Will the year-in, year-out learning of music (instrument, singing, drumming, etc.) make you into… a better person?

OK, OK, it’s a loaded question. And a crowd-pleaser too, the kind of question an M.C. could bark to a packed auditorium just to hear a great big “YES” in return. We’re all “better people” for loving music, aren’t we?

Seem obvious? Well then, try making music a “core” curriculum item in schools, one that’ll stick when your government starts to prioritize military spending and “security” infrastructure over education.

And if you’re daring, make music central to your concept of education.

My hunch is that you’ll have to find better words than “music makes children into better people” to sell your idea, no matter how much we all agree on the universal virtues of music.

character training

So how do you do it? How do you convince people that music is of central importance to education?

I’ll argue that music will forever be relegated to “secondary curriculum” status in education (what is also happening to phys ed these days) until the concept of “character training” is revived in educational philosophy, and given mainstream respectability.

In other words, we have to change our concept of education.

Seems like a radical proposition? Or does “character training” sound a little too much like boot camp, or religious upbringing?

…et la musique

Perhaps the best way to demonstrate how music and character training go hand in hand is to look at a real-world example.

Canada’s National Film Board has produced a fine little gem of a film on this very subject. It’s called …et la musique.

The film, released in French, follows three kids – Alexis, 6 years old, Rachel 9 years old and Anne-Catherine, 11 years old – in their public school learning adventures at école primaire du Sacré-Coeur in Sherbrooke, Québec. And you guessed it: the school’s curriculum focus is music education.

Having seen the film, I’ll try to encapsulate the experience and message it conveys.

First, filmmaker Michel Lam adopts the point of view of children in the school environment as they discover socializing, teachers, educational expectations, group discipline, and school-yard play with new friends. The film is set for the most part in the school’s classrooms, practice rooms, halls and playground.

Nothing especially novel here. But because the film eschews story development and favors “day-in-the-life”, scene to scene transitions, we’re slowly made aware of the real star of the film: the educational setting itself, and the special relationships that emerge between children and teachers.

Pierre Foglia, who reviewed the film for La Presse says it best:

“…On comprend tout de suite que ces enfants-là ne deviendront pas des virtuoses, ce n’est pas l’idée non plus. L’idée, magnifique, et même grandiose, est celle qui est au coeur de tout projet éducatif: apprendre à apprendre. On comprend tout de suite que ces enfants-là seront meilleurs en français, en sciences, en mathématiques, grâce à la musique certes, mais on comprend aussi que cela pourrait être grâce à l’équitation, au tricot, à la littérature… Je dis n’importe quoi exprès pour qu’on m’entende bien: apprendre à apprendre à travers une passion.”

In a nutshell, this film is about “learning to learn“, or becoming passionate about learning by developing a life-long pursuit. Foglia’s statement goes even further: he implies that the success or failure of any educational project should be judged on how well people “learn how to learn”.

All fine and well, but perhaps we’re putting the cart before the horse here: is Lam really making a case for quality education, or the ideals of pedagogy? Or is he simply concerned with making a loving portrait of kids learning music at school, as a tribute to his own experience as a child going to school at Sacré-Coeur?

I’ll let you be the judge of this. I for one, thought the picture of music education that emerged from the film was slightly idealized, almost isolated from other areas of character development. For better and for worse, the film focuses on the interaction between children and their teachers, with our attention shifting between directive vs. supportive approaches to music teaching. Does this setting truly create a “love of learning”? For a few, for many?

Of course, only Sacré-Coeur alumni can answer this question. As for Michel Lam, whatever “case” he might be making with …et la musique, he’s not in the least bit preachy about it, and more than a little bit poetic.

a modest proposal

Returning to our initial question: how do we “upgrade” our concept of education? If subject-based “core” curricula remain the norm in public education, how does one make the case for change?

If you’re having trouble with the idea, perhaps we should look at other institutions that are undergoing major brain-shifts.

For example, health care: we’re hearing more and more about a “whole-person approach” to treating illness and disease these days. Not just from alternative medicine practitioners, but from traditional “authorized” medical institutions, hospitals, universities, etc.

amateurmusicians.net‘s modest proposal? To do the same in education: reexamine our focus on knowledge and skill acquisition in light of this “whole person” paradigm.

If that sounds like New Age talk, it’s not. “Whole person approaches” in practice simply means using multiple models instead of a single authorized body of knowledge to solve problems. In health care the multiple-model approach is called “integrative medicine“.

And perhaps this is where music education – and music teachers in particular – will lead the way into a new revolution of “integrative learning” in education. Because you can’t teach music successfully without understanding your students’ music itch, and how to scratch it.

I learned about Carlin’s new never-to-be-captured-on-HBO routine in a wonderful interview piece by Jay Dixit for the Psychology Today blog done just nine days before Carlin’s death.

There it is, right at the end of the interview:

Dixit: So the last question is: What are you working on now?

Carlin: I have a piece of material that I’m doing on stage these days. I’m in Las Vegas now. I do weekends here, I do four nights on weekends as part of my year of touring. I go mostly to concert halls and theaters, around 80 or 90 of ‘em a year. But I come down here around three or four. So I’m down here. This piece of material called, “There’s Too Much Fucking Music,” which is my way of looking at how much music there is, I guess. It’s just my way of looking at the world and saying something that people don’t notice and figuring out a new way. And it’s filled with exaggeration and stuff. I’m doing that on stage a little bit. I’m not giving myself any pressure.”

O Irony of ironies for amateurmusicians.net! Carlin’s “new routine” successfully captures a perspective I’ve long been trying to articulate through this blog, in a single sentence:

There’s just too much music goin’ around these days!

on training to be an artist a human

The Dixit interview is valuable for many reasons – not the least being its blessed good timing, days before Carlin’s death. For me though, it especially stands out as an example of the rich results you can get from a well-prepared Q&A, conducted with someone you truly admire.

Kinda like a good Playboy interview, minus the pompous titties.

The essential lessons I got from this Carlin interview:

1. what his working methods were
2. his concept of the comedian
3. how method and mission inform one another

On Carlin’s concept of the comedian: a jester should always aim to be a court jester. A comedian should speak directly to power. A comedian should take risks. Reputation risks are therefore the holy grail of the comedian-cum-social-commentator.

With this in mind, we see that training to be a comedian is not simply a matter of coming up with good jokes. Rather, it’s about cultivating a point of view on the world, life, on absolutely everything, and doing so with courage. Thanks to Carlin therefore, I now understand that comedy is one of the many “genres” of human knowledge, one which leverages the “strategy of surprise” to teach important insights.

My own fave approach to obtaining insight is through cultivating paradox. In case you hadn’t already guessed.

So what did George Carlin do all these years, behind the scenes? He trained himself to be perceptive, as a life-long occupation. Indeed, the Dixit interview reveals that Carlin had a process for training his observational sense, a process he refined (and upgraded) over the course of his 50 years in the field of entertainment.

This attitude seems to me to be the psychological and spiritual key to the committed artist, whether amateur or professional. Without which you spend your life swimming in other people’s soundtracks.

where’s George?

All said and done, we certainly haven’t finished hearing from George Carlin. Therefore let this post be a message-in-a-bottle for all you Carlin fanatics out there: if you should ever come across a recorded version of the above-mentioned routine – text, audio, video – please forward me a copy! Or post it on Youtube!

With Carlin’s wise (and blunt) words, I suspect we’ll once again remember why we created the “off” button, and why we’re so afraid to use it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Person George Carlin

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This blog figures in my accomplishments list. And though in many ways I don’t really qualify as a true blogger (I don’t post with enough regularity), underneath it all I try to keep a consistent approach.

“And what consistency might that be, Mr. Eclectica”? you ask.

Well, I’d say it’s an underlying ethic. I’m only motivated to research, write and post when I’ve got some insight to share. So this blog is definitely not a news or current events blog.

I’m also motivated by a sense of mission. Which goes like this:

WHEN YOU’RE TIRED OF THE COSTUME PARTY…

What I’m advocating through my writing, at bottom, can be best described as “sensibility training through learning a musical instrument“.

The idea is very simple. I’m reminded of it everytime I watch a YouTube clip of Bill O’Reilly – or any other traumatized (and traumatizing) war-monger.

What does the world need more of? Sensible People (and if that sounds too Brit-snotty to you: Perceptive People).

I start from a premise of basic perceptual awareness:

Q – What happens when your communication environment saturates your senses all day (and night) long?

A – My hunch: you become numb and your senses “close off”. Your receptiveness to new experiences atrophies.

Paradoxically, in this environment you need more and more intense stimulus to even feel alive, and to know who you are. “Culture” is therefore experienced as a closed loop of identity consumption and various forms of media addiction.

That’s what I mean by “the costume party”.

look at me! I’m worth loving, too!

Important to the amateurmusicians.net approach: I offer this concept of “sensibility training” in contrast to the more common motive of “getting the attention I need by putting on a musical act”.

This is not out of some higher-than-thou moral qualm, but because the attention-seeking ethic runs counter to the process of sensibility training to begin with.

It’s basic psychology, really.

Though self-expression is one of the key values of sensibility training, it’s narrow self-expression – or narcissism – that still dominates the airwaves today, a sure sign of our culture’s deep habit of sensory closure.

In contrast: what does it mean to seriously devote time and energy to learning a musical instrument, and a specific repertoire/genre? What is this learning doing for the learner?

open vs. closed

In terms of training, you may be wondering if there’s a distinction to be made between “sensibility” and “sensitivity”.

There is, unequivocally.

“Sensitivity training” refers to workplace initiatives that “help” employees learn the habits of thinking and doublespeak mandated by political correctness, to disallow “out of place” private judgment in a public context.

The habit that is learned at root is self-censorship. Which is what a lot of “sensible people” learn to do at a young age, thanks to “good rearing” and public education.

In opposition to this well-intentioned but insidious dogma, sensibility training is about getting people to gain self-knowledge – and knowledge about the world – by using rich, open and expressive means of communication.

Literally, sensibility training means: training the senses, learning a culture of the senses.

With regards to learning music, this means specifically: the process of painstakingly learning an instrument, and choosing a repertoire. The key skills and attitudes are: active listening and comparative musical analysis.

To obtain good results, a multi-genre and multi-disciplinary approach is key. Why?

As a musician, if you dedicate yourself to only one genre/style, you are reinforcing:

1. a tribal identity
2. a marketing category

As a learner, if you follow only one set of learning methods for each music style, you are reinforcing:

1. a fundamentalist attitude for one method over another
2. dependence over autonomy and self-direction

and before your attention drifts to that girl wearing a tight yellow t-shirt

Needless to say, there is a lot more to say on this topic, and this post should only be seen as a reminder of the basic motive for this blog.

In the final analysis: the discussion that needs to happen is on the significant role that a serious musician can play in today’s world, beyond cultural diversion.

That role to me is, in a nutshell: sensibility training. For both the musician and his/her audience.

Funny funny, but were it only that simple, I say!

For, who has access to “one or two sonatas daily”, except… anybody with a digital audio player and the appropriate mp3 files or CD’s in his/her collection.

And this is exactly the assumption made by this tongue-in-cheek joke. Press the play button, and let Mozart take over your wounded psyche.

Right?

mozac prozac muzak

Certainly the idea of prerecorded instrumental music as mood enhancer is nothing new. In terms of industrial applications, music as mood-enhancement – or Muzak – is alive and well today in the service and retail sectors of the economy, as well as in many large organizations.

And the pharmacological equivalent is, of course, Prozac, the world’s most famous mood-enhancement pill – which the above faux-label is parodying, in a gesture of critique of our Prozac Nation.

To be sure. But as social commentary goes, how self-aware is this joke? For, whether we’re popping blue pills or music pills, shouldn’t we be asking: is the “instant mood-enhancement” way of life truly improving our lives?

In fact, has it ever? Like, if you’re hearing a Mozart sonata while being put on hold on your bank’s customer service phone line, does it truly relieve your stress?

music for the (moral uplift of the) masses

Yes, popping pills for every real or perceived ailment is here to stay. But as it pertains to music, how did this expectation of instant uplift become so widespread?

In reviewing the historical roots of the mood-enhancement view of music, I’m reminded of a little-known essay by the American idealist philosopher Manly P. Hall, called The Therapeutic Value of Music, published by the Philosophical Research Society way back in 1982.

In this small tract, Hall reviews various philosophies of music (mostly from Ancient Greece) , with an emphasis on the study of music’s effect on the human psyche. He notes that the therapeutic effects of music were well-known and understood in the Ancient world, and that philosophers thought of music as an “applied science” for mental health, what we would today call an “expressive therapy“.

The main difference between the ancients and the moderns being that the ancients thought music, in its everyday use, as integral to everyone’s mental equilibrium, whereas we moderns use music therapy approaches in cases of pathology and illness.

And this is precisely where Hall sides with the ancients. First, his description of the inner life of modern man is striking in its use of the Ancient Greek philosophical concept of psychic integrity, applied to the modern world:

Lack of personality integration also plays a part in the stress patterns of modern man. There is too much emphasis upon efficiency and not enough upon integrity. The individual is not equipped to meet shock and stress. He lacks self-control and self-directives. He is worried constantly by economic pressures due, at least in part, to the desperate effort to live beyond his means. Luxuries have become necessities, and the fear of debt hangs over millions of families. [...] We must realize that the intense struggle for economic survival has transformed our world into an economic battlefield. As in the case of most psychic disorder, the sufferer is his own worst enemy, and in many instances his troubles are due to his mental and emotional tensions. (The Therapeutic Value of Music, p. 24)

Having made a diagnosis of what ails us (economic insecurity due to debt financing), Hall goes on to suggest… the industrial application of the Ancients’ philosophy of music as the cure! That’s right, instead of suggesting corrective political action, Hall opts for the classic social engineering approach. You will no doubt be familiar with some of his prescriptions for “therapeutic music in industrial settings”:

First, as a therapy for nervous tension, the music should be heard rather than listened to. This means it must be played softly and the volume adjusted to the acoustical problem of the store or factory. If it is dominant and attracts direct attention, it becomes annoying and interferes with mental concentration. It may also conflict with the rhythm of industrial routine. Second, if the compositions played are too subjective, difficult or involved, they can cause concern or tip the listener into a negative mood. Also, unfamiliar melodies require more conscious attention and are therefore unadvisable. Third, background music – with a certain gentle insistence, pleasant and kindly, gracious and relaxed, and frequently repeated – becomes a suggestive therapy.

Fourth, problems of individual taste must be considered. When several thousand listeners listen at one time to a particular program, a common denominator of acceptance must be found. This involves the same type of thinking which endeavors to choose a popular program for radio or television. Experience shows that a certain type of music has the broadest type of appeal to every class of audience. Fifth, by trial and error it has been learned that jazz has little or no therapeutic value. If this seems to be an attack upon a popular music form, the outraged disciples of syncopation can take heart in the thought that grand opera is no better. Jazz is a stimulant and an irritant and so are all compositions featuring broken rhythms, dissonances, and exaggerated tempo. Most operatic selections require too much listening, as well as highly-trained acceptance and appreciation.

Further research has eliminated vocal music. Words do not always broadcast clearly, and the mind becomes actively intrigued and instinctively listens. Intense rhythms fatigue those who hear them and cause a positive reaction such as the effort to keep time with the feet or nodding the head. Semiclassical music, featuring persuasive melodies and familiar tunes – sometimes slightly nostalgic, is the more successful. A pleasant melodic line, carried mostly in the strings and not noticeable in the brass percussions, was found to be universally acceptable, fulfilling the old doctrine of Pythagoras. (The Therapeutic Value of Music, pp. 25-26.)

Does this sound like a program for the “psychic integration of the whole personality” to you? Or rather: the philosophy of elevator music?

from mood enhancement to sonic branding

It’s pretty clear to me that the model Hall prescribes in his Therapeutic Value of Music is what is known today as “easy-listening“. That is: that bland, formulaic, feel-good, endless-melody sonic streams that still pollute many of our indoor public environments today.

For most people, the entrenchment of elevator music in all spheres of public life is due to the successes of the Muzak Corporation. Indeed the word “Muzak” has come to be synonymous to elevator music, as “Kleenex” to snot rags.

This short video history of the Muzak Corporation briefly covers the corporation’s response to such intense negative branding:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’ve got a hunch that the Muzak Corporation’s radical makeover in the 1980′s has also something to do with the fact that the positive effects of easy-listening have been grossly over-estimated. I don’t know if such studies exist, but I bet one could establish a significant correlation between easy-listening music and an increase in ambient anxiety.

brave new leisure society

Perhaps Manly P. Hall and Muzak should be seen as products of the broadcast era, where the problem of mental health for the masses is viewed from above, and solutions are prescriptive. In other words, whether you’re popping Prozac, or your workplace broadcasts preselected playlists to optimize worker performance, the decisions about what’s best for everyone are made by expert psychologists.

To a great extent, this also still applies to the health sciences. In institutional contexts, therapeutic applications of music are in the hands of accredited experts in the field of music therapy, even if such applications are “personalized” and “patient-centered”.

But outside of the medical enclave, who’s privy to in-depth therapeutic uses of music? In other words: aside from your infinite mp3 playlists, how are you to meet your “personality integration needs” with music?

Taking our cue from Manly P. Hall, perhaps the answers may lie, after all, in a re-examination of the Ancient philosophy of music. But instead of a prescriptive approach, perhaps we could nurture age-old insights about music’s therapeutic properties from the point of view of learning to play an instrument, with self-expression as our goal, or deeper motive.

Here, I will give psychologist John Sloboda the last word:

We need living and socially relevant forms to replace the church choir and the village brass band. Recent pleas by major figures in classical music for the government to reverse cuts in school instrumental provision may have come too late, if the social institutions that support music making outside the academy are no longer there.

I have no idea what these social institutions might be, what they might build on, or how they can be encouraged. Psychology cannot provide the answer to such questions. All it can do is indicate some of the conditions that must be met if these institutions are to enable the flourishing of individual development.

The evidence [...] indicates to me that performance potential could be unlocked in millions of people if we could recreate social institutions that focused on musical enjoyment, and personal and communal fulfillment, rather than on the need to be best, or to meet the taxing performance requirements of a professional elite.