[hgiles]

Do you have any students, that despite the desire to get better, a reasonable amount of practice, performance, and attentiveness/attendance at lessons, just doesn't get better?

 

[ten man]

nope. never heard of this before. i think you must be seeing the only case of this.
;>/

 

[DanPerezSax]

As in, no improvement at all? No.

 

[Kelly Bucheger]

I can only recall seeing this twice in my years of teaching -- and in both cases there was an underlying "handicap" that kept the student from forward progress after a certain point.

One student, who was very earnest and worked hard and listened to and loved jazz, just had some sort of weird time "impairment" -- almost like a learning disability -- he just never could lock in with an underlying pulse. We even had lessons where he'd barely touch the horn -- we'd just listen to music and clap on 2 and 4, or even just try to clap with a metronome on every ding-dang beat. Because he could never overcome this, he never could get past a certain point, even though he had developed a pretty good sound...

The other student was a junior in high school, had been playing tenor for 4 years, and had even taken private lessons for a part of that time -- and she NEVER used her tongue to start or articulate notes. Her tongue never touched the reed while she played -- she did EVERYTHING with a breath attack. It's beyond me how neither her previous teacher nor anyone in her school program corrected her and got her on the right track. They really did her a disservice...

She really wanted to play jazz, and I told her we'd have to sort of rebuild her approach and get her to start tonguing. She worked on it, but got frustrated over time and eventually bagged the lessons with me...

So: yeah, I've seen it, but there was always an underlying impediment that stopped the student's progress.

 

[hgiles]

Just for clarity, I don't have any students like this. I was just thinking from the perspective of myself as the student and wondering whether a few lessons with a better saxophonist would really help me all that much.

 

[Dr G]

I've certainly had students where the learning curve seemed to go flat for a while.

That's the time for instructor and student to re-evaluate expectations and goals.

 

[booboo5000]

I teach German--not the same thing, but there's a lot of overlap--and have always believed that anyone can learn given adequate 1. motivation, 2. opportunity, and 3. effort. A deficiency in any of these three areas usually means that the student will either not learn or not progress beyond a certain point (usually the beginner high-low intermediate level). That said, I have had students who simply seem incapable of real progress, no matter what I do and no matter how hard they try. It's rare, but you will sometimes encounter people who have "an underlying impediment," as Kelly said.

 

[daigle65]

I had one student like that, but like Kelly said, there was a "handicap" factor.

I've had a couple of others where the progress was very, very slow.