parents making them learn against their choice. Here the challenge is to find out what interests the student and teach the instrument in a way which appeals to these interests.

One child I teach, Dylan, is thirteen years old, and has an unhealthy obsession with computer games. The only way I can get him interested in the cello is by describing everything in terms of objectives and strategies that might be used in a computer game. Suddenly the right hand must not be simply “relaxed” when talking about the bow hold, but he must hold the bow like he is holding a fragile container in which there is a deadly liquid. Hold too tight and the glass will break and he will not complete the mission. I’m not sure how much I approve of likening the bow hold to a life or death situation, but it seems to work for him. What can I say…to each their own...