At Soundpillar Academy, we believe there are four foundations that are crucial to the development of the music student. Each of these four "pillars" must be built and constantly strengthened. Together, they support the stage on which the student stands. As each of these foundations grow, so does the student progress, achieving ever higher in vioiln mastery.
These four pillars are: Perseverance, Practice, Pedagogy, and Performance
Practice
The pillar of practice is the key to everything. All the recent research points to the magic number of 10,000 in 10. Basically, to master any discipline, whether it be in the arts or sports or academia, it will take 10,000 hours of practice over 10 years. Roughly, that falls to just under 3 hours of practice, every day, for 10 years. Granted, this is an enormous amount of work, and to be able to attain anywhere near this benchmark, perseverance needs to be there - through parental disciplining in the beginning, through the student's own personal responsibility later, and through persistence even when the passion may come and go. And at long last, the 10,000 hours of consistent practice can be achieved, hopefully in 10 years, give or take a few. And with it comes mastery in the violin. And most importantly, the student has learned self-discipline which can be applied across anything and everything he or she wishes to accomplish... which bring us to the next foundation ->
Perseverance
The pillar of perseverance actually consists of four sub-parts - parents, patience, persistence, and passion, in that order. When a child first starts taking violin lessons, it is usually not the child who decided to take lessons, but the parents. And for the first so many years of learning, it will be up to the parents to keep the child on track with his or her violin studies. Through patience and persistence, as the child grows older and develops as a musician, he or she will start to develop self-motivation towards the violin, and then, passion. And then the parents can lesson their involvement as the student comes into his or her own and runs with it.
Pedagogy
While perseverance is the fuel and practice is the engine, pedagogy is the steering wheel that makes sure the student is driving in the right direction. The student's teacher will know the techniques and the music repertoire necessary to teach to the student at the proper times in his development. But more importantly, the teacher will impart to the student the ability to teach himself. Once that is imparted, then the student's own practice sessions throughout the week will be many fold more effective, and will continue to improve, even when the teacher is not there by his or her side.
Performance
Finally, the pillar of performance is where the fruition of all labors are laid bare to the public, for their listening enjoyment. Performance is the destination. With performance comes a whole new palette of issues and dimensions to work through - being able to calm the nerves and master the psychology of being on-stage requires real-life experience in front of people. To equip the student with the ability to perform under any circumstances, the student should be regularly put in performance situations, whether through student recitals, community events, chamber or orchestra opportunities and camps, and in this 21st century, even performances posted onto the Internet and cycled through social media.
At Soundpillar Academy, we seek to build up all four these foundations in all our students, preparing them with a well-balanced, full complement of abilities and experiences.