You Belong with … Scales?
It’s not uncommon for a student to want to play popular music. That was true for us when we were students long ago as well.
It stands to reason then that many of our students ask why they can’t just jump straight to those songs as a part of their lessons? Wouldn’t they be more likely to stick with music if they were playing the songs they know and like?
Would it surprise you to know that depending on the instrument, those in-demand, streamed songs might actually kill a student’s passion for learning music? It takes just six weeks to quit learning music forever. And I blame Taylor Swift.
Let’s say a student convinces their instructor to divert from the regular lesson curriculum for their favorite pop music, like Taylor Swift. Maybe their parents bought them a book for the holidays or a birthday. The book might even say Easy Piano or Big-Note Piano. Once the teacher permits shifting lessons to the popular music of choice, that’s when the six weeks begins. You can set a clock to it.
The first couple weeks of music lessons, the student is excited and determined even though nothing is coming together. By the third week even as their first song has been broken into parts the student is becoming frustrated that it doesn’t sound like the song they love. After this, the instructor struggles for a couple of weeks to get lessons back on track with appropriate materials. And at week six, the student and their parents inform you that they are going to take a break from lessons. This student will likely never return to you or to that instrument.
This six-week phenomenon takes place more frequently with piano students than with students who play single melody instruments like clarinet. However, even with band students, if a teacher’s curriculum is sidelined for the pop music de jour, lessons stagnate and eventually find themselves on borrowed time.
Ok, so before I unfairly toss Taylor Swift under the bus, I should lay out a few things:
Not all Instrument Learning is the Same for All Instruments
If you’re learning piano, it’s a very different process than learning guitar. Same for saxophone versus the violin. Every instrument presents its own challenges, learning curves, and for lack of better explanation, a timeframe from brand spanking new beginner to a musician capable of making something sound like it’s supposed to. We’re not talking about mastery here. Maybe more along the lines of competency or confidently apt.
There are Different Ways to Learn a Musical Instrument
Traditional music reading, the Suzuki method, learning by rote, or playing by ear are all different ways people learn music. Some styles of learning are more suitable for some instruments than others, just as different methods or approaches might fit one student better over another. Oftentimes, teachers incorporate a combination of these techniques, depending on the instrument, and depending on the experience of the student.
… Ready for It?
Ok, now that we have that out of the way, I don’t really blame Taylor Swift. She’s great! When I was younger, Disney music was our jam. My teachers didn’t hate Disney music, but they also didn’t allow me to play those songs for lessons.
So what’s up with that?
Do we go from students who just wanted to play “Under the Sea” to teachers who adamantly forbid their students from playing “Shake It Off” because we want to pass along the pain? Of course not!
What happens between here and there is not just learning how to play, but the pedagogy, which is how to teach.
Teardrops on My Guitar
It’s true that some instructors are able to get to those requested popular songs faster than others. Some instruments just get there a little quicker than others. From personal observation working with other instructors, I can state that guitar is one of those instruments.
Depending on the instructor, they will often move quickly from onboarding a student with basic skills to picking apart songs by request. I’ve seen some instructors pull out a recording and transcribe it on the spot section by section, which then becomes the student’s lesson.
I’ve also seen use of popular TAB books that take music reading in a different direction than traditional classical notation.
But you also have to remember that different guitars play different parts of a song:
- If you are playing rhythm guitar, you’re strumming chords to the music.
- If you are playing lead guitar, you’re picking complex melodies.
- Some singer-songwriters use a distinctive finger-picking style
- Specific genres like Jazz and Classical guitar playing require more in-depth knowledge and skills.
For those reasons, you aren’t getting to play the kind of musical content you love sooner.
At A Kopp Music, we do not officially work with guitar students. HOWEVER, we do offer lessons in both guitar and ukulele to Early Learners (ages 4 -7) to prepare them for guitar lessons with a “Big Kid” guitar or a ukulele teacher.
I have one such student in this category right now. She wants to play guitar, but is first learning on a baritone ukulele. (Think of a baritone ukulele as a tiny 4-string guitar that left off those two lowest bass strings.)
The ukulele works well for small bodies and hands, and simplifies the instrument for our youngest learners. In the last six months, my student has learned to both pluck and strum a small group of chords. Currently, we’re on our first book in which she’s learning to strum along with popular tunes. At the time of writing this post, her assignment is Fifteen by … you guessed it … Taylor Swift.
Hits Different
Compare the guitar to a single-note instrument like the flute or saxophone. Students quickly learn a short range of notes in order to play band music in their first year. Not surprisingly, they are quite ready to play melody-only lines of pop music in just a few months. Where this goes wrong is oftentimes a single melody line of modern popular music is not very diverse in notes. That’s because many popular tunes favor complex rhythms over melodies.
In the case where the music may have online accompaniment tracks to provide more excitement to the experience, the music will move at a set pace. This tends to shut out those who haven’t mastered quick fingers. If the student isn’t willing to practice to speed up the fingers, this becomes a major point of frustration.
Death by a Thousand Cuts
The piano, in comparison, is a behemoth of an instrument with a steep learning curve. Two hands, ten fingers, a grand staff with ten lines and eight spaces plus a massive middle space … a student’s brain is quickly overwhelmed with information overload.
For most students, it takes significantly longer to play something with a simple arrangement. These simple arrangements are often initially met with excitement followed by disappointment because the squared-off rhythms and melodies that lack the complex flares we are accustomed to make the song range from unrecognizable to just plain boring.
Piano curriculum creators who have incorporated Pop Tunes or Hits do well to try and bring the fun to the table, but we also have to recognize that some songs just don’t translate well to this instrument.
For example, the extremely popular music of K-POP Demon Hunters. Yes, there are piano books available featuring their songs, but when you play them, they sound thin or peculiar. That’s because that music wasn’t designed for piano.
A piano will never sound like a drum machine and synthesizer. At best, these arrangements have a rhythmic base line with a vocal melodic line that is repetitive rhythmically on very few pitches. It doesn’t coordinate well between the two hands and it doesn’t sound like what you hear in the movie.
Look What You Made Me Do
If you are learning through the lens of musical reading literacy, the biggest issue with jumping into popular music is not having enough background knowledge to know what you’re seeing. Even simplified Early Elementary or Big Note arrangements try to mimic the original track while matching the student’s current skill level. The end result is still music with lots of partial beat notes tied over the bar lines to the downbeat of the following measure, with a bass part that still falls on the downbeat. The reason for this is that much of the popular music we like has that ahead-of-the-beat feel in the melody.
For piano, this means coordinating the hands in positions that feel quite awkward. For single-note melody band instruments, it’s visually a mess, making it tricky to interpret despite it being the melody line we already know. You literally just need to play it like you sing it, but that only really works if you aren’t intimidated by what you are looking at.
The other issue that can happen with these arrangements is that they are close but not exactly what one expects. That means that they’re squared off melodically and rhythmically. Once students realize what they’re playing doesn’t exactly match up with the original, it can be a massive let down.
Ideally, waiting until they’re more advanced would allow them to play richer arrangements that are far more rewarding to practice and perform.
Anti-Hero
Ultimately we don’t want to stop students from playing the music that they want to make. Good communication regarding why they can’t play certain types of music for music lessons is key to mitigating the rightful disappointment that comes when we say “no” to a request.
Growing up in the 80s and 90s, it was different because printed popular sheet music was more readily available. Back then, we could pick up the latest tune by Madonna or Billy Joel at K-Mart or Target. Even though these were not appropriate for our music lessons, we still saved our money to buy them anyway, then worked on them on our own, applying what we were learning in lessons.
In fact, this is still something that I highly encourage our students to do. While the local big-box stores no longer carry printed sheet music, in the local Twin Cities Metro Area, Groth Music in Bloomington, MN carries a massive music library customers can browse. Additionally, sometimes you can find free copies of older popular tunes by looking at the local library or seeing what was donated to Keys 4/4 Kids in New Brighton, MN.
Don’t Blame Me
While you may not have developed the necessary skills needed to play that viral TikTok bop YET, be patient. You’ll get there. Just remember, Taylor Swift started learning her basic guitar chords at age 12. She had to put in some serious work before she was going to start recording and selling out concert arenas.
