What is the meaning of music? Debills (2005) states that from an expressionist perspective when the awakening emotions could be recognized as the purpose of music. In other words, people who play music need to express emotions, and the audience’s needs are to listen to emotions, which is an ultimate aim from both two sides. An expression is a movement that is active between the expresser and the listener. The person who sends the signal has a subjective understanding of this ‘signal’ when they could make the perfect interpretation (Scherer,1995).Therefore, although the same expression from players, it could appear with a different meaning in different audiences’ views and produce a variety of emotional interpretations (Laukka,2013).From such point of view, the word ‘expression’ is a complex action composed of multiple clues and behaviours in the process of musical performance. It could refer to the performance of music structure, rhythm, or melody. Still, more is to convey to the audience what events and thinking Music represent, but the essential thing is emotion. This is the difference between it and “performance”(Gabrielsson and Lindstrom, 2010). As described by Juslin and Timmers (2010), musical expression is a multidimensional phenomenon, composed of a combination of multiple actions and factors. Lindstrom (2003) stated that‘expression’ consists of:

1) The comprehensive instructions of sound, such as the tone, rhythm, pitch, timbre and intensity of music are the main representatives of musical clues.

2) The expressiveness of the performer and the influence on the emotion of the audience.

3) The musical sensitivity of the performer.

So, in this dissertation, the expression refers to all the possibilities that appear in a musical performance which could better the completeness and emotional value of performance.

1.2Experiments of emotional expression in music performance

Music as a special communication tool, the function of the emotional transmission is its most attractive part. The basic characteristics of the music itself (tone, rhythm, etc.) could awaken the mood of the audience after the second processing of the performers. Therefore, the emotional expression of music can be used as an essential means of communication between performers and audiences (Karlsson, 2008). In the previous researching methods on exploring emotional expression are the same which require performers to add different emotions in these experimental music pieces, these could be the same music, melodic fragments or even monophonic. On such basis of which researchers could conduct varying degrees of research. In this kind of experiments, the goal of the study is to focus on whether the emotional awakening from performers can be positive for the audience, and the extent to which the audience can recognize emotions. According to Scherer’s (1986) review on record of experiments on vocal expressions, one of them describes an experiment conducted by Kotlyar and Morozov in 1976, which required 11 singers to sing the same melody. Then, when singing each time, they should add joy, happiness, fear and other emotions. The results of the experiment led them to discover that the audience could receive expressions of anger, happiness, or fear from the performers’ singing.

Besides, with the growth of technology, researchers could apply software or electric programmes to test the relationship between musical, emotional processing and sonic factors. Such researching could help to confirm the specific affection of the music elements on the emotional expression. Due to the influence of music, cues could be multiple when examining the recognition of emotion in the music; it is difficult to find the music factors for a certain way (Eerola, 2013).Since the accuracy of the user of the system, researchers could manipulate not only the sound factors but also emotion. Droit-Volet (2013) is an example that controls the music cues that could relate to the music expression to explore such changings’ influence on audiences’ understanding of music. Also, listeners’ physiological reaction could be studied under such technique (Russo, 2013). Based on these experiments,

Moreover, although the context has been proved, it could affect audiences’ preferences,since the text lyrics have set the emotional basis in the original structure of the Music (Loui, 2013) so that the audience can better understand the presentation of emotions from words. Thus, singers could be more comfortable to express music naturally. In this sense, the tone with obvious emotional cues like lyrics will not be considered as the features that could be developed in the process of musical education. However, for younger children, teachers should still consider the child’s understanding of the words and context. Since children may not have the practical experience about the described in the songs, for this, teachers have to help young musicians have a preliminary understanding of such.

1.3Existing background of expressive instrumental teaching.

Expressive performance as a sublimation of playing instruments and following the rules, students expect to receive guidance from teachers on emotional expression during the learning phase. Still, research by Rostvall and West (2003) confirms that most teachers neglect the teaching of expression. In fact, in today’s most instrumental music teaching, the classroom teaching mode still follows the traditional teaching method of teacher-student mentorship teaching, teachers carry out one-way teaching output and determine the content and objectives of teaching (Hallam, 2006). Although the recent one-on-one classroom form has been taken seriously from teachers, a student-based teaching method is introduced gradually.However, a survey has shown that teachers in such classrooms cannot plan the direction of the classroom and teaching, which cannot indeed centre on students’ features and abilities (McPhee and E.A, 2011). As a result, teachers could follow the general syllabus, which might be unsuitable for students. In the meantime, teachers rarely teach music expression and ignore the part of students’ ability to innovate in the search for self-expression (Gaunt, 2008; Reid, 2001). However, young students could distinguish performers’ facial expressions and emotional characteristics in the early stages, although without teachers’ instructions (Woody,2003). But they would not think about how to perform expressively for they cannot receive the specific teaching of expressive performance when being students until they begin solo performances, they start to explore how to show expressionin playing independently. Therefore, it is essential to develop and stimulate students’ musical expression skills at the stage of their music learning, and teachers could assist in teaching at each stage, such could help students recognize emotionally rich performances and utilize this assistance in their expressive performing in the future without obstacles.

2.Music cues and expression

‘What is the music that we play?’, this question was proposed by Roy Howat (1995), Howat supposed that the music acted by performers could exceed the general cognitive which means that performers are more likely to play music notes in scores. In other words, the progress of music expression could be seen as the interpretation, just as dictionaries define words, music notes playing the role of emotional guidelines in songs. The notes in the score are basic rules that must be followed for performers, and there can be no mistakes during playing. And the marks in the score are the composer’s guidance. Therefore, the music itself contains characteristics that could benefit musical, emotional expression. Besides, Juslin (2003) believes that based on the study of the performer’s behaviour, it is possible to explore the causes of musical expression. Juslin attributed the composition of these behaviours to five types and called them the GERMS model.

1) GENERATIVE RULES It represents the most basic function of the musical performance, perfectly and playing out the structure of the music, as well as the marks given on the score. This represents the performer’s perception of the basic rules and transforms them into a complete performance.

2) EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION FACTOR This point represents the transmission of emotions in musical expression. Performers embed the emotional expression based on playing the music’s structure. To play rich and visible feelings, performers could shape the expressive emotion of the song by changing the intensity, volume and timbre and other elements to achieve a series of acoustic variables.

3) RANDOM FLUCTUATIONS The randomness and uncertainty of musical performance make each performance unique, and in every time, human performance does not guarantee that the notes and rhythms are the same when playing each note. However, these uncertainties can be found with regularities according to the study of the limitations of human movement (Juslin, Friberg and Bresin, 2001). Due to such points, the musical expression could have an aesthetic character for each performance that is unique.

4) MOTION PRINCIPLES Music and human movements are closely linked, whether it’s playing by limbs or vocal singing. Limitations of human repetitive movements occur in the movement of biological structures, and such presentations of these limits can be seen at the end (Shove and Repp, 1995). Whether consciously or unconsciously, the performance ends with a gradual deceleration, just as ritardando appears at the end of the score, but this is a performance that conforms to aesthetic characteristics. Also, the audience is used to such music processing in the ending; it could refer to draw a full stop for the music.

5) STYLIST UNEXPRECTEDNESS This factor indicates a situation that breaks away from the performer’s expected playing track when the performer makes a technical or musical error during playing, which can cause tension for the player. Still, when the performer eventually returns to the original performance, this contrast creates a witty, novel performance. Although seldom experts have explained or studied this kind of show so far. However, this unconventional performance has brought to the audience satisfaction of the emotional experience during this whole performance.

To sum up, when Juslin surveyed the first four causes of GERMS, it was found that when musicians could adapt to any points in these four factors, they could present expressive performance and listeners could understand the meaning of music. And emotional expression accounted for the largest part of the entire work from the views of the audience. Thus, the emotional expression occupies a vital part when students expect to present a perfect playing in front of the audience with needs. At the same time, the smooth rendering of emotions is based on the clear expression of the musical structure; in this sense, the factor of ‘G’ is essential for ‘E’. Therefore, in instrumental classes, an increasing music structure teaching could assist students in achieving better expressive learning for young musicians could feel confused about understanding the complex emotion in music. While the specific music cues on the music score help teachers to explain the emotional performance from the musical aspect. Thus, a clear explanation of the general music structure is vital in lessons.

Researchers began to notice in the early 20th century that the characteristics of the music itself could be a signal of personal emotional arousal. Gabrielsson (2010) states that changes in the rhythm, tone and pitch of music can be a way of expressing emotions. However, music is produced by a variety of interrelated factors. Therefore, it is complicated to control other factors in music experiments and study a single cue in research. Therefore, in later research, usually only two to three factors or one factor are studied when exploring emotion. Such as T. Eerola et al., (2001) only studied the relationship between timbre and emotion; Ilie and Thompson (2006) studied three cues of pitch, pitch and speed. However, the tone is the most apparent emotional cue, and composers could lay the emotional foundation through the key of a melody. Major songs are usually described as pleasant, relaxed and bright, but listeners could easily capture the sadness, mystery and melancholy of minor Music (Gagnon and Peretz, 2003). For such reason, the influence of musical modes on emotional expression will not be discussed. Next, the contribution of pitch, timbre, and rhythm to emotional expression will be discussed.

2.1Pitch

In a previous study, Juslin and Laukka (2003) believed that when listening to music, emotional recognition can be significantly recognized in the way sounds are expressed. Then pitch is the first noticeable characteristic that can be captured. In the expression of happiness, happiness and other positive emotions, humans usually present them with a high pitch or speak with a loud volume. Conversely, when relating to the expression of sadness, often choose a low voice. This sound features that most people can perceive and recognize. The composer will use this feature when writing songs which could hint the audience with emotional cues (Friedman, Neill et al., 2018). Despite another theory indicating that the link between high pitch and happy emotion is accidental, there could be no relationship between pitch and emotion. Poon’s (2015) study of Bach’s average law found that minor essential music is 1.1 and a half tones than the primary key music on the pitch. So, when talking about high or low pitch, all these gloomy or pleasant emotions will become meaningless. Therefore, in Poon’s study, it is difficult to say that the study of pitch is not mixed with the other musical factors like key and tone, so it is challenging to study pitch as a simple musical variable. However, in the Huron and Kinney (2006) experiment, three different styles of music were selected, and these three fragments are unfamiliar to the participants, each of which was divided into standard pitch, remade with moved up or down three segments twelve semitones. And then the participants were shown with three fragments, then rating their feelings in turn. The final results showed that as the pitch increased, the feelings of depression and sadness could be perceived in decreasing music.

Meanwhile, more research is needed to support the relationship between higher-pitched music and emotion. Still, the link between lower-pitched Music and negative emotions is proportional and could be verified. From this point of view, the pitch may be an additional element, in conjunction with other musical clues to carry out emotional expression. In instrumental lessons, the skill of controlling the pitch of melodies consciously could help the students to receive practical, emotional instructions.

2.2Timbre

Timbre can be seen as a distinction between two sounds with the same acoustic conditions, such as the sound of a violin and a flute when listening to a symphony. The tone of the instrument is innate and could be easily identified. Therefore, there is little research on the change of the tone of a single instrument and the musical expression. However, although the original sound from instruments cannot be changed, a minor difference through the change in skills artificially could make the timbre sound more expressively. Pianists could change the tone of the piano via controlling the strength of fingering or the pedal; the performers’ skills completely determine such a process. Due to such action needing the coordination between player and instrument, such changes of tone colour could be diverse (Bernays, 2013). In order to find out the different tones that the piano could express, Bernays and Traube (2011) conducted a search to find oral descriptions on the tone, which eventually divided the tones of the piano could produce into five words, bright, rounded, velvet, dry and dark. In this way, pianists could use words to describe the sound of the piano when they communicate with each other or in instrumental teaching. With these common words on exhibition of tone, the presentation of the method to show this timbre will be much more specific rather than the aural modelling. Additionally, in vocal performance, the emotional transmission could also be achieved by the replacement of tone colour. In vocal singing, singers can use vocal skills to change tones, such as sharp sounds, roars, laughing or crying, to interpret the expression from repertoires (Spreadborough and Anton-Mendez, 2019). In addition, singing and speaking have the same root in that they are both vocal expressions. Also Nygaaed (2008) found that when it is not possible to articulate the speakers’ meaning of a word clearly, the listener will infer the meaning of this word from the tone of the speaker. Therefore, when this point of view is linked to vocal expression, it can be said that the tone may affect the acceptance of the emotion.

2.3Body movement

In the process of studying music expression, the dynamic behaviour of the body has become the main focus to enhance the interaction between audiences and performers. The difference between a live performance and a recording of a concert is that the audience could observe the musician’s expression and movement visually and could immerse in the performance. During the process of performance, the musician’s body movements could exhibit their intention exceptionally clearly. Expression of physical movements, such as gestures or body swings, could be given meaning by listeners in social activities. Therefore, in music playing, the movements which accept the musical behaviours can be seen as vital emotional expressions. Leman (2008) came up with the idea which called Music Embodied Cognition; such is used to study the connection between the expression of personal purpose and music performance in which the body’s movements acted as an intermediary. This concept emphasizes the importance of body movements as a form of communication tool that can help better spread music thinking. At the same time, the external expression of the body could also reflect the structure of music in the performance. In the study, Luck and Nte (2008) found that the speed of gesture movement coincided with the rhythm of the music in the subconscious when participants played. In this sense, musical gestures could help the audience to notice the expressive performance when gestures combined with musical cues. Also, such movements performed could reflect the players’ understanding of musical instruments. In addition, Tarvainen (2019) categorizes music listening recognition and finds the listeners could capture that body movement in the most obvious way. When the researchers listened to a price of unfamiliar music, although they would not read the information aurally first in the music, but instead could notice the characteristics of the music and respond with their body actions. Therefore, gestures, as a non-verbal communication cue in a piece of music, is an effective way to communicate from performing or viewing. Moore (1998) proposed a concept ‘control intimacy’, which is to explore the link between the players’ skills and the best performance instruments could show. Moore says that an instrument needs to be played by humans; in other words, it requires an intimate relationship between the performer and the instrument. The performers’ gestural motion could affect the sound of instruments; even a small act could elicit a strong emotional expression. As well as in the singing performance, because the human body entirely coordinates singing as an artificial instrument. So, in the singing performance, the changes in the singer’s body movements could influence the sound, and such could directly externalize the music’s emotions and expression. It could be often seen in the opera performance that when singers expect to show the anger of roles they play, a posture of a slightly bowed and expanded chest could be seen.

As a result, instrumental music teachers should pay attention to teaching young musicians to distinguish the effects of different expressions by changing gestures or body movementsand combine with students’ interpretation of music under teachers’ cooperation. In this way, children’s learning on expressive performance could be maximum cultivating.

2.4Facial expressions

When a singer performs a paragraph with an emotional meaning, facial expressions could externalize the meaning of the lyrics. At the same time, stimulation of facial muscle activity could help singers effectively stimulate the expansion of the nasal cavity, and many musicians can be observed with the bodybuilding of the larger nostrils and increased cheeks during singing (Aura et al., 2019). Facial movements not only could build a feeling of a wrapped sound which makes it more three-dimensional but also allow the musicians to prepare for a facing movement before expressing emotion in the following singing (Quinto, 2014). In addition, people pay special attention to the changes in facial mood when searching for useful information in communication. In an experiment, Fiorentin (2012) found that when participants observed at a series changed images with emotional expression, they seemed to be able to predict the next pictures’ emotions in advance. Such due to the viewer noticed the characteristics of the changing facial expression before viewing and predicted it based on such a clue. Therefore, before the musician describes each emotion, the warm-up of facial movements could help the audience perceive the musical emotions and immerse in a preset emotional expression.

In addition, Davidson (2012) builds a study on the pianist’s facial expressions and emotional expressions, using the pianist Lang Lang as an object of observation, and ‘lebensraum played at a concert to observe how Lang Lang’s facial expressions are presented according to the changes of playing paragraph. After observation, Lang Lang’s facial expression was strongly related to changes in the structure of the music. It’s a narrative song about love, Davidson says, as a viewer, could fully understand the meaning of this repertoire and could perceive each expression of feelings even without lyrics. Thus, the audience could be guided with the musical structure and emotion contained in the music under the movement of facial expressions and body expressions from performers.

2.5Self-efficacy and music expression

Although there is seldom research on the link between musical expression and self-efficacy, however, the relationship between a negative emotional expression and self-efficacy is proved by the reduction of self-efficacy and the failure of musical performance in the course of music learning. Meanwhile, McPherson and McCormick (2006) state that significant musicians’ high self-cognation could observe an effective performance result. Thus, students’ positive self-motivation on learning music performance could result in a superior quality of music performance. Expressive performance as the sublimation of the playing instruments, the integrity of the musical structure plays determines whether the musical expression can be transmitted entirely to the audience. Therefore, as a performer, the satisfaction of self-efficacy not only helps to make fewer mistakes on playing music structure altogether but also provides more space for young performers to play their second creative, emotional expression. Papageorgi (2013) mentions that the integrity of musical performance is not only influenced by the skills’ level of the performers but also related to self-efficacy and musical performance anxiety. From this point of view, the improvement of self-efficacy could help performers reduce anxiety during the performance and express the music better. Self-efficacy could be derived from the mastery of personal music skills, or the prepared alternative methods (a plan B) when musicians make mistakes on the stage, and also could be related to the control of the emotional state and physically. Hendricks (2014) says the self-efficacy of music could come from daily music learning, controllable performance in front of the public, and increasing musical skills when overcoming problematic musical paragraphs. Lamont (2012) states that an active performance status could closely relate to the musician’s ‘flowing’ state. Self-affirmation is achieved when the performer is fully engaged in playing music that he or she could integrate with the performance.

Such musicians recognize musical performance as a manageable challenge, which they keep challenging the quality of music performance and expect to perform better. In this way, these musicians are always flowing. When musicians complete a new challenge, they could continue to gain satisfaction and a higher physiological awakening from it (Woody and McPherson, 2010). And a lower physiological wake-up call makes musicians feel that they are always at risk of acting mistakes which could easily produce an emotion of tension and anxiety (Simoens, 2015). In other words, in music expression’s teaching, high-level physiological awakening helps musicians perform perfectly on the basic structure of repertoires, while also enabling musicians to recognize the perfect expression of music as an ‘excited’ and controllable challenges. Therefore, cultivating self-efficacy could help musicians to improve the expression and integrity of their work one by one time.

3.Teaching music expression in one-to-one instrumental classes

3.1The foundation of education

All the time, music expression has always been regarded as an innate talent, whether children can be taught teachers and parents dispute emotional expression in instrumental teaching(Sloboda, 1991). However, undeniably, Coward presents that the ability to express music has always been a standard for musicians to judge their reputations in 1914 (Coward, 2013). Meanwhile, music teachers also acknowledge that the ability to express music is crucial (Laukka, 2004). But in the current musical instrument education on students’ performance teaching, the focus is mostly on the improvement of skills. Even the explicit performance teaching in the classroom can only exist in the form of oral narrative; there is no textbook to support teachers’ instruction (Kaplan, 2003). The reason for this is that teachers are unable to apply relevant educational theories in the music classroom, as such expressive teaching has not yet become a common phenomenon. Teachers’ teaching on expressiveness could only be tips, and it could be random. In a search about theorizing expressive performance in instrumental teaching (Karlsson 2008), the results show that teachers have few specific structures in class, only verbal description after students have played and is a short and temporary informing. Besides, a large part of music teachers, even if trying to teach expressiveness, but they spend most of their time guiding students to show their emotions with confidence, rather than instructing them how to demonstrate expressiveness in the playing.

Though teachers and parents are not sure about children’s capabilities of recognizing emotions, while plenty of research shows that children could capture others’ emotional appearance at a very young age, preschool children (six to seven years old) have been shown to understand the basic emotions repertoires (Franco, 2017). Children between the ages of 3 to 13 could express their feelings with improvisational music, and children of this age can feel the sadness or mystery in the melody while listening to the minor key music. (Davies, 1986) Furthermore, in Adachi and Trenhub’s experiment, a study on children between the ages of 4 and 12 was conducted to explore children and their abilities in performing emotions. They were asked to sing a familiar song but needed to express sadness or happiness as if they wanted and could be felt by researchers. The results showed that children were able to express their emotions clearly in the song when they used gestures, lyrics, body movements, and sounds. Sloboda and Davidson (1996) also believed that gestures were essential in musical performances. In this sense, children have their ideas about the expressiveness of music, they are inherently sensitive about the expression of music, so it is possible to instruct children about emotional expression.

Moreover, the environment in a one-to-one classroom provides more private space for music expression teaching. One thing about students need instructions from teachers about expression is that even if they could cognize the physical characteristics of other musicians’ emotional expressions, they cannot interpret in front of the public with confidence. Since they are in the early stages of instrumental learning and seldom have chance to accumulate performing experience. So, it is hard for them to control each movement on the stage. Completing the basic performance will cause their nervousness, not to mention showing physical expressions and embedded with emotion and personal music reprocessing. Therefore, in one-on-one classroom, students only need to face one person, and mistakes in such classrooms should be allowed to occur, students in such a classroom will be more relaxed and carry out expressions bravely. As Gaunt (2010) points out, one-on-one classrooms provide an environment for students could receive mentors’ feedback immediately and utilize them in reflective learning. This kind of teaching method is an innovative classroom where students and teachers could cooperate.

At the same time, Ganut (2011) says today’s one-to-one tuition can make students over-dependent on their teachers’ instructions, which could lead to student loose abilities to perform music independently. Therefore, from this point of view, a ‘scaffolding’ theory has emerged, which refers to teacher could offer temporary assistance students at every stage in musical leaning. When students can gradually master the autonomy of the ability themselves, teachers could reduce their guidance. At every step in this process, teachers and students’ level are situated, teachers need to follow students and interact with the student often (Gonzalez and DeJarnette, 2015). In this way, these actions can only be done in one-to-one classrooms, because teachers need to put all their attention on one student during this whole teaching. Therefore, music expression requires the interaction between students and teachers, which one-to-one lesson could be more suitable under such education for younger musicians.

4.The general expressive education method

4.1Metaphor

In current expressive performance music teaching, the most common use is oral teaching, because the personal emotional experience cannot be imitated and taught by others, so teachers could only use oral description to stimulate students’ imagination which could help students to shape their unique performance. In woody’s (2000) research, students generally said that the source for them to learn expressive performance is the oral teaching from teachers. In these methods of oral interpretation, metaphor is the most popular method to guide students, using a metaphorical way to describe the musical structure and the performance of sound (Woody, 2006). Teachers would tell students what they’re playing like, what sounds sound like, or what the music makes them feel like. Teachers try to explain the musical factors or emotion from the aspect of students and find the same experience with students through an abstract way to exhibit how to perform them. The metaphor that teachers use is often a common phenomenon or thing in life that students and teachers both know and could relate withthe musical skillsinteaching. As Karlsson (2004) points out that, metaphor is the bridge between emotional performance and music education. In this sense, teachers expect to arouse students’ interests and emotion through referring to familiar things which could better explain musical skills. According to Schippers (2006), teachers in conservatories seem to be used to apply verbal instruction in explicit teaching. For example, in vocal teaching, teachers will describe the feeling of inhaling as if smelling flowers to help students find the right place and organ to breathe, or the elevation of both cheeks during singing as if they were smiling (Aura, 2019). Metaphorically, this approach is related to the music teacher’s personal use of condition and style, for example, different teachers could conduct it in different aspects, just like when teaching the skills of playing instruments, or the explanations of musical emotion. In addition, oral descriptions could also be discussed to explain how to use the features of instruments to improve musical performance, such as rhythm and the tone colour discussed above.

4.2Auditory modelling

However, another method of aural modelling could effectively compensate for the shortcoming of the oral description. This method comes from modelling, which is often used in Suzuki’s classes. Modelling helps students familiarize themselves with the music before playing this piece of music and master the structure of the music through pre-observation. On this basis, students could embed their awareness of this piece of music and all factors in music into their playing unconsciously (Haston, 2007). In the very initial stage for students to learn music performance, children seldom develop their performance awareness without teachers’ cultivating. By remembering and imitating the music pre-assigned by teachers, students could become proficient when practising, and after this, they could develop their style. In Western musical instrument classrooms, auditory modelling is often used, which could allocate the whole teaching effectively when students could be exposed to the teaching materials and adapt them (Wlodarczyk, 2010).

Also, the mastery of auditory modelling is seen as the initial stage of self-reflective learning ability (Perfect and Schwartz, 2002). In the experiment of Frewen (2010), the relationship between children’s piano proficiency and pre-learning songs before class was explored. The experimental children were divided into two groups, and one group had to listen to a piece of Music 128 times in 15 days. The other group of children had never been heard before, and it turns out that children who are familiar with the music in advance could play more fluency than those children who never heard before. In this sense, during the time of aural modelling, children compare the playing skills that they own now with the music skills that they heard, they will maintain a reflective study when they have a reference object. Therefore, auditory modelling is like a bridge connecting various musical expressions, musical structures with other elements. Although children may not know how to use professional terms to describe the music they hear. However, they have already constructed the expression of this music in their imagination; they can imitate it when they play. For example, when playing the piano, children make a fading in a certain measure. However, they do not know the reason for it and do not know how to say it. But they know that the sound of this measure and such skill has been set in their minds in advance, so they show it according to the music. At the same time, coupled with the teacher’s oral guidance to explain the connection between music structure and performance, children could combine the practice and aural modelling, and transform to their skills. Gradually, when children are used to such kind of teaching, they could continuously add their understanding in music expression throughout the process of playing.

As a result, although the initial stage of auditory modelling is imitation. However, such could become the basis for children’s independent performance eventually. However, a teacher’s choice of teaching materials is also crucial—musical materials with exaggerated expressiveness which could help children to be more aware of the emotions in music. Various styles and expressions of music should also be considered for students to construct new expressions and performing styles (Bonnaire,2020). Therefore, in the learning of young musicians, the aural modelling serves as a transition from imitating musical performance to producing their unique style, which is also a kind of musical expressive learning support.

4.3The cultivation of self-efficacy

Self-efficacy is mainly influenced by four factors, the completion of tasks, the high degree of participating in tasks, verbal encouragement and physical signals. In the process of music learning, students’ self-learning takes up a large part, compared with other major subjects’ studies, the completion of music tasks requires a lot of training for young musicians. However, children are in the initial stage of music learning, and they are easily lost to sit in front instruments. So teacher’s assistance is essential to maintain students’ motivation, and the establishment of children’s self-efficacy could help students to invest their focus on music training.

To foster self-recognition, past successful experiences are seen as countable (Schunk and Usher, 2011). For people could build their confidence on past successes and face the next challenge. However, as a beginner of learning music expression, it is clear that children cannot gain any motivation from the previous performance experience for they have seldom had a chance to perform on the real stage. Therefore, what teachers could do is to create a successful experience for children and also need to motivate students. More importantly, the experience from such aroused self-awareness must be a real one. Pajares (2007) says, and such experience must be gone through by students themselves; also, they need to understand each step that they accumulate. In other words, students need to master their music learning, because the process of building emotional expression and music playing is real progress for children, and they cannot be replaced. These are the things that they have to understand from the beginning and gain confidence when they engage in musical study. Therefore, the increasing child’s autonomy process is effective for the accumulation of musical experience. Traditional music courses often fail to give students the ability to determine their music courses, especially in classical instrumental lessons (Creech, 2012). The whole teaching plan is arranged by teachers, as well as the tasks between the two classes. Such behaviour resulting in teachers tend to pay too much attention to the development of music skills while ignoring the other creative things like the expression of music. Therefore, a child may not feel the direct participationof musical learning and accept the learning contents passively. Besides, in western music teaching, innovative teaching of music expression could only appear in advanced music classes (McPherson, 2002). In this way, children as the starter lose their chance and interest to understand the repertoire that they play, which could result in a lack of motivation and autonomy to their performance.

From such point of view, giving students autonomy to choose their tracks could drive students to understand their musical structure, musical understanding from the aspect of interests. Also, the increasing initiative helps them to gain the musical experience that could be controlled. Valleland (2008) argues that people’s definitions of activities that are important and interesting that require time and effort are determined by themselves and that such definitions are often related to their self-perception. Vallerand exemplifies that music students who have always been motivated by his or her music career would recognize himself or herself as a musician. Also, students could maintain their motivation to participate in music learning by gaining the self-autonomy to choose the practice songs that they are interested in. An essential part of learning music expression is the understanding of music. When teachers arrange the repertoire, the work of interpreting music is often done by teachers. However, since adults and children have different views on the expressiveness of music, it is difficult for teachers to use their oral explanations to show children their musical interpretation clearly. Therefore, when it is up to the students to choose and feel the music, the students’ understandings and expressiveness of music would be structured clearly in their own mind. Compared with teachers’ oral expression, students could cultivate self-recognition for the past learning they have, which could refer to a ‘success’.

5.Creative teaching in instrumental lessons

5.1Improvisations

Although the connection between improvisations and music expression have not been proved directly, however, Scott (2007) states that the creative activities in instrumental lessons could improve students’ musical skills and abilities of understanding music. Also, improvisations could drive students to pay more attention to the way to produce sound and performance, instead of the original thinking on the music score. Also, Azzara (1999)states that the way that students generate improvisations is vital for music education. Due to it requires students to embed music features in the performance and could relate to the emotional expression easily. In this sense, when students have thoroughly thought about music’s emotion, they could do improvisation. Also, such skills allow students to present personal styles, and their abilities of whether they could connect themselves with music in a short time. Students are always afraid they have no capabilities of improvising and link it with composition. However, in this essay, improvisation could be seen as a creative work in instrumental lessons, and it seems to always occur in primary schools’ music group teaching, like using Orff percussion instruments to improvise some simple rhythm. However, such methods could be unsuitable for one-to-one instrumentals class, and the simple act of knocking cannot enhance students’ abilities to express music. Therefore, teachers need to get rid of the limitations of only one music style in lessons, and diversity should be considered.

From such point, Beckstead (2013) presents several points based on students’ psychoanalysis which could help music teachers to foster improvisations in the one-to-one lessons.

Reducing the complexity Forstudents could maximize the performance of improvisation, the task should be easy to achieve and understand. After students could understand it, teachers could increase the complexity according to the children’s level. Such could stimulate their confidence while giving them more challenge.
The structure of the task Teachers should consider the structure of when improvising, and the complex structure would disturb students’ focus which could lead to failure. The less and efficient structure could give students more relaxation to concentrate on only one thing.
Eliminate the fear Beckstead’s original statement is to discuss the advanced or mid-level students could be afraid that their abilities cannot match the professional music playing. And when talking about children, teachers may need to give more confidence to children to
Composing Although, children may have a weak cognition on music theory and composing, they could distinguish the melody aurally. Teachers could encourage students to improvise with singing, and teachers could support them with instrumental accompaniments. In this sense, teachers’ abilities to accompany flexibly are requested.
Education Showing the benefit of improvisation, helps children to experience different emotions that various styles of music could bring and guiding children to embed their abilities of expression in any playing, not only in improvisation.

Besides, Moreira (2010) mentions, the participant in improvisations is a motivating experience for children; it offers students a chance to enhance their connection with instruments. As a result, one-to-one instrumental teachers could try to build a relaxed environment for children to improvise. Teachers could try to help children establish their participation in the initial time and then considering the children’s level, based on the points that mention above to help children externalize their feeling about the song and express it bravely. In such a way, improvisations could help children from two sides, improving capabilities of stylize their musical expression and showing their inner affection. Secondly, children could be exposed to various styles of music which could help them to extend their views about the musical ways to express different feelings.

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What effect expressive performance and cultivating it in one-to-one instrumental lessons

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1.Introduction

1.1Expressive music performance