Beware the Song Machine
Monday, February 22, 2010 at 11:48PM Along with learning things in the same spirit in which they were created, I believe in teaching things the way I learned them (while of course allowing for different learning styles). When working in pop music (i.e., anything that is not classical or jazz), this has some counter-intuitive implications.
Most guitar teachers (and those piano teachers who teach in pop/rock styles) learn the drill pretty quickly: student wants to learn Song X, teacher transcribes Song X after having spent a few minutes working it out by ear. Student goes home, dabbles with Song X, brings in Song Y, and the cycle continues.
Some teachers are especially enthusiastic about creating professional transcriptions for their students. They spend their own time outside of the lesson working out every detail of the recording.
This works - to a point. The student is learning songs. However, the teacher is actually the one learning the instrument. How's that for counter-intuitive?
Randy Pausch, in The Last Lecture, talks about the "head fake," in which students think they are learning one thing but are actually gaining something deeper. In this case, the teacher has set up his own head fake. He thinks he is teaching the student, but in reality, through the process of working out a song by ear, assimilating it, transcribing it, and then teaching it, the teacher is the one who gets the benefit. The student just gets the by-product!
Through the process of working out song after song, the teacher's musical ear gets ever sharper, his transcription skills get quicker, and his facility on the instrument increases. This, my friends, is how you actually learn how to play an instrument: by teaching yourself songs. That's how the teachers themselves learned (and continue to hone their abilities).
Yet, instead of teaching the student how to figure out songs, the teacher functions as the student's Song Machine: bring in a recording and the Song Machine will spit out a transcription, teaching the student nothing but the superficial details of how to play the song. This is the opposite of teaching something the way you learned it.
This whole idea dawned on me when I started getting annoyed at a couple of students who were bringing in songs each week, but never following through by learning them well. I felt taken for granted because they weren't even mastering the songs I was giving them. "I ain't yer Song Machine," I grumbled to myself. "I never had anyone to work out songs for me."
Hey! Wait! That was not a grievance: that was my secret weapon. I'd always been my own Song Machine. And after many years of playing and teaching, it's become a well-oiled machine.
At first, a student doesn't have the skills to work out a song by ear, so we usually start with a few simple songs. But right from the beginning, I'm going to show how those songs were built. As I model the protocol for figuring out a song, I will also explain what I'm doing and why, and get the student doing the heavy lifting as soon as possible. Teach a musician to fish, if you will.
I hate just being the Song Machine for my students. There's no depth to it. The student gets the song, but the Song Machine gets to keep all the quarters.
Reader Comments (5)
Wow!.....I saw this back when I was Christine's student. I realized she was the one learning the song one day when I was sitting at the piano and she was figuring out the fingering and writing it down for me on the music sheet and when to press the right pedal, or left and all.
It's true. You don't really learn that way cause all the student is doing is mimicking you in a way. Not realizing why it's done that way, just that's how it was taught to play.
What up Casey?
So I really liked this, it's totally true. It's tough, though, 'cause all those skills that make up the song machine - ear training, notation, theory, technical ability - they're all really hard won. And your post does hint at something, that the really motivated students who are capable of developing all those skills learn some of them on their own. But it does remind me how important ear training is, and how it's not that hard to introduce ear training into lessons. Y'know, spending more time on ear training could reduce some of the weekly volume the old song machine has to churn through.
Later,
-Jim
I wish you were MY teacher!
Yvette, well put. And while I think mimicry is an important part of the learning process, the teacher should teach you why it's done that way, just the way you said.
Jim, I agree with you that it takes a lot of work to develop these skills in the first place. Students need to master a lot of songs in order to have a "musical vocabulary" to work from when they are learning by ear.
What I do is teach them music theory right from the start in order to get them headed in that direction. For example, at the first guitar lesson we might do that old Green Day chestnut, "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)." I'll take that opportunity to teach them that we're in the key of G, and show them the diatonic chords in that key.
I guess the main thing I try to do is to demystify the figuring-out-the-song process for them from the get-go, because some of the stuff we do as musicians can look intimidatingly like magic to the uninitiated! ;-) I want to show them how logical it is, even if it's still out of reach at first. I never want them to say, "I could never do that."
Thanks to you all for commenting! I am so glad to have my fellow musicians and friends reading my blog! :-)
Bravo! I just found a teacher for my daughter.