Prep Department Lesson with Perry, May 12, 2016

     On May 12, 2016 in Perry’s office, PMC 216, Decatur, Illinois, I observed a prep department lesson of a high school freshman. Perry began his lesson with having the student, Coy, play his chromatic scale. Coy took multiple breaths during this warm-up and afterwards, Perry told me that Coy has asthma so he usually begins his lessons sort of puffy, builds up his endurance, and then usually ends his lesson out of breath. Coy has been taking lessons for over a year now from Perry, and he thinks that he is already starting to breathe better, but it sometimes inhibits his performance. After the chromatic scale, Perry gave Coy another warm-up called “The Loop,” in which Coy had to label all of the scale degrees, play the warm-up, and then transpose it to F using the scale degrees. Perry asked him to have that warm-up memorized in the keys of C, F, and G for his next lesson. Next, Perry had Coy play, with multiple different types of jazz tonguing, his C, F, and G scale in the range of the horn along with them in different styles of thirds. They focused on a jazz solo that Coy has and paid attention to him properly executing the articulations. Perry and Coy played a jazz duet, slowly going over the runs that he struggled with and then switching parts. Lastly, Coy worked on a transcribed piece of music that he was learning by ear on Perry’s computer. Both Coy and Perry were very relaxed and comfortable during the lesson, with both of them being able to make jokes periodically.

     As tedious as it is, Perry never lets a mistake go. If one note, articulation, or rhythm is messed up, he will stop you and make you go back over it until you get it right. While this is a time consuming process, especially when reading something new, it keeps us students from forming bad habits and getting away with making mistakes. It also makes us better executers because we learn from ever mistake immediately. Something that I would do differently would be to have a lesson plan for each lesson. The plan can be altered of course, but sometimes time gets the best of the situation and things that need to be gone over don’t get covered within the hour. One thing that I would like to do as a teacher is to have the weekly scale and etude exercises for students to practice, because while they can get repetitively boring, it develops a student’s skill a lot faster than I think that they realize. Practicing scales and reading etudes on a consistent basis has made my sight reading skills much better, along with being able to play in a greater range of key signatures.