M
Matt Bo Eder
Guest
I hate admitting that I'm getting older. Worse, I hate feeling like things have passed me by, or I let them pass me by.
This weekend I got to teach some audio basics at a blues guitarist weekend retreat - kind of like a band camp situation - where all the participants were holed-up in a Holiday Inn, and through out the day they attended classes, private lessons, or had jam time with themselves or instructors. I was one of those 'lecture-seminars' covering basic live audio and recording.
My part went great, I'm not here to talk about what I did. But in between sessions, I got to meet with some of the participants while I was on a break and we talked a lot about how people learn.
Since they knew I was a working drummer, naturally, we got talking about education and what each of us did. But what surprised me was when I related to how I learned some 30 years ago, to how kids are taught today, it was like night and day.
My situation was nothing as violent as the movie Whiplash (which I have yet to see, other than the trailers), but it was close. Since I was at a blues guitar retreat, I told them the story of how on my first day in college with the jazz band, we pulled up a blues chart, and we didn't even get through the first 12 bars before the director stops us and proceeds to rip into me about how bad my timing is, and how I couldn't lay down a solid shuffle, etc.,....
A lot of the guys I spoke with this weekend didn't like the story at all. Some even related stories of how they were kids playing some other instrument and quit because the teacher just wasn't the positive motivating kind.
I argued my point that this happened to me in college, where I was paying to be there. I was not some 12-year-old in beginning 5th grade band. In the college situation, I think my instructors figure that you got this far, and you're willing to go through hell to get where you're going. And my instructors, back in the mid to late 80s, were the people who played in big bands with leaders like Stan Kenton, or Maynard Ferguson, or even Buddy Rich. That era of musician: working hard, playing out a lot, and getting jaded in the process, is where I came up in, I guess.
I get that teachers should be motivational and nurturing to their students (this would be the pendulum swinging completely the other way), but by how much?
Some people say the movie Whiplash is completely fake and wrong - some I've heard say they wouldn't let their kid to suffer through that kind of environment because now it's mentally damaging. But in my day, my instructors totally played head games with me to get me to work on stuff. Nobody ever threw stuff at me or trashed the drumset, but they certainly applied some mental anguish at some point to push me farther than I thought I would go.
And in college, I paid a lot of money for that. And in a way, it has shaped me into the guy I am now. I'm not complaining about not ever having played with Sting or anything, but I still work on stuff around doing the jobs I've gotten.
I'm not saying that I think the teacher-student relationship should be adversarial, but how much could it be? Obviously, you're not as good as you want to be, so you go to school to get better. The teacher points out you have problems, and forces you to either take the bull by the horns so you get better, or you quit working on it. Perhaps my take on this is that you can't really be 'friends' with your parents because ultimately, they're preparing you to be on your own?
This whole experience really had me biting my tongue and kept me from barking back to some of these students about just "manning-up" (or "womaning-up) and take care of business. I realized a lot has changed in the last 20 or so years, and there's plenty of positive examples of players who didn't get beat-up by their instructors and went on to bigger and better things.
What are you willing to do to get better at your chosen craft? What are you willing to listen to to make yourself get better? Or do you just resign yourself to not getting any better and stop listening? What did you pay for?
Just wondering out loud. Or am I crazy?
This weekend I got to teach some audio basics at a blues guitarist weekend retreat - kind of like a band camp situation - where all the participants were holed-up in a Holiday Inn, and through out the day they attended classes, private lessons, or had jam time with themselves or instructors. I was one of those 'lecture-seminars' covering basic live audio and recording.
My part went great, I'm not here to talk about what I did. But in between sessions, I got to meet with some of the participants while I was on a break and we talked a lot about how people learn.
Since they knew I was a working drummer, naturally, we got talking about education and what each of us did. But what surprised me was when I related to how I learned some 30 years ago, to how kids are taught today, it was like night and day.
My situation was nothing as violent as the movie Whiplash (which I have yet to see, other than the trailers), but it was close. Since I was at a blues guitar retreat, I told them the story of how on my first day in college with the jazz band, we pulled up a blues chart, and we didn't even get through the first 12 bars before the director stops us and proceeds to rip into me about how bad my timing is, and how I couldn't lay down a solid shuffle, etc.,....
A lot of the guys I spoke with this weekend didn't like the story at all. Some even related stories of how they were kids playing some other instrument and quit because the teacher just wasn't the positive motivating kind.
I argued my point that this happened to me in college, where I was paying to be there. I was not some 12-year-old in beginning 5th grade band. In the college situation, I think my instructors figure that you got this far, and you're willing to go through hell to get where you're going. And my instructors, back in the mid to late 80s, were the people who played in big bands with leaders like Stan Kenton, or Maynard Ferguson, or even Buddy Rich. That era of musician: working hard, playing out a lot, and getting jaded in the process, is where I came up in, I guess.
I get that teachers should be motivational and nurturing to their students (this would be the pendulum swinging completely the other way), but by how much?
Some people say the movie Whiplash is completely fake and wrong - some I've heard say they wouldn't let their kid to suffer through that kind of environment because now it's mentally damaging. But in my day, my instructors totally played head games with me to get me to work on stuff. Nobody ever threw stuff at me or trashed the drumset, but they certainly applied some mental anguish at some point to push me farther than I thought I would go.
And in college, I paid a lot of money for that. And in a way, it has shaped me into the guy I am now. I'm not complaining about not ever having played with Sting or anything, but I still work on stuff around doing the jobs I've gotten.
I'm not saying that I think the teacher-student relationship should be adversarial, but how much could it be? Obviously, you're not as good as you want to be, so you go to school to get better. The teacher points out you have problems, and forces you to either take the bull by the horns so you get better, or you quit working on it. Perhaps my take on this is that you can't really be 'friends' with your parents because ultimately, they're preparing you to be on your own?
This whole experience really had me biting my tongue and kept me from barking back to some of these students about just "manning-up" (or "womaning-up) and take care of business. I realized a lot has changed in the last 20 or so years, and there's plenty of positive examples of players who didn't get beat-up by their instructors and went on to bigger and better things.
What are you willing to do to get better at your chosen craft? What are you willing to listen to to make yourself get better? Or do you just resign yourself to not getting any better and stop listening? What did you pay for?
Just wondering out loud. Or am I crazy?
