5 Ways to Measure our Progress in Music Lessons

It’s easy to see and celebrate progress in the form of huge milestones along the way when our child is in music lessons. Milestones like book graduations are easy to spot, but what about all the hundreds of little milestones in between? There are endless small wins that add up to these bigger, more obvious signs of progress, and it can be very motivating to notice and acknowledge them along the way.

I wanted to share a few ways we can see our progress in music lessons other than the more obvious big milestones: from comparing recital videos from past years, lesson notes from the past and conversations to have with your teacher. My hope is you will find these ideas helpful and that putting them into action will help you feel encouraged as you see the progress that is happening, but may be hard to see!

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When talking about progress for the purpose of this article, I specifically want to gear this toward parents, caregivers, and families supporting their young musicians. All of these reminders are helpful for teachers, too, and if you’re a music educator I hope these ideas help you talk to the families you work with when discussing ways to see progress!

 

When we see and hear our child practicing their instrument on a daily basis sometimes the growth isn’t obvious because its happening in small increments right in front of us daily. Just like a relative who hasn’t seen our child for months might exclaim at how tall they’ve gotten – but we may not have noticed because we see them every day – the same can happen with our musical development – it is often hard to see! 

5 Ways to Measure Progress in Music Lessons

These are the ideas I share, especially if someone in my studio comes to me and says, “Do you think any progress is happening?” 

1. Watch a recital video from 6 – 12 months ago and notice ALL of the positive changes. Is your child playing with more musicality? More confidence on stage? A more steady tempo? Improved technical skills? Are they working on a more advanced piece? Sometimes we wish progress was happening in one area or another, and don’t notice that where the progress is happening is somewhere else that we weren’t looking for it to appear. Sometimes our development is not even across all of these areas, but the areas that are lagging behind now will catch up with more time OR they will catch up if we give more attention to them. 
2. Pull out your lesson notes or assignments from 6-12 months ago – are you further along in your assigned note reading or technical assignments? What were you working on back then compared to now? 
3. Take stock of your practice routine: Is practice more consistent? Is practice more positive? Is there less resistance to start, or less frustration that gets in the way of being able to continue practicing? Can your child focus for longer or more consistently in practice? Is your working relationship less conflicted and more cooperative? 
4. Ask your teacher for input – if you’re not seeing progress anywhere that is obvious to you (or even if you can see it but would like some input) a great way to take stock of where you are and how you are progressing is to ask your teacher for their thoughts. Some teachers prefer to do this at the start of a lesson – others prefer a parent-teacher conference. I am always open to doing this in place of a lesson. In fact, if a student is sick and can’t attend perhaps your teacher would be open to a phone call or online meeting to have a conference in place of a lesson that week. **Note: It would be helpful to let your teacher know that you are looking for a conversation taking stock of the progress that they see happening so they have time to put their thoughts together in an organized way for you. 
5. Ask your child what they think is improving – sometimes our child, depending on their age feels their playing is improving in a noticeable way. Especially students grade school and older may surprise us and may feel like something has gotten easier about playing their instrument, they are having more fun in some way, they are finding practice or the process of learning more exciting, more interesting, less frustrating and so on. That is huge to celebrate too! 

I have had families reach out feeling frustrated at what they saw as lack of progress in music lessons and sometimes I agree and we make a plan to move things in a more productive direction. 

Other times, the family is looking for progress in one area that I agree is treading water a bit, but I can offer a perspective that I see progress in another area – and we can agree to see the positives where they are but also how to help the other area grow if appropriate. 

I think it’s perfectly ok to acknowledge and feel encouraged by where we DO see progress and also look for ways to make more progress or more consistent progress. In fact, I think the balance of the two is really healthy and helpful. 

It’s an art form,I think, to celebrate what is going really well and riding that edge of continuing to grow – all of which is a part of healthy music practice, in my opinion. 

I’ve talked in other episodes of my podcast and also in my book Music Practice Makeover about measuring the gap and the gain (an idea from the book of the same title by Dan Sulivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy). The idea is if we measure and focus on how far we’ve come, in addition to where we are headed, it can be so motivating and encouraging. Its easy to feel frustrated or stuck if we only measure how far we have to go. 

I hope this helps you think about some ways to look for progress and see the progress that is happening right in front of you, one small step at a time. I also hope that looking for progress in these different ways, helps motivate you to keep going and keep encouraging and keep celebrating this wonderful journey we’re on supporting young musicians in their musical journey. 

Happy practicing and progress measuring!  

Looking for other articles on progress in music lessons? Here are two recommendations: Progress not Perfection Motivation & Helping Students See their Progress

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