No teacher… not one person… can tell you what Music tells YOU. This is between you and Music from the vey first moments.
A discerning “teacher” is a musician who understands they are simply a guide in function, form, and performance. A sensitive guide is attentive and submissive to how Music is continually manifesting and compelling the student to hear what Music may be telling them.
In the end, Music does not need teachers; it needs participants in it’s fundamental precepts and practitioners of it’s aesthetic movements within the art form.
The experience of tonic and dominant are innate at a very early stage of human development; it is our hearing essence.
First
Teach how to hear the cadences of the major scale; not to read. Teach without words; how to hear, Sing…Solfège.
Songs
A musician student needs to encounter the Beauty and Aesthetic of their Individual Original Voice within a Community of Sounds and a Heritage of Repertoire. This can be accomplished at a very early age; and is indeed miraculous.
There is no place for egocentric “clever” curricula. There is wisdom and truth in the tradition of the pedagogy contained in our shared historical precedence.
“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.” – Einstein
Give them the opportunity for the art form to be their fundamental teacher.
– JC Heisler