Getting stuck is a fact of any musician’s life. When music students tell you they’ve never been stuck, they’re either lying to you (or themselves!) or have only been learning for about 15 minutes. We all get stuck. Tricky rhythms, weird hand positions, crazy harmonies and more all present roadblocks that might halt progress.

Being stuck dispirits the student and shakes the confidence of the teacher. But above all, we certainly don’t want “stuck” to turn into quitting.

The Dangers of Staying Stuck

No matter what stalled progress looks like or why it’s happening, it’s important to tease out what’s happening when your music students get stuck and help them get past it. 

Getting stuck shouldn’t be allowed to fester. This may be the most important thing on this list. When students get stuck, we often push harder, thinking we can help the student bear down and overcome. We must push, but not so much we push them to quit.

Getting stuck can be a hydra. Often getting stuck actually has multiple little causes and they gang up to make a blockage. Each of the causes needs to be addressed – and importantly, they need to be addressed as a group.

The good news, though, is that getting stuck is usually temporary!

As you know from your own experience, and have seen from the list above, getting stuck is transitory. These things are usually a thinking challenge, and the way out is to think about it – and to think about how our students are thinking about it – so we can change their perspective.

It won’t last forever, but it will require some flexibility.

Recognising the Signs of “Stuck”

“Stuck” can show up in a number of ways. It can appear at first to simply be a lack of practice. But it can also present as a dispirited student, a lack of progress (perceived or real) or an apparent disinterest in continuing lessons. 

While there may be loads of reasons for being stuck, none of them will matter if you don’t even notice your student is stuck in the first place.

If any of these symptoms crop up over the course of several lessons, chances are your student is stuck.

Lack of Progress

It can make our hearts sink when a student flails along. It can be worse when they’ve clearly been practising, but don’t seem to get anywhere.

Technique Tangle

We all know how fundamental technique is, but when a student gets stymied by a specific physical movement you’re often left shaking your head and wracking your brain for ways to convey not just the technique itself, but its importance.

Even worse is when you try to find ways to help them understand the technique and its importance, but it’s just not getting in – they still resist.

Frustration

When a student just doesn’t “get it” (as defined by them), they can get frustrated and that can bleed onto you.

Whether it’s rhythm, fingering, particular phrases or even entire movements, feeling like they don’t (or, worse yet, can’t) “get” something, it can show up as a complete shutdown.

Whining

While whining is one of my biggest pet peeves during a lesson, it’s often simply a sign of a student feeling stuck.

They’re not necessarily “whiny” students 😩, but simply don’t know how else to express their emotions at that moment (especially with very young students).  

Getting Unstuck: 5 Student Concerns

If you can get a handle on why music students are stuck, you just might be able to pull them out of their mired state before they sink.

Here are some of the most common sticky points, from the perspective of the student.

Sticky Source 1: The Despised Piece

You’ve probably heard this one before: “I hate this piece!” Sometimes a student j-u-s-t can‘t <whine>. 

We’ve all met those pieces that just set our teeth on edge or make our ears itch (it’s Bartók for me!), and the same thing happens for our students. 

The question really is this: Why do they have to?

Getting Unstuck

You can’t make them love the music, but you can help them see how it fits into their musical journey.

If they truly hate the piece, I often tell them that a particular piece is a “liver and onions” tune – something that is good for them, and when they’re a musical adult, they can choose not to eat it. But for now, we’re going to choke it down.

Perhaps they’re actually just bored of the piece. It’s easy to flog our basic set of teaching repertoire, but there are zillions of tunes out there so there’s no need to beat a dead horse.

Introducing more music and not requiring a “performance perfect” level of every assignment can help them avoid boredom and keep them playing.

Maybe they’re just not into a particular piece right now. We all have our favourites, and we also cycle through tunes that we just can’t stop playing for a week (or month!). There’s no reason we can’t set it aside and return to it another day. 

Sticky Source 2: Practised Mistakes

It’s so frustrating when a student works hard at practising a mistake or error. It seems unfair to reward their hard work with even more practice to unlearn and relearn parts of the piece.

Often, they’ve baked in the mistakes so well that it’s very challenging to break out from the error.

Getting Unstuck

Spend time with the student to uncover how the ugly ended up in there, and help the student avoid it in the future. Did they:

• …read it incorrectly? Focus on reading.
• …misremember the phrase, or forget it outright? Make videos for them to watch or play along with.
• …rush to just “get it” and end up making it up rather than actually reading the music? Help them slow down and breathe. Musical journeys are not race tracks!
• …forget the tune of a rote piece? Send them home with a video or listening track so they have a reminder if needed.

Sticky Source 3: Music Beyond Their Capabilities

There will always be cases where a student wants to learn music that is simply above their current technical capabilities. If they don’t have the tools, it’s a veritable recipe for “stuck”.

Getting Unstuck

I never tell a student they can’t play something and I’m also big on “stretches.”

However, I’m also brutally honest about how much work they will need to put in if they want to play something they’re not ready for.

If a piece is truly beyond their capabilities regardless of how much work they’re willing to put in, try finding a different arrangement at the student’s level.

Even better, use the opportunity to create an arrangement together.

Sticky Source 4: Overscheduling

Sometimes being stuck has nothing to do with the student, the music or your teaching. There are so many things happening in the other 167.5 hours of the week beyond the lesson.

Sometimes students get stuck because music just isn’t their current focus area. There’s football season, baseball season, basketball season, school orchestra, ballet, bookclub, holidays, schoolwork, homework, housework, work work – you get the picture!

Then there are math tests to divorce to bullying and more – all of which can push students into getting stuck musically.

Some students have many activities and responsibilities, so be sure to ask (and probe if needed) when a student suddenly gets stuck.

Getting Unstuck

Acknowledging that sometimes music comes second (or third, or last) after everything else can be all that’s needed to bring back a student from the brink of the quicksand.

Gentle questions and careful structuring of lessons and practice notes can help students manage challenges while keeping up their practice. 

In addition, helping students to use music-making as a tool in their emotional toolkit can help them deal with stressors throughout their lives. 

Sticky Source 5: Over-practising!

Maybe – just maybe – the student is practising too much. In a world where we spend a great deal of time pestering parents into supporting practice, it’s easy to overlook the overachiever who’s practising too much and getting burnt out on the music.

Getting Unstuck

Decide together what a manageable – not to mention enjoyable – amount of practice is for the overachieving student.

A student who is perfectly prepared for every single lesson may need more challenges, more frequently, to fill their practice routines.

Got a challenge with students’ practice? We’ve seen almost everything! Check out our hub page devoted to all-things-piano-practice for the latest and greatest resources and advice.

Getting Unstuck: 3 Teacher Strategies

When music students are stuck, there are also general ways to guide them out of the mire during lessons regardless of the specific sticky source.

Teacher Strategy 1: Empower the Stuck Student

Teaching the process of getting unstuck is an important skill that can be incorporated into lessons. We can demonstrate what it means to get through the current impediments to progress, and help students to incorporate this process into their daily practice.

It might seem easier to just tell students how to get out of being stuck, but teaching them approaches to getting themselves unstuck will last longer. 

Allow students to uncover the source (as appropriate to their age and level of play), and teach the stuck students specific steps like these:

1. Name it: Helping your students learn to identify – and label – the challenges will help them to directly address them.
2. House it: No problem exists in a vacuum. Ask your student to figure out what’s contributing to the problem. Once they know what’s feeding the beast, we can craft a solution.
3.  List it: Have students list all the ways they could go about getting over this problem. Be sure to let them know the list can (and likely will) change.
4. Experiment with it: Ask students to keep track of what they’ve tried and how well it worked. Encourage them to be creative and to not stop at one solution, but to keep finding new ways to address the issue.

Teacher Strategy 2: Shake up the Stuck

When we work with students in the lesson, we don’t want to laser focus on it – quite the opposite! Here are some things to incorporate into the lesson to show that we all get stuck, a change of “scenery” helps and we’re not disappointed.

None of these suggestions is earth shattering. In fact, they’re all things you probably already do. Use them to ease the tension and keep the music going.

Target the Problem

 “Pop the pimple” (the place where they’re stuck) and have them create their own exercise that addresses their problem – guide but get out of the way.

Get Off the Bench

Choose an activity that can move the needle without hyper-focussing on it. Incorporate movement exercises, rhythm work, etc. to shift the attention while still moving the student forward. 

Use age-appropriate games, toys, anything to lighten the mood and keep them learning.

Stay on the Bench

No zombie practisers! Encourage students to pay attention while practising, without expecting or demanding specific numbers of repetitions.

Help them define the parameters of success (play so many notes, use a specific tempo, repeat until it’s “easy”) so they understand that mindless repetitions aren’t what makes good practice.

 Use on the bench activities that break the tension and keep the student playing:

• Turn the music upside down. Now the stuck spot doesn’t look as scary. Play the “new” tune and see how the sticky part changes.
• Frankenstein the piece. Cut up the tune and make it into something new. Print a copy, cut up the measures and reassemble the Frankentune, then play that! 
• Shift to improvisation and challenge the student to make a “fantasia” of the tune.
• Turn the mistake into a mistake by challenging students to make as many errors as possible. Then try to make even more errors. I don’t know why this works, but it does!
• Have the student write a new arrangement of the tune and play that.

Unicorn Horncraft is the perfect resource for helping students embrace mistakes, challenging them to make errors in as many different ways as possible. Enter your info below and we’ll send a copy of the game directly to your inbox for FREE!

Members of the Vibrant Music Teaching world can download Unicorn Horncraft, along with hundreds of other practice resources, directly from the printable library. Not a member? Learn more and join today at vibrantmusicteaching.com.

Boost Their Confidence

Part of the problem with getting stuck is how it chivvies away a student’s confidence. Help to refocus their attention in these positive ways:

• Celebrate every – single – solitary – small step forward!
• Teach them to “Paste on a smile and play”. Even when the tune is still in the ugly phase, smiling is good for us and breaks the tension.
• Find another tune and come back to the stuck one down the road.

Teacher Strategy 3: Use “Stuck” as an Opportunity

We see being stuck as a bad thing but really, being stuck is a great place to be. It creates an opportunity to teach our students how to teach themselves. 

Aid them in coaching themselves out of a hole and to keep moving forward. When we empower them, they build the resilience they need to play anything they decide to tackle.

What do you do when your music students get stuck?

Share your ideas for helping students move out of a stalled state in the comments. 🙂