Confidence is a great quality to have. Unfortunately, confidence doesn't always lead to successful results. For example, I have a chair that I was moving between rooms a couple of times a week. It's not heavy, but is too wide to fit through the door normally, so I have to angle it a certain way to make it fit. After doing it a few times, I was confident I knew what I was doing, so I confidently marched it to the doorway and confidently ran the chair right into the wall. My confidence did not produce the results I wanted because I didn't put in the effort to angle the chair the way I needed to.
Some students have the same problem. They are super confident that they already know what they need to, and proceed to confidently play their songs wrong or confidently misread the majority of notes in note reading practice. The problem with their confidence is that they are so sure they already know that they don't bother to listen when I'm correcting them or explaining something new...therefore, they do not put in the effort to do things correctly and figuratively run their chair into the wall. I always teach memory tricks for the line and space notes in the treble and bass clefs (ie. FACE, Every Good Boy Does Fine, etc.). These are super helpful for students first learning the notes and for more experienced music readers to be able to double check that they have the correct note. I recently had a transfer student insist that they already knew the notes and didn't need memory tricks. I knew this student didn't know the notes because of all the mistakes in songs and incorrectly identifying the vast majority of notes in note reading practice. So I told the student, "Maybe you don't need them, but I'm going to teach them to you anyway just in case they help." Guess what? A couple of weeks later, the student was using the memory tricks and had greatly improved in note reading. How wonderful to have confidence and the knowledge and skill to back it up!
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