Why I am glad I quit the piano: a response to Mike B. Christensen
I didn’t quit music. I just chose to follow my own path. For most kids who learn music, that’s the right way to go.
(Mike’s original — and thought-provoking — post can be found at: https://medium.com/@mike.b.christensen/dont-quit-the-piano-dc3491f50c7b)
Learning a musical instrument: no pain, no gain?
As someone who now plays jazz guitar, bass and clarinet, I too am grateful for having learned the piano.
But I sure wasn’t grateful for learning it at the time.
There’s a school of thought — probably the dominant one among instrumental classical musicians — that states that ‘if it ain’t hurting, it ain’t working,’ and that this disciplinarian approach needs to be inculcated from the very start.
You will hear from many musicians who made it in some shape or form that this is what made them what they are today.
Fine, if it worked for you. But it begs two further questions. First — at what point in your musical development was the rigour a help, rather than a hindrance? Second — an important cognitive fallacy: survival bias. What about the ones who didn’t ‘make it’? How many didn’t? And if they didn’t, why?
What the statistics don’t tell us
The prevailing narrative in music education holds up a tiny minority of success stories to the light in the same way that bottom-feeding social media profiles dole out the Steve Jobs/Elon Musk/CR7/Lionel Messi Kool-Aid to billions of aspiring businessmen and footballers. Useless role models, all: sorry, but almost none of us have a chance of being like them.
Michael, you were very charitable about your first piano teacher. As an instrumentalist and expert, he was no doubt exceptional. As a motivator, inspirer and guide, he sounds bloody awful.
An opportunity to teach and learn music right
I am convinced the process of instrumental education is taught backwards. The key to why is within that otherwise wonderful quote Michael shared: “[m]usic is foreign language.” The way classical instrumental music is taught and learned in Western schools seems to confirm it.
But the analogy is flawed for two reasons. The first is empirical: beyond classical Western instrumental music, it doesn’t generalise well. The second is much more fundamental: does it work?
Other approaches to learning and teaching music
Throughout the West, instrumental music is indeed taught as a ‘second language’ in schools. Just as second languages are still widely taught using direct methods prioritising grammar, comprehension and structure over lexis, communication and functional competency, so music education begins with the scale and the stave.
Compare Indian classical music, which is taught sonically — through call-and-response. Yes, there are analogues of scales and modes (raaga) and time/rhythmic schemas (taala) which, even in their basic forms, are far more complex than our 3/4 or 4/4. But the medium of instruction is fundamentally different.
Likewise, the Sinti Roma communities of Europe, who learn through apprenticeship and doing. Not all, and not even many of them become the next Stochelo Rosenberg. Many, however, play a wide repertoire at the extended family gatherings that are an essential part of the Roma lifestyle; and all of this without even a hint of the theoretical background mainstream Western teachers routinely claim to be essential.
These two approaches demonstrate how much more inclusive and empowering (I know these two terms are rapidly becoming clichés, but hear me out) music education could be, given the chance. To me, the secret lies in the framing.
Music as a first language
What if, instead of thinking of music as a second language, we try to acquire it in the same way we acquired our first?
Well, let’s explore a few differences between first and second language acquisition, and see how they might apply to music.
A second language is something we generally learn in school. Our first language is who we ARE. Music students are generally not expected to interpret scores, or impart emotion — in other words, communicate — until the ‘basics’ have been mastered. It’s the same with learning a second language. But in your first language, you do all of this from very early on: long before you can read, or someone tells you what a verb or an adjective is.
You can do this with music, too. First as a listener, only then — if at all — as a player. Listening helps us identify the music that most resonates with us, that forms our musical identity; that then informs the choice of musical style or instrument we undertake to play.
We acquire our first language without learning ‘the rules.’ In the early stages of musical development, rules and theory are excess cognitive baggage. At this stage, there should be only one rule: does it sound good?
But that doesn’t mean there can be no structure. Quite the opposite. What sounds good? A steady rhythm. Repeated melodic or rhythmic motifs.
Here’s the thing. There’s no need to go back to The Well-Tempered Clavier to experience them (but feel free to, if it rocks your world). You can achieve both and more — and it’ll sound powerful and engaging — playing a one-chord rock or funk vamp with a simple four-note riff. Soon enough, someone will get brave and start experimenting with the format. The first nine times, it’ll sound awful. The tenth, though, will be a breakthrough. Encourage it.
Forming identity, and learning through doing
I strongly believe that you need to instil a musical identity and embed it through practice and experimentation with the simplest building blocks — the amino acids of music, as it were — before putting the whole genome under the microscope and subjecting it to a rigorous analysis with questions like, ‘how did we do what we just did?’, ‘what is the right/wrong way to do it?’, or even ‘what is music, anyway?’
This is how we acquire the rudiments of our first language. We will have done so long before our first day at school, from which time onwards — and only then — are we ready to examine, analyse, and refine to ever-increasing degrees of specialisation. Why can’t music education follow the same path?
Epilogue: an experiment
When you admire anything that is beautiful, your mind is concentrated upon it. You are quite unconsciously examining it. You remember, without effort, many of its features, or characteristics. That unforced examination and attention is study. — Prentice Mulford, Self-Teaching; or, the Art of Learning How to Learn
I am not a music teacher; still less, a professional musician.
That said, everything I have written above is taken from experience. In 2020, at the start of the pandemic, my eldest son (then 11 years old) decided he wanted to play guitar. We immersed ourselves in music in those long, drawn-out lockdown evenings. Before long, he had decided he wanted to be a guitarist. No pressure from me: 11 years old is no time to be getting career advice from anyone.
By June, his younger brother (then 9) wanted a piece of the action. But — such is the nature of sibling rivalry — not as a sidekick to his elder. He would be a musician in his own right. A drummer.
Fast-forward a year. In June 2021 they played their first concert, not as a duo but as a quintet with two neighbourhood friends. In August, they recorded this. We had been using the methods I have outlined above for a little over 15 months.