My first piano teacher was very artsy and whimsical, she and I simply were never able to establish any connection as I have always been a very logical learner. I suffered under her for almost 10 years as a child while she tried to teach music to me in the way that made sense to her.
My latest piano teacher was a professor and specialised in the pedagogy of music so he was more than equipped to deal with an overthinking logical type music student like myself.
Learning music and an instrument can and should be quite intuitive. And as performing is quite expressive, music can attract people that stereotypical creative type who just wants to play and feel music. But the study of music theory and classical music are quite rigorous subjects and they can be attractive to logical thinkers who thrive learning all the nomenclature. But knowing the nomenclature is not strictly necessary to play music and so you have this disconnect between the very diverse spectrum of people drawn to music.
In fact, there is a certain inescapable intuitiveness to music and the professor taught me to really learn to via feeling and establish feedback loops that always come back to the sound and my own motor sensations (did you achieve the sound you want while playing freely?). You can't really logic things like that and if anything it's more like a sport than something you can science when every person's body and dimensions are different.
I am now having singing classes and singing is even more mindbending than piano has ever been
That resonates for me. I spend lot of time teaching volunteers. Early on, I encourage them to learn the skill from me, but also take any opportunity to have others explain and demonstrate the same thing to them. I tend to work from first principles, explaining how the pump functions and why that means water goes in here and out there, and what different configurations of valves are therefore valid and which ones will never do anything useful. Others often explain it in terms of which valves to turn in which order to achieve a given outcome.
Neither is right or wrong. Most people will be left pretty cold by one explanation while the other will land neatly into a hole in their brain shaped perfectly for it. Which one is which will be different for each person.
I think that there’s value in gearing educational settings towards having a plurality of instructors available on each subject and letting students gravitate towards the ones that work for them.
One of the hardest things about teaching others in my opinion is that to really teach effectively you have to be able to meet them where they are.
As in, you have to be able to have some understanding still of what being fresh and new to the subject is like, coupled with the ability to change how you teach something.
I wouldn’t say I’m exceptionally good at changing how I teach unless someone can give me a hint of how they learn best. (Unfortunately, this is one of those things people don’t always know well about themselves and can sometimes change based on context. ).
I try to always stay humble in that 1. I know I’m not the best at anything I’m teaching. 2. Usually if someone isn’t understanding, it’s 100% on how I’m communicating, and 3. Really it’s both of us learning - many insights can come from those new to material at times.
Those are abbreviated and perhaps not communicated in the best way.
But 100% a plurality of instructors, and techniques, is incredibly helpful.
I once heard, that a masters degree qualifies one to teach the subject matter. To do so, you had to organize the material in a way to accommodate students with different backgrounds, learning, and thinking process. In the process of doing so, you come to explore the limitations of your own understanding of the subject.
> I am now having singing classes and singing is even more mindbending than piano has ever been
The thing that drives me crazy about singing is that while I don't have a trained ear, much less perfect pitch, when I made a spectrogram of my voice I was more or less correct in terms of pitch. Apparently it's enough to do this for years to have some frequencies baked in.
As in without a reference you were still correct for pitch from muscle memory? I think I saw on HN that they no longer think perfect pitch is something you're born with and is essentially based on what I think you are saying. You have a few rock solid internal pitches and then you can do very fast recall. Although the people I know with perfect pitch hear everything as pitches - the sound of cars, footsteps the washing machine etc
> As in without a reference you were still correct for pitch from muscle memory?
Yes, exactly. If I try to sing a melody I'll be off by a few semitones, because well, no real musical training whatsoever, but I'll fall within the usual frequency buckets. Singing in a choir I always needed to rely on others to start, which is not ideal.
> Although the people I know with perfect pitch hear everything as pitches - the sound of cars, footsteps the washing machine etc
That sounds like hell.