Rant: music lessons should be FUN

Thanks to several very bad music teachers, I do not play an instrument. Somehow they managed to annihilate all the potential fun.

Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.

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[Bedfordshireman]

I play English folk music on the fiddle, and was taught by a chap in my village. No qualifications, no knowledge of musical theory, he couldn't even read sheet music.

And I tell you, I looked forward every week to his lessons. The man was so full of passion and love for the history of English folk music that I hung on his every word, noticed the minutiae of his technique. I wanted so *badly* to impress him, just to be like him.

And where am I now? Well, I can't read sheet music, and I can't play any classical pieces of music. I don't hold my violin 'correctly'. But I can play an instrument and musical style I love with competence and passion. That should be the end goal of any music student.

[TheModernMartialArtist]

There are so many good youtubers who teach music now, really happy that kids nowadays get all these amazing teachers for free online cuz I sure as hell didn't haha

[mandowarrior]

Why progress a child when you can have them drawing treble clefs and earning you £20 per hour or whatever.

[AgentTasmania]

We learn to read and write after we’ve mastered speech.
But the standard of terrible music instruction is to learn an entirely new and unintuitive writing system before we have any real idea what it means

[romkedeboer]

I remember we had a week of school trips once. One day, we played African drums, with a teacher from Kenya. It was really fun! He told us to improvise, and just enjoy the music.
Later that week, we played African drums again, but with a teacher who had lived here all his life. He told us the exact ways we had to do things, because "else it would be offensive to Africans."

[HemlockRidge]

YES!! I took pro guitar lessons and quit after 3 months. I thought to myself, "Well, I guess I won't be playing guitar". Then, one day, I sat with my friend who played, and learned more in a hour than I had in 3 months.

[kiardothefirst]

totally agree, when i did music in school i had a friend who stuttered badly, he was a drummer but one day the teacher randomly picked people to sing and picked him as one, he refused.
Another thing i found was that the teacher would favour students who already knew how to play rather than actually teaching and getting students interested in instruments and making music.

[wstedspace]

Thankfully having had an identical experience, with terrible tutors for the instruments I tried to pick up, I kinda 'fell' into playing bass for one of the school bands simply because I was useless at singing and we didn't have a bassist. I learned to sight read 15 years later because it had a purpose for me... and at no point did it prevent me from having a lot of fun.

It's sad given how rewarding and enjoyable playing an instrument can be that so many get put off by this, had I just gone by the 'taught' experience I'd not be playing now

[thomasbowers]

Some music teachers do drain all the fun out of it

[michaeldougfir]

I had an art teacher who didn't teach art. Sad, she was a wonderful lady otherwise.

At the same school I had a teacher in Music Appreciation. He too was wondderful. He taught us the workings of music, instruments, how to listen and pick out various facets of music of many kinds. In short it was satisfying and quite fun. About thirty years later, one day I was standing in que at a big post office. My grandmother was with me. It turned out that this teacher was just in front of me. I was quite happy to introduce my grandmother to him. I told him how he changed my life. I think he was quite surprised. But I want him to feel appreciated; and for Nana to know I ebjoyed SOMETHING in school.

Thanks Lindy. This was fun.

[TobiasKremer]

Make it fun!

This might be a wider school problem (I can of-course only talk about my schools in Germany): Suck fun out of every interesting topic.
Among my favorite is Geography. It is supposed to be about foreign countries and how hills and stuff form and Geological columns and all this neat things. But most of the time they forced us to memorize stupid maps. I do not care where the Kilimandscharo is in relation to the Nil. If I ever get to Africa I will look it up on a map. If I care.

[FalseEdgeHEMA]

As a musician I totally agree. Ive always been a singer, and in highschool I was very involved with musical theatre. Later on I taught myself to play guitar, and that was the point when I really found the joy of music. It's led me to believe that the key element of teaching music is to first express the joy that it is. Once you have that foundation of true enjoyment, you're far more interested and willing to learn

[thatfish]

Bless you. Expression should be fun and fulfilling, not painful and weighty

[KenjiWatanabe]

What splendid timing, Lloyd. This video came just in time since I have my first adult music lesson in 2 weeks. I'm quite excited but since I have absolutely the same experiences as you, I'm also a bit worried whether the teacher will be a proper TEACHER or just a paid goon to instil the doctrine of "the right and approved way of playing the instrument in the tradition of the 4th battalion of stickinarse" into me.

At school the music teachers were also P.E. teachers and combined the two subjects into a insanely strong mutant of "I don't give a damn, here are some notes, I toss you a ball, now do whatever, I'll be over at my car sippin bear while noone's watching". And the few times my family had the tiny bit of money to pay for a private teacher she was as joyless and life draining as you described.

Nevertheless this video and our replies shall be warnings to any educator in the field to not succumb to this way and at the same time we recognize and praise the various GOOD and talented pedagogical teachers out there. We thank you! Please be an inspiration to your colleagues.

We'll see how it goes in 2 weeks when for the first time I'll touch and hopefully SOMEHOW play the violin hahaha!
All the best!

[brianfeezle]

Hoorah! Another rant! I’ve been waiting for him to post one of these.

[chaosDEJhead]

Hey LB, I've always loved your content and I just got a puppy, so I've been putting on your videos for him while I am in class and your talking helps keep him from getting lonely. So thank you! I was thinking it would be cool if you did a video on ancient dogs or dogs in whatever part of history you prefer, I think Peter (the puppy) would love to learn the history of his people, as would I! Have a great day and thanks for the awesome content!

[cerperalpurpose]

I went to a Church of England school in Juniors, and I kid you not that within a week of joining in year three some 6 of us were called to the headteacher because we were “gifted” and told to learn how to play an instrument for the Church. Needless to say that made me put off from music for a good few years until I discovered rather too late in Senior school Oasis and decided to pick up a bass. My teacher- I make no exaggeration- set fire to a grade book in front of me and we learned with him playing guitar whatever song I wanted or he thought was cool. Absolute legend to me. I’m heading into my final year in School next year, and I hate how one moment of attempted indoctrination had lead to me learning so late. You are completely right Lloyd. Music is ruined for kids by boring morons who are transfixed on getting it right and not having fun.

[sebastiansilvera]

Thanks a lot for bringing this up! I completely agree with you about the core of your argument: learning g should be FUN! Specially for kids! I’m a teacher and I’m an advocate of having fun in class. I’ve been fortunate enough to work around the world and even now I still find that most of my colleagues believe that it’s ok for students to “struggle” and suffer in class and that if the learning gets to lay back or “fun” it means two things: the children are not really learning and the teacher is not really trying(as you can imagine I’m the target of criticism in the community of teachers for making sets in my lessons to have “too much” fun. I strongly believe that even horrible subjects can more easily learned if we make sure there is an element of fun in the lesson.

[misterkefir]

more rants, please. These are one of my favourites. Oh, and I feel about the same with learning a language and starting with difficult things like learning all the ins and outs of grammar.. okay, fine.. I know the grammar now, but I can't speak the language at all.. great.

[abeabe]

This is actually the only channel on which I turned the bell notifications on.