Why do we teach music backwards?
Why are we taught to read music before we know how to play it?
There is an explanation for this and I’ll get to that in a moment but first things first.
First of all, music is a language and like every language we must learn to speak it at least functionally before we learn to read and write it. Learning to speak a language creates a context to know what you’re reading. Music works the same way. We all begin learning the language of music when we learn to sing our first songs. The seeds of music theory are sown yet we don’t seem to nurture those seeds.
The typical scenario goes like this; a child loves music and loves to sing so they ask their parents for music lessons. The parent seeks out a music teacher and almost every music teacher will try to teach that child to read the music first by showing them dots on a matrix that relate to finger positions on an instrument. (Most teachers teach that way because that’s how they were taught.) The student is learning to decipher a melodic pattern but they’re not being told that they’re learning a pattern. All music, I repeat ALL music is a series of patterns. Learning to recognize the patterns is what music theory is all about! Furthermore most early teaching repertoire is comprised of melodies written by old dead European guys. I haven’t met many students who want to learn that old stuff so they become disenchanted with the melodies and frustrated with trying to read the notation. The worst part is they feel like music is too hard and are left with a sense of failure. People want to learn the songs that touch them emotionally.
So why do we teach music backwards? Well, it comes from the advancement of European imperialism. Back in the days of kings and queens and emperors and the like, ultra wealthy folks liked to have their own in-house or should I say in-castle band. And because they had gobs of money, the bigger the band the cooler you were, so they had orchestras. (The first person to create a large group like this was a guy named Monteverde in the early 1600’s.) So the emperor would hire a popular musician like Mozart to write a piece of music to impress his friends and then hire an orchestra to play that music. You’ve heard the term court composer and chamber orchestra I’m sure. Anyway the composer needed a way to get all of these folks to play specific parts to make the musical piece come to life. To do this the composer had to develop a notation system for the players to follow and play the piece. There were many less specific attempts at notating music dating back 4,000 years but this new notation system developed by Monteverde and those after him became the standard.
That notation system thrived and is the basis of what we use today to read and write music. It’s not perfect by any means but it’s what we’ve got.
It’s important to point out here that humans have been making music for at least 40,000 years. That’s forty thousand! Many cutting edge scientists in that field believe we’ve done it for 100,000 years or more. There are flutes dating back 45,000 years made of animal leg bones and some of them play the major scale! (That’s a whole other history lesson). From that time until the system used by the European composers , music was handed down exactly the way every child learns to speak their native language today. By watching and listening and mimicking what they see and hear. That’s how we learn a language and that’s how we should learn music. If and when we learn to read notation we know what we’re reading.
It’s pretty common to think you have to read notation to play music but that’s just not true. The majority of musicians these days do not read music and many are at the top of their fields musically. That’s not to say being able to read music isn’t helpful to be a better musician because it is. It’s just not necessary. Understanding what music is made from is more important than being able to read it. I’ve had many students in my teaching career who could read extremely well but they couldn’t sit down and just play. They needed the music there to read. They couldn’t sit in and jam with other people or play some Jazz, as the whole point of Jazz is to improvise on a melodic theme. (That means to make it up on the spot.)
Reading music is not music theory. Music theory is understanding how music works. In a nutshell, music is made of 3 elements. A melody, a chord progression a/k/a the harmony, and a rhythmic beat and they are ALL based on patterns. The foundation on which ALL of these elements are built is the Major Scale. You know it as the Do - Re - Mi - scale. This scale is the alphabet we use to create the language of music.
I’ve created The Right Brain Music Method to teach anyone and everyone how to play music and understand the theory regardless of your ability to read notation.
BIO
James McVay is an American composer, producer, songwriter, author, and educator. He has over 200 TV and movie scores to his credit. He has produced dozens of albums for various artists and 3 of his own songs. As a multi-instrumentalist he has played on hundreds of studio recording sessions. As an author and educator he has written 10 books on how to play music. His most acclaimed books are in the Right Brain Music Method series which seeks to change the way we learn music.