I have tried to situate this study in relation to the modest body of literature which is concerned directly with informal music learners and the ways they acquire their skills. This is not to dismiss the much greater amount of research into the world of formal music education and classical instrumental pedagogy. Just as musicians may learn in ways which belong to both formal and informal musical worlds, so research on formal, classical music learning may be relevant to informal learners too.
For example, if we consider the idea of self-recruitment, there is a considerable body of research on motivation and choice in music learning; OʼNeill and McPherson (2002) offer a helpful overview of recent findings. Informal learners are not alone in being highly motivated; Elizabeth Haddon for
instance interviews a wide range of working musicians and finds that ʻsomehow, often as a result of a particular experience, music becomes a passion, even an obsessionʼ (Haddon, 2006: 3). David Corkhill quotes a brass player who went on to teach in a conservatoire: ʻlike all musicians...when I was 17, 18, 19, I just had to do itʼ (Corkhill, 2005: 8). These comments could easily have been made by (and about) the informal learners in the present study. Equally, on the subject of tuition, the informantsʼ experiences find an echo in more general research. Susan OʼNeill suggests a disparity between the instruments that many young people want to learn and those that they are taught. Many children in her study who started lessons did not continue: ʻless than 35% of those children who played instruments in Y6 remained playing by the end of Y7 (OʼNeill, 2001: 4). According to OʼNeill, the children reported that:
the main reasons for giving up were that it became boring, and priorities
moved elsewhere. Children also rated practising and lessons which were
not enjoyable as strong reasons for giving up (ibid: 12).
Again, this sounds very much like the musicians I interviewed.
I have already suggested that being in control of what and how they
learned was crucial to the success of my sample, and this is an idea which resonates in much research literature about music education and beyond. In a major recent study involving 21 secondary schools and over 1,500 pupils at Key Stage 3, Green introduced elements of ʻinformal music learning practicesʼ into classroom music lessons, and found strong evidence to suggest that allowing pupils to make significant choices about repertoire and working methods greatly increased their levels of engagement and motivation:
The ʻnormalʼ approach [to learning] was seen to be both less enjoyable
and less pedagogically effective, precisely because it involved carrying out
instructions given by teachers. In other words, one of the reasons why
pupils indicated that they benefited from the project, in relation to both
motivation and educational achievement, was that they were granted the
autonomy to direct their own learning practices. (Green, 2008: 102)
Admittedly, pupils voluntarily learning instruments in their own time (and on their own terms) are not directly comparable to those who have been ʻgrantedʼ
autonomy within compulsory school music classes. Nevertheless, Greenʼs study is at least suggestive of the idea that ʻbeing taughtʼ may in itself have a negative effect on motivation.
Other writers suggest a similar relationship between autonomy and
motivation (Hallam, 1998; Renwick and McPherson, 2002), and this relationship surely extends beyond the confines of music learning. For example, in what amounts to an intriguing social and educational experiment, the teacher and writer James Herndon recalls his first year as a teacher working at a ʻproblemʼ school in California in the 1960s. One class in particular, the dreaded 9D, proves simply unteachable, and indeed uncontrollable. He settles instead (contrary to school policy) for letting them amuse themselves within agreed, if modest, boundaries of behaviour. However, after several months of this regime, a substantial number of students become spontaneously seized by a series of fads which, as it happens, involve considerable amounts of reading, writing, and discussion: the very activities Herndon, as their English teacher, was initially trying to encourage. At one point he observes them arranging themselves (in just five chaotic minutes) to read a play together, a feat of classroom
organisation which he doubts would have been possible even for ʻan experienced teacher with a machine gunʼ (Herndon, 1997: 167), and which leads to exactly the kind of ʻeducationalʼ activity he had never been able to force on the class himself. Although Herndonʼs circumstances are very different to those discussed by Green, his conclusions are similar: telling children what to do is always liable to provoke ʻsome impulse of protest in the tribeʼ (Opie and Opie, 1969: 11). However, when children feel themselves to be in control, and can actively choose what and how to learn, they can bring considerable energy and enthusiasm to their own education.
Thus there are occasions when research into classical, formal
instrumental learning is relevant to musicians learning outside this tradition. However this relevance is often by coincidence, rather than by design. Most research does not concern itself with such musicians who are often, in effect, invisible:
One of the most striking features of music, and one which sets it apart from most other educational activities, is the occurrence of informal
learning outside the formal system, although it has to be said that one
could be forgiven for missing this aspect, if one relied entirely on the
research literature. Although there has been significant research interest in factors related to learning musical instruments, the highly selective nature
of the samples involved is often unacknowledged...Much of the instrument
tuition in the UK is concerned with Western classical music and so almost
all research into teaching and learning with musical instruments is located within this cultural domain. Few writers feel the need to acknowledge this
constraint and to discuss the factors that such specificity might assume.
(Cope, 2002: 93-94)
This selectivity can indeed be misleading if not made explicit. To take one example which has already been referred to, ʻEnvironmental factors in the development of musical performance skill over the life spanʼ by Davidson et al. (1997) seems largely preoccupied with highly able students at prestigious institutions. This is not unusual; recent examples would include Reid (2001), Burwell (2005), Purser (2005) and Presland (2005), among many others. In this case, Davidson et al. consider five groups of learners, one of which is studying at a ʻspecialist music schoolʼ, another which is composed of students who had applied to this school but were rejected, while a third include children whose parents had merely enquired about entry to the school. It appears that all the learners they refer to are having lessons; indeed it seems that ʻbeing taughtʼ is implicitly synonymous with being a ʻlearnerʼ. Those who give up lessons are seen as having given up playing altogether. Moreover assessment is entirely through classical examinations:
Objective differences in musical competence between the five groups
were confirmed by examining their achievements in Associated Board and
Guildhall School of Music Grades. (Davidson et al., 1997: 191)
Thus being a successful learner equates to being taught and passing grade exams. It seems that Davidson et al. were looking for (and indeed found) very different kinds of learners from the ones I studied. If we map their criteria for musical success onto my sample, the results are somewhat misleading. Several of my participants did not have regular lessons at the relevant age and thus may well not have registered as musical learners at all; others who stopped having lessons would have been classed as ʻgiven-up instrumentalistsʼ while in
fact being highly motivated and successful learners. The groupʼs record of taking grade exams would also have led to conclusions about their ʻmusical competenceʼ that would have been far from ʻobjectiveʼ. Such assumptions about what constitutes successful musical learning may well exclude a whole
community of aspiring musicians.
Naturally enough, most music education research has tended to focus on
dedicated and highly skilled performers, often those grouped together in well- known schools and universities. This certainly simplifies the problem of gaining access, while focusing on high-profile learners in renowned institutions also adds a certain authority to the research; such gifted musicians surely have more to teach us than only mildly interested learners and mediocre players. Becker conceives a ʻhierarchy of credibilityʼ which leads researchers to talk only to the most highly ranked members of organisations (since they must know ʻmoreʼ) and to study the most prestigious institutions (since they must be the ʻbestʼ). This ʻuninspected credoʼ, Becker argues, held that:
when you studied one of the major social institutions, you studied a really
“good” one so that you could see what made it good. That would make it
possible for other institutions of that type to adopt the good practices you
had detected, and that would raise the standard of that segment of the
organizational world. (Becker, 1998: 94)
The rationale for studying unusually gifted learners is not generally made explicit. However, the ʻenvironmental factorsʼ, ʻpractice strategiesʼ, ʻteacher characteristicsʼ or other influences which seem to have conspired to produce a highly able student at a specialist school, or a professional musician teaching in a conservatoire, may not, unfortunately, have the same effect on everyone.
For example, Davidson et al.ʼs research, amongst other things,
emphasises the role of parents in supporting learning and encouraging practising, while suggesting that the personality of a childʼs first teacher may well be important in motivating the child to continue having lessons. These findings were not replicated in the present study, but may in fact not apply in the same way to all musical learners. Where a learner apparently has both their
instrument and their learning strategy chosen for them, often at a very early age, considerable encouragement and support may be required to persevere. Similarly, Gembris and Davidson give an account of the environmental
influences currently thought to be important to the success of instrumental learners. While they also stress that parental support is crucial, teachers too play an important role:
not only because teachers transmit musical abilities but also because they
more or less influence musical tastes and values and are role models and
hold a key position with regard to motivation - for good or for bad.
(Gembris and Davidson, 2002: 23)
Again, the idea that music teachers serve as important role models finds little support in the present study. However, the environmental factors which lead to success in formal, classical instrumental tuition and the passing of grade exams may not necessarily be relevant to autonomous, self-directed learners who choose to study on their own terms.
This kind of unacknowledged specificity can take many different forms. To
give another example, Victoria Rowe (2008: 331) suggests that music teaching is generally viewed as a ʻfeminineʼ profession. Male musicians may well be ʻconfident professional performers, a stereotypically “masculine” role, and yet may choose or need to adopt the feminised role of instrumental teacherʼ; this, she suggests may account in part for a certain reluctance among men to
become teachers. However, I would argue that music teaching only looks like a feminised profession to someone teaching classical music. As mentioned in section 2.2, it certainly seems that the majority of classical instrumental teachers are women, yet the cultural world of learning, playing and teaching pop and rock is overwhelmingly male. There is widespread evidence for this beyond the present study; for example, the Bristol Institute of Modern Music (www.bimm.co.uk/bristol) teaches aspiring performers in contemporary styles to degree level, and its website currently lists 26 instrumental and vocal tutors, of whom only four are female (all of whom teach singing). I would suggest that, among popular musicians, instrumental teaching is in fact a masculine
profession, and that if anyone is disadvantaged here by their gender it is women rather than men.
Therefore I would suggest that music education research needs to be
specific and transparent in acknowledging what kind of learning, what kind of achievement, and what kind of musical world is being studied. Considerable caution is required when trying to extrapolate the results of research from one musical and cultural context to another.