When I was a teenager, our music teacher was Mr Hailey. A kind, helpful chap, he was the organist at the local Catholic church. Despite his name, he was very unlikely to rock around the clock and I’m afraid that despite my burning interest in music, the syllabus held little of interest to me. I was just waiting for lunchtime so I could devour the latest copy of Melody Maker or NME and plan which albums I was going to buy with the money from my paper round.
Fast forward to 2017. Yesterday, I accompanied my dilly dallying son to school. By chance, the first lesson was music. I’d heard about the music teacher who is too cool for school: she sings in a Deaf Metal band. So, after a chat with the classroom teacher, I asked if I could pay a visit to the music room. No problem, she’d take me over. On the way over, we chatted about nerdy music stuff. She was rather chuffed about the fact that she had seen Jimi Hendrix at the Gröna Lund funfair and that (also at Grönan) her future partner had been invited out on a date by one of the Ikettes. Being 17 and very bashful at the time, he had wilted at the very thought.
In the music room, the lads were putting away their guitars. The teacher is a tall statuesque Viking lass with shades of pink in her hair. They had been studying the role of the riff in rock music. The last part of the lesson was watching a clip from a programme in which Josephine Forsman, the drummer from Stockholm band Sahara Hotnights, travelled to Birmingham and met Tony Iommi to talk about Paranoid. And suddenly there was a rather aged Chris Welch from Melody Maker holding forth about the birth of metal music.
Here it was! The music lesson that I was dreaming of when I was 14.
My son of course was boooored. He was asking why Stormzy and his other grime favourites are not on the syllabus rather than all this pensioners’ music.
Anybody else have any positive or negative experiences from music lessons, either as a pupil or a teacher?
I am the sole duffer in our house as son has trumpet lessons at school, Ms Moles and daughter both have weekly piano lesson. Daughter is also teaching herself electric guitar, bedroom covered with drawings of chord pictures.
Doesn’t seem to lessen enthusiasm for listening to it. I lead the way in cataloging though.
Worse thing I ever did was study for a music degree with the OU. It took me 20 years before I could listen to anything for pleasure without being overly critical.
Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.
No.
Next.
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Tough one. I’d say, on the whole, music lessons do lessen the interest in it. I suppose it depends on how good the teacher is, however.
In my teenage years I had piano lessons and guitar lessons, and hated them (or at the very least was bored by them). I suppose they must have given me some kind of grounding in musical theory (although Grade Two was the highest I reached on the piano), but it felt like I didn’t really get interested in playing properly until the music itself inspired my to do so. For example, until I heard Jimi Hendrix or Bert Jansch I wasn’t inspired to try and figure out for myself how they did what they did.
What am I trying to say? I suppose what I’m saying is the love of music has to come first. Once music moves someone they (if they are that kind of person) can be driven to learn for themselves how to play it.
There’s nothing duller than a competent (or even excellent) musician who has no love for the music they’re playing.
Doing a PhD in literature very nearly destroyed my interest in reading. Not a perfect analogy, but there you are.
Very relevant Moose.
Music, literature, film, art…once one starts to study any of these things that gives us pleasure, the joy wilts.
Thank goodness you didn’t do a Ph D in Mammary Studies!
Still at work on that one. It’s a longitudinal research project lasting three, maybe four decades, or until my eyesight goes altogether.
Definitely.
Our music teacher would have taught us all far more if he’d referenced pop music, but as he HATED pop music (though, in fairness, I did once see him at Lords, so he wasn’t all bad) pretty much half of the class were lost from Day 1.
The hipper English teacher regularly mentioned pop music and, consequently, piqued the interest of those very same people.
Ironically, the “non-music” people were far more enlightened when it came to pop music than the “music” people. The guy who got a music scholarship to Oxford really liked Bucks Fizz.
I had music lessons from an early age (6 or 7) and was absorbing pop music from my parents at the same age.
I don’t think the lessons had an effect either way: I just loved music and so learning and playing just seemed natural, in whatever fomat/situation. I think what Arthur said above it right: the love of music comes first.
What I mean is: if you have a love of music it can be complemented and enhanced by lessons; or your love of music will enable you to persevere and plug away even if the lessons may be boring and hard work (as they often were).
I wasn’t particularly interested in classical music (and I’m still not) but you learnt it because it was just part of ‘music’ and therefore part of your world.
Music lessons were available in primary school but were pretty crap so, coming from an entirely non-musical family, I got nothing from them.
In my secondary school you had a choice between Music and Art. I chose Art (despite being pretty devoid of talent in that field) and consequently got no music teaching past the age of 11. I took no real interest in music until my early teens and even then I was totally undiscriminating.
Although I seem to have a reasonably good ear for music and have grown to love the stuff, I’ve yet to find a musical instrument that I can get a half-decent tune from. Somehow the ears and brain don’t connect to the hands in the correct way.
Some words of praise now, From what I have seen and heard, the pink Valkyrie is doing a very fine job of getting the kids interested in music. I am sure there are many more like her.
Great point there, DD. Referencing music that the kids can relate to in any subject is bound to make lessons more interesting.
i started my music lessons in 1977…surely a fabulous year for popular music.
the sense of anticipation on the morning of the first lesson could be sensed throughout my class of about TWELVE kids….1977 remember!!
we chatted at length, trying to guess the upcoming topics to be covered….punk, prog (ugh), disco. synths, music production etc….
BUT NO!!
as I vividly remember it, we covered the early career of music legend….yes yes…child prodigy….oh god yes….and the role of his tutor….err what…..MOZART AND HAYDN.
to this day I cannot recall a longer hour…. although a velvet revolver gig I was conned into came close….soon after came positions and roles of instruments in a symphony orchestra.
to be fair the lessons perked up later in the term when we covered……world folk songs…GET IN.
to see and hear a class from a inner city slum school engaged in a rousing rendition of “OH LORDY, PICK A BALE OF COTTON was heart rending….and to be fair plain strange.
we also covered “ava nagila”, the well known jewish ditty…..you know, the one in ALL holocaust films.
“yellow bird, up high in banana tree” and “come mister tally man” also featured.
all the above accompanied by the teacher on a frikkin huge dreadnaught acoustic.
despite her best efforts, my love of music continued to flourish.
1977. Your music teacher announced “There will be no Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones in these lessons!”
*Joyce Grenfell voice* – ‘Children, I’ve suffered for my music, and now it’s your turn’.
“Don’t do that George.”
‘That’s right, Ringo, it is called a paradiddle’.
I was lucky . My music teacher let us bring in records. I brought in U2’s debut ( I know but at the time it was quite cool) and my mate Nigel brought in Cash Cows, a Virgin compilation of mainly new wavey bands I think.
Plus she was hot.
Paging Moose The Mooche!
There’s a possible correlation with comedy here. I knew a guy once who was quite the standup comedian – a natural. He told me that his interest in comedy means that he no longer actually laughs at things. Instead, he hears himself saying “that’s funny”.
Isn’t that the reason Ade Edmonson gave for quitting comedy…said he’d heard most of the jokes, and could usually see every punchline coming, which sort of spoiled it all…?
I’m reminded of an incident in our music class when one boy on being asked a question about musical quotation that half the class couldn’t have answered, including myself, said, “I can’t read music.”
Even in my slumber I realized that this was a VERY BIG mistake.
The music teacher went C.R.A.Z.Y., a year in and this kid says he can’t read music, so he asks an open question “Can anyone else not read music?”….quite correctly, no one answered in the affirmative. Why would you?!
A very strange way of teaching, essentially making 50% of your class hate the very sound of the word “Music.”
Following on from that “parents’ music” thread, this guy must have been born around the time The Beatles and Bob Dylan were also born.
But…..he did like cricket.
Interesting examples, Fishface and Freddy. On the one hand, a teacher who is rigidly oblivious to what the students are actually interested in, on the other a teacher who nurtured their interest and enthusiasm, and encouraged input. I wouldn’t be that surprised if my son’s Valkyrie let the class watch a Stormzy clip.
When I was at school, one of our English teachers, who had little time for pop music, was open-minded and astute enough to arrange a discussion of Frank Zappa’s music which he knew many of us were keen about. We didn’t convert him but that didn’t matter. He took our interest seriously.
When my son was at nursery school, they had an activity where each week one of the kids brought in a piece of music that they liked and the kids all listened together. At the end of the term, we parents got a list of the songs. A few Eurovision stinkers, but a few wonderful choices, He took Rachid Taha’s Rock the Casbah, which we had been playing a lot at home.
A few years later, I sat in on a lesson where his class were doing Linnaeus. The teacher described him (very pertinently) as Sweden’s first superstar and compared him to Abba, Björn Borg and other Swedes who had made a big impression internationally.
He’s doing the Romans at the moment and none of the kids are too interested. But I mentioned to him that Trump bears a considerable resemblance to the loonier Roman emperors. Hadrian was far from a loony, but he too built a wall. Suddenly there was a flicker of interest.
My school music lessons consisted of the teacher handing out a classical music score, sticking a record on and then walking around randomly demanding which bar it was up to. It had about as much to do with my T Rex and Bowie albums as geography or, shudder, cross country running.
I never had instrument lessons and music ‘lessons’ at school were a waste of time – mostly ‘listen to this classical record while I doze off in the corner’. But, at the age of 65 I started guitar lessons having never picked one up and it’s great – my guitar teacher is fab and I’m having the most fun ever by learning and understanding all those licks and how it’s done. I’ll never be a ‘guitarist’, but it’s deepened my interest in music and I watch and listen to stuff with different eyes and ears!
Here’s a science teacher who really takes his job seriously!
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/02/19/frontiers_of_science_video_emlyn_hughs_strips_down_for_quantum_mechanics.html
I used to work in a (classical music/exam system-based) music college and it was intriguing to me how many of the qualified music teacher staff had no apparent concept of music – being played or recorded or listened to – outside of a purely functional enironment, such as instrument lessons/exams and junior orchestras. Most of the few who had any interest or knowledge of music outside the classical idiom had remarkably naff/conservative tastes, like one or two mediocre pop artists from the 80s or godawful pop/classical boy band ‘crossover’ acts. There were of course one or two who were genuinely gifted at music making and interested in music of all types. (I’ve had the pleasure of having the most gifted of all the above, violinist Alan McClure, play improvisationally on a couple of my albums.) There was much more openness among the part-time/peripatetic instrument tutors.
I think there can often be a very conservative amosphere in the musical establishment and your post there just seems to confirm that, Colin. In the classical world there seem to be a lot of competitions and I can understand that a “good ” teacher wants their students to do well in them. Perfect technique is more important than personal expression: an appraoch that I have problems with.
One lovely instrument that has suffered as a result of it being the first one that kids learn to play is the recorder. It’s a great first instrument as most children can rapidly make a quite pleasant noise with it. But because of this I think it is looked down on. Shame!
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-every-kid-in-america-learns-to-play-the-recorder
I do various freelance jobs, including teaching piano. For me, it’s not just about showing them how to play the instrument and read music, it’s about helping them discover a love for all sorts of music (making it and listening to it).
The only times the job has been a little gruelling is when a kid has no interest in the subject and has just been forced to be there by parents who think that piano lessons are “improving”. In those cases, I can usually find some element of music that’ll make the lessons more fun for them (composition, music games).
Your comment about parents who send their kids to piano lessons against their will reminds me of when my brother and I were sent to piano lessons. The piano teacher lived in a grand house in the posh part of Pinner and she was a real dragon. The atmosphere was very stiff and formal. Try to imagine a cross between Jane Austen and Hannibal Lector and you get some idea. She was very keen to get her pupils performing in various local music competitions and very hot on getting good results in the various piano exams. We were terrified of her.
I remember one occasion when I came home from school and found my younger brother quivering and cowering in abject fear in the potting shed at the thought of having to go to his piano lesson. Not a teacher who did much to encourage the joy of music!
I bet most of your pupils really look forward to lessons with you, Hannah. I can not imagine any child fleeing in tears to hide behind the lawnmower at the thought of meeting you!