A lot of kids take piano lessons. Why? Status for the parents,
perhaps? A sense of infusing children with culture? Another thing
to be done to build the perfect child? There's a variety of reasons.
But, it's usually some need on the parents' part to improve the
lot of their child.
I think that's great. A lot of piano lessons means more work for
piano manufacturers and piano teachers and more support for music
in general. So, what's my beef? Well, give me a minute to explain.
Most piano lessons start out as fun for the child. They have fun
with neat sounds and they get to play pleasant sounding children's
songs. After a while, as the kid progresses, most teachers will
start the kids on classical music (in general terms, whatever
is accepted by classically-trained teachers as 'serious' music).
Soon, the kid is asked to memorize pieces from guys long dead
to play at examinations or recitals. The pieces get more and more
complicated requiring much more work from the student. At some
point, students get really bored and parents and/or teachers may
give them lectures to persuade/force them to keep going.
I don't think most kids are lazy. I think it's normal to get bored.
Just think about it, you spend a whole year working on five to
eight pieces written by guys that died anywhere from 50 to 400
years ago. You don't spend any time (at least not with your lessons)
learning about all the great music that you hear today. I think
great music and great art have value and should be passed on no
matter how old they are, but I really think that it's moronic
to base all your teaching on old stuff and not even touch the
stuff that's going on right now (rock, pop, country, dance, etc.
take your pick).
Music is part of society. It's all connected. Some of the older
stuff, especially Baroque (about 1600-1750) and Classical (about
1750-1825) pieces, were composed for an aristocratic, Western
European audience. The popular music today, especially rock, is
democratic global music. It started with the black community in
the U.S.A., got picked up by rebellious white kids, and spread
to Europe and, eventually, most of the world to embrace people
of all ethnic backgrounds.
Someone that understands Baroque and Classical pieces but has
no understanding of pop or rock will, to some measure, be cut
off from today's world. Instead of focusing on just the old stuff,
I think the best thing to do would be to teach mostly pop songs
and then connect them back to earlier music. Instead of separating
things, the teacher should demonstrate how things are connected.
Is this a tall order? Probably, but it's not impossible; there's
a lot of good educational materials (transcriptions, etc.) out
there. I think I'll bug Ronin about coming up with a practical
program for implementing my suggestions. It should take him a
few days or so.
[Editor's note: Since this article was initially published, Happy
has badgered me into taking on the above task. It's complete now
but it took more than a few days. ]
Goodbye for now. Remember, stay Happy and don't take no crap!
Yours truly,
Happy.
