School of Rock & Learning to Walk
Hey y’all - buckle up for this short story!
Last month I visited my family in Baltimore to see my 8 year old nephew perform on the piano in his recital. Well, I thought it was a recital. He takes lessons at School of Rock, which is a school I’ve been aware of for a while, but knew little about (except the rad marketing). I was blown away by what I saw, which wasn’t a recital at all - but a concert! They played familiar classic rock tunes instead of a too-long recital of cute ditties.
As I analyzed things further, I noticed that there was one adult in the band among kids of varying ages. I also realized that aside from the adult band leader, everyone else playing a tonal instrument was repeating the same pattern over and over again. 1 pattern, 4 chords.
Recognizing that didn’t make me any less impressed. In fact, I realized something: this is the way it ought to be. If I was allowed to play what motivated me maybe I’d have enjoyed piano lessons more and stuck with them longer. In fact, it was only when I quit taking lessons and started to play songs that I loved that I developed the skill that I needed - I taught myself to sightread by sight reading. I played songs that were way too hard for me and I played them poorly, BUT somehow I developed the ability to read quickly without any practice.
Learning builds on itself. One way to learn is to break things down into smaller parts. That’s logical right? If you were learning about cars it’s important to know what each part does and how each part works, but most people just want to learn to drive a car, not build or fix them. Thankfully it’s not important to know how to make a car in order to drive one.
Can the same be said about singing? Do you have to know how it works in order to do it? Is it actually helpful to know how it works?!
You’re probably thinking, ‘well, yeah! It can only make things better!’
Sometimes.
What muscles do you use to walk? Next time you’re walking, tell yourself which muscles to flex & when. You don’t actually have to do this to realize that you’d look pretty awkward if you micromanaged walking in this way.
How did you learn to walk, anyway? You didn’t just do it! There were skills that you had to learn first - like standing up, that’s an important thing to be good at! Before that you were crawling, and before that you were shimming on your belly, which is a stage called creeping. It’s interesting how there’s a walking pattern nested inside of creeping & crawling - like a mini version of something that's currently too hard, scaffolded by more contact points on the ground. This is an example of a different way of learning that’s not reductive - it’s scalar!
My nephew playing in a rock band is also an example: it's a simplified version of the thing he wants to do, scaled to his ability level.
How can vocal education be scalar in a world that loves to reduce things into parts?
As an educator I think about the endgame: what is this particular student’s goals? To sing in a theatre? In a concert hall? In a coffeehouse? I also think about the state of things in this moment: where is this student succeeding? Where are they confused or stuck? From here I help my student create a relationship between the endgame and the current situation.
Can the endgame inform the stuckness? Strategies like imagining filling the space you’re going to perform in, singing as if you have the microphone in your hand, getting clear on who you’re singing to and why, among many others can inform technical growth. This also creates an oscillation between the present and the successful, scaled-up future as the student radiates themselves more fully into their potential.
There is absolutely a time & place for reducing things into components, which can actually compliment a scalar approach! You could even look at each component as having scalar aspects - but now we’re getting into the micro/macro weeds! Next to nettle, those are my favorite weeds to be in!