How To Look For A Great Musical Instrumental Teacher
As a young child, I insisted to play the violin. I had played the cello for one year. But I started to play another instrument, the violin, my parents needed to find a violin teacher for me.
I have a sister playing the violin too, so I wanted to play that too.
My sister was with the Suzuki method. I went with her to the violin lessons sometimes. This method worked for her, but it didn’t work out for me when I played the cello. For almost every instrument there are books in this method — as well as the violin method within the Suzuki method. So, we had to find someone else as I didn’t want to do this method.
We went to an open day of the local music school at that time. I really wanted to play the violin, so my parents did everything to let me play the violin. We found a lovely young man giving violin lessons there. He was great with kids. Actually, he was too kind to me. I needed someone who was strict with me. I learned my first violin steps with him. One year later he went back to his roots in the north of The Netherlands. We thought about searching for a new teacher. But the local music school found a lovely young woman who wanted to step in and I stayed with her since then for about eight years.
It was not really difficult to find a teacher for me.
Then I had aspirations to be a professional violinist. I wanted to be the best soloist. But when you want to be a professional violinist you have to go to the big music school, it is called conservatory. So, as my lovely teacher played in an orchestra sometimes, back then, there at that orchestra, she sat next to an incredible teacher who teaches at the conservatory. This teacher was very good at teaching me the right technique. At that time, I was about sixteen years old, I got lessons from her. For about two years she taught me the finest techniques to play the violin in a proper way.
In the last year, I did audition to become a member and student of this conservatory. In the meantime, I got pregnant too. So, that dream fell apart. I gave more priority to that in the last year. I also felt I wasn’t ready for going to the conservatory. It was great timing, I guess.
These teachers were “thrown” at me. I took the chances it was given to me.
I also read stories and people ask me how to find a good teacher. I think it is important to have a guide for this kind of area. So, here are my steps, as far as I will use with my experiences from teachers I had.
- I looked if I had a click with the teacher.
- How is the teacher with children and adults? Can you look at how the teacher teaches someone else?
- Does she or he arrange concerts? How does these concerts look like? Do you like that?
- Do you — as a parent — have a click with the teacher?
- Does the teacher have external activities?
Agnes Laurens is a writer. She writes for the local newspaper. Agnes lives in Bunnik, The Netherlands, with her husband and three daughters. Writing is — aside from playing the violin — one of her passions since childhood. She is on Twitter and Instagram.
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