Instead of waiting in the car for Aidan to emerge from his bass guitar lessons the other day, I went inside and watched the last 10 minutes of the lesson. Aidan was playing his bass at the time, and Grant McLellan, his teacher and an old friend of the family, was playing his six string guitar. Aidan was reading and playing a reggae bass line from sheet music, and Grant was playing a standard reggae rhythm guitar line over top. I spent only five minutes listening before Aidan's time was up and we had to go, but in those five minutes I was struck by how differently musical knowledge is transmitted to my son in 2010 than it was to me when I was a kid.
Beginning at five years old, my trumpet teacher would come to our house on Tuesday evenings, and between 6:30 and 7:00 I would have my lesson. My teacher would listen to what I had been practicing throughout the week, and then at the end of the lesson assign the week's material for the next lesson. I loathed the lessons. There always seemed something more fun to do during the week than to sit down and practice, and as I recall, I was never well prepared for the lesson. One minute into the lesson, and the teacher would realize that I had practiced very little or perhaps not at all during the previous week, he would become frustrated, question my work ethic, I would then feel guilty, completely liberated when he left, and the cycle would continue. Consequently, I hated playing music until I got to High School and played in a Stage Band.
However, for Aidan it is entirely different. First off, he can hardly wait to have his weekly lesson. After school on Mondays he jumps on a city bus and gets off near Grant's house. When I pick him up, he is always charged up and brimming over with enthusiasm. "Today we played 'Autumn Leaves', or "A Reggae bass line is good but really repetitive", or "Eric Clapton is more a Blues player than a Rock and Roller", or 'Jazz is the most fun to play'. His weekly lessons renew his deep love for music, whereas my weekly lessons seemed to do everything possible to kill the flicker of love I had for playing music as a kid. What is the difference?
Grant approaches things completely differently. It is as if he recognizes that we all love music, and works very hard to nurture the love of playing it. For the first couple of years, Grant did not assign traditional homework throughout the week. Instead, he would ask Aidan to think about certain pieces of music that he would like to learn how to play. From very early on in the process, when Aidan would listen to music, he would also be thinking about playing it. During their lesson, Grant would download Aidan's musical choice with the tabs (a more graphical way of illustrating music than the standard treble and bass clef style), show Aidan how to read the tabs, and teach him how to play certain songs. Once Aidan had learned the piece, Grant would play his six string electric over Aidan's bass line.
The next stage in the process seemed to involve teaching Aidan enough about musical theory that he could improvise a bass line. Aidan learned chord structures, progressions, and musical keys, long before he knew how to read music. So cool. This information allowed him to step beyond simply mimicking the bass lines of famous bass players.
After all this initial preparation, the ground was set for this latest stage in Aidan's musical development. He is now reading music and counting out rhythms in the traditional way. However, he is approaching it already having had a really solid understanding about how music works. He is also enthusiastic, because he knows that by reading music he will enter a new realm of possibilities. The result is that he is putting the full force of his learning potential into this latest stage, and he will learn much.
We all begin learning language from our parents and siblings, and actively participate in speaking by the time we are 2 years old. Later on we learn how to read and begin to understand the rules that govern language. With my music teacher, he tried to teach me how to read before I could speak the language of music. However, with Aidan, he has learned how to 'speak' music before he could read it. In doing so, Aidan may one day converse in the language of music with the same creativity and clarity that he now speaks English. Many thanks, Grant!
2 comments:
This is very insightful Jim. Wish we had known this when you were taking lessons.
I suspect that those rather good musicians from your era who taught themselves how to play, had the kind of built-in ear that Aidan is now acquiring working with Grant. A giant step in the right direction.
Thanks Mom. And I do appreciate the efforts you put in to make sure that we learned the basics of music. All three of us hated music lessons, and yet you hung in there through all those years. It is a breeze with Aidan, because he loves to go to his lessons, and we as parents simply sign the cheques. However, you were down there in the trenches giving pep talks on a weekly basis, and that must have been hell for you.
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