ABSTRACT
Outside the dominion of curricula, schools and colleges, a great deal of music-making and learning, in childhood and into adulthood, occurs most successfully. Within vibrant traditions, musical knowledge is transmitted effortlessly between practitioners in their communities, artistic collaborations take place and significant innovations occur, all without recourse to ‘formal’ training. Traditional and popular musics are simply not reliant on ‘formal’ music education for their survival, yet they have flourished and proliferated – indeed, massively so! In England, Lucy Green has investigated the ways in which popular music is distinct in its learning processes from Western classical traditions and, what is more, has shown how its traits can advantageously be imported into schooling. How Popular Musicians Learn (Green, 2001) reported on detailed interviews with 14 musicians from the London area, aged 15 to 50 years. The musicians’ recollections of learning experiences revealed key differences to ‘formal’ music education. She has categorized these as follows:
music the learner selected by him- or herself
the primacy of learning through copying from recordings without the presence of notation (ear-playing)
self- and peer-directed learning, typically in the absence of adult guidance
holistically-acquired skills as opposed to those formed through a pre-determined curriculum, one progressing from simple to more complex material
a high integration of listening, playing, composing and improvising throughout the learning process (adapted from Green, 2008, pp. 5–9)
