<p>Violadad:</p>
<p>I hear you, and I understand what you are saying. There is a limit to where more practice is not going to make the student any better, and in fact it is in my opinion a negative if they practice too much (among other things, the risk of repetitive strain injury goes up, especially since on top of anything else, the student is likely to get tired, and as a result their posture and setup and such is likely to become less then optimal, which leads to real issues. Among some of the music students and in talking to their parents, there is this idea that if someone else practices 3 hours a day, and you practice 6, you will be twice as good, which frankly idiotic (on two grounds, one it isn’t a linear ratio, one person could get 4x as much out of each hour of practice then another person, so they don’t need 6 and b)as we were talking about, after a while extra practice time does little. </p>
<p>As far as discipline and such goes, I think music students have to be much more disciplined that pre med students or pre law students, I think their discipline is much more difficult. First of all, with pre med students, the basic requirement is to take a track of courses, get good grades on them, take some standardized test, then get into med school, then into internship and residency. It is a defined track, one where you know that if you study hard in the subjects, do well, prepare for the MCAT, do well, you are on the track, it is measurable, you can look at your gpa and see where you are, if your grades are slipping a bit you can do extra studying, get tutoring, etc, there is a definite feedback cycle there, that makes it easy to judge, for example, if you are practicing enough (i.e studying, working problems out, etc). </p>
<p>With music, it is as nebulous as heck, there is no magic rule. Someone who isn’t that talented, no matter how long they practice, isn’t going to become a virtuouso, and there are so many nebulous aspects to success, whatever that is. In pre med, you are taking standardized courses pretty much, even if the professor in a class is a dunce, you can still do well in the class, they are clear alternatives. With music teachers, a bad one can ruin your chances of succeeding, because you depend on a music teacher to evaluate and guide what you need. You could have a bad teacher on violin, for example, and I don’t care how many instructional videos you watch, how many Clayton Halsop dvd’s you buy, how many hours you practice,the bad teacher is going to hurt you. To get into med school, there is no magic there, you know what the rules are pretty much; with music, the rules seem to be simple, but that is a chimera, because saying "you work hard, you practice, become proficient, you become successful " doesn’t work, because the battlefield of music is strewn with talented, hardworking students who went nowhere. Med school doesn’t have the pixie dust element that music does, that in music you have to work and keep working, because there is no magic transition “you have made it” ,which professional programs have, and the formula is talent+hard work+ excellent instruction + more hard work+ sweat equity, and then hope the magic pixie of success pours the dust on you.</p>
<p>The real discipline in music is kind of like the discipline of the battlefield, where in the middle of a firefight it gets all scary, who is winning, what winning is in nebulous, and all you can do is keep your nose down, keep firing, trust those giving orders know what is going on, and despite being scared in the unknown, you keep plugging away, that is the discipline to ignore fear and move ahead, something pre professional program students don’t really have to experience, because they know what is up ahead.</p>
<p>As far as liberal arts classes for musicians, I favor it, for a reason I am not sure others would agree with. Music across the board is changing, from pop to classical, traditional record companies are dying, getting a new act out there in pop takes a very different path today and more so in the future, and in classical the old world order (literally old world order, from out of the 18th and 19th century) is rapidly changing. More and more, musicians are going to have to make their own career, even talented soloists no longer have the traditional path defined for them, where the record company signs you, you have management that guides you, etc (not totally gone, of course, but also smaller then it ever was and shrinking). I think musicians cannot just be the music playing ‘artistes’ they once were, that they are going to need to be more well rounded. My thought would be that having exposure to other things besides music practice, music theory, orchestra etc, like humanities and english and literature or history, would kind of bring the kids more into the real world. What do I mean? What I see happening in my always foggy crystal ball is that musicians are going to need to have a lot more ‘people skills’, they are going to need to define themselves, they are going to need to negotiate with other musicians on a flexible basis, they are going to need to be outreach people to audiences, to get gigs and so forth (not exactly a stretch, many musicians do this today). I suspect if orchestras and such are going to survive, there is going to be a lot more required then a body that can play a violin, cello or clarinet with technical prowess, it is going to require musicians who are truly performers, who even though they are a line player, reach out and connect with audiences. It is going to take understanding, not just of the 3B’s, but the world outside, too, and to be able to bridge differences and so forth. Though a lot of the hoity-toidy purists sneer at him for doing it, Yo Yo Ma is a fairly good example of what I mean, while still in the classical world (guy can get a gig with any orchestra probably with a phone call, and then some) he also is willing to do a lot more; Lang Lang can fill concert halls, in part because of his personality on stage, and Dudamel is causing a stir, not because he is a great conductor (though he is), but because he, though a music geek, sees something well beyond playing music well. I think having balance to the rigors of music can help the students keep a focus on the world around them, or that music is a human endeavor:)</p>