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 absolutely do appreciate theory, but I think the theory should follow the music. That is to say, the musician should have an aural appreciation of what the sound is.
For Jazz, that means being able to transcribe a solo before worrying about the analysis. There’s a huge difference between being able to do a harmonic analysis and actually being able to hear the changes. And I feel like music theory-heavy types assume that learning the theory will teach you the sound, and for a lot of people it doesn’t.
Which feeds into another theory of mine of why music education sucks: the people who thrive under it are actually people who excel DESPITE the education; that is they have good ears and are willing to experiment and learn how the sounds work. That’s much harder to teach and if a student doesn’t “get it”, they’re discouraged and quit.
I’m proposing a musical system that focuses on developing musical SKILLS before developing knowledge. Ultimately you want both, but I see way too many teachers willing to teach knowledge INSTEAD of skills.
I think this is the Suzuki method–kids don’t learn to read until they can play by ear.
My friend, it does. That’s has always been its purpose. That’s one of the points I’m trying to make. If your teachers never made that clear to you, they owe you an apology. And yes, I’m fully aware that there are musicians who place theory above practice. You don’t have to take them seriously.
I get it - if I’m reading you right you’ve come to the conclusion that ear training isn’t being given the focus it deserves. Which may be your experience but I feel like in the larger musical world aural skills are highly valued. Yeah, I’ve seen many “highly trained” kids who can sight read their ass off but freeze when you take their sheet music away. It’s common. Their teachers failed them. The music education system at large is a very fragmented thing. It’s filled with microcosms created by short-sighted instructors who value X over Y. In the performing world that I lived in, we were all ear people. We had to be. That was the way you survived on our stage. There’s lots of that happening out there. If you think you can devise a system that doesn’t currently exist that hammers that home, I’d be the first person to encourage you to do so.
I went to a party with a paid piano player who could play any sheet music you put in front of him. He played all the notes correctly but it sounded like absolute shit to me. Since then, “You played all the right notes,” is the highest form of insult I can deliver to a musician. I feel like that’s the end goal of a lot of music education.
Your suggestion that I create a competing music education system is kind of hostile and defensive and weird. I’m just a middle-aged guy playing some songs on guitar and wishing he had more time for clarinet. If you’re an educator, I’m glad you’re out there creating musicians and not trained monkeys; we’re on the same side.
But, since I have you here, I’ve been listening to a lot of samba and bossa nova lately and it’s got a lot of stuff I don’t understand. Any good resources for understanding what’s going on with all that random b5 stuff? I think it’s tri-tone substitution mostly, but I’m having trouble absorbing it.
I probably misread what you were saying up there. No hostility intended.
I’m retired out of music now. I work in the industrial sector and do music on the side. And I’ve learned a lot more about music since escaping academia that I’d never have gotten, and encountered people who have similarly broken away from the formalized, conservatory educational attitudes and grown as performers.
Regarding your question about samba and bossa nova, I’m not very experienced with those styles. You’d likely find instructional videos or articles out there that can explain what’s going on harmonically better than I could. I’m mostly a rock guy lol.
A few years ago I had what I affectionally call my “psychotic break” where I started to realize that society is largely in service to systems that benefit themselves at the expense of individual happiness and diversity.
Music education is just one of many institutions out there squelching the human spirit.
Thanks for the conversation. I’ll keep learning theory alongside music.
Rock on brotha. 🤘🏻