teaching trombone as a folk or pop instrument

[hyperbolica]

Do any teachers teach the trombone as a folk instrument or in some other way other than reading a lot of music? The older I get the more I wish I had learned to play by ear with less dependency on printed music. Are beginners ever started on a jazz or rock/pop type of style rather than the traditional style? The type of music people hear growing up is not the kind of music they get to play in school music programs. Would band overall be more popular in schools if they didn't start with 3 blind mice?

[Doug Elliott]

The only thing I know of that fits that description is this:
https://www.historysouth.org/shout/
And they are pretty amazing.

[Redthunder]

What you teach doesn't matter. How you teach it does.

There is a huge ongoing debate in urban music education circles especially about this because of how weak our music programs are in these environments - and it's primarily hung up on false binary choices between "traditional" styles of learning instrumental music (method books, reading music immediately, all classical music, wind band etc), and "modern band" (no music reading at all, all popular music, no knowledge required, rote teaching).

Both of these miss the point, and both have huge blind spots that allow students to fall through the cracks. As a teacher, it's neither my job to cater my content to the music I love anymore than it is to cater to popular content. I want to empower my students with skills that can be applied to literally any style of music and any task. This involves pulling on elements that are drawn from many musical traditions and style. It means developing strong aural, kinesthetic, executive instrumental skills, improvisation, composition, and music reading skills. The more of these skills you learn the more they reinforce each other. None of them are contradictory or require the study of a specific style of music. Through thoughtful instruction, I aim to teach students a process of learning new skills that they themselves can replicate with any musical topic they may wish to tackle, with or without the assistance of a teacher.

Additionally, I want to expose students to all types of music making, including things they may not like, or things they may have never have had the chance to like, alongside of the types of music they may already be familiar with or particularly like.

If you've never heard of it, check out Music Learning Theory, a term coined by Edwin Gordon.

[MagnumH]

Two words - New Orleans.

[soseggnchips]

There are definitely people out there who learned to play that way.

I'm not aware of any formal programs that teach trombone that way, and I think that's in large part down to where the trombone is used. If you're teaching a beginner, you probably want to get them to the point where they're ready to play with other people. On trombone, that most likely means wind band, brass band, orchestra, big band... all situations where you need to be able to read. If you don't teach them to read, they won't have the same opportunities to play.

Having said that, it seems like a lot of people never get taught to play by ear or improvise at all, and that is a problem. They shouldn't be seen as skills that are in competition with notation reading, but complementary to it and equally as important.

I think Redthunder's hit the nail on the head. A good teacher is one who gives their students a well rounded education that includes all the skills they need whilst keeping them engaged. Sometimes that will mean giving them want they want, and sometimes it will mean challenging them to try something new. Easier said than done.

[VJOFan]

I guess your focus is mostly about repertoire but it also touches on method.

Your question jogged a memory of Suzuki style trombone instruction in Sweden (I think they start the little ones on altos) and I know of at least one conservatoire in Quebec that has run similar camps with pBones.

Also the El Sistema method relies on learning to play before relying too much on reading. It is also a social program focussing on improving the lives of kids who may not get a chance to play otherwise.

The scuttlebutt is that the St. Andreu jazz band is a listening first instruction method.

The philosophy is out there. In all these cases, it’s not about the musical content but establishing agency in the student so they have that joy of competency.

[hyperbolica]

The only thing I know of that fits that description is this:
https://www.historysouth.org/shout/
And they are pretty amazing.

There's a guy in the forum that participates in this. I think I've bought some horns from him in the past. Sounds like fun. Beginners start by blowing the root of the chord. Sounds like only a few develop high level skills, most of the rest just play loud (and long) notes. It seems like they do teach people right from beginners.

What you teach doesn't matter. How you teach it does. ...

If you've never heard of it, check out Music Learning Theory, a term coined by Edwin Gordon.

The Jump Right In thing sounded interesting, although I didn't see any practical examples of the method.

There are definitely people out there who learned to play that way.

I'm not aware of any formal programs that teach trombone that way,...

Yeah, a formal, documented way of teaching an informal approach to playing music - I guess I'm not sure what I'm looking for exactly. Most singers don't really get any formal training until after they already have a lot of experience. What if musical instruments just sat round the house, you played them in the shower, or on family picnics, or at church, and just learn by listening and doing. And then later on when you've figured out the main outline you go for training on the details that let you excel at something or specialize in a type or style.

[Redthunder]

The Jump Right In thing sounded interesting, although I didn't see any practical examples of the method.

I have never and do not use the Jump Right In method books. They don't really present the depth of what MLT is. It's more of a course of content for teachers who already understand MLT. I don't know anybody personally that actually use that book.

Music Learning Theory isn't a book, it's an understanding that if you expect to teach music well, you must understand how people learn things. Music Learning Theory is pretty much just a more standardized, backed by research and data approach to what folks in this thread already are saying: -Sight before sound, improvisation, and aural skills are just as important as any other traditionally emphasized skill, and there are ways to teach these skills to learners of all ages.

Here is a fairly good source that presents the broad concepts:

https://theimprovingmusician.com/beginn ... ng-theory/

Again, none of these ideas are new - it's just one of many standardized approaches, and I've found it to be particularly useful, largely in part because of how easily adaptable it is, because it's skill based and the skills that are emphasized don't really change through a musician's life, they just get scaled up to more complex levels. I use MLT much more informally than other teachers who have built entire curriculums around it for general music programs. It still works.

[soseggnchips]

What if musical instruments just sat round the house

You've just reminded me: a guy I play with put a p-bone in his son's toybox. No lessons or anything (he's a bit young for that) but he likes to grab it and honk along in time with songs on the radio. Seems like as good a way as any get started.

I do think there's something to be said for gaining a bit of instrumental proficiency independently of learning to read (alongside, not necessarily before). Like most people I went through that phase as a beginner of playing pieces one note at a time with big pauses in between to decode the next note. I don't remember it being a lot of fun. I do remember I'd memorised a couple of my favourites and would play those over and over.

[timothy42b]

When I was in high school choir (prior to 1971) it was based on reading music. Some of us read better than others especially if we were in band too, but everybody had some exposure.

When my children were in high school, different story. They learned mostly by rote, they memorized everything and sang programs without sheet music. I doubt if any can sightsing.

And yet, their performances were every bit as musical as mine were. I learned to appreciate a different approach.

[Cymrych79]

What if musical instruments just sat round the house

You've just reminded me: a guy I play with put a p-bone in his son's toybox. No lessons or anything (he's a bit young for that) but he likes to grab it and honk along in time with songs on the radio. Seems like as good a way as any get started.

I do think there's something to be said for gaining a bit of instrumental proficiency independently of learning to read (alongside, not necessarily before). Like most people I went through that phase as a beginner of playing pieces one note at a time with big pauses in between to decode the next note. I don't remember it being a lot of fun. I do remember I'd memorised a couple of my favourites and would play those over and over.

I'm more than a little late to this thread, and definitely cannot address the OPs question, but just wanted to say that as an archaeologist and anthropologist, this has been a great, thought-provoking thread with strong parallels to a series of lectures I attended ages ago on initial and secondary language acquisition. That symposium was very much focused on early hominin anthropology and the emergence of verbal language, but several lectures touched on the emergence of written language in the Neolithic as a point of comparison, and here is where the parallels with music really start to emerge (although there's almost no doubt that music has been with genus Homo for as long as spoken language, and probably longer).

Seoseggnchips's two paragraphs really highlight the two main ways in which youngsters can pick up a second language, much as they do with either the written form of their native language or a true second spoken language, or indeed via a musical instrument if you see musical expression as an analogue of spoken language. And we've all gone through both forms of learning: we learn our first language, our native tongues, by imitation, experimentation, and trial and error, much as the p-bone left in the toybox to toot along with the radio, and our second by laborious study of the alphabet and the written word. Some folks are fortunate enough to have their second language be a spoken language even before learning to read and write, and as someone for whom second/third/fourth languages do not come particularly easily or naturally, I'll admit my jealousy!

Obviously, learning a language(s) isn't a perfect analogy to learning to play music. It could be argued that learning to read and write doesn't qualify as learning a secondary language since you're learning what you already know how to express verbally, or that music isn't a proper language in that it doesn't have a syntax or vocabular in the same sense that spoken language has, etc. But it's hard to deny that the fundamentals of music acquisition are mirrored by how we acquire language, especially when we consider that written music has only been around for a small fraction of the time music has existed in the human repertoire of expression. I'm sure this would be a surprise for exactly nobody on this thread, lol!

From an anthropological perspective, a curriculum taking advantages of both tactics, reading music along with simply playing music and developing an ear, makes a heck of a lot of sense because it directly mirrors how other aspects of human symbolic expression are learned, and it acknowledges that people might have preferred or optimal ways of learning which favors one tactic over another, or indeed favor something that falls on a spectrum including both tactics to some greater or lesser degree. I think the tendency over the last century or so, at least in the US public school system, has been to start music instruction later, long after that phase between 2-4 years of age where we're literally sponges that can pick up just about anything by simple repeated exposure. And so we tend to start with reading music from day one as we also are trying to learn to play our instrument, which can work of course, but can also create challenges down the road. I know I certainly first picked up a trombone in the first year available in my school district, in 5th grade (I think), 10-11 years old, and I definitely had those long pauses in the first few weeks or months that Soseggnchips noted while my brain struggled to figure out the next note. The only things I recall that we ever needed to commit to memory at all were scales, at first just a couple of the major scales, then later in high school the less utilized majors, most minors, and a couple in other modes. (Well, memorization was strongly encourage for marching band, but it wasn't required. I always committed the playlist to memory because marching with a lyre was just awkward, but I know many people who took the exact opposite approach.) I think it was only in 9th or 10th grade when we first started some limited controlled excursions with improvisation. As a result, although I felt and knew that I was technically competent at the end of high school (certainly not professional level by any stretch of the imagination, but skillful enough that had I wanted I could have successfully applied to college as a performing music major), I always felt woefully underprepared for the jazz gigs my small group of friends and I played. I know I ultimately gave perfectly adequate performances during those mostly improvised sessions, but when I compared myself to, say, friends who had picked up guitar and learned to play without ever seeing so much as a lead sheet, it just felt like I was in some sense doing something different than what they were doing: I was a music reader first and while modestly successful, I struggled to get into the experimental, whereas my guitar buddies were all about experimentation from day one.

In short (acknowledging the irony in that phrase when I use it), based on my own musical challenges, anyone who teaches today using a synthesis of music reading with pure music playing gets a huge thumbs-up from me, because that lack of early pure playing I think was a detriment to my further development on trombone, and perhaps even a detriment to my enjoyment of the instrument, 25 years ago when contemplating post-high school life. I definitely think it's a major reason I, and so many others I've bumped into on this forum, had a long period of time when we didn't play at all. For me, picking up the horn just for the sake of playing a bit of melody for a few minutes, was never a "thing". Playing, for me, was always a process, with a set of tasks, some goal, and a strategy to reach that goal, whether that was a practice session or a performance. There always was a reason for the horn to come out. Once high school was over and trombone wasn't a part of of my daily life any more, I had no real goals with it, and my horns gathered dust. Meanwhile my guitar buddies, almost to a man, still often pick their guitars off their stands and play, having never totally stopped. They might only strum a few chords while watching tv or making their grocery lists, but that's more than I can admit to during the 20 years my horns sat in the closet.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm likely someone who would have benefited from a more "making-music" versus "reading-music" program balance. Or a program with any early "making-music" aspect, really. Which, knowing my struggles with foreign languages, makes perfect sense for me personally: I've had 4 years of college Latin, about 6 years of German between high school and college, and presently about 3 years of Welsh. For every one of which I can pick up a book and have a reasonable understanding of what's being presented (maybe; it's been a long time since I read any Latin or German), but if you say much more than "guten Morgen" or "bore da" to me, I'll probably just stare at you funny while my brain sifts through 30 yrs of detritus to figure out if I understand you or not. But if you speak to me in Hungarian I can hold a 5-year old's level of conversation with you, all from a month-long trip 10 years ago and a few phrases my grandmother taught me, yet I know almost nothing of written Hungarian. I know the book-learned aspects of German, Latin and Welsh quite well but for me, with languages at least and probably with music to some degree, there's a disconnect between book knowledge and the practical expression of that knowledge in speaking/hearing the language or moving beyond the sheet music. It's definitely a left hemisphere/right hemisphere thing, and a program with a good dose of both playing and reading music would go a long way towards minimizing such a division.

TL:DR; The old-school nun who liked to whack knuckles with a ruler when a piano student messes up a chord they misread was a dinosaur 40 years ago, but public school music programs still largely follow that basic paradigm, though probably without the bloody knuckles. Private instructors have long embraced the need for different strategies for different students, that some students may be more sheet-music inclined while others are more intuitive players, and that a strategy involving a stance for each student somewhere on a spectrum between column A and column B and with the fluidity to adjust one way or the other as needed tends to produce the most well-rounded, knowledgeable players.

Sorry for the essay, but it's been a thought-provoking kind of a thread which I much enjoyed reading.

[johntarr]

What you teach doesn't matter. How you teach it does.

There is a huge ongoing debate in urban music education circles especially about this because of how weak our music programs are in these environments - and it's primarily hung up on false binary choices between "traditional" styles of learning instrumental music (method books, reading music immediately, all classical music, wind band etc), and "modern band" (no music reading at all, all popular music, no knowledge required, rote teaching).

Both of these miss the point, and both have huge blind spots that allow students to fall through the cracks. As a teacher, it's neither my job to cater my content to the music I love anymore than it is to cater to popular content. I want to empower my students with skills that can be applied to literally any style of music and any task. This involves pulling on elements that are drawn from many musical traditions and style. It means developing strong aural, kinesthetic, executive instrumental skills, improvisation, composition, and music reading skills. The more of these skills you learn the more they reinforce each other. None of them are contradictory or require the study of a specific style of music. Through thoughtful instruction, I aim to teach students a process of learning new skills that they themselves can replicate with any musical topic they may wish to tackle, with or without the assistance of a teacher.

Additionally, I want to expose students to all types of music making, including things they may not like, or things they may have never have had the chance to like, alongside of the types of music they may already be familiar with or particularly like.

If you've never heard of it, check out Music Learning Theory, a term coined by Edwin Gordon.

This is something I’m struggling with in my teaching. I learned the “read music first” way and miss having developed my ear. My younger brother had Suzuki training and, even though he rarely touches a violin or viola, he can pick one up and play whatever he’s heard.

At the school where I teach, my wind instrument colleagues are very set on reading music and having kids play in the wind band. The problem is, not all kids aspire to play marching and band music and those who “play well” in the band can not necessarily make music. In Sweden, it’s getting harder and harder to get kids to play brass instruments and keep local bands going.

I have read Gordon’s books and even attended an intro course online but still find it hard to implement his ideas. Part of it is that I think it would be helpful to have colleagues who were interested in similar ideas.

This summer I’ll be attending a Suzuki book one course for brass teaching. One of the other problems I encounter is that kids aren’t exposed to much music that can help them build a mental model. I’m hoping that having the Suzuki process in my toolbox can help begin to remedy that.

In addition to teaching an instrument, I believe we should first and foremost be teaching music. Recently having read a doctoral dissertation Jan Kagarice’s methods, she was quoted as saying something like: the measure of a teacher is how much their students love music, not how well they play. If music as we know and appreciate is to have a chance of surviving, then we must help students learn to love music, not just push the right valve at the right time.

Thanks for this discussion and I’d be happy to exchange ideas, John

[soseggnchips]

Recently having read a doctoral dissertation Jan Kagarice’s methods, she was quoted as saying something like: the measure of a teacher is how much their students love music, not how well they play.

I remember reading - I think in a pop. science book about high performance - about a series of interviews that were carried out with succesful soloists about their early tuition. Generally, they didn't report studying with particularly notable teachers in their early years. What most of them did report was that their early teachers got them excited about music and that motivated them to work really hard. Obviously, it's just anecdotal evidence, but it rings true to me.

To look at it from the opposite direction, lots of people (most?) who start learning an instrument give up before they get to a really proficient level. For those students, maybe the best thing to teach them isn't what's strictly best for their musical or technical development, but whatever will keep them interested and engaged for another year. If they remain interested, hopefully with time and maturity they'll become willing to tackle things that are necessary but less appealing.

I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all answer for teachers. Yes, there's probably a case for more ear-training and improvisation than most students get, but that shouldn't diminish the value of learning to read - they're all valuable skills, and I'm sure some learners really enjoy cracking the notation code and becoming fluent readers. Ideally you'd treat every student as an individual and give them exactly what they need, in the right order, without them losing interest, but in the real world of group tuition and limited time that's not always possible.

With all this focus on how students are taught early on, it's worth remembering: playing by ear and improvisation are learnable skills. They're easier to pick up when you're young (everything is!) but adults can and do learn them as well.

[johntarr]

Recently having read a doctoral dissertation Jan Kagarice’s methods, she was quoted as saying something like: the measure of a teacher is how much their students love music, not how well they play.

I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all answer for teachers. Yes, there's probably a case for more ear-training and improvisation than most students get, but that shouldn't diminish the value of learning to read - they're all valuable skills, and I'm sure some learners really enjoy cracking the notation code and becoming fluent readers. Ideally you'd treat every student as an individual and give them exactly what they need, in the right order, without them losing interest, but in the real world of group tuition and limited time that's not always possible.

With all this focus on how students are taught early on, it's worth remembering: playing by ear and improvisation are learnable skills. They're easier to pick up when you're young (everything is!) but adults can and do learn them as well.

In his book, “The Laws of Brainjo: The Art and Science of Molding a Musical Mind”, Josh Turknett (neurologist and M.D.) talks about how learning by ear versus from notation can wire the brain in different ways. Learning by ear tends to develop the networks allowing musical thoughts to be translated into sounds, or, playing what you imagine. Learning from notation develops the skill of translating visual information into sounds and can be done without really hearing the music (unfortunately I did this for many years and now find it hard to play what’s in my imagination).

Of course we want to be able to do both fluently but favoring one could diminish the other. Many who possess even rudimentary language skills can both improvise (conversation) and read what others have written. We learn to improvise before reading language. Music pedagogy that primarily stresses reading can produce competent crafts-people who may not really know what their expressing, much like reciting poetry in another language with perfect pronunciation but not understanding what is being said.