Page 79 - How to Shine on Stage

book, and they use pictorial symbols to mark the child’s achievement
in the lesson.
The teacher’s task is to create suitable teaching conditions so that
the child’s musical abilities can be optimally developed. As musical per-
formance is primarily a non-verbal form of artistic expression, the core
of the teaching should also be directed towards the non-verbal aspect,
with an emphasis on the development of the right-brain hemisphere
skills (synthetic thinking). This means that we should be relying on su-
perior musical presentation rather than on the verbal concepts associ- 77
ated with the left-brain hemisphere (analytical thinking) (Kohut, 1992).
Teachers generally tend to use verbal and cognitively oriented meth-
ods. Teaching requires a set of general teaching principles, not rigid rules
and formulas. Functional processes for diagnosing and solving problems
are also needed. The imitation method, which is grounded in non-ver-
bal communication and in this sense complies with the principles of the
sensorimotor learning, corresponds to such rules. Learning by imitation
is probably the most effective method to teach an instrument (Kohut,
1992). The only problem is that many teachers reject such teaching be-
cause they do not consider it professional enough. Trial and error learn- Direct Factors of Musical Performance Success
ing is also effective in learning an instrument, but many teachers are
negatively disposed towards this method, too. Suzuki (1969, in Kohut,
1992) stresses the importance of following the principles of natural learn-
ing in teaching an instrument, such principles reflecting a spontaneous
process of receiving information from the environment, and encompass-
ing the creation of mental imagery, imitation, learning by trial and error,
while also including bodily feedback as a means of noticing and correct-
ing mistakes. He developed his own teaching method according to these
principles, and it has proved to be extremely useful.

2.2 Direct Factors of Musical Performance Success
In the previous chapters, we have focused on the indirect factors condu-
cive to musical performance success and used the sections on self-reg-
ulation and social influences to slowly build a bridge to the direct
influences that await us in continuation. We now move to the area cover-
ing everything explicitly related to the question of what it is that directly
influences musical performance success at a given moment in time. We
will begin by focusing on the factors outside the performer—the influ-
ence of the audience—and their impact on musical performance success.
We will then divide the direct factors into three major groups relating to
the performing musician: