Informal learning and instrumental teaching

How popular musicians learn is now reasonably well-documented. Bennett (Reference BENNETT1980), Cohen (Reference COHEN1991), Berliner (Reference BERLINER1994), Lilliestam (Reference LILLIESTAM1996) and Green (Reference GREEN2002) show that such musicians are often largely self-taught, typically employing ‘informal’ learning practices such as listening to and copying recordings, watching – and getting advice from – other more experienced players, as well as joining bands, rehearsing and performing with peers.

Many researchers and educators advocate the potential benefits of introducing aspects of these informal learning practices into the classroom or the conservatoire (see for example Boespflug, Reference BOESPFLUG1999; Allsup, Reference ALLSUP2003; Jaffurs, Reference JAFFURS2004; Davis, Reference DAVIS2005; Finney & Philpott, Reference FINNEY and PHILPOTT2010; Feichas, Reference FEICHAS2010); attempts to do so are variously reported by Bjornberg (Reference BJORNBERG1993), Evelein (Reference EVELEIN2006), Gullberg (Reference GULLBERG2006) and Green (Reference GREEN2008).

It is not immediately obvious whether or not popular musicians who become instrumental teachers themselves use these informal learning practices as part of their own teaching methods. The commonplace idea that musicians tend to ‘teach as they were taught’ is debatable (see for example Mills & Smith, Reference MILLS and SMITH2003), and in any case is not necessarily relevant for popular musicians who have largely taught themselves through self-directed informal learning. What research there is into instrumental teaching is overwhelmingly concerned with the teaching of classical music, and even prestigious classical performers may be surprisingly reluctant to reveal the details of their teaching practices (Purser, Reference PURSER2005, p. 296). Most instrumental teachers are isolated (Burwell, Reference BURWELL2005, p. 199) and thus tend to devise teaching methods individually and in private. How musicians from a popular music background might teach is a subject almost completely undocumented by music education research.

There is ample research to suggest the significance of personal biography to the working practices of teachers (Goodson, Reference GOODSON1992; Thomas, Reference THOMAS1995). Lortie (Reference LORTIE2002, p. 79) argues that personal experience and judgement are more profound influences on teacher behaviour than statutory teacher training. If this is true for classroom teachers, it is likely to be even more so for instrumental teachers, who generally enter the profession with little or no training in pedagogy (Baker, Reference BAKER2006, p. 39) and often have considerable freedom as regards syllabus, or at least the manner in which they deliver it. Therefore one might assume that the choices popular musicians make about how and what to teach would, in some way, reflect their own learning histories.

However, much popular music learning is solitary, self-directed and apparently indiscriminate, and thus hardly forms an obvious model to base teaching strategies upon. Lucy Green interviewed 14 popular musicians about their learning histories, and found that they tended to undervalue the ways they themselves had learned; some of them ‘did not consider their own informal acquisition of musical skills and knowledge to even “count” as learning at all’ (Green, Reference GREEN2002, p. 184). Accordingly, she suggests that popular musicians who become teachers may be reluctant or unable to draw on their own experiences as learners, and instead adopt traditional, formal methods of instrumental teaching; the story recounted in the introduction is one such instance. Certainly, the stereotypical image of the traditional, ‘conservatoire’ model of instrumental teaching – based on reading notation, learning technical exercises and performing notated pieces – still represents many people's idea of what an instrumental lesson should be (West & Rostvall, Reference WEST and ROSTVALL2003, p. 19; Mills, Reference MILLS2007, p. 140). Even popular music grade exams (such as those offered by Rockschool) broadly follow this familiar structure. Yet this approach to teaching hardly reflects the typical learning practices of popular musicians as suggested in the literature. The research reported here attempted to establish how learning histories related to teaching practice within a selected group of popular musicians.

Research methods

A number of instrumental teachers were invited to take part in an investigation into how popular musicians teach, involving interviews and lesson observations. Teachers were contacted through a variety of means; some advertised on notice boards and in listings magazines, while others worked at private music schools and publicly funded colleges. Friends and acquaintances of the researcher were also contacted. Some teachers were simply unwilling to take part, while others disqualified themselves as not being ‘popular musicians’ who had learned to play ‘under their own steam’ (as the participant's introductory letter put it) but rather had begun learning through formal tuition. Ultimately, eight popular musicians were recruited, mainly from the Bristol and Bath area; seven were male and one female. They ranged in age from 30 to 52, and taught a variety of instruments: there were two piano teachers and two saxophone teachers, one who taught guitar and singing, while the others taught respectively harmonica, 5-string banjo and double bass.

The interviews and lesson observations took place between January 2006 and December 2008. Each participant was interviewed at length on a wide range of topics concerning their learning histories and their teaching practice. Semi-structured interviews were employed, allowing issues to be explored in depth as they arose; equally, given the personal and potentially intrusive nature of the research, it was important to adopt a form of investigation which encouraged a good rapport between researcher and interviewee (Smith & Osborn, Reference SMITH, OSBORN and Smith2003, p. 57). Questions covered a range of subjects, such as how and why they learned their chosen instrument, their experience of being taught (both at school and in instrumental lessons), and the extent of musical participation among their parents and siblings. They were also invited to give as much detail as possible about their teaching practice; for example, where their teaching materials came from, to what extent they relied on listening to recordings in their lessons, how they approached the use of notation, and their attitude towards grade exams. The interviews lasted on average around one and three-quarter hours.

Seven of the eight teachers were also filmed at work (one teacher was happy to be interviewed but reluctant to be filmed). The teachers themselves chose the students to be filmed, and in most cases this resulted in around an hour of one-to-one teaching, though in one case four shorter lessons were observed.

The coding and analysis of the interviews was based on Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith & Osborn, Reference SMITH, OSBORN and Smith2003), a form of grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, Reference STRAUSS and CORBIN1990). This resulted in the data being grouped into three major themes: how these musicians learned to play, how they teach, and their role as teachers and the attitudes and beliefs that this entails. The lesson observation videos were initially transcribed as a ‘timeline’, a form of event coding (Robson, Reference ROBSON2002, p. 334), and were subsequently analysed in terms of their ‘fit’ with the interview data – that is, the extent to which they confirmed or contradicted the interviews. The personal ‘style’ of the teachers, including for example their manner towards their students and their levels of expectation, was also considered. For more details of methodology, and the project as a whole, see Robinson (Reference ROBINSON2010).

Learning histories: Bill and Frank

All the interviewees seemed willing to discuss their musical life histories, and in particular their learning careers, in considerable detail. Much of their talk supported existing accounts of how popular musicians learn, though these histories were surprisingly complex and varied. Despite agreeing to a description of themselves as ‘popular musicians’, several of them had in fact also drawn extensively on more ‘formal’ resources, such as having lessons and using notation. This group was certainly unusual among popular learners, since they had all gone on to be teachers; however, it may be commonplace for more serious or committed players of popular styles to consciously study technique and theory, albeit after their aural acuity has been well established.

Similarly, all the participants spoke at length about their teaching practices, which also demonstrated a range of formal and informal strategies. For example, one teacher never used any notation in his lessons; others used notation as a matter of course from the first lesson. Some began teaching ‘by ear’, through listening to recordings and demonstrating, before introducing matters of technique and theory as lessons progressed. I will focus on two teachers in particular, referred to here as Bill (double bass) and Frank (harmonica). A comparison between the two is helpful for the purposes of illustration since their learning histories are in many ways quite similar, yet their teaching practices very different.

Frank had a long and not particularly successful history of music learning at school, mainly on the trumpet. He recalled his lessons as being ‘dry and dusty’, and ‘hated’ the tutor book he was expected to study: ‘What I really wanted to do was become Louis Armstrong . . . I didn't really want to play classical music’. The teaching he experienced at school simply didn't allow him to develop into the jazz trumpeter he longed to be. It was only several years after leaving school that his interest in playing music again was re-kindled by (repeatedly) seeing the film ‘The Blues Brothers’, and listening to a recording which accompanied the film:

As a result, he decided: ‘I have to get a harmonica, it's very simple, the road ahead is now clear’.

Meanwhile, Bill volunteered for the cello when he was ‘about eight or so’; as far as he could remember, this was just out of ‘curiosity’. He took both shared lessons at school and individual lessons with a private teacher, and studied for grade exams: ‘I think I got up to about grade 5 on that, did the theory exam’. However: ‘I pretty soon figured out that the cello wasn't the instrument for me’. Much like Frank he couldn't make the music he wanted to on the instrument he was being taught:

He gave up the cello and started playing electric bass instead, learning entirely by ear: ‘I just used to listen to records and play along, pick the bass line out, and play along with it’. He stressed the excitement of being in a band and making up one's own music.

Similarly, Frank began ‘tootling around’ by ear on the harmonica. He ‘went to see some bands, getting more into music, and saw some people playing harmonica live, and thought: “A-ha, this is interesting”’. He had some lessons with a well-known blues harmonica player, which were of limited help in practical terms but ‘very inspirational’: ‘I went out and bought some other harmonicas, I think he lent me a record, so I started playing – and then I just really didn't put it down at all’. Within a year of starting to play he was in a band, a situation in which ‘you're forced to learn’. He described using his ear to pick out suitable blues riffs from recordings and emphasised how motivated he was: ‘I was driven to achieve my aims, and my aim was to be in a band, be on a stage’. Frank regarded listening, experimenting, having periods of tuition with various teachers and playing in bands as being all ‘parts of the picture, I can't say which is more important’. He described his playing and, subsequently, teaching career as ‘very eclectic’: ‘it's been a very wide, a very broad learning’.

Bill also described a powerful urge to master the electric bass. After his punk band split up, his bass guitar playing continued to develop as a result of determined practice. In particular, the distinctive sound of Mark King from the band Level 42 was a major inspiration: ‘How on earth is he doing that on the bass? I want to do that, I've got to find out how to do that’. His new band was heavily influenced by listening to ‘proper “muso” music’:

Although he went on to be a full-time double bass player in musical theatre, he was very aware that the skills he needed for his career could only have developed through learning in complementary ways:

The determination to master his instrument transferred from electric to double bass. Hearing a solo recording of Ludwig Streicher was to prove another major inspiration: ‘Again, it's this thing about: “Ooh, I want to be able to do that, ah, that's such a nice sound, gorgeous”’. However, the informal approach that had seemed to work for electric bass, such as ‘watching other people play’ and ‘listening to some records’, no longer served; he was unable to correct specific technical issues, such as bowing technique, without expert advice. He seemed driven by his own dissatisfaction (‘never really been happy with what I could play’) and had studied with a series of increasingly prestigious teachers to improve his playing.

We can see from this brief summary that the learning histories of Bill and Frank are in many key respects quite similar, and have much in common with existing accounts of popular musicians’ experiences, particularly in their negative reports of classical tuition and in the self-directed learning strategies they adopted (see in particular Green, Reference GREEN2002, for similar accounts). They both had a history of formal tuition which involved learning (that is, being taught) instruments and playing music that were not what they wanted at the time, and which were abandoned. Each had moments of revelation when they heard a particular sound which captivated them and thus determined the musical direction they would take. They both started learning their chosen instruments by ear from studying recordings, but they also sought tuition to help them, and both believed that how they had ended up as musicians was the result of a wide range of influences and experiences, both ‘formal’ and ‘informal’. One might imagine, if learning histories do indeed have a powerful influence on teaching strategies, that these similarities between Bill and Frank might result in broadly similar approaches to teaching.

Teaching strategies: Bill and Frank

Frank's teaching career began when, despite his misgivings, he was persuaded to take over the running of a series of evening classes on the harmonica: ‘I really didn't know what I was doing at all’. As a result he enrolled on ‘a two-year course in how to run music workshops’ at Goldsmith's College in London:

This (among other training courses) was to prove invaluable to his teaching.

Frank subsequently started work for his local music service in Bristol, and was confronted by the lack of suitable syllabus material for teaching the harmonica to primary school children, some as young as five years old. While he didn't like the tunes on offer in the existing ‘harmonica books’, the problem was more profound than one of musical taste. Given their physique and level of motor control, such young children ‘couldn't access single notes, they couldn't play melodies’. As a result, he began creating syllabus material himself:

He subsequently found a harmonica with only four (large) holes, and used these with a system of hand signs he devised:

At first his lessons were based on listening and watching (‘of course they're all staring at you . . . there's nothing written down’) though this system was subsequently backed up with notation (‘they get it written down to take home’). As learners progressed they moved up to a standard ten-hole harmonica, and he had produced a series of increasingly challenging play-along CDs, much of which he had recorded himself, using a wide range of musical styles spanning ‘blues, jazz, funk, rock . . . film and cartoon themes’. In establishing his teaching methods he had founded a minor empire in a nearby local authority, with nine teachers (whom he had trained) using this material to teach 500 children in 30 schools.

Meanwhile, although he had occasionally taught more advanced pupils, Bill had mostly taught beginners, and it may be useful to quote in some detail (although edited) his answer to the question: ‘Can you give me some idea of how you teach?’:

Bill himself seemed somewhat overwhelmed with how much a novice double bass player needed to do. Whether starting to teach beginners or more experienced players, his attitude was the same: ‘The only level you can attack on is like technique, how do you actually play the bass’. This focus on technique led directly into the Associated Board syllabus, and he taught the same pieces he himself had studied with a teacher some 15 years earlier.