When I first started playing ocarinas in 2011, there was an atmosphere among the members of the 'The Ocarina Network' forum of: the ocarina is an instrument that you can learn yourself. The message that came across in people's sentiment in the community was a desire for self-directed learning, and the facility to learn to play music that people themselves enjoyed listening to.
To me, this felt like a direct counter against the nature of formal music education approaches, which tend to be very controlling. Most music education systems are / were based around a 'method', which rigidly defines a set of exercises and music pieces that a student must learn to play.
The problem here is that these systems leave little scope for learner agency. Because music education silubuses typically define every single thing a learner is to do, learners are typically not permitted to learn music that they already know and enjoy.
People may not be encouraged to seek out information for themselves, or be shown how to do so. It is also rare to communicate what the function, value, and expected outcome of the exercises being pushed onto them is, and practice of them can easily feel like valueless work.
If one were to draw an analogy to relationships, this kind of teaching approach is like a situation whereby one parter is controlling everything the other partner is allowed to do, 100% of the time.
However, the fully self-directed approach held among many members of 'The Ocarina Network' is not an ideal solution either. The process of learning instruments is very complicated and It is easy to fall into learning approaches that will consume years of time, leaving the learner little to show for it. Learning only music that the student has chosen will also limit the scope of things they are exposed to, and thus what they are able to learn.
I think that there is a need for a robust learning approach for neurotypes that reject external control, and i have some thoughts on how to work towards this.
Why music education has tended to be controlling
Before discussing alternative learning approaches, I think it is valuble to consider why music education has evolved into patterns that are controlling. I think there are a few reasons for this:
- People who are new to an instrument do not understand what they need to practice in order to improve, or know what questions to ask in order to find out.
- It is difficult to know what music is approachable for an individual's current skill level. It is thus easy to try to learn something that is too hard, and end up giving up.
- Finding music of different difficulty levels can take a considerable ammount of time.
- A driven and self motivated learner who wants to learn to play well, can still easily fall into a practice approach that will not lead to good results.
- An obvious reason why music education may tend controlling is due to individuals that are not naturally intrinsically motivated.
The way that music education systems have tended to solve those problems up to the current time, has been to define a teaching method consisting of a number of pieces of music that the learner is expected to learn to play. Often these are orgonised into difficulty leavels or 'grades', which intend to make the process more approachable. The learner can learn the music that is easier for them, before progressing to a more difficult grade, and therefore building skills gradually over time.
For a lerner that has demand avoidant tendancies anx rejects external control, being told exactly what to practice in this way is unbearable, and will tend to cause them to reject the whole teaching approach.
The point is then to guide people towards effective learning approaches, without directly telling them what to do. This can be done by showing learners more about how the learning process itself works. That gives them the information needed to make better choices and learn more effectively.
Knowing what to practice
It is often hard for a learner to know what to practice so that they can improve. Traditional method systems solve this problem by defining a set of pieces of music that a learner should be able to perform. They are typically orgonised into grades, whereby the music in the following grade becomes progressively more difficult than the previous one.
A grade also serves as a referance standard that can be used to evaluate the skill of a player. A band or orchestra may state 'players must be able to play music at or higher than grade X'.
There is a lot of value to thus, but existing grade systems are too limiting because only about 5 to 10 pieces are offered for a given grade, which do not span a diverse range of music genres. Thus the learner has no ability to play music that intrests them.
Grades should define abstract music complexity, instead of a fixed set of pieces
Instead, a difficulty grade ststem can be defined as a set of rhythmic and melodic patterns that a piece of music should incorporate.
Graded music collections can also be provided, but their function should change. Instead serving as examples of music that are built from a given set of patterns, and which achieve a given level of complexity.
The self directing learner can then use that information as a tool to judge the difficulty of the music that they are personally driven to learn, and gauge how difficult it will be in relation to their current skill.
Such would alsi enable learners to intentionally find other music that they are personally driven to learn, which is at a difficulty leavel that is appropriate for them.
There are also other skills beyond just music that one needs to be able to perform, such as ear training and general theory knowlage.
Regarding knowing what to practice, I think it helps to realise that music teaching can be split into two separate entities:
- A corpus of skills and information that a player needs to know to be able to function effectively.
- How this information is communicated to the learner.
Existing teaching approaches like established music grade systems provide a good reference for this, Instead of viewing them as a fixed set of stuff to force upon learners, view it as a source of information to draw from as needed.
Graded music collections need to become a lot more genre diverse.
Having a clearly defined corpus of graded music is valuble, but this should not be forced blindly upon the learner.
As mentioned in the introductory thoughts, many existing formal music education systems for other instruments are designed around an ideology of training orchestral musicians, or jazz musicians.
Music as a subject is much more diverse than this, and there are many different genres and music traditions that people may wish to explore.
Because of this, I think it would be of high value for there to be much more diversity in graded music collections. Instead of just 'music for flute to pass exam X', it should be 'graded classical pieces, graded folk musuc, graded video gamr music, graded film music, and so on.
Having that diversity enablez learners to choose for themselves what they would like to practice, and choose the music that most intrests them as individuals.
Learning resources need to support skilled outcomes that are not 'orchestral musician'.
I also feel that these method systems hold a too narrow expectation on what the learner's end-goal is. Almost unanimously, these systems expect that the learner's goal is to play in an orchestra, failing to recognise that music is an extremely diverse art form with many genres, and many other outcomes that a learner may be drawn to.. The vast majority of people today do not listen to orchestral music, besides in the context of other media like games and films.
It is also important that people can explore music in a diverse range of settings. For example, playing an instrument does not have to imply playing on stage. There are many other situations where music can be played, such as the model of Irish sessions where people play in a group for their own enjoyment. Many people also enjoy playing instruments as a solo activity, which must not be invalidated.
Children especially should not be forced into playing on stage, as this may be off-putting and cause them to drop music entirely.
Non-competitive options should also exist. The focus of method systems of creating expert orchestral musicians, creates a very competitive and cut-throat environment, which is itself off-putting for a certain subset of learners.
Developing other skills
Music silibuses often define collections of other skills and knowlage thst learners should be able to do, such as ear training exersises or a given set of scales.
It is important that exactly what one needs to know depends a great deal on the situation that a player wants to play in. Existing music teaching methods often make gross oversights here, such as how a lot of classical method teaching massively de-emphasises ear training and playing by ear, due to the myopic focus on producing orchestral musicians who will always play from provided sheet music.
Accounting for things that people can not do.
A method being a static set of rules all learners must pass to be considered 'good enough' is a problem because, due to genetics, some people genuenly can not do some things regardless of how much they practice. Rather, it shod be viewed as a set of guidelines.
Instead of pushing fixed plans with expected outcomes, expose to a wide range of things and see what you / the student latches on to or is good at.
Then work from this point to optimise skill in this.
Thoughts on the role of teachers
It may seem that a teacher has no place within this system, because the role of a teacher within school systems often involves controlling the learner.
Instead the teacher can shift to being a guide whom which the learner can ask questions.
Listen to what a student is asking for, and act on this.
It seems pretty common for a teacher to have a student eagerly wanting to learn to play a given song, then start pushing technical exercises. I think that this is a bad idea dof a student that needs to retain control, because whey want to learn the song and the exercises seem to be pointless in that content.
From this basis, it would be easy to show the student how to extract exercises from this music and as such, they can see clearly where the exercise came from. Showing through practical demonstration is better than telling or explaining.
For a teacher, what is the student looking for? Be attuned to what this individual student wants:
- Do they want a series of exercises that they can practice blindly, with no awareness of the design choices behind those exercises?
- Do they want a logical / informational approach, where the student first logically understands how the process works, and then uses this information to effectively create their own learning approach?
- Some people will function well in groups, others function better individually.
Make information exist in the environment of the student, and engage with them when they start to express interest in it by their own choice.
For some people, learning the whys behind the design of exercises is critical for them to be able to learn anything at all. For me personally, unless I understand where an exercise came from and what value it has to me, my subconscious will reject it as valueless
Closing notes
Some people really like being told exactly what to do and closely directed, and for those kinds of people the traditional 'controlling' teaching approach would work well for them. However, there are also neurotypes that will intrinsically reject any kind of external control, and anything they did not personally choose to engage with.
I can see ways of doing this both for a self-directed learning approach, and for approaches that involve a teacher or mentor. This could be embedded with a cultural system around an instrument where people are able to share information about effective learning approaches with new players, or direct them towards relevant resources.
There are multiple ways of approaching things, and being aware of that and able to adapt is important.
I can not offer unanimous solutions for all people for whom the current music teaching approaches don't work. The problems faced are surely more diverse than what I am able to percieve, and a much more serious study would be needed. I do strongly believe that these are things we need to be discussing more.
