Clarinet "Lesson"

Yesterday I had the exciting task of teaching my very first clarinet lesson. My job was to pretend my professor was a fifth grader who was there for his first clarinet lesson (we were both new to the instrument). The lesson was to be taught in front of the other students in my secondary methods class.

My goal for this first lesson was to teach the student proper posture and breathing techniques. I believed by doing this we would create a solid foundation that could be built upon. I think a lot of what I had to say may have gone over the student's head. In my own musical training I have learned to breathe using very technical terms. I knew these would be too complicated for the student, especially in 5 minutes, so I tried to explain it in ways he would understand. I don't think he needed to understand it as fully as I wanted to teach him. The foundation could have been simpler.

If I were to do it again, I would teach him posture and begin to get him thinking about breath. It is unreasonable for me to expect him to find the low connection to breath (which took me years to learn) in five minutes. This goal overwhelmed both of us and the lesson was not as productive as it could have been. I would then begin to teach the student some basics of the actual instrument. In real life, the student would have been very bored and frustrated by this lesson and likely would not have returned for a second one.