Yes, a bit provocative, let me explain. Music is amazing and knowing how to play an instrument could unlock sublime experiences for humans. The problem is related to how playing an instrument is taught, or rather how music is not being learned. A piano has the same relationship to music, as a human voice has to a spoken language. The purpose of using your voice is to express your thoughts. The purpose of playing the piano is to express your musical “thoughts”. The problem starts when the technique of playing an instrument becomes the end goal. To make this concrete, let’s consider two examples.

Children learning their native language.

One basic fact about this situation is that children are not being taught their native language. There are some things that children are supposed to learn by themselves. Examples are how to crawl, stand, or how to speak their first language. Parents trust that their children will learn this hence they do not coerce them into it. I guess that some skills that children learn are seen as part of their biological development, hence they are taken care of by “biology”. This is mostly positive, however, parents seem to not be in complete awe of how incredible learners toddlers are. Learning a language is difficult for many adults yet their toddlers do it easily. They are not just learning a language, they figure it out without having any language to compare it to, not even an idea about what communication is in the first place. The main point is that parents are not instructing their children in their language, they just talk with them. Children are being surrounded by language and being encouraged to make mistakes, talking even when they are not producing words yet. They are not being asked to focus on their talking mechanism, like how their tongues are supposed to move, or what their vocal chords should do. If you have spent time with a two-year-old, it is interesting to experience how much language they understand before without speaking themselves. They can respond to questions by nodding their heads or similar, but they haven’t developed the skill of producing sentences of their own. In other words, understanding a language comes before the ability to speak it.

Learning music, or how to play an instrument

Contrast this with how children learn music. They go to an instrument lesson, say piano, and are being taught how to use their fingers to manipulate the keys. Maybe in their first lesson, it is done somewhat playfully but sooner rather than later they are being encouraged to start practicing. One week they might learn how to play the first keys of a D major scale, which they are supposed to practice later by themselves. This would be like a parent telling their child how to pronounce the letter T and then asking them to go to a room and say this letter over and over for some time. In the context of learning their native language that seems rather crazy, in the context of learning music, it is standard procedure. What about the understanding of music? As mentioned children understand their native language before they speak it, in music it is often the opposite. It can even go so far as pianists playing on a higher level without knowing the “changes” (i.e. the harmonic structure) for a piece they are playing.

So what would it look like to learn music and use instruments as a means of expression similar to how we learn to manipulate our mouth to speak a language? The bassist Victor Wooten provides some guidelines. His great talk on “music as a language” is what inspired many of the ideas in this essay.

• They are not taught When a child learns their language they are not taught, people just speak to them. Not just any people, professionals. People for whom speaking the language is second nature. So if a child is to have any reason for learning an instrument, they should first be surrounded by music.
• They are jamming with professionals, from age zero. You are allowed to speak back when learning your native language, in a sense to jam with professionals. In music, beginners play with beginners, intermediate with intermediates, etc. Instead, the idea should be that whatever sound you can produce on an instrument, is what you can contribute to the song.
• They are not corrected when making mistakes. Learning is essentially error correction. But the important thing is that we cannot become discouraged from making mistakes. When children try their first language, they are never discouraged from making mistakes. They just make sounds, try a few words, and use the wrong grammar. But adults don’t bother correcting them. Because they have a sense of trusting the process.

This week I also discovered Music Learning Theory. A theory on how music learning works by Edwin Gordon. I am just skimming some of the ideas but the basic principle seems to be in line with what Wooten advocates, though it is laid out in a much more structured and systematic way. Being systematical might be good or bad, remember that children don’t learn language in any kind of systematic way. They just learn it. There is more to say about all this, one thing being that I don’t think it is quite correct that music is a language like Wooten claims. Moreover, practice has its use, but mostly in the context of more advanced musicians. In the same way, writing is a separate skill from being fluent in speaking and understanding a language. I might be fluent in English, but I am far from anything like a great writer. In that context of my trying to improve my writing skills, it makes sense to “practice”.

Happy to hear your thoughts on all this. Thanks for reading!