Let’s start with some historical context. In the late 1980s, two Interlochen Arts Camp flute faculty members did a radio interview and were asked about their careers and what it was like to teach flute. They were both deeply experienced university faculty members, and both had been at IAC for many years. When asked about the level of flute students in general, they both responded that the overall playing ability of the students had increased at a remarkable pace since they started. One of them said he was assigning Andersen etudes to high school students that, years before, he had only been able to assign to graduate students. The other said she heard that there was a 15-year-old kid at the Interlochen Arts Academy that was already playing the Nielsen Concerto from memory.
Humblebrag time—that kid was me. Fast forward a few decades, and now I am that experienced university flute professor teaching at Interlochen, and I can most assuredly say that my students amaze me every summer. Some of them have already achieved a technical skill level that is astonishing, and, yes, last summer I taught a 12-year-old playing Mozart with the same polish and proficiency I have seen in some of my graduate students.
Think of it like athletics. People are running faster, jumping higher, swimming faster, scoring more points, and breaking records every year. If you compare the ability level of an athlete from 1950 to today, you will see an amazing leap forward in basic competency. The same is true in music.
Has the human body evolved rapidly or our mental capacity for motor skills increased that much in just a couple generations? No. Instead, I believe our ability to train people has rapidly accelerated in quantity and quality, and we are constantly learning to push the boundaries of what is possible.
In the U.S., athletic training is supported by billions of dollars of investment at all levels every year. Sadly, music is not financially supported to the same degree, but we have nevertheless exponentially increased capacity and competency in training. In the mid 1950s, only one school in the U.S. offered the Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) degree. By 2000, over fifty institutions did. At present, somewhere around 150 schools offer an MM degree in performance. In the abstract, that represents a huge increase in the number of people intensely focused on training as performers and teachers, with a remarkable amount of depth in research and thought about improvement.
In the real world, recent studies have shown that what musicians have known anecdotally for years is likely true: demand for highly skilled performers in traditional music careers has stayed the same or slightly diminished while the supply of highly trained, capable musicians continues to grow, far outpacing demand. As a result, securing employment of any kind is fiercely competitive, and the skill level has increased accordingly. Along with that, audiences are now quite accustomed to hearing extremely skilled musicians playing the music they love all the time no matter where they are.
Depending on your perspective in this scheme of things, this is fantastic, or this is awful. But the overall point is that the skill level of all trained musicians is climbing every year. I had the privilege of judging a few major competitions recently, and I can easily say that there are early-career musicians now with jaw-droppingly high standards when it comes to technical ability. I told one performer I wanted to cheer when they had the tiniest of mistakes because I was glad to know they were actually human!
What does this have to do with older adults learning the flute? Simple. Unlike sports, where many older adults play for simple joy—think of the people you know who live for their weekly softball game, or willingly drop quite a bit of their disposable income on chasing a small white ball around large patches of grass with aluminum clubs every weekend, or any other athletic pursuit—too many older adults define success in music by comparing themselves to professional musicians. To exacerbate the problem, in many cases, they are paired with a highly skilled teacher who only knows how to replicate their own musical training, such as weekly benchmarks for learning coupled with demanding standards for execution, that has little to do with defining success for older musicians playing for joy and satisfaction. Too many adult learners set a high standard for themselves and easily fall into the mindset of, “I’m never going to be very good at this,” which is a strong detractor for growth and takes away the simple delight of making music.
Here is one of the ways I have learned to alter my approach for older students to unlock better learning with technique. Yes, I believe that scales are essential, and I have the highest standards for my younger and college students. Ask anyone who has had my end-of-semester scale test over the last couple decades, and they will confirm, likely with an eye roll or four-letter word, that I am relentless in pushing students to achieve mastery of basic technical skill. However, this kind of demand is not appropriate for an older adult student.
Instead, I do what I call the “3-5-8” game. Once I am confident that the older student grasps what a scale is, we use either one octave of F or G major, and we break it into 3-, 5-, and 8-note patterns. Leave C major out for now so you aren’t trying to play to the bottom of the range. Nothing is written down; this is also designed to increase listening while focusing on gaining confidence with sequential patterns.
Here is the basic idea:
Set the metronome to 60 or slower.
Start with the first three notes of the scale, (e.g. F–G–A) and play that pattern and ask the student to play it back.
Repeat until it seems the student feels confident and the fingers are relatively fluid.
From there, continue to improvise basic patterns with those 3 notes.
Some basic parameters apply to this exercise: have fun, make mistakes, and be creative with patterns. Along the way, you can patiently address issues in hand position or other basics to help stabilize and improve technical facility. Once you think the student is ready, increase the pattern to 5 notes (e.g. F to C and back). Continue improvising patterns. At some point, see if they can play the first three notes of the scale up and down, then five, then eight, always playing it first and playing along with the student as needed—and always at a nice slow pace. A student can work on patterns like this on their own as part of their practicing, too. No written notes, only a metronome, ears, brain, and fingers all working together to build basic competency.
From the teacher’s perspective, one can sit back, be passive, and simply instruct the student to play a one-octave scale until they get it right, click the box as “done” and move on. Or, one can be active in the process, model good hand position and sound, challenge yourself to improvise a bit, and help gently guide a student to learn basic sequences.
At the height of his career, Larry Bird never left the gym each day until he made fifty foul shots in a row. Imagine the discipline that entails as well as potential disappointment and frustration. If I pick up a basketball and think that I have to be like Larry Bird in order to be “good” I will never enjoy the experience. Instead, I will celebrate when I make two shots in a row, especially if I do it in the company of friends or family while playing for fun.
Learning an instrument of any kind should be equally social and joyful.