The Other 10,050 Minutes: How to Get the Most Out of Music & Acting Lessons
You may spend 30 minutes a week with your teacher. What you do with the other 10,050 can make all the difference.
There are 10,080 minutes in a week.
Most recurring students at Hickory Arts spend about 30 of them with us.
That means we're together for less than 0.3% of your week.
The other 10,050 minutes belong to you.
Even if you sleep eight hours every night, you're still awake for 112 hours each week. Subtract a 30-minute lesson and that's 111½ waking hours without your teacher. If work or school occupies another 40 hours, you still have roughly 71½ waking hours outside work, school, sleep, and your lesson before accounting for everything else life throws at you.
We're not suggesting you spend 71½ hours practicing.
Please don't.
We're suggesting something much more important:
Your lesson isn't where most of your development happens. It's where we help you decide what to do with the time when we're not there.
At Hickory Arts, our standard recurring sessions are intentionally short, focused, one-on-one appointments. The value isn't in stretching a lesson until the clock becomes impressive. It's in using the time well and leaving with something worth doing afterward.
How Do You Get the Most Out of Music or Acting Lessons?
The short answer:
Come in with goals.
Send music, sides, audition information, or questions ahead of time when possible.
Practice and prepare between sessions.
Ask questions.
Take notes.
Show up on time and be present.
Communicate.
Listen to advice before deciding whether to use it.
Apply what you learn.
Let your goals evolve.
Learn more than the narrow definition of your instrument or discipline.
Remember that your teacher can point toward the next step, but you have to take it.
None of that requires extraordinary talent.
It requires participation.
Bring a Goal
Our goals for your artistic life don't matter.
Yours do.
That's one of the reasons Hickory Arts doesn't use the same predetermined curriculum for everybody. A lesson should be going somewhere, but where depends on the person sitting across from us.
And a goal doesn't have to be grand.
A weekly guitar goal might be:
I want to learn how to change my strings.
A longer one might be:
I want to start a band.
A pianist may want to play a C major scale correctly with the right hand.
Another may want to play by ear.
A singer may want to get through one particular phrase without tension.
Another wants to prepare for a college audition.
An actor may need help choosing a monologue.
Another may be preparing for a self-tape due tomorrow.
Someone else wants to become more comfortable speaking in public.
Goals can be five-minute goals, weekly goals, monthly goals, five-year goals, career goals, or something you're curious about this afternoon.
The scale doesn't matter nearly as much as having some direction.
Music-education research supports this kind of intentional approach. Research into self-regulated learning among musicians describes effective practice as a cycle involving forethought and goal setting, performance, monitoring, and reflection rather than merely accumulating practice time. More recent research published in 2026 continues to describe effective musical practice in terms of planning, execution, and reflection.
In other words:
Don't just practice. Know what you're practicing for.
Give Us a Head Start
Here's an incredibly easy way to get more from a 30-minute lesson:
Text or email us before you arrive.
If you know what you want to work on, tell us.
Send the song.
Send the sheet music.
Send the sides.
Send the monologue.
Send the audition notice.
Send the recording.
Send the question that's been bugging you since Thursday.
Otherwise, five or ten minutes of a 30-minute lesson can disappear while everybody searches for a piece of music, reads an audition notice for the first time, hunts for the correct key, discovers what version of a song we're talking about, or tries to figure out what the theatre actually asked you to prepare.
Ten minutes is one-third of your lesson.
We'd rather spend it teaching.
If You're Preparing for an Audition, Bring the Actual Instructions
This deserves its own section because we see it constantly.
Don't come in and say:
“I have an audition Saturday.”
Great.
For what?
What role?
What company?
What are they asking you to prepare?
Sixteen bars?
Thirty-two?
A one-minute monologue?
Contrasting pieces?
A cold read?
A self-tape?
Do they want a slate?
Full body?
Landscape?
Specific framing?
Accompaniment?
Sheet music?
A particular file format?
Bring us the information.
The director or music director's instructions aren't administrative clutter. They're part of the audition.
A brilliant performance that ignores the assignment is still an audition that ignored the assignment.
Ask Questions. Lots of Them.
A lesson is one of the rare times in your week when you've hired someone specifically to let you pick their brain.
Use it.
Our teaching artists are college-educated and bring decades of accumulated successes, failures, auditions, performances, rehearsals, recordings, productions, wrong turns, better turns, strange gigs, career decisions, and creative bruises into the room.
Ask us things.
Why does that chord work?
Why am I flat there?
How do I find auditions?
What microphone should I use?
What does this marking mean?
How do royalties work?
Should I change strings before the show?
How should I slate this?
What should I wear?
Why does my hand hurt?
Why isn't this joke landing?
How do I tell a director I'm unavailable that weekend?
What's the difference between an agent and a manager?
How do I start playing with other musicians?
What don't I know that I should probably know?
Questions fuel lessons.
You're not bothering us.
You're giving us something useful to teach.
The world may be your oyster. For 30 minutes, the lesson certainly is.
Crack it open.
Don't Use Lesson Time as Practice Time
There is an important difference between practicing and taking a lesson.
Your teacher can demonstrate.
Diagnose.
Correct.
Explain.
Challenge.
Listen.
Suggest.
Redirect.
Give feedback.
Your teacher cannot practice for you.
If the assignment last week was to learn eight measures and you arrive seven days later having not looked at them, we're probably going to spend much of the lesson doing what could have happened at home.
Now you're paying for supervised practice.
Sometimes that's necessary. Life happens. People get sick. Work explodes. School gets ugly. Motivation disappears. Everybody has bad weeks.
We're talking about the pattern.
You cannot reasonably expect to move forward every week if every lesson begins where the previous lesson ended.
As we've written before, lessons aren't magic. The value of a private lesson isn't that the teacher does the work for you. The teacher helps make your work more useful. That's also why independent exploration and private instruction can work so well together.
Research on musicians' practice reaches a similar conclusion. Effective practice isn't just repetition. It involves identifying problems, choosing strategies, monitoring what happens, and evaluating progress.
A lesson can help you identify the target.
Practice is where you take aim.
Actors, Memorize the Lines
This is the acting version of the same conversation.
Memorizing lines is not the work.
It's what allows the real work to begin.
Once you're no longer using most of your brain to remember which sentence comes next, you can listen.
React.
Make choices.
Change tactics.
Explore relationships.
Understand objectives.
Discover behavior.
Actually act.
If we're spending the entire coaching session helping you remember the words, there isn't much time left for the thing you came to learn.
Learn the lines.
Then bring us the actor.
Be On Time. Communicate. Be Present.
Some of the most valuable things you learn in lessons have very little to do with C major, Stanislavsky, or a bow hold.
You are also practicing how to work.
Show up.
Be on time.
Communicate when something changes.
Bring what you need.
Put the phone away when it isn't part of the work.
Listen.
Take notes when something matters.
Follow through.
Meet deadlines.
Answer emails and texts that require answers.
These may sound like ordinary life skills.
They are.
They're also professional skills.
And bad habits compound.
Someone who continually arrives late, doesn't communicate, forgets materials, fails to prepare, ignores instructions, or disappears when somebody is depending on them isn't only making lessons less effective.
They're practicing a reputation.
The arts are surprisingly small worlds.
Practice the reputation you want before anyone is paying you to have it.
Don't Be an Askhole
We use a highly technical pedagogical term for this.
Askhole.
An askhole repeatedly asks for advice and then consistently does the opposite.
There is nothing wrong with questioning advice.
Please do.
Teachers aren't always right.
Directors aren't always right.
Coaches aren't always right.
We're not always right.
The healthy cycle is:
Ask. Listen. Consider. Decide. Learn.
The unhealthy cycle is:
Ask. Ignore. Repeat.
We've seen the difference matter in very practical ways.
Years ago, we coached an actor preparing a self-tape. Among other things, we advised keeping the scene partner off camera and allowing the reader to support the audition without competing with the person actually auditioning.
The actor didn't take the advice.
A very good actor was used as an on-camera scene partner.
Our student didn't get the part.
The other actor attracted attention instead.
That doesn't prove the reader caused the casting decision. Casting decisions are far more complicated than that.
But it did rather spectacularly demonstrate the point we were trying to make.
And this isn't merely our preference. Actors Access currently advises that, unless casting specifically requests otherwise, the reader should remain off camera and does not need to give a full performance. It also recommends memorizing sides when possible so the actor can focus on performing rather than reading.
We've had similar conversations about websites, headshots, self-tape equipment, reels, social presence, communication, audition materials, and professional presentation.
If you ask what will help and then decline to do every single thing suggested, that's your choice.
It's your career.
Just don't be shocked when the wheels continue spinning.
Don't be an askhole.
Commitment Doesn't Always Mean Forever
How long should you take lessons?
It depends.
We've had students work with us for eight lessons.
We've had students work with us for eight years.
Some have started in elementary school, continued through high school and college, and returned later as their careers and lives changed.
Over time, the relationship changes too.
The teacher who once explained where middle C was may eventually be discussing college programs, auditions, contracts, recordings, relationships, career decisions, or whether taking a particular opportunity makes any sense at all.
Sometimes teaching quietly turns into mentoring.
Sometimes mentoring wanders into career coaching.
Occasionally life coaching sneaks through the side door without knocking.
That's one of the advantages of a long creative relationship. Your teacher knows the history behind the question you're asking today.
But longevity isn't the goal either.
If you need three sessions to prepare an audition, great.
If you want six weeks of help getting comfortable accompanying yourself, great.
If you haven't needed us in six months and suddenly text because you have an audition Friday, great.
There is value in knowing you've got somebody in your back pocket who understands you and is a text away when the next creative problem appears.
For some students, that rhythm has lasted years.
For others, the job is simply:
Help me get from here to there.
Both count.
Our recent article about which students tend to succeed digs further into what we've observed over decades about curiosity, communication, initiative, work ethic, ownership, and long-term development. That's a natural internal link here once that article is live.
Round Out What You Learn
I often ask aspiring actors a question:
What is an actor?
The first answer is usually some version of:
“Someone who acts for a living.”
That's not wrong.
It's just one-dimensional.
A working actor acts.
A working actor also learns how to audition in person.
Self-tape.
Submit.
Read sides.
Choose monologues.
Make a reel.
Understand audio.
Understand cameras.
Understand lighting.
Edit.
Dress appropriately.
Handle hair and makeup.
Manage a business.
Market themselves.
Maintain a website.
Understand social media.
Communicate professionally.
Network.
Create material.
Work on stage.
Work on camera.
Record podcasts.
Perform commercials.
Narrate audiobooks.
Dub dialogue.
Perform in video games.
Do voiceover.
Know when they need an agent.
Know what an agent does.
And sometimes know enough about every one of those things to recognize when somebody else should be hired to do it better.
Suddenly “actor” is a very big word.
The same thing happens with musician.
What is a musician?
Someone who plays an instrument?
Sure.
But a working musician may also arrange.
Compose.
Write songs.
Record.
Engineer.
Perform.
Accompany.
Collaborate.
Read charts.
Play by ear.
Publish.
Understand royalties.
Run sound.
Book gigs.
Promote shows.
Manage a website.
Create content.
Teach.
Direct.
Produce.
Manage a business.
Understand contracts.
Build relationships.
Learn a second instrument.
Then a third.
A singer may eventually discover that learning piano changes everything.
A guitarist may start writing songs.
A violinist may become interested in cello.
An actor may need voice training.
A songwriter may discover recording.
This is one reason Hickory Arts developed Artist Development alongside Music Lessons, Acting Lessons, and Creative Services. Real artistic lives don't remain conveniently inside departmental boxes. Our current Artist Development program is specifically built around combining disciplines when the student's goals call for it.
Round out what you learn.
The more dots you understand, the easier it becomes to connect them.
Your Teacher Is a Stepping Stone
That phrase could sound insulting to a teacher.
We don't think it is.
We want to be a stepping stone.
A teacher points something out.
You try it.
You practice it.
You test it.
You question it.
You adapt it.
Eventually, it becomes yours.
Then you step again.
The ultimate goal isn't to create somebody who cannot function without a weekly appointment.
It's to create increasingly independent musicians, singers, actors, writers, performers, and creative people who know how to solve problems, ask better questions, find reliable information, evaluate opportunities, and keep growing.
That's autonomy.
And autonomy doesn't mean you never need another teacher.
The better you become, the more sophisticated the questions often become.
What Are You Doing With the Other 10,050 Minutes?
Thirty minutes can matter enormously.
We've seen it happen.
One correction can change technique.
One conversation can change direction.
One audition session can change confidence.
One question can open a door somebody didn't know existed.
But we're still only with you for 30 minutes.
You have the other 10,050.
Set a goal.
Practice.
Prepare.
Communicate.
Ask.
Listen.
Take notes.
Try things.
Fail at some of them.
Come back with better questions.
Follow one interest into another.
Learn the lines.
Change the strings.
Send the sides.
Build the website.
Write the song.
Play the scale.
Make the tape.
Go to the audition.
Start the band.
And then bring whatever happened back into the room next week.
We'll help you figure out the next step.
But remember:
We're merely a stepping stone.
You're the step taker.
