Group Lessons in Music: Advantages for Pupils and Parents

For generations, parents and music teachers alike assumed that individual lessons were the ideal way of teaching musical instruments to young pupils. Today, however, many teachers recommend group lessons, especially in the early stages, because of the advantages they offer to pupils and parents.

Here are five of those advantages.

(1) Familiarity. Young pupils are used to learning in a group environment in their regular schoolwork. Therefore, they tend to feel more comfortable beginning their music studies in a similar environment.

(2) Cost effectiveness. Group lessons are cost effective to deliver. Depending on where they are offered, at public schools or through private studios, they are free or at least much cheaper than individual lessons. They also eliminate the problem of parental fears that sometimes arise when teachers work one-on-one with children.

(3) Ensemble experience. Most musicians, including young students, need and want the enjoyable experience of making music with others in an ensemble, such as a full band, full orchestra, wind group, string group, percussion group, or jazz band. Group lessons lay the groundwork for that rich experience from the outset.

(4) Peer support. Teachers and parents constantly see the benefits of peer support in group music lessons. In fact, some pupils initially express interest in learning an instrument specifically because their friends are studying it.

Many young pupils tend to be timid about playing alone, but will play with joyful abandon in a group. Peer support may help struggling pupils to persevere. Successful older students often serve as role models for younger ones. And the bonds formed between students at lessons sometimes result in the youngsters' informally and beneficially playing together outside the regular lesson period.

(5) Skill development. The most important advantage of group lessons is the bottom line of all music studies: the development of musical skills. Many young music students find that combining group and individual instruction is the most effective method of achieving those skills, with group lessons playing an important role. Musical skills may be broadly categorized under the headings of technique and musicianship.

Technique involves such matters as embouchure, hand position, fingering, tonguing, breath control, bow strokes, methods of striking percussion instruments--all the mechanics that go into producing musical sounds on an instrument. In a group, students share practical, helpful hints with each other.

Musicianship involves subtler issues of musical nuances--those qualities that raise a performance from merely a series of tones to a work of musical art. Among such elements are phrasing, expression, control of dynamics, shades of differentiation in repeated material, and structural awareness. Rather than restrain individual growth in these issues, group lessons tend to draw the pupils' attention to the need to develop such elements. By coming to an unspoken consensus about what the music needs to convey a clear meaning, all the players raise their individual musical understanding.

The cumulative effect of these advantages clearly shows the value of group lessons for young instrumental students.