Short & Sweet

Recently my sister and I talked about the attention span of my nearly 3yo great-niece (her granddaughter) while doing "craps" (translation: "crafts").

Today I attended a piano recital. The program progressed quickly and the musical works were interspersed with light banter.

Afterwards I mentioned to the performer that it was an "easy" recital - not in terms of the music, but in terms of the length of the works.

The pieces were more enjoyable because they were not incessantly long.

We talked about how it is important to consider the audience when preparing music for listening.

In my classes I make every effort to keep the listening examples long enough to get an idea of the music, but not too long to make the students tired or bored.

As for me, I could listen for hours, but I know many of my students wouldn't tolerate that so class listening examples are right at 2-3 minutes.

Yes, that is very short.

And yes, some students may want to listen longer.

While this is true, I must keep in mind that I do have a curriculum to get through.

I appease my desire to play the music longer with the knowledge that students do have access to the work in its entirety through our school's online classroom platform so those who wish to may take advantage of that.

So, like my listening example this reflection of the day is ...

Short & Sweet.

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