Musical knowledge transfers

November 1, 2022 Published by

Today I visited a music teacher at a high school for my master’s program and I played flute and guitar there with his students. I haven’t practiced guitar in a about a month and I haven’t practiced flute in over a month. But I could pick them back up quickly because a lot of the musical knowledge I have transfers.

For guitar I’ve reached a high enough level where it’s hard for me to lose a whole lot of progress. I will lose a slight level of comfort with the instrument, but that comes back within a few minutes.

For flute I’m at a fairly low level, but it’s enough where it comes back within 15 minutes of warming up.

The main thing I noticed was that I was more comfortable soloing on guitar even though I haven’t practiced soloing a whole lot recently. I’ve mostly been focusing on improving my improvisation skills on piano. And I’ve played a number of jazz standards on piano.

But all of that knowledge of scales, arpeggios, changes, and standards transferred to guitar fairly easily because it was so ingrained. I could think of the changes and follow them on guitar because I’d practiced over the exact same changes on piano enough.

All of this is to say that many things in music transfer from one instrument or medium to another. Even if you haven’t been practicing one specific thing, many other things help you improve that skill.