Music and Critical Thinking

My process of critical thinking has three stages: 1)obtaining knowledge 2)understanding/validating the knowledge and 3)utilizing it to benefit you the most. In music, this process can help a lot, especially in performing and auditioning situations. For example, when preparing for a seating audition, you are given the excerpt/excerpts that need to be performed, this is the knowledge. Then you must learn it, listen to recordings and talk to people who have previously performed it so you can figure out how it should sound. Then you take all the information you learned and pick and choose what advice you want to take to make the excerpt musical and original to your instrument/skill. Critical thinking definitely helps in the musical setting.