A central part of the student experience as a music major in a school or department of music is the studio. Studios are essentially a home-away-from-home for students and is where some of the most fruitful learning and social opportunities can occur. One could equate studios with working in a research lab in the sciences. With this in mind, the culture and atmosphere of studios and how studios interact with others are central to the culture and effectiveness of the larger school or department.
Music students often enter higher education with a fairly high standard of what classroom culture looks like. Ensemble music courses that music students likely took in high school, such as band, choir, and orchestra, foster a high-level classroom culture and community by the nature of the activity. This creates an expectation that music education, at any level and in any situation, will have that same sort of cooperation and community. The ensemble nature of large group instruction fosters a strong sense of shared identity and a culture that defines everything from day-to-day classroom routine to learner outcomes. University music programs (departments, schools, colleges, or conservatories) are structured in order to teach, perform, and experience music in a variety of ways. While the large ensemble (band, choir, orchestra, opera, etc) is a significant part of the school – and perhaps the most visible to the general public – learning also occurs in traditional classrooms and labs where foundational knowledge such as music theory, music history, music technology, music education, and aural skills are taught.
The core of a college or university music program or conservatory, however, is the studio. Each area of performance is organized by a studio and led by an applied teacher. At Michigan State, for example, within the College of Music there are areas of study for composition, conducting, jazz, voice, brass, woodwinds, percussion, strings and piano. Each of these areas consist of studios led by artist-teachers. The woodwind area, for example, consists of studios for flute, oboe, bassoon, clarinet, and saxophone and an applied teacher for each of those studios. For many students, especially graduate students, they elect to come to certain school to specifically study with that applied teacher. While students participate in ensembles, take classroom courses, and are educated through several avenues, the studio teacher is their major professor and advisor, and typically has the most contact time and influence on that student.
Studios in schools of music, however, can sometimes seem isolated from each other. This can occur for several valid reasons and not the fault of any one student or faculty member. Unlike large ensembles, where cooperation and a mutual understanding of each member’s role is an essential aspect to music-making, studios often focus on specific pedagogical goals based around the expertise of the individual teacher. And studios can have very specific ideas of what they want their “sound” or approach to playing to be. This can sometimes lead to issues in understanding the priorities of other studios and creates a divide in the school where philosophical conflicts may arise between teaching goals and strategies. This conflict is not the fault of the teachers, and usually is not caused or perpetuated by faculty. Faculty typically understand this dynamic because they have a vision of what they want their studio to be and each understands that other faculty may have different goals. While it is possible they may disagree with certain choices in other studios, each teacher comes to the job with their own unique set of skills and priorities. As long as students are choosing to come to the school, being successful within the school, and being productive musicians contributing to the field after school – the teacher’s work is often judged as a success.
Sometimes the breakdown occurs with how students perceive the work of other studios. Learning does not occur in a vacuum. While the studio is often the hub of the learning, much of a student’s time is spent in performing ensembles. It is in cooperative spaces like this that the breakdown can come to a head. Teachers have different priorities and students have different goals. When one person’s goal rubs against another’s goal, conflict can arise. Each instrument has inherent attributes that make them unique and different from others – and therefore difficult to compare. Oboist have to learn to make reeds, tubists may also need to learn euphonium, violinists sometimes also learn viola, trombonists may need to learn to read tenor clef, and saxophonists are always stretching their skills with extended performance techniques. Every instrument has its own challenge, and the fundamental knowledge necessary before moving onto the next step of learning varies considerably between all of them. Furthermore, every student focuses their study in order to be competitive for differing jobs following graduation. Students seeking college teaching positions may need to study theory pedagogy in addition to learning to play their instrument well, while other students may focus on obtaining an orchestral playing position – which has very specific skills you need to perfect. These are facts often overlooked in the frustration that occurs when goals do not align in rehearsal. Understanding where students are coming from and the different paths and pacing each needs to take to meet different goals is something that my colleague and fellow DMA student Evan Harger calls “vocational empathy.” These unique and varied paths sometimes create a flawed perception of what really is progress.
Large ensembles are led by conductors who guide the direction, philosophy, and culture of the learning environment. Conductors navigate through the web of individual philosophies of each studio and performer to create an ensemble experience that proves to be a successful composite of a variety of pedagogical approaches. In addition to large ensembles, another significant performance opportunity for students are chamber ensembles. In these small groups, students have more autonomy and sometimes conflict can arise between contrasting ideologies and rehearsal priorities. It is not uncommon in chamber ensembles, where there is little faculty input and the music-making is purely student-led, to have differing approaches to the ensemble experience. Everything from rehearsal strategies and what components of the music needs addressing to ideas about performance practice and interpretation can differ and pose potential conflicts. While these are issues and topics to consider in any ensemble opportunity, even in the professional ranks, academia sometimes creates environments where students develop tunnel vision to their own learning biases and objectives.
In order to create healthier ensemble experiences, understanding and developing positive studio culture allows students to not only feel comfortable and foster deeper learning within their studios but also allows for more meaningful cross-studio learning. By allowing students the opportunity to understand the focus and approaches of other studios, students are able to more easily collaborate with those who might approach the same musical issue from an entirely different angle. This awareness of multiple ways to view the same idea, or even being presented with new ideas entirely, creates an environment where cooperation happens more deeply, naturally, and genuinely. This allows for the development of stronger ensemble skills in rehearsal and contributes to more authentic performances. Additionally, this awareness of why certain studios focus on particular aspects allows for students to be better colleagues in future professional, academic, and business environments. We approach conflict and problem-solving through a lens developed in rehearsal and through conversations in the studios. For future teachers and professors, we have a deeper toolbox of instructional strategies to pick from to use in our own future classrooms and studios. This shared knowledge combats the issue of tunnel-vision-learning that limits our capacity for performance as well as the capacity for understanding, cooperation, and growth.
An awareness of vocational empathy creates an avenue where students can share what they value in their studios and as individual learners in order to better understand the values of others. To be a successful 21st century musician, a wide variety of skills are necessary. But what we focus on, the degree to which one does, and the end goal of that study is something that cannot be compared. Richard Floyd, a noted music educator and State Director of Music Emeritus for Texas, calls this space where students are engaged and seeking to learn in a variety of ways a “happy workshop.” And within this workshop, there are a lot of people doing a lot of different jobs in a lot of different ways that all work together to teach and learn from each other. This healthy culture knocks on the door of Paulo Freire’s view that teaching and learning are interchangeable and that the student and teacher do both.
Through working with the Graduate School as a Leadership Development Fellow, I was able to dig into what defines a successful studio culture and how we can best connect these cultures to foster a positive and productive learning environment within the entire College of Music. This past year served as essentially a fact-finding year: defining, through research and student voice, what a productive studio culture looks like and where conflict can arise and how to work through conflict. Higher education music rarely defines this awareness and implications of how studio culture effects an entire school. By and large, music studios look very similar today as they did twenty-five or even fifty years ago. Generally, many teachers still teach the way they were taught. MSU is fortunate that we have many innovative and progressive educators, but the notion of still teaching as we were taught is all too common in academia.
To define best practices in studio culture and to compare the music field to other fields, I looked for defining qualities in classroom culture in higher education. Some of the most relevant ideas of studio culture came from architecture. The American Institute of Architecture Students In-StudioBlog travels to architecture studios across the country, asking many of the same questions that we are asking in the College of Music.
- Describe your studio culture.
- Give one tip that helped you succeed in studio.
- What motivated you to work hard in studio?
- What aspect of your studio experience do you think will help you get a job?
- What can professors do to create a helpful and supportive studio culture?
- What should a high school student understand about studio at my university?
- What can the College do to help improve your studio experience?
- What would be your ideal studio care package?
- I love my studio because….
Schools of architecture have a fairly well-thought out approach to what culture looks like in their studios. The Princeton University School of Architecture has a detailed “Studio Culture Policy” which aligns well with similar concerns in a music studio. From speaking with students in the College of Music, topics raised in these architecture policies are similar to concerns shared here – and I would venture to say any classroom can benefit from tough conversations about culture and productive, cooperative learning environments. These same conversations can apply to other close learning environments in the arts such as dance studios and theater programs; but they are equally relevant and impactful in scientific research labs.
Through the Graduate School’s Leadership Development Fellowship, we’ve created a forum where music students can share what makes their studio’s unique, what brought them to study at MSU, and also concerns or suggestions they have to improve our College. In an open environment where all can share ideas, we not only create a space where cooperation and understanding are built, but also allow ourselves to deepen our own toolbox that can be used in the professional world and in future classrooms and studios. An initial meeting of this forum quickly veered away from talking about our own studios and personal interests, but to larger questions in the discipline of music: ideas about music and its role in global citizenship, entrepreneurial skills in the performing arts, repertoire selection and variety, and diversity and representation. These are important topics beyond the scope of studio culture, but agreement exists that each studio can make a significant difference in these areas. Studios can be the start of grassroot change in tackling bigger issues in music and music education. When we come together to talk about these significant issues and how each studio confronts them, we are making positive change – not only in our studios and the College of Music – but in music and music-making at large. This year we just barely scratched the surface of the impact that we can have on understanding and developing the culture in our studios. From the initial research and student conversations, it is apparent that these ideas make a meaningful difference on our learning environment in real ways that will have impacts far beyond the walls of the College of Music.