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?
Oh, I remember stanza and refrains. I didn’t know they’d fallen out of fashion.
But, yes, definitely one advantage of theory is a common language that makes communication easier.
I do think it’s odd, though, that you haven’t learned it. I’ve run across a few people who play be ear, and every time I’ve tried to explain something to them, even as simple as (“oh, that’s was a cool chord, what is it? OK, I think that would be a sus4”), they kind of tune out. It seems so accessible to me, but I think some people’s brains just don’t like it on a fundamental level. There’s a very talented guitarist i run into at open mics, great ear, sings harmony at the drop of a hat, and I tried to explain something really simple stuff to him, with his consent, before he confessed he just has some kind of learning disability about it and it was always a struggle.
Which I totally get, because learning to play by ear for me is really hard; but unlike theory, learning to play by ear gets you a lot farther towards your immediate musical goals, so overcoming whatever block you have to learn theory, there’s just less motivation for it.
I do concede that knowing theory enough to have a common language makes it easier. There were times, like the show band I mentioned, where that would’ve made it way easier to exchange notes. But at the same time, those kinds of groups (hired guns) are mostly at the level where you are expected to already know the material by rehearsal time.
Another example would be when I joined a new band that was starting up, and the primary songwriter was formally educated and was already in a semi-popular band in my city. Now that was a time I felt inadequate, because when he wanted us to do something, I couldn’t just simply translate what he was saying into my instrument. On the other hand, I was also a member of a long time prog rock band with technical players, but we didn’t have to resort to “theory” to communicate, and we got along fine. Everyone was pretty good with playing by ear, so a show-and-tell approach wasn’t a detriment.
As to the tuning out, I don’t necessarily “tune out” or ignore it. It’s just that I’m at a point in my life that music isn’t a primary career for me, and even if I still play with bands and release solo music regularly, I have so much going on with responsibilities that I choose to spend the already little free time I have to just enjoy playing/making music. I guess it’s also why the more complicated stuff I write, I just do myself as a solo artist because I can enact my vision without dealing with anyone else.
Damn, man, and I spend my days posting on Lemmy. Maybe one day I’ll get there.
There’s a pretty accomplished bass player that has a general music channel on youtube. He has a whole post about reading music where he concludes that it’s very time-intensive skill to learn that definitely has its uses, but unless you plan to be in situations where you have to read music, it’s really not worth the time.
I find when I get into discussion about reading music, people often think I also mean don’t learn music theory or understand anything and don’t know the notes of a scale or what they are on your instrument, which is absolutely not the case.
But, yes, people have different abilities and some people like me benefit from some scaffolding but can be harmed by too much of it, and other people, like you, don’t really need it at all.