Firstly, Bennett stresses the importance of recorded music as a resource,
in particular the ability to play parts of a recording ʻover and over againʼ, thus allowing specific segments of a song to be identified and copied aurally. This concentrated listening tends to happen in private, and thus at a pace that suits the learner: ʻIt is the conjunction of naive determination and the controllable repetition of recordings which makes an individualʼs song-getting skills possible (Bennett, 1980: 134-5). He argues that commercial recordings serve as ʻformal notation systemsʼ, texts which have shaped the way contemporary popular musicians listen and play.
Others researchers take a similar stance. For example, in her study of
ʻsong-gettingʼ from a recording is a private interaction with music one likes and is familiar with. Lars Lilliestam is not studying rock music specifically, but rather making music ʻby earʼ. He too identifies recordings as a key source of songs and, more generally, of musical ʻbuilding blocksʼ - ʻriffs, solo phrases, chord sequences and rhythmsʼ (Lilliestam, 1996: 204) - that can be used in a variety of contexts. Green draws on her own interviews of 14 ʻpopularʼ musicians and acknowledges that copying recordings by ear is ʻby far the overriding learning practice for the beginner popular musician, as is already well known (Green, 2002: 60). Like Lilliestam, she sees this practice as generating, not just basic technical facility, but also ʻfundamental building-blocks in compositional
skillsʼ (ibid: 75). However, she also emphasises the importance of different kinds of listening in the making of a popular musician. In several cases the musicians she studied, while deliberately listening to and copying recordings:
Also emphasized a less conscious approach...which has more to do with
enculturation into and enjoyment of music than with any disciplined or
systematic learning practice. (ibid: 67)
She points out too that musicians have always learned by listening and copying; the solitary use of recordings has become commonplace as widespread
communal music-making has disappeared as a social context for learning.
In line with existing research, the idea of copying recordings was evident among the musicians I interviewed. Recordings played a crucial role in the learning histories of these musicians, in the specific sense of being a ʻtextʼ or ʻscoreʼ that they could use as a source of musical material to copy and play along with, and also as a way of hearing music and finding styles and songs that appealed.
Some of their enculturation occurred simply through hearing music during
their childhoods. Ed grew up ʻhearing Beatles songsʼ around the house: ʻmy dad...used to listen to a lot of music, and still does listen, my mum does as wellʼ. Andy was more active in seeking out music to listen to:
Mum and dad had a record player, a radiogram, huge old thing and a
number of records, and I was absolutely fascinated by it, and my dad was
good enough, or trusted me enough, even as a kid of two, he taught me
how to use the record player, and I just loved it. [Andy]
Two years old seems very young to be using a record player, but clearly this is among Andyʼs earliest memories. This again is an example of a strong early engagement with music and autonomy as a learner, as well as an instance of a parent being at least a facilitator in this interest. Hearing music as they were growing up may well have given these musicians a taste for listening, but the styles they were hearing at the time did not seem to be reflected in the music they subsequently became passionate about; only Dave, Andy and, to a lesser extent Ed and Graham, became involved with the kind of music they heard around them at home. As I have already suggested, the fact that some kinds of music were explicitly not approved of by parents or teachers was in some cases part of that musicʼs appeal.
Often the specific listening that they engaged in when they were old
enough to choose was guided by a sound or a style which was completely new to them, or which had been half-heard but not consciously identified, and thus their subsequent listening served as research as much as enjoyment. For Frank as an adult, exploring the history of blues harmonica is what convinced him that he must learn himself. Having heard some examples almost by chance, he started investigating the sources of this style:
I could see that they did this song by Willie Mabon, so okay, I went to the second-hand record store, oh there's a Willie Mabon I'll take that, find out, so just researching some of the origins, and then I found all these old
guys, Sonny Boy Williamson and Sonny Terry and all those guys, and I
just thought “I have to get a harmonica”. [Frank]
Carl did things the other way round. He bought a banjo first at the age of ʻ16 or 17ʼ, purely on the basis of seeing some buskers performing in a style which he only later discovered was called bluegrass. In retrospect, the ʻvery cool musical sceneʼ in films like ʻBonnie and Clydeʼ and ʻDeliveranceʼ apparently may have had an effect: ʻI think it was kind of lurking there and then I saw it on
the street and it triggered somethingʼ [Carl]. To begin with, his listening was more about developing an awareness of a style of music than learning to play it:
I bought some records, and made a little bit more - not kind of, what
would be the word, not definite kind of things, but you know I got more of a feel for what I was trying to do rather than actually how to do it. [Carl] Even when he did find someone - his first teacher - to help him get to grips with the instrument, the most useful aspect of that help was not so much teaching him how to play, but in showing him what the music was about:
The best thing he did for me really was he gave me lots of tapes, he'd
record tapes for me of players, so I got a real strong feeling of who was playing what, you know what kind of banjo, cos it's like anything else, you get into five-string banjo and you realise it's not just bluegrass banjo, there's lots and lots of different types of bluegrass banjo, there's eras and there's kind of - so I got a real feel for that and I developed my own kind of opinions as to the kind of player that I wanted to be, just from listening to
music. [Carl]
There is a sense here that, to begin with at least, being able to play what you are listening to is less important than absorbing it, to use as a reference point or a goal. Bill spoke in similar terms; after initially playing punk rock, his tastes began to change:
I was getting into like, a lot of Level 42, you know, Mark King and that sort
of thing, so it was more, we were listening to Tower of Power, proper
ʻmusoʼ music, it was way, way beyond, you know what I mean don't you
[laughter]...; way beyond what we could accomplish, but it didn't put us off,
you know. [Bill]
Recorded music then served as a source of inspiration and an aural guide to the kinds of musicians they wanted to be.
Copying and playing along to records is often seen as the archetypal
informal learning activity, and certainly several of this group (though by no means all of them) mentioned it as an important part of their learning. Ed conceded that playing along to records was ʻquite helpfulʼ, while Bill primarily learned the electric bass by just such a method: ʻI just used to listen to records
and play along, pick the bass line out, and play along with itʼ. Dave began ʻplaying by earʼ and using a variety of recorded music as a resource; as another fan of punk music he attempted to copy the keyboard parts from The Stranglers, although at the time this was ʻa bit out of reachʼ. He also ʻgot interestedʼ in blues and boogie-woogie and ʻdeveloped a lot of, you know, doing boogie-woogie bass linesʼ, picking them out from records by ear. Helen recalled:
Playing along with my mumʼs records, like - really embarrassingly...Nic
Kershaw and stuff like that [laughter]. Just playing little, you know working out harmony lines to it, and always just being allowed to play this recorder,
is what I was doing. [Helen]
However, while they all stressed that learning by ear was fundamental to
how they became musicians, I was slightly surprised at how little emphasis they placed specifically on copying and playing along with records. This could be because at the time this was so natural and obvious as to not, now, be worth mentioning; as Green (2002: 60-61) points out, young people seem to have spontaneously adopted this approach to learning world-wide without anyone suggesting it to them. Moreover, for most of them it was a long time ago; they may have been overlooking an early stage of their musical learning that they now take for granted. Yet copying recordings may be only one aspect of developing the ability to play by ear; using recordings as ʻtextsʼ surely does develop a musicianʼs aural acuity, but one needs to have a certain level of aural discernment in the first place to be able to take advantage of recordings in this way. If this was indeed the participantsʼ ʻoverriding learning practiceʼ (ibid: 60) they did not emphasise the fact.