7 Unforgettable Lessons I Learned at the "World's Best Music School"

i often get asked what's the deal with music school is it worth the money would i do it again if i were to go back what was my experience like at a school like juilliard so i made a list of seven most valuable things i learned while studying at music conservatories things that played a crucial role in my development as a musician i did my bachelor studies at the juilliard school in new york city studying piano performance then i got a grant to study piano and harmony in paris at la scola contorum after which i got my artist diploma and did a new music fellowship at the royal conservatory of music or better known as the glenn gold school in toronto canada today i work as a composer and pianist in the classical music field as well as areas like film scoring video games and all the other genres i cover and explore on this youtube channel so by the way please remember to subscribe to stay up to date with videos that i upload otherwise these days it's really easy to never get notified of new videos and also thank you so much for all of the likes and comments i always love how these types of discussions extend into the comments so without further ado let's get on to the list number one i learned that there is no such thing as over-preparation but there is such thing as over practicing so let me explain when i was at juilliard my teacher marty raycaglio helped me understand that in order to prepare for a performance you really have to cover a wide range of types of preparation this doesn't just include learning the notes but also the mental aspect of getting into the character of the music doing your research and understanding the depths of the music and training yourself to deal with the pressure and anxiety surrounding performances so stage fright is something that i've always struggled with and in order to help with this one semester my teacher recommended me to read books like zen in the art of archery and various books on method acting by stanislavski which really did help the thing i also realized about preparation is that the different areas you focus on shouldn't be too much out of balance the biggest example of this is over practicing especially in terms of the number of hours you're spending on a piece i just noticed that there is a cap there's a certain drop-off point where after a certain amount of hours tacking on more on top of that especially on the same day is not going to help you improve what you're doing at all in fact it can very easily lead to injuries especially if you're not minding your form and practice methods i saw many students and teachers suffer all kinds of injuries including carpal tunnel tendonitis repetitive stress injury hearing loss and also a major part of this were mental health issues these things are all connected so it's best to be mindful of this balance number two i learned that it is so important to speak up ask questions and ask for specific feedback so it is a myth to think that just by going to music school you'll automatically be given a ton of attention support feedback and valuable information on a regular basis this is so not true you can actually go to a conservatory sit quietly in the corner in your classes or not go to classes not talk during your lessons and only receive whatever comments and feedback you get do your assignments and graduate in my opinion you can learn so much more from having a dedicated private teacher and watching some youtube videos if you approach it this way so for the first year and a half i was at juilliard straight out of high school i was quite shy and timid and i didn't communicate much with my teacher so going into a lesson if there was something i needed more help on but my teacher didn't address it i would just assume he might talk about it the next week it took me a while to just realize by asking him the question in the lesson we could work so much more efficiently it seems silly in retrospect but at the time i thought i would come off as being a little needy or incompetent if i asked too many things in another instance my fixed lesson time was 8 30 am or 9 am one of those two i can't remember but it was early for me and i am not a morning person i lived in the dorms which is one building over from the main campus and i remember so many lessons where i would run across because i overslept and i'd still have my pajamas on underneath my jacket and then i would try to then go on and play a fast chopin etude or a prokofiev sonata whatever it was less than 15 minutes after waking up so i definitely struggled with this but i didn't say anything and it took me or took us a few months to figure this out my teacher finally said you know i actually think some of the issues we've been talking about in your playing have more to do with the fact that you're still half asleep and this was a major learning experience for me for many reasons it's not practical to assume that your teachers will be attentive to you that is your responsibility number three i learned how to maintain focus under pressure which i think is largely handled by making a decision to handle the heat so the pressure of being at a school like juilliard is pretty intense but it's something more self-imposed than in your face it's nothing like what tv and movies portrayed as i think we all know this by now but in general the classes and the social atmosphere on the surface is pretty chill there is however this underlying force almost that reminds you of the caliber of the school that i think drives most students to work extremely hard a lot of this has to do with where the school is in the middle of new york city within lincoln center where you'd spot people like yo-yo ma and evgeny kissing on your way to the cafeteria to have lunch and also bump into it's a pearlman in the elevator also you're surrounded by so many students who are actually already seasoned professional musicians so this stunned me at first my freshman year i really felt that i didn't belong there and i even actively considered transferring to another school but i decided to stick to it which in my case was a four-year program and this type of longer-term commitment is what helped me handle the pressure then learning how to focus just comes from concentrating on the tasks that you need to accomplish and get through without thinking too much about any kind of stakes at hand i don't think this gets much easier kind of like stage fright for me but you do learn to just function better in these environments over time number four i learned how to compare myself to others you're probably thinking no you shouldn't compare yourself to others you're unique just do you this is true but there's also a time and place to make useful comparisons in music school you have the advantage of being surrounded by many other individuals that share a number of variables with you you're all around the same age with a similar amount of experience taking the same classes pursuing similar goals and so by comparing how you do certain things to how your peers handle the same things will give you very valuable insights these things can be extremely little details for example i played on the piano in class after a classmate once who is around the same height as me and i noticed that the height of the bench was slightly higher and i just made comparisons to what i'm used to and i actually discovered that i actually prefer sitting slightly higher than i normally did it's a small detail but these little things add up day in day out over the course of a few years and you end up learning a ton i realize in music school that i'm not the most technically proficient pianist out there sometimes this is unnoticeable because you just see the final product a final performance or a recording but it actually takes me longer to get there sometimes and being in music school surrounded by some students that would be able to achieve the same level of playing in half the amount of time was very humbling number five i learned how to predict how much time is necessary to learn a piece of music my time at music school was one of the most busiest periods in my life even during the years where i didn't have a heavy curriculum my agenda was loaded with deadlines for different applications auditions competitions and all kinds of other projects so time management is of course so important on top of this it's crucial to understand how long it will take you to learn a piece so that you can know whether or not to include it in an audition program maybe happening six months from now or during your next semester recital or your lesson two weeks from now whatever it is it's great to know just how much time it'll take for you to get there number six i learned how to deal with a wide variety of performance settings so at juilliard for example over the course of a month i might be playing in my lesson which of course is a safe area but it feels like a mini performance then i might play for my teacher again in studio class where the pressure is a little higher because my studio mates are listening in then i might also play in a master class which is a gentler atmosphere in my opinion but depending on the guest teacher you might have to be prepared to be harshly criticized in front of everyone else there's also piano forum which is the worst of them all because you're playing in front of all other pianists at juilliard at that time also everyone is involved in chamber music then there are jury exams which are so incredibly awkward you're playing for a handful of professors in this quiet stale auditorium so there are so many subtle differences between how nervous or uncomfortable you'll be in each setting one final thing to add was that i was also part of this thing called the gluck community service fellowship which made me do about a dozen performances a year at places like homeless shelters hospitals and retirement homes there i was able to see how music impacts listeners in a very different setting in general this was such an invaluable eye-opener for me it made me realize that what i was experiencing inside of the conservatory bubble was in fact very different from the real world number seven i learned what i do not like and what i do not want to do as a musician there are of course many layers to this such as learning what types of repertoire really didn't suit my taste but i personally associate this with my gradual realization that i did not want to be a traditional concert pianist it took me about two years to even share to my teacher that i was actually spending quite a bit of time on the side writing my own pieces and this was the very first step into i guess my transition over to what i'm doing now it took many years and over those years i began to understand my own autonomy as a musician and honestly this is kind of hard to break sometimes since you're really influenced by your surroundings especially at that age your late teen years and your early 20s but being in music school and seeing what is asked of me to for instance become a typical concert pianist and seeing how others do it made me realize that this is not what i wanted because i can observe what it takes it's really not for everybody i'm also going to add that i learned to stand up for my personal goals and preferences as well maybe a topic for another video but i did have a teacher after my juilliard years that was not supportive of the way i was approaching my studies and my music career and i learned how to not let that affect my self-perception let me know in the comments if you'd like to see a part two on the subject perhaps one on things i wish i learned in music school a very special thank you to my patrons on patreon for your continued support and thank you all for watching i'll see you very soon it's the struggle do i think it was worth it for a lot of people probably not because honestly i saw a lot of people drop out of school as well i did a lot of work study jobs the first one was working in the mail room i also taught secondary piano at juilliard is there anything you would do differently knowing what you know now there's so many ways to answer this question

Channel: Nahre Sol

Views: 270,557

Keywords: Nahre sol, best school, classical music, juilliard, juilliard school, juilliard school of music, music major, music school, music student, music training, nyc, performing arts, piano major, piano student, the juilliard school, virtuoso

Id: 6GwwZBYdZpE

Length: 12min 6sec (726 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 10 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Few-Candle-4308]

Indeed the world's best music school