8/16/2019 Chapter 3 Learning to Play Popular Music

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Chapter 3 Learning to play popular music: acquiring skills and knowledge

 The discussion in the preceding chapter, concerning the ‘beginnings’ and

‘ends’ of acquiring popular music skills and knowledge, sets the contet for

eamining what went in!between" #ow do the musicians get from those

beginnings to those ends$

 This chapter will consider the main learning practices through which the

professional musicians in the study had arri%ed at, and the younger

musicians were going about working towards, their ends" &n inter%iewing the

older musicians concerning this aspect of their eperiences, & was relying to

a large etent upon their long!term memories" The younger ones, by

contrast, were often talking to me about what they had done that day or the

week before" 'll the accounts were nonetheless largely commensurate with

each other, age and eperience featuring as interesting parts of the

musicians’ perspecti%es whilst introducing no glaring contradictions" The

accounts also tied in with eisting research into popular musicians’

practices" ( 's obser%ed in Chapter (, informal music learning practices andformal music education are not mutually eclusi%e, but learners often draw

upon or encounter aspects of both" )hilst Terry had recei%ed no specialist

instrumental tuition in either classical or popular music, the other thirteen

musicians had each eperienced %arying amounts, four in classical music,

four in popular music, and *%e in both classical and popular music" &n many

cases the eperiences in%ol%ed only elementary tuition, the number of

lessons amounting to not much more than a handful or less than two years’

worth, and were not felt by the learners to ha%e been particularly bene*cial"

 The main eceptions to this were, regarding classical tuition, bassist +ob

who had regular trumpet lessons for two or three years as a teenager,

drummer ichael who had piano lessons for three or four years when hewas about - to (. years old, and guitarist /mily who had taken cello lessons

for about *%e years from the age of (( or (., and was still taking them at

the time of the inter%iews" +egarding popular music tuition, those who had

recei%ed a continuous course of lessons during their teenage years were

)ill, who had electric guitar lessons for *%e years, and 0imon and ichael,

both of whom had drum lessons for three or four years" 1rent took lessons

sporadically from the age of about (2 to (3, when he started to do paid

gigs" #e then dropped lessons until he was (- when he took them up for a

year, then dropped them again until he was .3, a year after ha%ing become

fully professional" anette had taken singing lessons only after she had

become"