Teaching the Mob

09:02 PM June 03 2009
angrymobfa2
Lately my students have been talking to me a lot about guitar ensembles, either at their middle school or at the high school (where it serves as a bona fide class during the day). Which is cool and exciting for them, and serves to remind me that, regardless of my enthusiasm for the prospect, there will never be a Piano Hero video game (well, there sort of is). Or, even more sadly, Bassoon Hero.

Regardless, this brings up a lot of stuff relating to music education (and just education in general, see also:team sports) and why kids in high school jazz programs get to play in a big band when I know of only handful of groups with 7 plus members that play jazz locally. When you teach music to a group you have to get the group involved, and give them something to do that they sort of like, so they don’t realize that there are more of them than you and turn on you.

In keyboard classes they usually have a bunch of kids at keyboards with headphones, so that it becomes a large-scale individual practice session, which serves to remind me that unless you’re the Beatles recording “A Day In The Life”, no one wants to hear a bunch of pianos play a D major chord simultaneously. My theory (not mine really) is that at a certain age (teenagers) there are ways to motivate kids that are fear-related, but not in a “learn this music or I’m going to lose it” way (my piano and guitar students aren’t scared of me anyway), and that usually involves the prospect of failure in front of people they know. This can involve duets (in smaller settings) or public performance. The problem for piano is that due to portability and amplification issues, it’s tough (though not impossible, I know) to get a group of kids playing at the same time on piano. So what’s the answer?

I played jazz, which allowed me to play with a drummer and feel more like a rock star than playing Bach did, but the theoretical learning curve of jazz is challenging for most kids. One thing that excites me is that as kids are consuming music more through video games, there is an opportunity to get them exposed to jazz and classical music more because the licensing fees are cheaper, which may drive more interest in ensemble playing, which may create more of instrument-based ensemble classes for all instruments. Then everyone will have the opportunity to be afraid of failing in front of their friends.
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