I’ve struggled to be musical all my life–took lessons, took college classes, did ear training, etc.
I think I finally cracked the code, and it’s surprisingly simple:
- Learn to play melodies by ear (starts with singing)
- Learn only enough theory to:
- know your way around your instrument (scales, arpeggios)
- understand chords
- understand song structure
- Experiment (ie have fun!)
The most anal formal exercise I’d recommend is learning to hear relative scale degrees (two very good apps available for that)–though I think that skill would be developed by transcribing (playing by ear), it’s helpful for your confidence level to have graded exercises you can have some success with.
But my experience with most of my music teachers is they fall into one of two traps:
For classical music, it’s:
- Learn how to translate written notes into notes on your instrument.
- Go to 1.
For instance: I was taking clarinet lessons and I remember my teacher saying goodbye to his last student–a kid–and the teacher said, “If you bring me the sheet music for it, we can learn to play it.” And I thought what a missed opportunity that was for that girl to learn to hear and transcribe music–obviously not a skill he thought was important to the teacher at all. And I’d understand now wanting to do that for piano, which is really complicated, but learning to play a melody by ear on a single note instrument is a very achievable goal, especially when you have someone that can tell you what key it’s in and what the first note is.
The trap for jazz music is:
- Learn what are the “right” notes to play.
- Play them in any random order.
I used to blame teachers for just being bad at their jobs, but I think students (and maybe parents/administrators) are also to blame.
I ran across a senior guy who was trying to get back into piano. He’d played for a few years and it was clear he had no idea of how to be musical–no idea of how to construct a simple bass line, no knowledge of how to define a chord. So I said, “Hey, I’ll work with you even though I don’t play piano, I think you need to learn this song and just play the root and the five in the left hand, and sing the melody while you play, and use a metronome.” What an amazing exercise I thought: it would help teach him timing, develop his ear, develop his feel, let him be expressive with his voice, let him embody the melody, lear to work the bass, etc. Aren’t I brilliant teacher?
You know what this guy did? He pulled out his phone to show me some recordings he did of him playing the song the way his music teacher had written it out for him; it was what I expected–just haltingly reading the music with no sense of time. I wasn’t sure, but I think he wanted me to praise him for playing such a complex piece.
For him, and maybe for a lot of students (and certainly for parents and administrators), they don’t actually want to master music, they want to impress people. And maybe for the musically disinclined, haltingly playing a complex written piece is more impressive than a 2-note bassline in time with an expressive voiceline sensitive to dynamic; since most people in charge of music education (parents and school administrators) don’t know music, maybe they would promote a teacher who taught the former and fire a teacher who taught the latter…
For jazz programs, I think they’ve got a lot of theory they’ve got to cram into the kids heads, and we can learn theory a lot faster than we can develop musically, so if you’re going to be judged on “performance” of your students, you’ll be rewarded for having them be able to pass essentially paper exams set to music more than for having them skillfully play pentatonic blues.
I don’t know what the answer is, but for some reason, actually mastering music is very low on the list for both teachers and students.
What’s all y’all’s experience with music and music education?
I think teaching people songs they already know is really powerful because they’ve already internalized the music, and they just need to translate it to their instrument. Seems like a lot of music education is introducing a very tedious first step where the student’s never heard the music and they have to learn what it sounds like by reading it and playing it. Unfortunately, because they’re never forced to SING it, it might never be internalized, just a very complex pattern they execute with their fingers. This also cripples our ability to hear time.
In a world with plendiferous youtube videos and streaming music, forcing children to read music first and foremost is less excusable than ever.
I often wonder if people’s fear of learning a new instrument is based on their music education. Like, “Oh, no, I have to do all this rote garbage AGAIN.” But for me, learning the clarinet was really cool because I would just play songs I already knew (in the keys I could play), and I’d eventually add a flat or a sharp and thereby gain access to a new key which I could then learn songs for… it’s hella fun.
My clarinet teacher was in that school of getting people into college… it’s a pretty sick society we’re in.
But what really hurts me the most is how few people play any music at all once they become adults–that, to me, is the the absolute biggest failure of the music system. Music brings so much joy, I can’t imagine my life without it, and I know it would also bring joy to so many other people with their high school band instrument in the attic if only they had a more authentic relationship with music.
This was way before youtube, but I agree on that. I actually wondered what the state of music education was after youtube since you can look up so many different educational videos, exactly what you are looking for, instead of having to learn a bunch of stuff first, since people love short cuts.
Right, good point on that last part and fully agreed, it enriches everything and it feels so good to be able to have a second voice in a way. A more expressive one that can sound any way you want. I think a lot of people feel like if they don’t have anyone to perform for there is no point, but it is personally enriching first and foremost.
What’s your instrument?
I supect guitar players are probably the least susceptible to this sort of thing, because they want to actually play music they listen to and are doing it for their own enjoyment.
I do want to perform for people, but it’s hard to find a good venue. One place I’ve been to is a super cliquey place with mostly young kids who congratulate you for staying up past 9pm. The other is a very insulated place in the 'burbs where people sit at their own tables and don’t really mix with each other. Haven’t found a “community” yet.
It’s kinda sad how few people play together. Mostly it’s solo guitar, sometimes it’s solo keyboard; if there’s a second player, it’s most often a drummer, maybe a bass player. But where are all the string and horn players? Who wants to be Grappeli to my toddler Reinhardt?
Keyboards, synthesizers… I’ve kinda always been into atonal or microtonal sounds. I do it mostly for my own enjoyment really I just like messing with sound :3 I am working on some less sequenced and more tonal stuff, it’s all without computers though. I can kinda play a didgeridoo too :D
Ah yeah that is kind of a bummer that you have no where to play, I think every community should have a square or something, where people can rent it for cheap for a few hours or a day or whatever, and perform their music or poetry or play or whatever. I guess we did have that, at some time, it needs a comeback I think. That would expose more people to music, they could just come and go at their leisure. People could also welcome others to play with them if they like.
How do you do microtones on a keyboard? How did you get into that?
The closest assemblage of buildings and sidewalks to me is mostly dead, I never see anyone playing, with the exception of Saturdays when an obnoxious hispanic church group entertains the homeless people camped out in the park near the bus stop with their portable speaker Jesus karaoke.
We hardy have any foot traffic. Can’t wait for ICE to disappear so we can get back to normal.
It’s getting a bit more popular these days, some of them have them built in, on synthesizers you have an oscillator pitch or frequency control that you can set from 0 Hz to 20 kHz sometimes, so you can set that up however. I have a Squarp Pyramid that has some microtonal scales built in, so I can play them on my MIDI keyboard and it uses that scale for the MIDI instrument I have selected.
I got into it through ambient music. People like Brian Eno, Steve Roach, Vidna Obmana, Steve Hillage, Richard James, Taylor Dupree, lots of IDM too.
Yeah that’s what I’m saying, would be good to have a place, but then I guess before you have that you have to have a culture that respects and would keep that place clean for everyone else. That’s really sad to hear I hope things get better than normal soon.
How about a pedal for pitch changes? I remember those wheels from the 80’s and always found them super cheesy.
I often had Music for Airports on a loop, but its never effected me musically… maybe I should listen more carefully.
Third spaces (restaurants, plazas, etc.) are famously and quite rapidly disappearing. Everyone stays at home until they work then they go back home again. Covid accelerated it, but a lot of our ability to entertain ourselves with devices is driving this isolation… Then you decide you do finally go out and meet people to find there’s nobody left to meet, so you go back home and pop in a DVD.
Oh yep, I have several Eventide harmonizer pedals, notably Pitch Factor for that kind of thing. Before I had an Alexander Marshmallow which is a real fun pitch shifter, a Meris Hedra and Red Panda Particle (granular) but I had to sell a bunch of stuff recently so I cut down on my pedals a lot.
Well, that’s a good album, but I wouldn’t necessarily call it the best ambient album or anything, it’s just the “first” or whatever. There’s a vast spectrum of ambient music from light to dark to quiet to walls of noise.
I agree with you on the last part, and I’m just as guilty about it so I can’t say a word, I just let it happen because I really thought everyone being online and talking would lead to a new universal understanding and world peace. Well, not quite that, but something near it at least. I suppose I’ve always had high expectations perhaps.
Do you ever explore traditional microtonal music? I think India’s pretty famous for its 24 note octave or some shit.
I used to listen to an NPR show called Music from the Hearts of Space. I loved it. But because I only play traditional instruments, I guess there’s not much room in my head for saying, “I wonder if I could play that.”
There’s definitely a movement building. People are becoming more and more aware of the individual costs of social isolation. You can start with Bowling Alone, a pre-internet-era book about how society was getting more and more isolated… but I think the social tolerance of the captialist ordering of society is rapidly coming to and end.