Play for Fun, Play for Others, Play Deeply
This is much more than just a tagline. It’s a core part of who we are and what we do. Each of these "statements is a vital and an important part of our educational mission at Pillars.
Play for Fun
Music should be fun! We want students to feel joy and excitement when they practice. Students should ALWAYS have 1-2 pieces of music that they are learning that they helped to pick. Songs that they Love and want to learn. When the passion of music is there, and the student feels connected to the music, then we will see developing a lifelong love and enthusiasm for music.
Play for Others
Stage fright can be a very real thing. Learning how to perform and play in front of others is a learned skill. Your child cannot read a book about it, cannot watch it, they have to do it! And furthermore, they need to be on stage/performing frequently.
We do not support the 2x a year performance format that we see going on all throughout the music community. Although we understand that this is easier for a teacher to have each student play 1 piece that they have worked on for 3-5 months, it is not the best approach for a student who is learning to play an instrument. The growth rate is too slow frankly. Imagine signing your child up for soccer, and they are going to have practices once or twice a week, but just one game in December, and then one game in May. Nobody would sign up for that in sports right? Yet somehow in music it has become the norm. This is unfortunate, and at Pillars it is one (of many) things that we do differently. To see a list of other major differences between Pillars and most studios/teachers - take a look here.
Our goal - students need to play for others frequently! At Pillars - we have Friday Fests. They are Smaller (5-10 students), the students play more pieces (2-5 pieces of each student), and we encourage students to have something ready to perform every 6-10 weeks. What this means in reality is this: in a given year, a student at Music Pillars may perform in 5-8 recitals, and play from around 10 to 40 different songs on stage in that year! Compare that to the traditional formal of one, maybe two recitals a year and at each recital the student only plays one song. See the difference!?
Where you can really see the difference with students at Pillars is when they play in bands at other larger venues (Knotts Berry Farm, Hard Rock, etc..) They are pretty comfortable up there, and it’s not magic...it’s because they have been on stage so much that rather than be scared - they typically are really excited to perform and share their music with the audience. As a result - the audience can enjoy the experience more too!
Play Deeply
Playing Deeply is all about becoming a well-rounded musician, and about having a solid foundation in the "Pillars" that make up Music Pillars.
Love, Theory, Pattern Recognition, Dexterity, Audiation, Sight-Reading, Improvisation, and Composition.
As students take lessons, they will learn and be assessed through exams on each of these core concepts. The scores, and tracking/monitoring of all of this can be viewed by parents and students by logging into Einstein (The Nickname we have given to our custom IT platform built specifically for Music Pillars parents, students, and teachers).
We want to ensure that our students are growing and developing in all areas of musicianship and become well-rounded musicians for life.
IN OTHER WORDS...
When you combine it all together - Playing for Fun, Playing for Others, and Playing Deeply - parents and students get the most comprehensive individual lesson package and experience that is out there. If you would like to come for an assessment - please click on the link below and we'll be in touch soon.
