Learning Music The Easy… The Right Way

Years ago there was this thing called the Suzuki Method, it came out of Japan after the War … the whole idea of it was that it was supposed to be easier for little kids to learn music, because it’s easier for little kids to learn language. Hand a little kid a fiddle and tell him to play with it, while immersing him in an environment rife with music and other musicians, and pretty soon the little kid would be carrying a tune like other little kids carry the mumps or the measles.

Unfortunately the foundational premise of the Suzuki Method is so discouraging for anybody over the age of about 4 years old when that Language Advantage parallel levels off and disappears, and, besides, its wrong!

While adults and older children may have a tough enough time when it comes to learning the proper conjugation of French Verbs, when a catchy tune comes over the radio, nobody has any trouble remembering how to hum it exactly, hours or even days afterward. Mr. Suzuki might have been bright enough to know that Catchy Tunes cling to the mind a lot better than those devilish Foreign Languages. Maybe he was too dazed by the War, or just grateful he could come up with some reasonably credible justification for his Big Moneymaking Scheme. Well, we all have to eat, don’t we. But its left to other people to clean up after such Intellectual Sloppiness.

So, yes, Music is different. Having heard a song once, People, even those older than 4 years old, stroll down the street skipping to its beat and “la la la-ing” it. And everyone else who has heard it knows the song. People get music right… often the very first time they try. Yes, and as Suzuki might have predicted, often these adults and older children don’t get the language of the songs quite right. While they get the melody just fine, as, for instance, when they sing a new song in the shower shower, the words are almost always not quite correct… but the substitutes and faux-rhymes are often as good as the real words… or even sometimes better. As far as words and Modern Music are concerned, it is not as though the bar is set so very high.

You know, playing tunes on a musical instrument is almost just as easy as singing in the shower or humming while subtly skipping down the street. One only needs to get acquainted with the instrument one plans on playing. And that is not really as difficult as the Professional Musician Culture makes it out to be. After all, ‘They’ already know we think they are lazy, and they don’t wish us to find out that what they do for a living is easy as well. So they do what most professions do – they pretend that what they do is difficult so they don’t have to apologize for all the money they take away for doing it. Well… not that 99% of professional musicians don’t live in the most abject poverty… but its always the top 1% that controls the Public Relations, is it not? The Voice of One Madonna drowns out the lamentations of a million low paid songsters who crowd the slums like so many pathetic rats… rats who can whistle happy tunes and tap their little paws in time…

Here is an illustration of just how easily music comes to us, even as adults. In Germany there was this policeman who had been shot in the throat in the line of duty. It destroyed his vocal cords. Since it was not in America, it was decided that no public expense would be spared to rehabilitate the man and bring him back his speech somehow. So they got him this Sound Generator Box with a touch sensitive activation screen. It was programmed to operate like a kind of palate – consonants could be formed and then tones could be modulated like the various vowel sounds and then more consonants… you know, like real words and real language. At first they were going to make it monotonic, as a pitch control would have added another complication to an already complicated little piece of equipment. In other countries they may have thought that a common man would have trouble working through so many intricacies and variables, but remember that this was in Germany where they rather take high levels of common intelligence for granted, and so they heaped on the tonal pitch control, supposing it could be used to make the ‘voice’ more natural with just a dash of sing-songiness, once the man got used to the controls and didn’t overdo it. Well, long story short, after only a few months the man was not only able to form intelligible and surprisingly natural sounding speech… German even!... using the fingers of just one hand, but he was able to “sing” with it, and then just by using various vowels and tones on the little box he was able to “play” it, mimicking various musical instruments!

Now, violins, pianos, guitars… aren’t they about like the same thing, or even easier? Remember, we only have to get familiar with the things and how they work. And if we commit a little time everyday, its bound to become easy. Just think about it. Everyday, the same old strings. Everyday, the same old notes. It is not a moving target. Nothing moves. Nothing ever changes. Of course one would get the hang of it.
Nowadays I don’t even bother taking the dust cover off my keyboard… after you hit the first key… blind… you got your orientation and your hands know where all the other keys are. On guitar and violin, while I still watch the pick or bow to keep them on the straight and narrow… from inadvertently dinging the next string over, the finger board fingers are free to roam where they want… they know their landscape perfectly well.

So it is that the Relationship between the Keys or the Strings never Change. Learning it doesn’t take long and once you know it, you know it forever.

So what is stopping everybody? Well, the Music Teachers! Let me illustrate with a story. I remember when I was a kid. My parents got my older brother a guitar, and sent him to a music teacher for an official music lesson. He came home with a book. His first Music Book. Apparently Music was to be treated like some kind of an intellectual endeavor. In his first week he was supposed to learn the chords for the song “Red River Valley”. What this means in practical terms was that in his first week he was expected to master the coordination of all six strings of a guitar with one stroke of a pick. And when he learned “Red River Valley”, they would teach him a new song. Apparently the idea was to learn every song in the Universe, one at a time, a week at a time. Well, the practices must have been hateful! All he was doing was straining to put his fingers in the correct mechanically pre-determined positions to fill out these mysterious chords, which, if he did it correctly, would mechanically result in the sounds of the correct song coming out. Not the least bit of art in the entire thing. It was all rote memorization and finger bending races with a metronome.

But the Music Teacher could show mommy and daddy that after just one week Little Johnny was already playing a song. What a Success! Music done like its some kind of a trick. Shortcutting the process so badly that sometimes these ‘musicians never really learn the strings. They tend to fall back on their mechanics… the chords they know instead of the chords they are hearing.

But it’s not like that everywhere. In the South, in those Blue Hills of Kentucky and thereabouts, they would get a kid a Thing with a mop handle with one string running from the top on down to a fastening in the bottom of a bucket – the Ol’ One String Bass. They’d turn on the radio and tell Little Johnny to play along. “Boing, ka-boing, ka-boing boing boing”. No further instructions required… well, not until little Johnny mastered the One String and wanted to add a second string or even a third string, and then Mom and Dad or Cousin or Uncle Bob would sometimes get involved… “Johnny, do you want 2 full tune steps between strings, like a bass guitar, or 3 tune steps like a big ol’ fiddle bass?” Well, most ‘Johnnies’ try both ways. So we have thousands of these ‘Little Johnnies’ out in Them Hills that in their first few months of practice learn how to move comfortably between the World of Violins and Guitars. Hopefully the parents time it all correctly so that by the time their Little Johnny starts to rig his Ol’ One String into being a 4 or 5 or even 6 “stringer”… replacing the Mop handle with a shaved down 2X4, Christmas will arrive so that Johnny can be presented with his first ‘real’ guitar or fiddle… which, given a few minutes to adjust to the new feel, he would already be able to play half as well as Elvis, who probably learned the same way. Well, perhaps not the chords to “Red River Valley”, but he would be able to jump in and play the songs on the radio, just as he had with his Ol’ One String Bass.

At first he would move very quickly between strings, covering all the necessary harmonic blends and tones within the song, and then with time he will get lazy like everybody else and simply hold down all the appropriate strings at once in their necessary positions – making Chords… but he won’t have to ask anybody what they are or should be or what to call them. He will simply just know them by intimate acquaintance. Of course, out in the Hills people ‘know’ chords and teach each other chords, but they aren’t held back by them. They can all jump right into new songs, and the chords might be some very fast finger-picking at first, but by the end of the song the right chords will be strumming away. Its not so much that they know the chords as that they know the Neck of their Guitars.

And, really, adults in the Civilized World could learn Music in about much the same way, and just about as quickly… if they were willing to put in as much time as Little Johnny. It’s just embarrassing for adults to start off learning new things if it can be held up to public ridicule. So just find a room with a lockable door and a musical instrument that can play into headphones, and you’re set. People will simply think you’re in there looking at Porn, which by Today’s standards isn’t nearly as embarrassing as learning to play a musical instrument.

Well, technically, to do what Little Johnny does… to play along with the Radio or the Stereo or whatever, but secretly, you’ll need a two channel mixer… to hear both the Song and the instrument you are using to play along with it.

I really recommend the Violin as a first instrument. Pianos have discreet keys and guitars have those discreet frets. When given these discreet units, the Intellectual part of our Minds try to learn them intellectually. The Left Brain tries to co-opt a Right Brain activity. What keys are which notes? What frets are which notes? One is full of questions. But the violin, while having four discreet strings, which is perfectly obvious, has no frets. A beginning Musician will simply have to squirm around on the strings and find the note he is looking for. Yes, for a second or two it can be very discouraging, but then when one lands on the exact right note, and hears the perfect harmonization between target song and what one is playing on one’s own Instrument, then it is a virtual moment of bliss from heaven.

But don’t get ahead of yourself. Remember the Ol’ One String Bass … start with just one string. With a violin, start at the low end, or the high end, but pick an end, and just see what you can do with just that one string. You know, there are actually a lot of possible notes in each one of the violin strings, from the top of the neck at the nut to as far down the neck toward the bridge as one can reach on the fingerboard… at least the match of most people’s singing voice range. You see, the way Strings work is that from the Top to the exact middle of the String is one full octave, but then the next higher octave takes only half that same distance, the next octave just half of that half of a distance – the notes get closer together as you come down the neck, and it gives each string a heck of a lot of range. You know, Little Johnny really was able to play songs on that One String thing. One string was plenty at the beginning, but it was also enough.

No one will have to tell you when you can go to the next string. You will get lazy about moving all the way up or down on the string to get to a note you want and you will figure it’s just easier to reach across to the next string where the desired note is situated closer… more conveniently. You see, stringed instruments have more than one string not to make it harder to play, but to make it easier… once you know the relationship between strings.

One of the best exercises for after you have mastered One String Playing, is to never play a repeating note twice in a row on the same string. On guitars where the strings are only two full steps apart… 5 frets which include those Sharp and Flat half tones… it is actually quite easy to play the same note on three adjacent strings – boing, boing, boing… going diagonally across the fingerboard. Violins with their 3 full steps between strings, well, the same note is a bit more of a reach between strings, so there it is sufficient to play the same note from one string to the next… the third string might be a bit of a reach. Anyway, once your Hand knows this string to string relationship, all else quite easily follows, and moving between strings will come quite as naturally as just playing just one string… only easier.

Keyboards are in fact easier than string instruments in their own way… and harder. One can learn the Octave Spacing of a keyboard within minutes, but the very ease of being able to beat on so many keys at once, well, introduces the possibility for so much error. Easy to play, easy to get wrong. And then with the sharps and flats … those annoying Black Keys… arranged on a different plane and level from the Full Note White keys… it throws a non-linear relationship into the whole thing and makes it far more difficult than it really should be – than if they had simply put all the notes in the same row and on the same level. But, still, the keys never move, and are the same from day to day, and so after a while one eventually gets used to the arrangement.

Keyboards are not given to the “One String Bass” mode of learning, but one can start in a comparatively easy fashion by using far fewer than all ten fingers. I would have suggested starting with the Index Fingers of both hands, except that this will lead you to a preference for the White Keys, so start your first keyboard exercises using Thumbs and Index Fingers – the Thumbs covering the White Keys and the Index Fingers held in reserve for when your Hand senses that one of the Black Sharp or Flat Keys would seem to be more appropriate… at first hit both the White Key and the Black Keys close above, and sound them out for which is best. Start Practice with one hand, giving the Ear its full attention, then switching to the other hand, and then finishing your songs with both hands, letting your Ear get used to the blend of sounds. With enough practice, thumb and forefingers only, your hands will eventually sort through the whole full note, sharp note and flat note thing – the White and Black Keys and their different levels. And just like on guitar or violin where you tried to limit yourself to just one string, after a while it will become impossible to keep the other fingers from joining in on the keyboard. But try not to rush it. Let it happen naturally. As you stretch into larger chords and more dashing speeds and broader riffs, you might exceed your present capacities and get a jarring off-note or two, as is to be expected. Just remember, though, if it gets too bad, you may be adding too much at time. So go back and retrench with your basics. Listen to the left hand. Listen to the right hand. Use fewer fingers and make sure you are hitting the basic chord outlines. Once the basics are solid, then you can add all the pretty details and flesh out the songs.


The ultimate trick is to remember that Music is done with the Right Side of your brain, while the Left Side of your brain is busy thinking of method and rules and theory and all of that. Now, as you begin Practice, it is difficult to simply turn off the Left Side of the Brain, which, really, more often than not, interferes far more than it contributes. What you need to do is tire the Left Side of your brain out… practice until you notice that your Left Side Brain is no longer really paying attention… that you are consciously thinking about other things, all the while the Right Side of the Brain continues to play. This is when the real work is being done. Typically after an hour of practice even the most tenacious Left Side of the Brain is fatigued beyond caring, and the Right Side of the Brain is allowed to learn … and play… unmolested. So try not to cut your practices short. If your mind begins to wonder, CONTINUE, BECAUSE THAT IS A GOOD THING! This is when the magic of new skills develop, when you will see and hear your hands do things that you really didn’t have to teach them. Believe me, you will never have to just sit around and think up neat things to do you’re your musical instrument. All that stuff comes during the long practices. Manna from heaven. You just find yourself, tired, distracted, doing new and wonderful things. And they don’t go away. On the next nights practice, they will be their waiting like you had been doing it for the last 20 years.

Well, yes, I may need to clarify something… the Left Brain can sometimes be a little bit helpful. It’s the Left Side of the Brain that suggests volume changes, and adjustments to the knobs and petals. When a string falls seriously out of tune, it’s the Left Brain that yells “ouch!” (the Right Brain would just keep playing and find new frets or different violin ‘positions’ to compensate for how the string jumped out of tune… but the Left Brain notices and yells “Whew! That’s Bu Shi”. Oh, “Bu Shi” is Mandarin for Not Is and other approximate concepts. I think that is where the American’s got their colorful colloquialism from, which really has nothing to do with boy cows and feces). Or matters of Taste. The Left Brain is the Judge of all that. One will be jazzing along hard on what should be a Sentimental Ballad and the Left Brain will be drawn back to attention and remark that it would all sound much better with deeper Feeling and less effing around. So the Left Brain does have its place. But 99% of the work of learning to play a Musical Instrument is accomplished by the Right Brain – the seemingly effortless way one dances one’s fingers over the Keys or the Strings… that is no Intellectual Left Brain accomplishment. If it were, then Little Johnny, no intellectual giant by any stretch, would not be quite so good at it or enjoy it quite so much.

Oh and a final word about Level of Accomplishment, and Pleasure in Playing. You know, I’m pretty sure that there is no cap on the enjoyments one realizes while achieving the triumphs that are had at one’s present level of ability. Happiness is Happiness. The King conquering the World is really no happier than the Cat given its tuna dinner. Getting better and better does not make one happier with one’s playing. Indeed, the most bored musicians are those who have hit a plateau at the highest level of accomplishment. I remember a story about a German Composer and Piano Player who was so sad about leveling off at Perfection, that he designed a “Finger Spreader” to stretch the span of his grip so he could hit slightly wider chords. It gave him arthritis and destroyed his ability to play at all. So I guess the enjoyments of Music are a lot like enjoying the Trip and the Scenery along the way, as there will never be any Final Ecstasy at some Perfect Destination. The Beatles played the Metropolitan Opera, the Mecca of all Stage Musicians, symbolizing having arrived at the top of the Masters of their Craft. And what a poor pathetic lot of miserable dogs they turned out to be. And if that doesn’t convince you, we can talk about Michael Jackson…

Now, of course, where other people are concerned, it is far happier to be Accomplished. Especially in the sense that if one is not completely Accomplished, and according to every taste and preference, then there will be people out there screaming that ‘You Suck!’. But here we are moving away from Pleasure and entering the considerations of Work and Professionalism – how one is auctioning one’s self off to the Public. Actually, it is probably best to keep Music as a pure and private Pleasure, and where Work and Professionalism is involved, to simply keep one’s Day Job. Of course, with the intense Competition of Global Capitalism side-lining more and more of us, downsizing away thousands of ‘Day Jobs’ every day, we may have little choice but to dance for our dinners… or to play for those who do dance.

Oh, and I just had a thought while reading some criticisms of the Suzuki Method. People complained that the very young children were not being terribly creative… playing what they heard and not doing a heck of a lot of change-ups. Well, duh. People need to realize that the Conceptual Mind does not even turn on until we are about 8 years old. Indeed, one of the things that make Language Acquisition so difficult after that age is suddenly so much more is expected of a Language. Conceptualization, so difficult even while Thinking in one’s Mother Tongue, has to struggle with the nuance of unfamiliar words. So it is similarly with Musical Conceptualizations… making up new songs, or new riffs and arrangements for old songs.

I’ve heard of a great many autistic musicians who can play what they hear but can never think of anything new or different. That’s sad. Since so much in Today’s Music can stand improvement. After all, look at the Process for turning out Today’s Music. Everything is rushed post-haste through the Studios because to the Producers its just a Business and their Target Audience is really not very selective anyway. Everything hits the Market being barely good enough to please the Standards of an Industry where the standards fall ever lower each year. So of course one can play music like that and improve upon it. Just note the differences between the original Beatles “With a Little Help From Your Friends” and Joe Cocker’s version To Joe the song was familiar and he probably dabbled with it long enough to get some good ideas for it. He took longer than 5 minutes before rushing it through the studio which is how it sounds performed by the Beatles. Hmmm, Joe Cocker also did a good job with Randy Newman’s “I think it is Going to Rain”. Just listening to Randy Newman’s original, one would think that the song held no promise at all. Oh, and during the Sixties and Seventies there was practically an Industry all to itself dedicated to bringing out Laura Niro songs with more polish than the originals.

So, yes, playing along with Music is often more than just playing what one hears being played. It is also about one’s Imagination sometimes taking over and playing what SHOULD HAVE BEEN played. For instance, after 30 years of playing it, I think I have a better piano solo in “Home Again” than Carole King… or just more elaborate. That is one Album nobody has ever been able to improve upon… Carole King’s “Tapestry”. That girl came into the Studio with her guns loaded…

More later…