Planting the Seed Session #2
with Mathieu Boucher, Ph. D.
This session will be offered in French with English subtitles.
Session Description:
For anyone learning a musical instrument, improvement inevitably comes through practice. That said, practice often leads to generational conflict at home. Presented in a lively and humorous way, this workshop will offer parents new ideas for maximizing the effectiveness of their child’s practice. Together, we’ll discuss topics such as motivation, the role of each member of the “triangle” of teacher-parents-student, time management, memorization, goal achievement, and more. In recent years, research in music education has provided new insights into instrumental practice and ways to approach it to make it more effective—and, as a result, much more motivating. Parents don’t need any prior knowledge of music to attend! The reasoning behind this approach is very simple: when students experience success, perseverance comes naturally. A word of warning: the “pre-practice” arguments might stop…
Presenter Bio:
Mathieu Boucher is currently the academic director at the Conservatoire de musique de Québec. In August 2024, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship that took him to the Schulich School of Music at McGill University and the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Performance at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, thanks to a grant from the Fonds Québécois de Recherche sur la Société et la Culture.
A graduate of the Conservatoire de musique de Québec (where he received unanimous honors in classical guitar and counterpoint) and Laval University (Ph.D. in music education), he served as an adjunct professor of instrumental pedagogy at the Faculty of Music at the University of Montreal (2015–2024) and as a professor of classical guitar at Cégep de Sainte-Foy (2007–2016). He also served as coordinator of the Anna-Marie-Globenski Preparatory School at the Faculty of Music at Laval University from 2015 to 2022.
His scientific research on the use of video playback among college-level classical guitarists has been published in prestigious journals such as *Psychology of Music* and *Musicae Scientiae*. He has given lectures on instrumental practice and pedagogy at several institutions of higher education and schools in Eastern Canada, France, and Australia. He is the author of teaching resources focused on instrumental practice published by Productions d’OZ (*Le musicien stratégique*, *Le petit musicien stratégique*, and *The Strategic Young Musician*). Finally, his podcast *Le musicien stratégique*, launched in 2021 and available on all major platforms, is currently listened to in 93 countries around the world, and in 2026 he launched a YouTube channel of the same name.
