Lesson Attendance
Arriving
When you arrive at Music Place, you will enter through the front entrance off Park Avenue. Upon entering the lobby, you will have a choice of going straight into the retail store or turning left towards a stairwell leading to the second floor. You go into the retail store if you need to make a lesson payment, purchase a book, or check out some other musical thing that's on your mind. The stairs are the route to your lesson!
At the top of the stairs is our lounge area where students and parents wait for lessons to begin and end. Our waiting area has seating for some 20 people and is supplied with reading material that is just slightly newer than what you'll find in the waiting area of a doctor's office!
The first trip or two to Music Place might seem a little intimidating but you'll soon find that the people who work here are kind, friendly, and light-hearted. Come to think of it, most of the students and parents are as friendly and helpful as the staff! If you need something, just ask; there'll always be someone more than happy to point you in the right direction. And in no time at all you'll be one of the family!
Learning
When you get into the studio, you'll feel at home right away. There's interesting stuff in there, the teacher is really super friendly, and it's way cool to be in a private studio taking a music lesson!
Okay, that's great, but let's not forget that we're here to learn something, and we only have a half hour. It'd be really cool to play "Smoke On The Water" all lesson, but the teacher has a few important things to show you - like learning the string names. Piano players might want to watch the teacher play those awesome blues licks for twenty minutes, but we do have to get the fingering right for "Oh Suzanna."
The point we're making here is that studying music is about a lot more than awesome licks and cool riffs. You'll get there soon enough, playing those licks and riffs, but right now it's time for learning the really important stuff - the basic stuff. Listen to your teacher, practice faithfully between each lesson, and attend all your lessons! Treat each lesson with respect, practice each new technique until it's as natural as your breathing, love your music like it's the most important thing in the world, and before you know it you'll be playing like a pro.
Hey! Before you know it you might actually be a pro!
Valuing Attendance
We can't stress enough the importance of attending lessons. There is no value in a missed lesson and it carries no reward of any kind. Each lesson contains a little "something" of value that contributes to a student's future ability to express music. Each time we allow a week to go by without gaining that "something," we throw away a little piece of life's beauty that can never be retrieved.
In addition to the benefits we gain from the study of music itself, there are the ideals of discipline, commitment, and self-honour that are an intrinsic part of attending a weekly music lesson. We don't study music because we're forced to. We study music because we choose to: for ourselves, for our kids, for the sake of taking up a challenge that most people want to but very few choose to. And every time we miss a lesson for some frivolous reason, we miss another opportunity to say to ourselves, or allow our kids to say to themselves, "I did what I set out to do; I am very pleased to be me."
There is much to be gained from regular, faithful lesson attendance. There is little to be gained from lackadaisical attendance other than a succession of losses and disappointments that add up to impeded progress and eventual failure.
A lesson attended is a step toward success. Let's think more frequently about success.
A piano studio
