I now play drums as my first instrument, guitar, bass, keys, and sing a bit…but I taught myself all of these skills, because I was allowed to experiment and push myself without having to follow a set of rules imposed by an intolerant tutor.

My personal opinion is that trying to turn popular music into an academic subject is an attempt by people without sense or experience to become involved in an industry they simply do not understand.

You cant catch a whisper.

Fine, classical music, no problem, but I believe Rock, Jazz, Hip Hop, Reggae, Metal, Punk…..are all styles based on feel, with their roots in strong emotion.

Very good article. Many Thanks for sharing.

Curiously, for my ceilidh band, we practice by drinking beer.

Why doesnt the Music GSCE cover the correct drinks to go with different styles of music?

PS Excellent Open Sky gig last night

As a begginer bass player you may want to learn all the techniques and all the fastest links, however when you start thinking music instead of scales and thinking groove/feel, instead of speed, you are thrown back to the back seat and start to see music as a whole and no longer as a maths class.

One of the things I looked for was context, it is indeed dificult to find a teacher who contextualizes every lessson, and that happens with Steve. More so the easy way he finds to relate music with other live like situations it’s just fantastic.

Learning should be a pleasure and not a choir, and something that makes you look forward for the next lesson. Often after my lessons I have even more questions than before.

David

I like watching the students faces at masterclasses when you shatter these myths and allowing them to move forward, unbound… which makes learning music a lot easier and a hell of a lot more fun.

Teaching is by definition imparting knowledge.. But the thing is… it’s a two way process.

If you don’t understand and acknowledge that it is, you’re not going to engage minds in any meaningful manner.

I’m old enough to have been taught by teachers.. academics mostly, who “lectured” their students… (Literally )

All teachers want to impart new skills/ideas, and all minds start off being curious about the world – sadly many of those minds get turned off – every single time that happens it’s a personal tragedy for the student and a great loss of potential to everyone else in society.

Different subjects require different methodology (probably).. When I was teaching my subject was art.. specifically 2D.

The differing courses I taught… required different approaches, depending on the age/interests/requirements of the students. Because of the nature of the subject everyone needed to be encouraged to work independently. This was extremely demanding on all of us, but mostly we managed.

Teachers (of all subjects) do a pretty amazing job and often under extremely difficult/constrained circumstances… A society that doesn’t support it’s teachers is in grave danger of falling apart… It’s really THAT important.

I hope you get loads of feed-back from this post.

I try to teach my students through the music that gets them excited. Any song or piece of music is an opportunity to teach an important musical concept. Once these concepts are understood, students can start to identify them in a variety of different styles of music. That chord progression from an emo tune is similar to a classic pop or rock song. The guitar solo from a Metallica song uses the same scale as an old blues tune, etc.

By learning what they love, and having an open mind, many students will find themselves appreciating styles of music that they never would have given a chance.

Great post Steve.

John

It is odd how particularly in the States, Jazz has become a museum piece – played ‘the proper way’ by Wynton and friends, and woe betide anyone who tries to take it somewhere else, which is in EXACT contradiction of what the bop guys of the late 40s/early 50s and the early avante gardeners were doing, in pushing the boundaries, moving forwards, expanding the horizons, soundtracking what was then ‘the modern world’ in a way that befitted it… I wonder if industrial/hardcore music is actually the new be-bop… I would’ve said hip-hop, but that largely lost its way in the early/mid 90s and has yet to find it again…

Anyway, stop reading blogs and go shred! You’ve got bass-monkeys to impress

technical death metal is an interesting case, as it definitely requires a degree of harmonic understanding and strict dexterity that rewards the same kind of hammering of scales, arpeggios and metronome-based studies that most orchestral musicians spend their life doing.

Like all kinds of music, it’s a very small percentage at the top that are actually ‘brilliant’ at it – the tech-metal thing has brought out amazing stuff like Blotted Science and Meshuggah alongside the unlistenable sludge that happens when the players just haven’t got the chops… it’s definitely one style where just having a lot of ‘heart’ doesn’t cut it in the way that it does for a punk or rootsy country and western outfit

cheers!

I feel that modern Jazz has suffered tremendously from this very thing.

All the greats of Jazz’ Zenith era are being analyzed and re-taught. It’s become a largely academic affair when at it’s core – Jazz was -as you say – folk music.