My philosophy of music is changing, slightly.
I used to give little credibility to musicians who couldn’t read. What would be the use of a great poet, I thought, if she could never write down her words to share, and couldn’t partake in the words of others? The same must be true of music.
Furthermore, when I became a music major, it was somewhat shocking to me that some of my peers didn’t know their key signatures. I took annual theory tests since first grade, and in hindsight had some inner-snobbiness about that. There was even one classmate in college who was learning to read music, and while I heard people praising him, it caused me to struggle inwardly with the legitimacy of my education.
This past Christmastime, a family friend named Marc* asked me to show him some things on the piano. Marc is 17. I used to babysit him. He is a kid you can often see in his family room or on the front porch playing his guitar. Marc has had some guitar lessons and is also self-taught. While I can’t praise his techniques in detail to someone like Corey, I do know that it is pleasing to listen to Marc’s guitar playing. I think he has whatever it is that you sometimes can’t teach.
With this in mind, I looked forward to meeting with him weekly to mess around on the piano.
A few months ago, Marc enlisted in the Marines, and he reports for boot camp in August. (His 19 year-old brother is already in Iraq.) These conditions turned my ideas of education upside-down. At first, I did what I knew how to teach – intervals, basic symbols from the Adult Piano Method, etc. Then one day, he asked, “Will you teach me Claire de Lune?”
I’ve played this Debussy piece on some occasions, but had never taught it – let alone to some who isn’t a proficient reader of music. It contains five flats, complex rhythms, arpeggios that encompass several octaves… and the boy asking me is about to risk his life to protect mine. “Sure,” I said, having no idea what to expect.
And so it was that he began to learn Claire de Lune by rote. I teach him 4-8 measures each week, and he comes back playing them well. He is my hardest-practicing student. I don’t know, maybe he uses it to woo young women. And just maybe it works!
I tease him that he brings the sheet music for my sake, but it’s true, he does. Perhaps he would not survive a piano jury of judges, but it doesn’t sound half bad. If I tell him to linger on this note or create more tension in that measure, he does it. But usually I don’t have to tell him.
This week I sent him home with a Grieg lyric piece. We’ll see what happens.
So what would I say today, to a poet who couldn’t write? Maybe, “Tell me a story.”
*his real name
Wow, Shar, this is great stuff.
I think it’s funny how some instruments, like guitar or drums, we consider it normal for students to learn by rote and by ear for years before we put a piece of music in front of them. We buy a kid a $100 strat and a Led Zep record, not a method book.
With piano though, there’s such a strong tradition of how we teach, with a heavy influence on theory and technical study from the very beginning. But (even though Phil will throw a fit over the comparison), music IS a lot like language, and we learn it best by immersion and imitation, not by memorizing the rules and the structures.
Joel Clifft (head of the piano dept. at APU, for those of you keeping score) and I were talking a few months ago about teaching our own kids. Joel said the biggest challenge for him as a teacher is to not try to fix all of his issues as a player when he sees them in his son. I think that’s part of why we develop technical studies so early - every musician in their 20’s looks back on their early practicing and says, “I wish I’d understood how to really practice scales earlier in my career”, or “I really wish I could sight-read better”, and then we try to correct those problems in the 8-year-olds that we teach.
Very interesting. I’m hoping so much that we will strike a balance with our sons in regard to piano lessons. With less than a year of piano lessons under our older son’s belt, I can tell already that, if left to his own devices, he would play by ear and sight (he tends to watch his hands vs. the music). I want to develop whatever naturalness or talent or whatever exactly all that is, but I also don’t want him to be impeded by it. It feels like a pretty big stab in the dark to strike that balance…kinda like the rest of parenting often feels.
Great post, Sharolyn. Being completely self-taught, I can identify with what Mike and Joel were talking about. I can’t read key signatures, but know if I look over the piece for a few seconds I can give myself a tone center based on the harmony. BUT, it would be so much easier just to look at the number of sharps and flats. Even being the guy who charts and rearranges all the tunes for the church where I work (using Finale), I still don’t have reading chops. I almost always ask the “readers” around me if they have pointers for me to improve my charts so that they’re more conventional (read: legit).
But I think you’re touching on something that I’ve always held dear about music. It’s an everyman thing. Nobody is beyond the reach of music’s power (not even the deaf). I fell in love with music loooong before I fell in love with girls and I would be pretty bummed if I had been told early on that I’d need formal education to move forward with the relationship.
It’s funny, I’m in Bozeman, Montana right now (which I think is in Middle Earth) and we did a Taylor thing at a store last night. And I’m realizing that these clinics are becoming less and less about playing cool stuff and more and more about teaching people to hear the nuance in the guitar. What’s beautiful about it is that most of these people are beginner or intermediate players. (Even the kid who can run 32nd-note pentatonic scales at 100bpm can only do that and only in the one position where he learned the example from Zakk Wylde in a 2006 issue of Guitar One.) But for the most part, we’re a room full of people who are really hearing the beauty that can come from a simple G chord. You’d be amazed at how many I play a night- between which I’m holding up my humongous invisible 10-band EQ and telling them which invisible sliders to listen for.
I guess this has gotten tragically off track- but looking back over it, it’s interesting how it mirrors both my love for playing the instrument and the manner in which I do so. Like my playing, it’s rambling at times, and all the gushing love spills out into areas that seem overly tangential and disengaged- but they’re still part of this swirling vortex of giddiness that I feel for the instrument and resonance of that jangly G chord against my hip. I’m curious how my love for the guitar would have changed if I’d been formally educated earlier on. I don’t think for a second that it would have replaced the love (hence people like you, Mike, and Joel), just maybe the giddiness.
Tod Machover heads the lab at MIT that develops intuitive musical instruments, instruments that require no formal education to play, but are capable of great subtlety based on abilities the player already has. It was his lab that created Guitar Hero (insert jokes here), as well as a personal instrument for Yo-Yo Ma that allows him to orchestrate a full ensemble based on the specific nuances of his own playing.
He gave a talk at TED recently (it just came up in the podcast feed) about making music, not just listening but creating and performing music, available to everyone. Corey, your comment about the everyman idea reminded me of that:
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/246
When recorded music first became possible, one of the strongest objections was voiced by John Phillip Sousa. He thought that it would be the death of music for the everyman, and that instead music would become the sole domain of the “artist”, whose recorded version would then become the fixed interpretation of what had, until then, been a fluid and changing song. Part of his testimony before congress:
I think technology has, today, recaptured a lot of what Sousa thought we were losing. People are capable of creating new ideas, of rebuilding and replaying “the songs of the day or old songs” using Garage Band, or a dozen other similar programs, with little or no musical training. The idea that music is something made by anyone, by everyone, has recaptured a whole generation.
Sharolyn, dear Sharolyn.
It’s funny. Here I am, reading your post, thinking that the internet is a great thing… It’s nearly 10+ years since we really had time to hang out, and yet I get to participate in your life in some small way via this blog.
But then, I realize 2 things:
1. Making me wait 7 paragraphs for a big, big belly laugh* was comedy genius. Thanks. The internet, for all it’s splendor, has over time dulled my memory of how truly funny you are. I look forward to May 30th.
2. I’ve had a funny experience, watching my APU friends musical maturity over these ten years. Some frequently, some intermittently. Now, no one on this blog should read too much into this statement, but sometimes I hear a friend sing or play and think… “Hmm.. it doesn’t sound like they’ve ever taken their APU (circa 94-00) edumacation, and grown it.”
Other times, like hearing my boys Mike and Rosy do their thing, or the when I heard Dave Loucks do a tune at a wedding a couple of years back, I think, “Yeah, homie’s been workin’ it.”
I’d forgotten what a good player you are. Reading about Debussy and Grieg and Marc reminded me of all those rehearsals and small group concerts and I feel somehow certain that you would fall into my latter category.
Fun piece. I have more musically related thoughts for later.. :)
Thank you, everyone. You have made my day.
Chad, I have a memory of you and Clair de Lune. Once on a tour, in some state I don’t currently recall, I said it would be nice to have three feet so I could utilize all three pedals. This is the only song that has accompanied such a desire. So you crawled under the piano and held down the “soft pedal” and I used the other two.
These responses are so overwhelmingly thoughtful that it’s hard to digest them all. So I’ll just say what is currently on my mind.
Mike, I had never contemplated “music technology” at the turn of the century. I would likely have fallen into Sousa’s camp, had I lived at that time. As a music lover, he had a true concern.
One time I was flipping channels and up came The Andy Griffith Show. Andy and Barney were sitting on the porch with a guitar, singing a hymn. I fully expected someone to interrupt exclaiming “Sheriff Taylor! Sheriff Taylor! Come quick!” It didn’t happen. How nice, I thought, this was a musical treat for the viewing audience of the early 1960s.
Then they sang a second verse.
Then they sang a third.
Thoughts:
-Sousa would have wished the viewers were on their own porches, creating their own music rather than watching it happen on TV.
-People wanted to hear hymns on TV. Not even arrangements. Wow.
-In a matter of 40 years, we have shot our attention spans to our own detriment. I couldn’t enjoy their song, because it was almost like a game to see how long it would last, or how it would end. Such a 21st-century response to a simple hymn.
Mike, your last paragraph really led me to the full-circle view of technology. Well said.
Chad, your praise means a lot to me. But I must admit that since I have had two children in the past four years it has taken a toll on my musical maturity. But I am confident that while it’s on the “back burner”, I will commit to it more as my freedom will hopefully allow.
Meh.
Worrying about musical “maturity” while raising young children is like worrying about nail polish while dodging mortar fire.
I have seen first hand what birthing and raising young children does to young moms, and I can testify about what it does to young dads.
It’s stressful, let’s say.
It sounds like your mind is active, and that’s the most important thing, if you ask me. Muscle memory is not so easily dislodged. :)
Alan Jacobs writes about technology and creativity in his book A Vanity Fair (I think, maybe, or else in Shaming the Devil … I’m away from my bookshelf right now). He takes issue with the idea that what people are doing with some of these musically assistive technologies is actually “making music”, but rather, they are combining together complex ideas, whole cloth, that have been created by someone else.
I’m not sure yet - given the inescapable role of reuse in anything music, I’m not sure we draw that distinction between technology as tool to create music, and technology as tool to replay existing music in slightly different ways.
Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it does, and we’re raising a generation of “Guitar Hero” musicians. All I know for sure is that AJ has more brains than me do, and him use them good. Me like beer.
You guys make me want to go practice my flute. I suppose it would benefit my students…..
I love reading all of the things you all write on here. It keeps me thinking and challenged!
This is the best post I’ve ever read here. Thank you. I experience daily inner conflict over how much time to spend on music theory with my choirs vs. time spent singing. When they sing seven note chords acapella and the sound fills the room they say . . . aahhh. Many can’t identify the key. The joy must come first. My husband is frustrated because he spent his entire childhood and college years playing classical music exclusively on the piano (except for those years in the ’60’s playing keyboards in a local rock band). His struggle today is with playing those jazzy things that roll around in his head. On the other hand, our dear friend who is a killer Hammond B-3 player doesn’t read a lick of music and can play comfortably in any key because they are all the same to him. He says the only key he won’t play in is ‘C’ - because all the keys are white.
Each of you have had insightful comments and they have been a pleasure to read.
Melody, is your friend racist?
What’s he got against the white keys? White keys need love, too!
:)
Welcome back, Melody!
(pun absolutely intended)
Chad,
He is black and makes lots of racial jokes. He also calls me Aunt Melody. Maybe I should lok in the mirror.
Michael, thanks for the welcome. I have had lots of computer problems lately and have been unable to access this particular site for some reason.
For some reason, flagrantly racist black people just sorta work. I dunno….
:)
Man, Sharolyn, you made me feel so good. And SO BAD. I will essplain. I don’t have anything particularly philosophical to add, except my own sorrow at how piano died for me:
I LOVED to play when I was young. I was a great (I should say very enthusiastic) by-ear player. I was the dorky kid picking up “Eye of the Tiger” and “Feelings” and the theme to Airwolf because I thought they sounded so effing COOL and had no disconnect, at that time (ah, childhood…), between “I love hearing this” and “I can totally figure out how to play this so I can listen to it any time I want.” The last thing I did on a piano that gave me real joy was when the “On Fire” album came out and I taught myself to play “Somebody’s Gonna Praise His Name” by Petra. The whole thing. It’s fast and big and the coolest song I’d ever heard (did we cover me being a dork already?) up to that moment. Granted, if I’d recorded it on a cassette tape and played it now it’s probably honestly total sh*t from beginning to end. But hey, I was 13 or something and I could play it fast and big enough so that I could sing it, too; totally sit there and channel John Schlitt and keep up, you know? I was so proud and SO HAPPY sitting there and pounding, hour after hour. I haven’t felt that in a long time…
Something about that accomplishment wigged my parentals out. (hey, maybe they just hate Petra and had to listen to it hour after hour) They were proud of me and my ear (and I’d been singing since forever, so they knew I had some musical acumen or what have you), but suddenly a switch flipped in their heads and they got really scared that I hadn’t had any formal training. So they told me that I could play my songs, but only after I’d sight-read hymns for at least half an hour. I think somebody taught me to read music somewhere in there, I can’t really remember. I know that I knew enough to painstakingly pick out the notes and fingering and knew to feel guilty when I looked at my hands.
I hate hymns. Hate them. It’s chicken-or-eggy for me - do I despise hymns (not all of them - I dig Be Thou My Vision and a few others) because I was made to play them instead of Eye of the Tiger, or did I hate them already and this just tore it? Plus, there’s the whole thing where I kind of virulently dislike/fear Christianity too, I mean, the brand that I was raised on, not the kind you all seem to live (sorry, guys. I don’t mean to distress you, I swear, or beat to death what you already know about me), and hymns bring me back to all of those horrible church services faster than almost anything. It’s all entwined and it’s mostly not good, I’ll leave it at that.
So I grudgingly set the kitchen timer and played less and less and…eventually stopped playing anything at all. I still took lessons from about grade 6 on (my timeline’s a little screwy, I think) and was able to meet the proficiency levels in college that I needed to achieve a voice major, but I practiced the absolute minimum amount to get by and hated every moment of it. And now I couldn’t play the simplest both-hands-together song without a lot, lot of work. And I don’t know how or why, but it colored singing for me as well. Somehow music turned into a prison for me - I flinch more than I fly when I think of what I did back in the day and what I have now and what I could do with it. Dammit, Sharolyn, you’ve got me weeping now.
This could have turned out so differently, don’t you think? I mean, I don’t know what the right idea was, and I’m not saying that I should NEVER have gotten some theory and learned how to sight read really well. Eventually that would have been helpful and the adult me would consider it indispensable as a musician. But sometime between preteen-hood and now I went from pounding on the piano and singing and feeling the best I’ve ever felt, ever, to being a pretty happy receptionist and wife and city dweller that does almost nothing musically. And not because I don’t want to. Because I’m so afraid of what I don’t know or have forgotten or that I’m going to suck and quit again and that’ll hurt more than just skating along and not doing it and trying not to think about it. You guys are musicians. You know that it’s like suddenly not reading books ever again, or having sex, or eating Italian or seeing trees to NOT be doing music.
I know I’ve over-dramatizing it (hello, I’d like you to meet Cerise. She exaggerates as an art form). And I’m not trying to say that my parents killed music for me. I’m a 32 3/4 year old. I killed music for me, somehow, and it would be cool to get at least some of it back, because I was pretty good for a while there.
I’m sorry - I know this is a serious, no-joke vomit therapy session, but blame Sharolyn and yourselves, because there’s literally no one else I know who would understand so perfectly. Thank you SO much for teaching that guy Clair de Lune, babe. Thank you from me.
I teach beginning band to 5th grade students all day long. This is my 8th year doing this full time and my 11th year total. At this point in the year, I am usually doing ode to joy and other simple tunes in unison with all the varied instruments in my ensembles. This allows me to continue to teach technique, new notes and new rhythms.
This year I added a second book to the list of music I run over with my charges. The second book has precisely 0 techniques addressed throughout. It is only simple full page arrangements for beginning band. We play through 4 to 6 of them in a session. We do less technique stuff. My students, (and I) love it. There is a wide variety of styles, latin,. rock, swing, Handel, and it is easy to sound, well I would not say good, but at least not bad on.
There are still kids that cannot remember how to play the first note we learned back in the fall if I ask them to play “E”. I am teaching these kids a couple of the tunes by rote. They are now practicing. They feel successful. The band time flies by. Along the lines of what Sharolyn has shared, what I have learned since unleashing this book on my students is that people, of course including kids, want to have fun and sound good with music.
Sharolyn et alia;
I’ve been following this thread now with some interest. You hooked me with your question about a poet who couldn’t write, but I think you answered it for me, too. Like a poet (as a poet? - I never did get little twist of grammar worked out) or really anyone else who is illiterate, a musician who can’t read printed music has certain limitations. It isn’t a limit on his talents or skills or creativity as much as a limit on his access to other people’s musical offerings, and in the ways in which he can share his talents with others.
Clearly the inability to read music doesn’t have a direct bearing on creativity (and obviously not innate talent) - think about blind musicians like Stevie Wonder or Joaquin Rodrigo, amazingly talented and prolific composers, who simply have to rely on someone else to take down their compositions. Like literacy, it’s a tool, but an incredibly useful one for a musician to master.
My daughter (14) is studying harp. I hope I’m not trying to fix all of my issues when I see them in her, though that’s definitely a trap I could fall into. When she was five she resisted learning to read, in part I think, because she was afraid we’d stop reading to her. Once she figured out that a) that wasn’t the case and b) learning to read meant she didn’t NEED us anymore (well, in this limited capacity at least), there was no stopping her. Now that she is beginning to realise that being able to read music actually makes it easier for her to play her favorite Broadway show tunes that she knows by ear, some of the resistance is fading.
I’m geekily classically trained (and I was a theory major in undergraduate school), so most of the contact I’ve had with musicians who can’t read printed music has been with folk musicians. Many of these folks (a lesser pun, I’m afraid) have hundreds or even thousands of tunes in their repertoire, usually only have to hear it once to have it cold, and have a facility in improvisation that I can only dream about. I’d be hard pressed to claim that my sight-reading ability makes me a more accomplished musician.
Corey, your only real problem is that you’re using Finale instead of Sibelius… ;-)
Eric
Cerise, I wish I could say I’m teaching him by rote because I don’t want him to end up with the same frustrations you have, or that I want him to express himself freely. The true story is that it’s the war. War has odd effects, doesn’t it? I was thinking, here is this boy I’ve watched grow up, we have him for six or less more months, and he’s asking me to teach him something. How can I say no? If he asked me how to quilt or divide fractions or play volleyball, that’s what we’d be doing.
This spirit is totally reciprocated, by the way, which makes it easy to give. Once I entered a room and he was playing Pretty, Pretty Princess with my daughter, wearing earrings and a tiara. :)
Back to Cerise. I share your feelings - not to the same degree - but I will share that I can’t READ like I did a few years ago, and this is frustrating. I will pick something up, have an idea in my head of how it will sound, and when I go to play it, I feel all thumbs.
My husband and I have a plan already that when our kids are in first and third grades (translation: I have an ounce of self-time) I will take piano lessons again. It will likely be a little scary. Reading what you wrote, I know I’ll feel defeated at times.
Cerise, do you have any musical outlets up there in Washington? I would love to support you (in spirit and friendship) in singing again.
PS - Where I was originally going with that thought is that while I started teaching him by rote because of the war, the results now have implications on my teaching in general. Melody said it very well, so I won’t try to say it any other way: “The joy must come first.”
PPS - He was well into figuring out Erik Satie on his own. I don’t think most human beings can learn Debussy by rote.
Hey, love, I don’t care WHY you’re doing it (though your reason is awesome and I salute you for it). I’m just so grateful you’re doing it for him. And no one shares my feelings to the same degree about anything, I don’t think. You know how Jack Black acts? That’s basically the inside of my head.
My musical story is pretty simple and shared by many. I was born with some talent, puffed up by admiration in churches and living rooms, and then undone, musically speaking, by a combination of some very negative, painful experiences along the way and a complete dysfunction in Normal Human How to Deal 101. My therapist and I are working through things - but she’s my first real therapist and I haven’t seen her for long, so I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. I’m confident that when I untwist all the webs of…all the crap you have to sift through in therapy in order to feel like a real person…a lot of areas of my life that have gotten dammed up will flow again, including music. That would be sweet.
To answer your question: yes and no. It’s really, really hard to commit to or even try to engage in musical activity, especially with strangers. I’m pretty much a big chicken (see many, many above paragraphs for why) and have to give myself a lot of time and coddling in order to try anything. An analogy that comes to mind is that it feels like trying to convince an 8-year-old that The Exorcist is a cool movie that they’re really going to enjoy. I sang with the Seattle Symphony Chorale for a season, discovered no real love of choral singing (at least in that set of circumstances, though I wouldn’t give up the experience for cash money), and am now spending a great deal of money at Guitar Center with Ramon to start recording at home. Not for any real purpose, really, except to be doing something. Something safe, for now; whatever we want, sans baggage, just to see what happens.
“You know how Jack Black acts? That’s basically the inside of my head.”
You made me laugh out loud. Teary.
“Something safe, for now; whatever we want, sans baggage, just to see what happens.”
Safety is important. Ramon is good people.
Have you ever seen the movie Hillary and Jackie? It sounds like it’s about presidential wives but it’s not. It’s the story of two real-life prodigy sisters, one a cellist and one a flautist. One chooses music as the center of her life, and one doesn’t. And I won’t give anything else away.
There is a powerful scene in which the flautist is reduced to playing scales by a harsh and critical teacher/panel of judges. Where she is playing expressively and rapidly in the previous scene, in this scene she is merely trying to keep it together. She is reduced and it sucks.
This is what happened for me when my piano teacher, Dr. Sage, went on sabbatical. It was terrible. The “substitute teacher” had me playing a Chopin book I had played in eighth grade, and what’s worse, I sounded better as a middle-schooler. I hated meeting him for the weekly lessons, and it was the reason that (on paper) my “main instrument” for graduation purposes became clarinet. To this day, his was the only piano lesson in my life I have ever intentionally skipped (credit: Bryan Ashmore). I watched this scene a few times when we rented it a few years ago. It was like therapy. “Maybe the problem wasn’t me,” is what I was left thinking. And thankfully, Dr. Sage returned.
For Chad: The internet is telling me that Rachel Griffiths was nominated for best actress for playing Hilary in 1999, but that the Oscar instead went to Gwenyth Paltrow for Shakespeare In Love.
eric,
don’t get me started. I tried and tried due to Sib’s Macness and Finale’s PCness. But the MD before me used Finale and they wanted to keep the flow of things. I can understand. Not like it, just understand it.
Having spent a number of years now not doing much of anything musical (mostly by choice), I find myself feeling more and more strongly about music being an equal opportunity endeavor. I think it’s terrific that with the advent of various technologies, people can once again be amateurs in the best sense of the word. Specialization has its place, of course — and we’ll always need pros (like Sousa) to use their more advanced abilities to blaze new musical trails (hopefully not a slew of marches, but maybe that’s just personal preference) — but for pure personal or communal enjoyment, I think it’s incredibly important to view knowledge (i.e., mastery of music theory, history, etc.) as a tool, not the point.
I also think we could do a much better job contextualizing knowledge so that students understand why a certain amount or type of it will enhance their experience. What happened with you, Cerise, is a downright tragedy and, unfortunately, a great example: The knowledge your parents tried to give you was a deterrent to rather than an enhancement of your passion to improve. All of us have had those moments, closeted in the practice room, doing some banal exercise incorrectly for the 176th time when we’ve thought, Why the hell am I doing this again? In those moments, it really, really, really sucks not to have an answer that connects directly to what matters most.
You rock, Shar. Marc is blessed to have you as his teacher. And perhaps when he gets home, he’ll want to acquire some of your higher end expertise to make the music he makes even richer.
The more I teach students, the more I realize how critical it is to connect new knowledge with their existing interest, curiosity, passion, goals, whatever. I’ve learned some ways to artificially manufacture their interest in the subject, mostly through the sheer energy of my own fascination, but it is always a distant second in effectiveness to being able to connect with their own passion.
The beauty of great students, truly great students, is that their passion is for knowledge, the curiosity itself is a driving factor, and it can directed toward almost anything.