Do we REALLY express ourselves through music?

The traditional model for instrument lessons is familiar to most: Turn-up each week and present your playing to a teacher who duly points out all the ‘mistakes’ and tells you what you need to go home and work on. Rinse and repeat. 

The problem with this approach is we are forever judging musicianship on students’ ability to REPRODUCE written music from a page. 

Rather than being a joyful tool of self-expression music becomes another thing in life to ‘get right’ and for many young students gets lumped into the category of ‘things you have to do’ like homework and house chores. 

There are many apps and resources around now that promise to motivate students to practice in one way or another. But if playing was a joy then what motivation would be needed?

When I hit my teenage years I did what so many piano students do at that age - I quit. This is the age where kids start to know their own mind more and decide they’d rather spend their time on more rewarding things than reproducing dots on a page with the reward of being scrutinised for their efforts at the end of each week. 

If you’ve ever watched an inspiring musician play you’ll have witnessed something different. You’ll have experienced deep self-expression, playfulness and the simple joy of playing music. 

Young kids have this naturally. They arrive to music with a natural urge to express themselves, in whatever form that takes, through playing. Music lessons should embrace this raw energy and nurture it, not put barriers in front of it like the mental gymnastics required to decode symbols from a page or run uninspiring scales and technical exercises. 

Maybe it’s our model of education that says ‘you must be mentally taxed in order to be REALLY progressing at something’. Maybe that’s the case for science or engineering but it’s been my experience that with music it only serves to shut down creativity and playfulness. 

While language and words register in the brain, music is felt and experienced in the body where the endless possibilities of expression can be found.