When “Tell, Don’t Show” Makes Sense

The best teachers will not play at your lesson, but will listen to you play.

It seems that “show, don’t tell” is dogma in teaching, but I think that when it comes to learning music, the opposite is  true. I have often learned more from “tell, don’t show.”

If a teacher spends too much time playing an instrument (or singing, if you study voice) during the lesson – the teacher is not teaching you. At best, they are not effectively using your lesson time. At worst, they are showing off!

I had a math teacher in 9th grade who spent almost the entire class at the board working out problems. Unfortunately, I had absolutely no idea how he arrived at the answers!  He was saying to us: “Look at me; watch me do this. Now, you do it.”

My sense is that the teacher was confirming what the class’ math whiz’s already knew. The rest of us were lost.

The first time I ran into the “tell, don’t show” concept was with my former vocal teacher, Diana Cole. Diana is a former opera singer outside of Boston who teaches singing of all styles, and is particularly good with absolute beginners.

She sang very little at the lessons, and did a lot of listening. She would tell me how the back of my throat was supposed to feel, or that I could get the sound I wanted by yawning, for example. She would patiently wait until I discovered the “feel” and sound for myself, and then tell me when I’d gotten it “right.” By allowing me to discover the sound on my own, she enabled me to essentially “teach myself,” which is a gift that the best teachers give you.

I’ve tried formal lessons with guitar teachers over the years, and all of them, with the exception of Chuck Anderson, were focused on the “show, don’t tell” method. Unfortunately, I learned little from these teachers. They would play during the lesson, as if to say, “See, I can do it. So can you!”

In looking at music teacher sites, I came across one for a piano teacher who said of one of his former teachers:
“She possessed the rare gift of remembering how it feels to not know a subject and was remarkably skilled at translating that into her teaching style.” If he’s teaching the way his former teacher taught, he too is a good and rare teacher.

The great violinist Itzhak Perlman once said of his role as teacher: “Another thing that I don’t like to do is show too much how it goes. I do it once in a blue moon. Sometimes there are lessons when I don’t pick up a violin at all.”

If you’re currently in the market for a music teacher, ask the teacher about his or her teaching philosophy, and see if it compliments the way you learn best.