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From: Douglas Tate
Date: Sun, 29 Sep 1996 15:32:14 +0100
Subject: Icky Theory revisited.

Newly created Featherman (Michael Will in disguise folks)

A ...Says that learning music is not as easy as I make out.
B ....How old is he and does he remember how difficult it was.

Answers!!!

A ... You learn to drive a car, doesn't mean that you then pop into a
Super Godzilla Ferranum Special V547 32V Magnum Guzzler and do the quarter
mile on one wheel in 6.2 seconds at a drag strip. This requires a second
lesson.
Come on Mike, you know what I am talking about. I am talking about the first
steps in music reading. If you take those, then the second steps are just
as easy. There are a lot of steps. You do NOT say Music is difficult to
learn because I have had one lesson and I can't whistle Brahms violin
Concerto from the score. It would be just the same as saying it is easy
to play blues harp... here Kitty, kitty, shove this in your gob...this is
how you Blow, this is how you draw, this is a bend this is a blowbend.. do
it...and then stand back in total amazement as the child blows every known
player in the universe away.. I believe that as much as I believe it in
"White Christmas" when Bing Crosby (or someone) says "Let's do the show
right her" in a howling blizzard in the middle of Alaska and suddenly you
have sophisticated lighting and a full orchestra all with their hair done
etc etc.

If you can read this, you can read music. But you started reading this type
of stuff with Rover or some other stupid Mutt forever playing with a damn
ball Whilst Janet and John spent their lives murmering platitudes at each
other (except in some of the books where the older boys had ascribed
different functionality and intentions in heavy pencil)

I read stuff at sessions sometimes which looks as though someone has spilled
3 pounds (Weight .. Danny!) of Caviare (at $75 an ounce) over the page. and
on the whole I do it quite well, but it took time. Didn't start that way.....

Cue for episode 2

B..1934 was vintage year for my mother, she ceased to be a blimp and
returned to normal shape. Does that answer the question?? I started to learn
music because I have a very poor aural memory (nerves rather than actual)
As nobody would teach me and official music teachers refused even money when
they found out I played mouthorgan, I had to work it out for myself. It took
a long time because I started at the wrong end of the horse, writing out two
Chopin Nocturnes for piano because I thought it would help. All it did was
give a pianist hysterics. I hadn't realised that the left hand part had to
line up with the right hand part.

BECAUSE of early embarassments I have spent a large amount of my adult life
trying to develop ploys so that my pupils don't have the same horrible
introduction to things musical. I have had thousands of music students
through my hands over the years in schools. (work it out, 300 plus per year
for about 12 ish years plus odds and ends of private pupils etc. ) and all
of them have learned to read and write music. A fair proportion have gone
on become pro musicians, If you think that the approach of teaching
notation turns kids off, ,,,in one school I taught music there were 504
pupils and over 480 in voulntary after school and lunchtime music clubs.

One of these ploys involved teaching music notation, ie the stave, the clef
sign and where the notes were on the treble and bass clef, timing of half
note, quarter note and eight note, and beats in a bar, sharp and flat, in
just over half a lesson at school, including in that time a test. Then we
would all have a little dictation back. That took the rest of the lesson.
These kids then went on to write their own pop songs, orchestrate them for
group of their choice, record them on professional equipment and get a copy
for themselves. By the time they had done this.. (two one hour music
lessons a week for 40 weeks) they were nearly all writing two or three part
harmonies to chord sequences with bass parts and some percussion. NO, not
all of them, but well over 60%.

################
If you don't believe me, employ me to do a seminar and I will attempt to do
the same with adults in an hour., or kids, or mixed.
################

Don't givre me the excuse that kids can learn anything,

So can adults .... if they will get off their intellectual butts and
actually try rather than think of excuses as to why it is impossible. In
most cases it is simply a fear of failing.

YOU can learn to read music, but you have to continue to take small steps
for a while before you can read as well as you can play.

Sorry for bandwidth, BUT, I feel very strongly about this.

Douglas

PS, Mike, thanks for the stimulus

You mention >>>>
(*how* old is he??? I hear the memory is the ~second~ thing to go...)
<<<
May I say that I pity anyone's view on life if they think it finishes two
years ahead of their present age. I am having a great deal of fun at
present doing things which are new and exciting, which are leading to future
projects and which I am getting a durn sight more out of than when I was
younger and wasted my time bemoaning the fact that things were difficult.
Difficult takes time, the impossible only takes a little longer. Pray God I
have a little longer.

DT