Reflective Essay #1

How do you learn and transmit music?

Music for our generation's life has been everywhere, even when one's mother was

still bearing him/her, we began to "accept" fetal education music. As infants, we start to

listen to music from our parents. For example, when they cooled us to eat and sleep, we

unconsciously accept the beauty and unique functions of music. So, we begin to "learn"

music in fact imperceptibly. The premise of "learning" is "acceptance". For infants

whose cognitive ability has not reached a certain level, letting them learn to "accept" is

equivalent to planting a seed in the soil of their "learning". And this seed may be a bud in

our future music learning, it may germinate, may not. And the budding group of people

will choose to really start music learning, or even start their professional career. Imitation

is an important way for me to learn music, and I still use it even now. I choose to listen to

and watch the performances of many famous guitarists to imitate their hand shape,

posture and music processing in order to avoid going down the wrong path when I do not

have a basic understanding of music. So I think this is very beneficial for me because the

wrong practice will let us get used to these mistakes, it will be very difficult to correct it
back again. Now I also have my own music style, which is related to my experience, it

also creates new results in the process from the imitation.

My music learning life may be a little different from most people's. I was very

naughty since childhood, but I love sports very much, so I joined the school's soccer team

when I was in primary school, and was admitted to the soccer team of Shanghai

professional youth sports school two or three weeks later. But my parents always thought

that a career in high-intensity sports would not be a lasting goal, so they "forced" me to

learn an instrument and chose classical guitar instead. And now I am also reflecting on

my parents' advice on my study in music when I was young, and even "ordered" me to

perform and take level exams. Now, I think it is very useful for me, at that time, I did not

have enough cognitive ability and judgment ability, while my parents could make up for

our shortcomings in this area. Therefore, I think the "intervention" at that time is very

necessary, which is also a precious experience for me to educate my children or students

in the future. , of course, in the process of learning, whether in the body and mind,
emotion and cognition are to promote and hinder the role of, and for me personally to

promote the role of is greater than the hindrance role, because my parents are very

understanding of my personality, so they are higher than standard requirements to "force"

me, is very effective to me, but I don't think this applies to all people. In my teaching

process, there are many people who give up learning music completely because of

overeducation of parents or teachers. Sometimes, their psychological state will also

become worse, their relatives or teachers around the worse relations also after giving up

music study. In my opinion, understanding each student's characteristics, personality and

dynamic psychology is far more important than teaching some music skills. Similarly,

how to maintain a certain degree of “relaxation” and “push” also comes from our

understanding and cognition of students' psychological conditions. This cognition is not

only the role of students for teachers, but also the role of teachers for students.

Music transmission is a bridge of communication and interaction between music

culture in human social life. It is one of the basic ways of art and culture communication.
In my opinion, the premise of discussing how to transmit music or how to make it better

is to distinguish who is being transmitted first. Different age, work, self-experience and

so on will affect the effect of music transmission. There are many varieties of forms of

music communication in our life. In my past experience, I have participated in and

planned many activities related to music communication and transmission, such as an art

festival, a concert or a lecture. And the instruments and the ideas that we use are the

medium through which we transmit the music. Each form of transmission has its

advantages and disadvantages. When I was in college, I did a situational concert, which

was more like a crossover concert. Formally, it required us musicians to interweave many

scenes similar to acting in the concert, so that our concert could be a situational show

rather than a pure concert. On the other hand, from the organizational form, we need to

cooperate with art management students to plan and execute, including doing market

research, advertising and so on. We had a lot of trouble early on, and we didn't even know

where to start, especially since we had never performed a concert like this before. We

usually need to be calm enough before the concert to think about the piece we are going
to play, so it is difficult for us to think about acting with playing, and it brings the

psychological barriers to overcome. At the same time, when we did market research, we

found that the audience really liked this kind of performance, and they really liked to

interact with the performers on the stage in the classical concert. As it turned out, our

concert tickets were completely sold out, and some audience emailed us after the music,

hoping we could perform in this format again. The music manager off the stage also

invited us after the meeting. Therefore, understanding the audience's psychological status

and preferences is also an important topic that music workers need to study, which is also

the basis of music communication in my opinion. By understanding the market, audience

and their psychology, can music be better communicated.

Overall Evaluation = Poor/Incomplete: This assignment has been marginally completed or not
completed at all.  Devoting more time, effort, and attention to detail would vastly improve the quality of
the work. Please provide a rationale for your grade based upon the assessment description and
nature of your work. You may skip the other two evaluation sections if you select this level of quality.
In fact, I didn’t have enough time to prepare and write this paper, because we had the guitar festival
before. I think the examples given are very useful in proving my point. I think the essence of music
transition is not only by the medium, but more importantly the sense of identity between people.
Effort: What efforts did you make to revise (or consider NOT to revise) your essay after receiving
feedback from your colleague? Please explain your decisions.
I have added some modifications to the original, because I have been hovering over the definition of
music transmission and music communication. My colleague also gave me some advice, so I made
some changes in the definition.
Use/Worth: Do you feel this essay was useful to you in terms of further understanding the content of
the course and/or as a scholarly writing experience? Please provide details to the instructor about
your opinion (i.e., Why, or why not?).
Music transmission is a very important topic for music workers. And studying psychology can help us
understand how to get the audience to pass us, so as to prefer music better. Therefore, I think this is
not just a topic that can be concluded by a paper, but a beginning. We should spend more time on
research and make the connection between music and people easy to understand, this is not only
conducive to the future life of our music workers, but also conducive to the public's knowledge of
basic music.