Firstly I focus in some detail on two particular teachers, Bill and Frank. A comparison between the two is helpful for the purposes of illustration since their learning histories are in many ways quite similar, yet their teaching practices very different.
Frank had a long and not particularly successful history of music learning
at school, mainly on the trumpet: ʻI had private lessons in school and played in the orchestra and sang in the choir and all that stuff, learned to read musicʼ. He recalled his trumpet lessons as being ʻdry and dustyʼ, and ʻhatedʼ the tutor book he was expected to study; what he was invited to play in the school orchestra ʻdidnʼt sound like musicʼ. He didnʼt get the chance at school to be what he really
wanted to be, namely a jazz trumpeter. It was only several years after leaving school that his interest in playing music again was energised by (repeatedly) seeing the film ʻThe Blues Brothersʼ, and listening to a recording which accompanied the film:
That had lots of harmonica on it, and I just thought: "That is such a sexy sound, I really want to do that", and they were playing this bluesy jazzy
stuff that I wanted to do but could never do on trumpet. [Frank]
This led him to investigate ʻwhere the music came fromʼ, and he tracked down early recordings of ʻSonny Boy Williamson and Sonny Terry and all those guysʼ. In doing so, he came to a conclusion: ʻI just thought I have to get a harmonica, it's very simple, the road ahead is now clearʼ.
Meanwhile, Bill volunteered for the cello when he was ʻabout eight or soʼ;
as far as he could remember, this was just out of ʻcuriosityʼ. He took both shared lessons at school and individual lessons with a private teacher, and studied for grade exams: ʻI think I got up to about grade 5 on that, did the theory examʼ. However: ʻI pretty soon figured out that the cello wasn't the instrument for meʼ. As we have already seen, he was aware that playing the cello ʻled into an orchestraʼ, and while he did play in youth orchestras, he had reservations: ʻthat was, you know, that was good, but it wasnʼt music that I liked listening toʼ. He really wanted to be playing punk rock, and as such he abandoned the cello and started playing electric bass:
I think a friend of mine got one, my best friend who lived up the street from
me, cos he wanted to play in a band, and I picked it up one day, and
decided within about ten minutes that I could play this, this was quite do-able, so [laughter]. [Bill]
He emphasised both learning by ear and the excitement of making up oneʼs own music:
At first...I just used to listen to records and play along, pick the bass line out, and play along with it. I think my friend he bought a tutor book, one of these 'learn to play rock' books, with a flexidisk in the front of it, so I
learning tab, cos the music the band I played in obviously, you never read
any music you just made it up didn't you, you write your own songs, that
was the exciting thing about it. So I didn't bother, at first I didn't bother learning to read music on it, for it specifically, I just learned by ear really. [Bill]
Similarly, Frank began ʻtootling aroundʼ on the harmonica without having
much idea of what to do. He ʻwent to see some bands, getting more into music, and saw some people playing harmonica live, and thought aha, this is
interestingʼ. In the process he saw a well-known blues harmonica player, which was a revelation:
It was a bit like the scene from The Blues Brothers, I see the light! I see
the light! I had to go and speak to him, and I booked some lessons with
him. [Frank]
While the ʻlessonsʼ were of limited help in practical terms, the experience was ʻvery inspirationalʼ: ʻI went out and bought some other harmonicas, I think he lent me a record, so I started playing - and then I just really didn't put it down at allʼ. Within a year of starting to play he answered an advertisement for a
harmonica player, and found himself playing in a band, a situation in which ʻyouʼre forced to learnʼ. He described using his ear to pick out suitable blues riffs from recordings and emphasised how motivated he was: ʻI was driven to
achieve my aims, and my aim was to be in a band, be on a stageʼ.
Frank attributed his ability on the instrument to ʻdoing it a lotʼ, and regarded listening, experimenting, having periods of tuition with various
teachers and playing in bands as being all ʻparts of the picture, I canʼt say which is more importantʼ. He described his playing and, subsequently, teaching career as ʻvery eclecticʼ:
I've been having to fit the harmonica into a huge range of different situations, completely different situations, it's been a very wide, a very
broad learning. [Frank]
Bill also described a powerful urge to master the electric bass. After his punk band split up, his bass guitar playing continued to develop as a result of
determined practice. In particular, the distinctive sound of the bass player Mark King from the band Level 42 was a major inspiration: ʻhow on earth is he doing that on the bass, I want to do that, I've got to find out how to do thatʼ. His new band was heavily influenced by listening to ʻproper "muso" musicʼ, and although initially this was far out of reach of their abilities, his musical aspirations - based on learning by ear - clearly drove him on:
Bill: It was way, way beyond - you know what I mean, don't you? [laughter]
Q: I know exactly what you mean!
Bill: Way beyond what we could accomplish, but it didn't put us off you
know, and I spent hours and hours and hours listening to these Level 42
records, getting it off, and I did actually do it.
Although he went on to be a full-time double bass player in musical theatre, he was very aware that the skills he needed for his career could only have
developed through learning in different ways:
Right from that first gig in the theatre, I just realised I could do that, there
was no problem about it...cos I had experience in the orchestra of
watching a conductor, that's quite important, and reading music obviously,
you know, I can do that. So it's the two things, but it's having the rhythmic feel for show music, it's not the same as orchestral playing in the rhythmic
sense, you've got to be a band player with an orchestral mentality almost,
you know, it's a combination of things. [Bill]
The determination to master his instrument transferred from electric to
double bass. At around the same time as buying an instrument, he heard a recording of Ludwig Streicher playing solo double bass, which was to prove another major inspiration: ʻagain, it's this thing about, ooh I want to be able to do that, ah, that's such a nice sound, gorgeousʼ. However, his initial attempts to emulate the sound of Ludwig Streicher were not a success: ʻI got a bow, and I was trying to fiddle about, making a terrible soundʼ. He adopted the same strategies that had seemed to work for electric bass: ʻwatching other people playʼ, ʻlooking at photographs in a book, and listening to some recordsʼ.
However, this approach no longer served; double bass proved ʻa lot harderʼ. He seemed driven by his own dissatisfaction:
Never really been happy with what I could play, I'd just completely stopped bothering about bass guitar at all, I didn't do any practice on it, I wasn't interested in modern styles of bass guitar playing or any of that caper any more, it was just all double bass, really was interested in the sound of it and how could I get better at playing it. [Bill]
As such he had consistently looked for professional help to improve his playing, and after passing Grade 8, had sought out increasingly prestigious teachers.
Thus we can see that the learning histories of Bill and Frank are in many
key respects quite similar. They both had a history of formal tuition which
involved learning (that is, being taught) instruments and playing music that were not what they wanted at the time, and which were abandoned. Each had
moments of revelation when they heard a particular sound that engaged them, in the process realising what musical path they should be taking; they pursued their goals with great energy and commitment. They both started learning their chosen instruments by ear from records, but they also sought tuition to help them, and both believed that how they had ended up as musicians was the result of a wide range of influences and experiences. One might imagine, if learning histories do indeed have such an influence on teaching, that these similarities between Bill and Frank might result in broadly similar approaches to teaching.