the most effective teacher

[pjv]

The best teacher is:
The teacher that can teach students how to teach themselves. This includes time allocation management and encouraging absorbing as much about music as humanly possible.
Probably as important is whether or not the student and the teacher are a good match. A teacher can be the most brilliant on earth but if they remind you with every word of your own mother, well..., you get the idea.

[hup_d_dup]

It so happens I had a tuba lesson this morning. In one of the etudes I've been working on I have had difficulty with a particular slur that doesn't shift well. I have been working on it without much success.

When this passage came up in the lesson my teacher said forget about the embouchure and just give more support. The slur cleaned up right away. Not perfect but more progress in about a minute than all the time I had put in working on it alone.

Now of course I am aware of the importance of good air support – it's been drummed into me for years. But for some reason I had stalled and ended up focusing on the wrong thing (kind of stupid I admit). If I was a better musician I probably could have quickly solved it for myself . . . not being a great musician I might have solved it even then through trial, error and frustration.

But my point is that sometimes being your own teacher is not having the best teacher.

Hup