How to learn music?

After lunch is harmony and improv class. I've been really excited about this. I'm pretty good at harmony and improv so I pick the level 3 class. But the teacher's diagrams and language make no sense to me at all. After 10 minutes I pick up my bags and go find the level 2 class.

I enter and sit. “The best way to make a chord,” the teacher explains, “is to play one note at the same time as another one.” He turns to the white board, and draws a round 'E' note above the 'C' note already on there. I promptly pick up my bags and skidaddle, along with about 80% of the class.

What are these people doing?

What can you teach me about harmony and improvisation with theory, mathematics and diagrams?

You're putting me into the wrong place to make music from! Music comes from the heart and belly, the heart and soul. You're putting me into my head! What's that about?

I'm confused.

And the singing teacher earlier was putting us into our noses. Why on earth would you want to sing from your nose? Do you love from your nose? Do you feel from your nose? What do you want to receive when a person sings to you – soul or snot?

When the tutor sung from her nose in a performance, I have to say I didn't like it at all.

The heart, the belly, the groin, the loins – this is where we must sing from.

I'm wandering the corridoor and I pass a room full of rhythm. I peer in. Ah! A group is learning about rhythm by tapping their feet, clapping their hands, hitting their knees, scatting with their mouths.

This is the way to learn music! I go and join in. It's great.

Later I bump into the teacher outside. “The old head of music here made an official complaint about me for not showing him due deference,” he tells me. “He had them all learning by the book! I said to him, how do you teach a child to speak, through writing and grammar? That comes later. The body comes first. Shame was, he was in charge of all the learning here.

“You go up to a Brazilian master percussionist and say, teach me that rhythm, he won't go and get out a notepad and write some phenomenally complicate lines and dots for you. He'll slow it down and sing it to you. He'll play it on your hand. He'll dance it for you.”

When Atul taught me Indian vocal improvisation, he did so in temrs of rising suns, bouncing balls and a road trip around Europe.

“When the Sun enters the sky, how does it come - with a loud burst? No! It begins to arrive with a delicate, gentle lighting of the whole sky. Your sonic arrival must be like this.

“When you go to Europe, and you go to France, do you then go straight to Germany? No! You play around in France. You get comfortable in France. Then when you go to Germany it's a Big Deal to get there.”

France is Pa. Germany is Da. Italy is Ni.

He plays me a recording of a woman beginning her Alap, the first slow part of the improv. “Listen to her. She's been singing for twenty minutes and she's still in Germany! She hasn't even touched Italy yet!”

Here it comes... Then BAMN she's in Italy and it is a Big Deal. I feel it all through my body.

Discipline in creativity. You need discipline in creativity. What is my discipline? He's given us some rhythmic exercises and I bunk my next class (Hello, please tell me your name and what you want out of this song performance masterclass – my name is Briony and I don't want to be in this class, I'm only here because you said I had to be – Oh! Fine! Go then! - OK! Thanks!) Excited, I skip off with my Mbira, sit down by the Barbican's fountains, get playing my little song and practising his rhythm exercises over the top, gradually working melodic improvisation into them. I've been practising my little song All Week at Findhorn and I haven't been able to improvise over it. Now, using this technique, I begin to be able to.

Ah! This is creativity, and discipline, and fun. It's challenging and it sucks me in for hours like a computer game you want to get better and better at.

Good.

Good.

The teachers on this music course have been talking at us a lot in words. I seem to switch off.

A couple of years ago I was hired by a government-funded R&D lab to conduct an independent evaluation of a new technology for learning and teaching physics. I did focus groups with all the kids in the study. What do you like least? “When the teacher talks for hours,” they unanimously replied. What's good? “Class discussions. We learn a lot from each other.” What's best? “When we get stuck in and play with things! That's how we find out the most.”

A teacher's dialogue and language must accompany the play to make sure the kids are learning what they can from their exploration. But why do teachers so universally think that they should spend so much time talking?