Did music lessons at school help with your musical life?

[lurksalot]

1 hour ago, Leonard Smalls said:

Music lessons in my schools (70s-early 80s) were largely a waste of time...

There was nothing in primary, just a bit of singing at assembly. 

And in secondary we had music in years 1-3, 1 lesson a week. They consisted of Mr Bird playing some music (usually Young Person's Guide, or The Planets, or for a contemporary feel (!), Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Yawn). Then folks would say if they liked it or not, though because he wasn't particularly good at discipline this usually meant him shouting above a general cacophony of rude comments. And then we'd do some very rudimentary theory. This theory would be tested at annual exam time. However, they discovered I had private piano lessons after I got 100% in the first exam (my mum's a piano teacher) so from then on I got different exams from everybody else - though this was usually about grade 1 theory when I'd already done grade 5... So music wasn't really a thing for us at school.

Though in 6th form, Mr. Q had the bright idea of forming a one-off band to play before a viewing of that banned anti-nuke film (wot I can't remember the name of). I played keys, Cossack played guitar and Mouse played his violin bass - someone rattled a tambourine in the background while we did a couple of BarclaysBankHarvest and Dylan songs. I was so fascinated by Mouse's bass that I took it up when I got to Uni - and strangely it turned out that the Hofner bass belonged to Mouse's brother, our very own @lurksalot!

My experience was quite similar @Leonard Smalls would you believe 😁 except we started with Mr Fogel the chalk chucker and then Crystal tips.

but yes Kevin Q did like the music for his spiritual celebrations . 
 

a bit odd that music was so low in the proceedings considering the headmaster’s son was one David Balfe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Balfe

 

but then , he didn’t go to our school 😂😂

[SteveXFR]

GCSE music lessons at school put me off learning more. It only covered jazz and classical. Anything else was "not real music". 

Our music teacher was very old and wouldn't even acknowledge anything modern.

[Nail Soup]

On 04/09/2020 at 17:18, Nail Soup said:

Just thinking back to music lessons at school (back in the seventies when I was at 'big school' aged 11-16)

I can say I learned absolutely nothing that has helped me in my musical life.

All our teacher did was to stand in front of a blackboard and make us learn the different clef and key signitures on the stave and that kind of thing. Never touched an instrument, occasionaly heard (classical) music and rarely did anything practical. Thinking back I'm getting angry at how bad those lessons were.

It wasn't till I left school and got my first bass that I learned anything. Essentially taught myself from books and friends.

 

Anyone have similar experience?

Or a better experience?

 

My (bad) experience was late 70's/early 80's at high school.

[Gareth Hughes]

Yes in many ways. I was blessed with being taught by Mr Hunter. Whilst a devout classical head, with everything else deemed noise, he did allow me to play a video of Jimmy Page’s theremin solo in our class once.

 

Main lesson I got was following scores. This was long before I was reading music, but with those little yellow books of full scores by yer Beethovens and Mozarts, he’d put the music on, we would follow along and after a few minutes he’d stop the record and ask - what bar are we on? Bonus points if you could work out the beat and note. In a nutshell that showed my how written music worked. Eternally thankful.

[Newfoundfreedom]

Definitely! 

 

I've lost track of how many times I've bashed out Three Blind Mice on the Recorder at jam nights. 

[Rosie C]

20 hours ago, Newfoundfreedom said:

Definitely! 

 

I've lost track of how many times I've bashed out Three Blind Mice on the Recorder at jam nights. 

 

I did a gig on recorder last Saturday - through the house PA in a music bar to a pretty good reception. I didn't do three blind mice. I've a try-out next week with a folk dance outfit on treble recorder, so lunchtime 'recorder club' in 1978-9 has actually served me pretty well. 

 

[russ.c]

We had music lessons aged 8 to 11 back in the mid eighties. Our music teacher was a somewhat gifted polymath who rocked on piano and taught about every subject going at school. I learned various sized recorders and how to read bass and treble clefts, but not an ounce of music theory. All we did was learn to sight read. So I didn't gain a true appreciation or understanding of music. Weird thinking back and analysing what actually happened and realising it was mostly pointless. It was paint by numbers. My young daughter's musical education will come from me instead, and I won't be relying on the school system to teach her.

[bassbiscuits]

Unfortunately not. I got into music at 12 by listening to Iron Maiden and Kiss records at the same time as our school music teacher was waffling on about the great composers which meant nothing to me.
 

There was no emphasis on participation or playing an instrument. It was alien to me. 

 

As a result I dropped school music at the earliest chance and did my own thing. As a consequence I’ve never learned to read or write music but have worked out most of what I’ve needed to know.