<p>I had a quick question. Although it would seem most desireable to be at your top level on a piece when you do a private lesson, it seems that many would be in the early stages of their audition type pieces early in the spring of Junior year. If one has been spending most of their time on quartet and orchestra pieces this winter/spring this could add to the dilemna. On a spring break tour, would it make sense to have a private lesson to meet a professor even though you know you may not be in the finishing stages? Or, would it be better to wait until the fall visit? I am concerned about turning a prof off as opposed to on. Or, is the opportunity just as important for the student? Thank you for your experience.</p>
<p>I think the teachers will understand if they know you are just starting on a piece. That also gives them the chance to see how much you have progressed with it if you play it for them again at the audition. The purpose of the sample lesson is to see how well student and teacher work together and, if things work well, to make the audition a little easier for both parties.</p>
<p>I think it’s always important to play at a highly prepared level on a piece in a “lesson” that could have some effect on admission to a program (and after all, these lessons are for the purpose of checking each other out in terms of interest, talent, fit) - it’s the same thing with never turning in a “rough draft.” It can leave a lasting negative impression.</p>
<p>My daughter just had a sample flute lesson at SUNY Fredonia with Susan Royal. D had two pieces with her, one she had just performed in recital for winners of a flute competition and one the Prokofiev Flute Sonata that she started a few weeks prior. This will be one of her audition pieces for next year (she is a junior). D met with Dr. Royal twice, once to observe a lesson on Monday and once for her sample lesson on Tuesday morning. At the sample lesson my D asked which Dr. Royal would prefer and she chose the Prokofiev. After the lesson Dr. Royal asked if we would like to take a little walk with her and she could show us around the music school for a while and chat. I asked her during our walk why she chose the Prokofiev over the Sonatina. She said that to her the lesson was an introduction not only to my daughter’s technical ability but also how she took to suggestions over the course of the lesson, her understanding of instructions given and in discussions of the piece before and after the lesson. For these purposes to her, a piece in progress was a better choice. She wasn’t at all interested in a perfected well rehearsed piece. She also told us that she was appreciative of the chance to have the choice. </p>
<p>My suggestion would be to approach a lesson as we did, with a piece in progress and one in the bag and offer the choice to the teacher. When we did that with my son, the teachers all seemed to want the piece in progress.</p>
<p>As an aside, the last stop on our little tour was the main school recital hall, Dr. Royal looked at her, smiled and said “This is where your senior recital will be held”. a nice touch I thought.</p>
<p>It really is a double edge sword as the responses indicate. Part depends on how far along one is on piece, and what the current private instructor may recommend. Sometimes the private lesson at that stage may provide an insight that may help the student in the audition process, or it may also reveal a relationship that can be marginal, or not work at all. Often, having 2 pieces as sagiter illustrates can be the best approach.</p>
<p>It is a lesson, and not an audition.</p>
<p>I suppose it does depend somewhat on the level of the piece relative to the student’s ability. If you were to come in with a piece that is clearly beyond your ability and hack your way through it, that could leave a bad impression.</p>
<p>I think if you are in the learning stages of something that is appropriate for you to be working on, it helps give both you and the teacher the best chance to find out what it would be like to work together on an ongoing basis. After all, if you do wind up studying with them, you are going to spend a lot of time working on pieces that you have not already mastered.</p>
<p>My daughter’s experience was much like sagiter’s story - the teachers may have spent a couple of minutes listening to a piece she had worked on a lot, but then they spent half an hour taking apart one that was in progress.</p>
<p>I think we should also take into account that as with my daughter the OP’s child is a junior. If my daughter was a senior and this was October or November my suggestions to my daughter would probably have been different. What I think would be worse to the student at least would be to have played a piece just performed and supposedly perfected be torn apart or commented on harshly by the prof. That probably would have devasted my D.</p>
<p>Also, these profs are on their game, don’t show up with a technical piece and claim to be just learning it, they will see through that like looking through a screen.</p>
<p>Obviously there are many ways to look at it, but I don’t see how it could be better not to be prepared. It also depends on how competitive the program is. A Juilliard professor is going to be more impressed with a student who plays a piece well, and also responds well to suggestions and criticism. It’s a tough world out there - far more players than slots - so it is worth considering just how “new” a piece you bring should be, and to be thick skinned regarding criticism and receptive and flexible in response to suggestions. It’s the dynamic between the teacher and student that will be most important, but it is likely to be better if the teacher is impressed with the student’s skill and insights into a piece, which can only come with a good deal of practice beforehand.</p>
<p>Oh well if it’s a Julliard professor…</p>
<p>OK, let’s take it one step further. Two students come to play the same piece for a sample lesson with our hypothetical Juilliard professor. One has slaved over it for months and the other got it a week ago and has played through it a few times. Their performances are both quite good. Our skeptical professor, after asking how long each had practiced the piece, hands the students some relatively obscure work of comparable difficulty to sight read. The first student (who did all the practicing) gets through it with some problems, but the second plays it nearly perfectly. With whom would the professor be more impressed?</p>
<p>Some may very well commend the work ethic of the first student, but my guess is that the ability to play an unfamiliar piece with unexpected polish and musicality would be very impressive at the highest levels of instruction. Note that this is not about being unprepared. One student was prepared for something very specific, while the other was prepared for nearly anything.</p>
<p>For what it is worth, the conventional wisdom seems to be to go into sample lessons like you would an audition, to play the pieces you feel strongest on, because in a sense this is an audition, albeit one to get a teacher interested in you and see if it is a fit, rather then getting admitted. Going in with a piece you aren’t fleshed out on can thus give the impression you aren’t ‘ready’ or whatever…</p>
<p>From what I have heard from friends of my son who have done sample lessons, teachers can ask specifically to hear something they are just learning, or even ask them to sight read something and take instruction on it to see how they respond in situations learning something new, but that is only in some cases.</p>
<p>Bassdad-</p>
<p>It depends on the teacher. The ability to sigh read well from what I can tell seems to be something a lot of teachers don’t care much about, from what I have heard and seen. From what I know of auditions for music programs, few or none of them ask for sightreading, it is all about playing prepared pieces and you get admitted on how you play them, period. It is possible a teacher in the situation you are talking about might in fact be more impressed by the ability to sight read, but from what I have seen and heard out there it doesn’t sound common (as I noted in my post just before, some teachers do ask students to work on a new piece with them). One of the things that is interesting to me is that apparently sightsinging is a common requirement for vocal student auditions, but is rarely if ever used in instrumental ones (sight reading, not singing <em>lol</em>). Surprised me, because that allows gaming the audition process, someone can work X years on a high level audition program and not be good in other things…but that doesn’t surprise me, because the audition basis leaves out a lot of things I think are important, but then again, I don’t run the places or am a teacher, so what I think matters naught:)</p>
<p>Perhaps this is more instrument-specific than I had realized. Just about all of the teachers with whom I came into contact wanted to get the prepared piece out of the way so that they could roll up their sleeves and get to work on something relatively new. They hear prepared pieces at the auditions all the time, but the sample lesson is their opportunity get to know what the student is like to work with day in and day out.</p>
<p>One of the best teachers that my daughter ever had required her to sing a piece before even attempting it on her instrument and vocal sightreading was one component of at least a couple of her instrumental auditions.</p>
<p>I think it’s fine to go in with a piece that isn’t completely in order, but darn near close. I think it is NOT a good idea to go in with a new piece, or one which a student is still on the early stages of work on. Completely polished? No. But it should be a piece that the student has had quite a bit of work on, IMO. There needs to be room for the teacher to offer feedback anyway. Part of what the teacher is looking for is a student’s “teachability”.</p>
<p>On edit: sight reading was a part of most of my son’s auditions, and his sample lessons.</p>
<p>well, truth be told, the Juilliard prof. will be most impressed with the student who plays the sample piece very well (and responds well to criticism) and ALSO can sight read well. So yes, the hypothetical posed by BassDad may work in favor of the student who is a good sight reader and not the player who has studied only one piece and perfected it, but neither of those students will be more impressive than someone who can do both well if all 3 are competing for the same slot.
Would you go to a job interview unprepared? This is something like a job interview.</p>
<p>I would not go into a job interview unprepared, but most good interviewers manage to come up with at least one or two questions for which I do not have a practiced answer, even after thirty years in the same industry. The ability to handle those kinds of questions in real time can make a real difference.</p>
<p>Since you’re “teacher shopping” I will throw out one more idea. We are vocal - so not apples to apples. But my D also took in a piece she was “working on” (and had been for awhile) and asked for input on a certain area where she was having trouble. Most of the teachers during the lesson asked her if she had questions so it was her way of evaluating how the teacher approached that particular problem. It seemed to help her with her analysis of the teachers because she developed definitive opinions. I wasn’t in the room so . . . but that’s what she told me.</p>
<p>My D (a junior in HS)has only had a few “sample” lessons, but in each of them has been asked to play a duet with the professor. My guess is they are using this instead of sightreading.</p>
<p>First, there is no “conventional wisdom” as can be seen in this conversation. </p>
<p>Second, this is not a job interview. I spent 20 years as a corporate private investigator and ran a fairly large company of people trained to throw you off guard. If you came to me for a job interview I could send you out when we were done happy or sweating bullets, trust me if I wanted to throw you off guard I could do it in 5 minutes. I don’t think that’s what we are taking about here.</p>
<p>Sample lesson, that’s it. It’s a simple concept.</p>
<p>The OP is asking about taking a Junior in for a sample lesson. It is NOT an audition and I don’t really think I would want my D or S to study with some priss of a professor who would judge whether he or she would want my child to attend based on a sample lesson 6 - 12 months before the actual audition. What kind of a teacher would that person be ? I don’t care where they teach or what the rest of the music world thinks of them.</p>
<p>No one is suggesting that a student walk in blind with a piece of music they picked up at the local music store over the weekend. No one is even suggesting that it is not a good idea to walk in without a very well prepared piece but there is a difference between a work in progress and a sight read piece and a work in progress and a finished piece. I can’t imagine what is wrong with informing the teacher of what you have and asking them to choose what they would prefer to work with.</p>
<p>I agree with sagiter: have at least one well-learned piece and at least one work-in-progress and, after giving the teacher an explanation as to where you are with each, give the teacher the choice. </p>
<p>If the teacher throws the choice back to you, then I would be inclined to go with the better-learned piece first. While it is not an audition, first impressions do count and even the most careful teachers cannot erase their initial subconcious impressions of a student 10 months later when the student is auditioning. </p>
<p>I honestly think that students at a high level will get much more insight into what a teacher can do with a well-learned piece. Can the teacher take it to the next level? What a student calls “polished” can always be improved upon substantially. Ultimately musicianship has much more to do with tone quality, phrasing, architectural understanding and interpretation than it does with correctness. A good teacher can open up understandings of how to get a great sound, how to convey a mood intensely, or how to communicate the structure of a piece. A mediocre teacher often has trouble taking a performance that is excellent for a high school student and turning it into something that would be acceptable for a professional.</p>
<p>Most college students in good programs spend most of their time working with their teachers on repertoire which has already been “polished” (I use “polished” in the sense that high school students use it: all notes and rhythms are accurate, intonation is excellent, all dynamics and phrasing are in place). Some of the better college teachers that I know will not work with a student on any unmemorized repertoire. Their students learn to memorize quickly! (and to practice plenty!) </p>
<p>A teacher does want to know how quickly a student learns and adapts, but they can see that with repertoire that a student knows well. In fact, it is often much tougher to change things in a piece which one has played for many many months. Teachers are very impressed when a student can change bowings, fingerings, phrasings, articulations quickly in repertoire which is already comfortable to them. </p>
<p>To get a good idea as to what a teacher does with repertoire in its initial stages, it is probably a good idea to do what the OP did and sit in on a lesson or two that another student has. One’s impressions are usually much more objective and accurate when one’s personal involvement is minimized and when one can focus exclusively on the teaching process rather than on the playing process.</p>