Although not spoken by all, it is sure understood by all. Music is one of the few languages that transcends all continents, and all types of people without much getting lost in translation. It is a form of communication that can more easily influence emotions of all people without a single word spoken, bridging the gap that verbal communication leaves. Award winning bassist Victor Wooten posted a five-minute video, via the popular “Ted Talks” channel, explaining his thoughts on this topic, comparing and contrasting music to verbal language in the way we teach, practice and learn the art.
This short video left a heavy impact on my views on literacy due to the comparison of my two most fluent languages, and how just by treating music as we treat verbal communication could result in a revolutionary effect on how music everywhere is taught, and could speed up the process so we can excel in music at the same rate we learn to excel in spoken word. To start, Wooten explains how music is taught currently. Many students, myself included, were taught under the strict regiment of an already experienced instructor. At most, the student would be sent away to learn with this instructor not more then a few times a week.
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We are given strict rules to follow while being told every step of the way of how and what to play. He also explains how we treat mistakes like a plague and in turn cause fear of mistakes or wrong notes. Wooten radically rejects this idea of teaching, pointing out that most musicians would agree that music is a language and a form of communication while only a slim number of musicians, and even fewer educators in the field treat music as the form of communication it truly is, opening people’s eyes to a whole new world of how to think and teach music.
Time and time again would my band director try to explain the emotion the works we play were attempting to get across not realizing his own hypocrisy that he taught in terms of strict rules rather then communication. Wooten first starts with adolescents, explaining how when first learning to speak we are not scolded for the mistakes we make, but rather comforted by a smile from our parents. In music it is quite the contrary, wrong notes are taught to be unacceptable from the start. From the first time we play something incorrectly rules are put in place to steer us away for making those “nasty” sounds again.
Compare this with speaking, when a young child says something that is not proper he is welcomed by laugh and allowed to continue exploring the sounds that are possible, learning what does and does not sound correct. This idea can come to life when shown in self-taught musicians that bring a whole unique style and technique to the art such as Jack White and countless others. That brings on another point, how do we know what sounds good? From the moment a life begins it is surrounded by people who excel in use of this verbal language that the child is most likely to speak.
The infant is submerged by professionals, using verbal commutation in nearly all aspects of life, giving the children a good idea of what he is suppose to sound like, while incorporating the previous idea of allowing exploration. In music this would be the equivalent of a jam session with some seasoned professional musicians where the student is given freedom to experiment and join in and finding a sound that will fit. It’s drastic difference from the way music is taught today but this shows its relevance by looking at the advantages one has by having another musician already in the family.
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Next, Wooten poses the idea that we are crippling young musicians ability to learn by starting them off with an overwhelming amount of rules and definitions. When first learning to speak there are no of given set rules, being that we would not understand them, and putting restrictions on what is not yet understood would just stunt the exploration, therefore stunt the growth and development of our verbal communication. The alphabet and how to read and write are some of the later things learned in comparison to the sounds one can produce.
By putting so many rules in place young musicians become unfamiliar with the sounds they can make, and what sounds good together and what does not. If instead of rules and practice young musicians should be influenced to play, to get to know the sounds of the instrument and learn how to connect sounds while branching out and experimenting. Personally, I have never learned more then when I had the chance to sit down in a drum circle was just told to jump in. They whole group was grooving to a beat started by one and then people would one by one join in once they heard something they could add.
Listening to the complex collective rhythm of the group and finding my place taught me more about playing music then the countless neoclassical percussion ensembles I have been in. The idea’s shared by Wooten completely transformed the way I personally see music and my whole thought process. So simple and instinctual yet one of the least practice methods of teaching. The relationship between verbal and musical communication has always been a thought in the back of my mind but never made so clear as after I watched this video.
It gave me a totally different sense of literacy, expanding my previous definition to a wide range of what it could mean and how it should be taught. Never before had I considered myself literate in music, nor had I considered the relationship that was so openly present between spoken word and music, not to mention the wide range of thought that you can apply from one to another with a nearly seamless transition. To think back to all of the difficulties I had learning in my early days as a student, and how nothing I learned truly clicked until I was in an advanced level theory class.
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I would be told I had played in the wrong key without any explanation of what a key even is. I was told that triplets did not exist in simple meter with out having to barrowing for a complex meter or that the implied overtones cause I9 to lead to ii7 leading to V11 and finally to I. Getting lost in the jargon? So was I. The complexities that the rules of music place on a young student with out explanation until upper level theory had given me a new respect for the natural process of learning that is imbedded in all of us, and how using it we can become literate in languages at an accelerated pace.
In conclusion, seeing the director correlations between the language of music and verbal language was an eye opener. It was like seeing something that had been not only been right in front of me the whole time, but also naturally engraved in all human. It has taught me literacy comes in many forms, and that between all forms of literacy there are similarities connecting them not only in reading and writing but the way they are naturally learned.
With this new idea in my head I have approached music in a totally new way more willing to just play and listen for what I think sounds good rather then reading notes on a page. I will sit and play guitar until I get the sound I hear in my head rather then looking up how to do so from a youtube video. This idea paired with my knowledge of music theory has a drastic acceleration on my expeditions on learning new and unknown instruments and will continue to change my style pervious conceptions on my primary instruments.
