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I've been teaching a beginner's guitar class at the office with another coworker. Teaching to adults is interesting because as a kid I was satisfied without nec

I've been teaching a beginner's guitar class at the office with another coworker. Teaching to adults is interesting because as a kid I was satisfied without necessarily knowing the underlying foundational concepts of music (something that held back my development for a while) but adult students are quick to ask questions and dive deeper. "What do you mean play a minor chord?" is easy to explain away to a child and get the to accept an intuitive definition (to be explained more thoroughly later) but totally throws off adults who are used to having acquired deep knowledge in some other field. As with music, math, programming, one does need a deep foundation to be good but also one needs to develop a feel by repeated effort so that your mind begins to recognize patterns.

OscarCunningham 11y ago
As a kid I refused to learn music because no-one could give me a good explanation of the difference between the black piano keys and the white keys. The explanations were always circular: white notes are special because they are in C-Major; C-Major is special because it contains all the white notes. (The correct answer is that people's hands aren't wide enough to deal with all twelve notes on the same level, and that particular subset of the notes contains a lot of consonant intervals and barely any dissonant ones.)
- hueving 11y ago
  >As a kid I refused to learn music because no-one could give me a good explanation of the difference between the black piano keys and the white keys. Doesn't that seem really stupid to you now or do you still support that stance? Refusing to learn the entire field of music because of one irrelevant detail is pretty appalling.
  - nkrisc 11y ago
    Kids aren't known for being rational.
  - Kluny 11y ago
    It makes you distrust the people teaching you - if they're going to answer your legitimate question with circular logic, it shows that they're missing some info and not willing to admit it. So they're either lying or wrong about this thing, and who know what else they're lying or wrong about? Similar logic puts some people off of Christianity - x is in the Bible, and we know the Bible is true because the Bible says it is true, therefore x is also true. Hmm. Someone who tries to sell you that logic is also either lying or wrong, now you can't trust either that person or the Bible.
    - sbilstein 11y ago
      Imagine people had refused to use the calculus because no one could really answer what an infinitesimal value really was. Sometimes you just need to make progress.
      - sanderjd 11y ago
        My understanding is that it was rejected by many mathematicians for precisely that reason, but that many others took up the challenge to answer the question rigorously, resulting in some major leaps in theory. On the other hand, it's good that many others were able to overlook the issue of the infinitesimals and put the techniques to lots of practical use. The lesson I take from this is that both first principles questioning and suspension of disbelief can be valuable tools for learning and discovery.
      - SilasX 11y ago
        I don't think the GP (Kluny) or GGP (OscarCunningham) disagree with you on that point. If I understand them correctly, it's fine to have unresolved mysteries in your understanding, so long as you are honest about it and explicitly label it[1]. In this case, "hey, we can't quite put infinitesimals on a solid grounding (or Dirac Delta, or whatever), but it doesn't break anything else, so let's see if we can figure it out some other time." There's a huge difference between "it's not worth our time to resolve this now" and "non-rigorous thought is okay, reality doesn't have to make sense, just do what the high-status people say, they're smarter". [1] There's a practice in some groups to explicitly say "it works by magic" to avoid false understandings and to flag unresolved issues.
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    Grit is hard to come by for kids. You never find yourself interested in 'the whole field of music'. You find yourself drawn to the immediate. Seeing a piano in front of you, you might want to learn about it. You might get turned off the exact same way. Unless your parents are directing you, childhood is a random walk through the universe of creative possibility.
  - lotyrin 11y ago
    I think it's more of a rejection of the instruction, not the concept being instructed. I had a similar experience with music instruction, everyone taught to the instrument and to the book of music, never any concepts of music theory even to the point of "What's with the sharps and flats over here by the squiggle? Why not put them where I can see them easier?" "Yeah, I don't know, it's kind of a pain, I just write them back in with pencil." "How do you write a new song?" "Oh, it's really hard, you have to be really smart like Beethoven. Don't worry about that, we have plenty of stuff to practice in the book." Later, in self educating, I discovered key signatures, playing to those keys (and even improvising!), and that I don't have to think about sharps and flats except for accidentals and it makes so much goddamn sense, but no adult I had access to in childhood ever knew or at least none could explain something which was so fundamental, something that actually made music fun and allowed me to create a positive-feedback loop required for consistent practice. Had I stood firmer on the grandparent's question, rejected instruction sooner (instead of just through confused burn-out), and begun to self educate sooner, I could have avoided wasting a lot of time.
    - retbull 11y ago
      A good teacher can get all of this for you. I knew all of that stuff because my mother was a violin teacher and she new musical theory in and out. Some of her first lessons are in theory before you get to sight reading so you don't have any questions like that. You had shitty teachers it sounds like and you should never reject formal education just because you had 1 bad experience.
    - tonyarkles 11y ago
      It's funny, I "learned" piano for years as a child, but somehow missed a lot of the theory (e.g. the circle of fifths). A year ago, I got a deal on guitar lessons from a student who was looking for work for the summer. It was a crash course, pretty much taught the basic cords (G, C, D, Em, Am, etc) but we didn't have enough time to go into much theory there either. But it was enough of a crash course to start looking at the guitar and figuring out how it works, relative to my base knowledge on piano. My partner is quite musical though (formally trained), and she's help fill in a lot of the gaps. I'm at the point now where I can fiddle around with different chord progressions and get good-sounding melodies to come out on my own. I get inversions and how they work on the guitar, etc. It's quite cool and way more interesting to me than just learning songs from a book.
- phaemon 11y ago
  I suspect your correct answer is wrong. Organ keyboards originally had only the long keys (the white keys) because they only had the natural notes of the scale. The accidentals were added later as the short keys, and were added as short keys so you could still play as though they weren't there. Piano keys are the same because they copied the keyboard from the harpsichord, which copied it from the organ. The reason the long keys are in C is because a piano is naturally tuned to C. Tighten all the strings a bit to bring it up to D, and all the long keys will be in the key of D.
  - jameshart 11y ago
    "Tighten all the strings a bit to bring it up to D, and all the long keys will be in the key of D" ... briefly, before the piano implodes.
  - OscarCunningham 11y ago
    But what do you mean by "natural notes of the scale"? Why is it those notes that are in C and not the others?
    - sbilstein 11y ago
      it's defined somewhat arbitrarily but those 7 notes are the notes of the C Major scale. If you just pay them in sequence, that is the scale. Western music is based around 12 tones, but each scale only has 7 of those tones. A piano with black keys allows you to play in any key/scale (based around semitones) since all 12 tones are present but only 7 constitute the major scale.
    - phaemon 11y ago
      By the "natural notes" I just mean the notes that would make up an octave in that key, like "Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do" in whatever key you like. On a piano, the long (white) keys are tuned to C for that. If you start on a D and just play the white notes up, it won't sound right. If you're asking "why is it tuned to C", it's probably because C is the key that historically was assigned the letters without any sharps or flats. There's no physical reason for this, it's just a convention (as opposed to, say, octaves, where each octave is half the frequency of the previous). If you're asking why C got the letters without sharps or flats, I believe you have the Romans to blame for that. They did start with A for their scale without sharps or flats, but it was what we would now call "A minor". Which leaves C as the major scale.
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
Kids haven't learned what yak shaving is yet.

OscarCunningham 11y ago

As a kid I refused to learn music because no-one could give me a good explanation of the difference between the black piano keys and the white keys. The explanations were always circular: white notes are special because they are in C-Major; C-Major is special because it contains all the white notes. (The correct answer is that people's hands aren't wide enough to deal with all twelve notes on the same level, and that particular subset of the notes contains a lot of consonant intervals and barely any dissonant ones.)

hueving 11y ago
>As a kid I refused to learn music because no-one could give me a good explanation of the difference between the black piano keys and the white keys. Doesn't that seem really stupid to you now or do you still support that stance? Refusing to learn the entire field of music because of one irrelevant detail is pretty appalling.
- nkrisc 11y ago
  Kids aren't known for being rational.
- Kluny 11y ago
  It makes you distrust the people teaching you - if they're going to answer your legitimate question with circular logic, it shows that they're missing some info and not willing to admit it. So they're either lying or wrong about this thing, and who know what else they're lying or wrong about? Similar logic puts some people off of Christianity - x is in the Bible, and we know the Bible is true because the Bible says it is true, therefore x is also true. Hmm. Someone who tries to sell you that logic is also either lying or wrong, now you can't trust either that person or the Bible.
  - sbilstein 11y ago
    Imagine people had refused to use the calculus because no one could really answer what an infinitesimal value really was. Sometimes you just need to make progress.
    - sanderjd 11y ago
      My understanding is that it was rejected by many mathematicians for precisely that reason, but that many others took up the challenge to answer the question rigorously, resulting in some major leaps in theory. On the other hand, it's good that many others were able to overlook the issue of the infinitesimals and put the techniques to lots of practical use. The lesson I take from this is that both first principles questioning and suspension of disbelief can be valuable tools for learning and discovery.
    - SilasX 11y ago
      I don't think the GP (Kluny) or GGP (OscarCunningham) disagree with you on that point. If I understand them correctly, it's fine to have unresolved mysteries in your understanding, so long as you are honest about it and explicitly label it[1]. In this case, "hey, we can't quite put infinitesimals on a solid grounding (or Dirac Delta, or whatever), but it doesn't break anything else, so let's see if we can figure it out some other time." There's a huge difference between "it's not worth our time to resolve this now" and "non-rigorous thought is okay, reality doesn't have to make sense, just do what the high-status people say, they're smarter". [1] There's a practice in some groups to explicitly say "it works by magic" to avoid false understandings and to flag unresolved issues.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  Grit is hard to come by for kids. You never find yourself interested in 'the whole field of music'. You find yourself drawn to the immediate. Seeing a piano in front of you, you might want to learn about it. You might get turned off the exact same way. Unless your parents are directing you, childhood is a random walk through the universe of creative possibility.
- lotyrin 11y ago
  I think it's more of a rejection of the instruction, not the concept being instructed. I had a similar experience with music instruction, everyone taught to the instrument and to the book of music, never any concepts of music theory even to the point of "What's with the sharps and flats over here by the squiggle? Why not put them where I can see them easier?" "Yeah, I don't know, it's kind of a pain, I just write them back in with pencil." "How do you write a new song?" "Oh, it's really hard, you have to be really smart like Beethoven. Don't worry about that, we have plenty of stuff to practice in the book." Later, in self educating, I discovered key signatures, playing to those keys (and even improvising!), and that I don't have to think about sharps and flats except for accidentals and it makes so much goddamn sense, but no adult I had access to in childhood ever knew or at least none could explain something which was so fundamental, something that actually made music fun and allowed me to create a positive-feedback loop required for consistent practice. Had I stood firmer on the grandparent's question, rejected instruction sooner (instead of just through confused burn-out), and begun to self educate sooner, I could have avoided wasting a lot of time.
  - retbull 11y ago
    A good teacher can get all of this for you. I knew all of that stuff because my mother was a violin teacher and she new musical theory in and out. Some of her first lessons are in theory before you get to sight reading so you don't have any questions like that. You had shitty teachers it sounds like and you should never reject formal education just because you had 1 bad experience.
  - tonyarkles 11y ago
    It's funny, I "learned" piano for years as a child, but somehow missed a lot of the theory (e.g. the circle of fifths). A year ago, I got a deal on guitar lessons from a student who was looking for work for the summer. It was a crash course, pretty much taught the basic cords (G, C, D, Em, Am, etc) but we didn't have enough time to go into much theory there either. But it was enough of a crash course to start looking at the guitar and figuring out how it works, relative to my base knowledge on piano. My partner is quite musical though (formally trained), and she's help fill in a lot of the gaps. I'm at the point now where I can fiddle around with different chord progressions and get good-sounding melodies to come out on my own. I get inversions and how they work on the guitar, etc. It's quite cool and way more interesting to me than just learning songs from a book.
phaemon 11y ago
I suspect your correct answer is wrong. Organ keyboards originally had only the long keys (the white keys) because they only had the natural notes of the scale. The accidentals were added later as the short keys, and were added as short keys so you could still play as though they weren't there. Piano keys are the same because they copied the keyboard from the harpsichord, which copied it from the organ. The reason the long keys are in C is because a piano is naturally tuned to C. Tighten all the strings a bit to bring it up to D, and all the long keys will be in the key of D.
- jameshart 11y ago
  "Tighten all the strings a bit to bring it up to D, and all the long keys will be in the key of D" ... briefly, before the piano implodes.
- OscarCunningham 11y ago
  But what do you mean by "natural notes of the scale"? Why is it those notes that are in C and not the others?
  - sbilstein 11y ago
    it's defined somewhat arbitrarily but those 7 notes are the notes of the C Major scale. If you just pay them in sequence, that is the scale. Western music is based around 12 tones, but each scale only has 7 of those tones. A piano with black keys allows you to play in any key/scale (based around semitones) since all 12 tones are present but only 7 constitute the major scale.
  - phaemon 11y ago
    By the "natural notes" I just mean the notes that would make up an octave in that key, like "Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do" in whatever key you like. On a piano, the long (white) keys are tuned to C for that. If you start on a D and just play the white notes up, it won't sound right. If you're asking "why is it tuned to C", it's probably because C is the key that historically was assigned the letters without any sharps or flats. There's no physical reason for this, it's just a convention (as opposed to, say, octaves, where each octave is half the frequency of the previous). If you're asking why C got the letters without sharps or flats, I believe you have the Romans to blame for that. They did start with A for their scale without sharps or flats, but it was what we would now call "A minor". Which leaves C as the major scale.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

Kids haven't learned what yak shaving is yet.