As a language teacher, I can’t but agree with you. Music learning and language learning could be taught at the same time with benefits for both skills, in fact both becoming a unique new skill with huge benefits for students of all ages.
Listening to this, I suddenly remembered the COVID lockdown, when people in France, like other places, applauded the healthcare workers every evening at 8 pm. I'd played the recorder in childhood, and taken it up again a few years ago. Suddenly I was in a situation where I just wanted to make noise, the louder the better, and everyone would approve it, after decades of worrying about disturbing the neighbours. It was terrific fun and I produced sounds from that recorder that I'd never heard before, and all in a good cause 😇. (Now I'm back to playing decorously, I don't want my neighbours to call the cops 😱.)
It's well known amongst medics and care staff that people who take up either a musical instrument or a foreign language when they retire are much more resilient against mental diseases that often ravage the elderly. I saw an academic paper produced jointly by the universities in Munich and Vienna (I might have the wrong universities) which showed how music improves the structure of the brain.
It has to do with any in-depth learning project, doesn't have to be just these two popular ones, language and music. Could be Egyptology, Engineering, or English Lit. It's about the passion to work at it consistently. Gives you cognitive headroom, so even if you have age related loss, you have extra neural networks to make up for it. Source: Optimizing Brain Fitness, a Great Courses course.
Largely agree - though important additional points a) we have an innate capacity to learn a language but not a particular one. My daughter spent her first 13 months immersed in Cantonese but now can now no more speak it than I can (never wanted to learn) this highlights an important aspect of environment (having language/music around you but b) genetics also matter. Despite what Gladwell famously claimed 10,000 hours of practice will not make you a Beatle. McCartney fascinating in this regard - has always resolutely refused to learn ‘the dots on the page’ but at the same time has an instinctive grasp of musical theory. Mozart I suppose is the sublime example of environment/inheritance in perfect sync. Not for a moment suggesting that this should deter the rest of us from striving to become the best musicians we can be but the learning process will highlight our strengths and limitations - and what we need for what we want to do.
As a music and language teacher I am fully on board with this idea that language and music are highly connected. I improvise, and speak a second language and teach and study both in highly similar ways.
That was the clearest explanation and blue print on how to learn music language I’ve seen. I love how you contrasted it with learning a native language. I sincerely thank you and great work!. Thanks.
So informative thank you and makes total sense. I took up piano after a 45 yr gap. (Grade 2 aged 11) and am now at Grade 6 aged 63. I’ve had to tackle theory grade 5 to sit the exam. That extra knowledge has helped me understand the music better and so aid learning the pieces but so far I just get glimpses of understanding a score seeing patterns etc and am still relying heavily on repetition and finding it very hard going. I’ve just downloaded your effective practice tips so hopefully things can improve! Thanks again.
Hiya, With regard to being immersed from birth a great video to watch is International Irish Seán-nos dancer, Emma O'Sullivan. She talks about growing up in Connaught and every week all would come to their little home, the kitchen furniture pulled to one side and everyone played music and danced. I've seen experienced musicians in awe of children at the annual Fleadh in Ennis, Co.Clare for the same reason, mind boggling in a wonderful way. Thank you very much for another great tutorial, David.
Something about you is very likable. Both your manner, presentation, and the way you're able to consider things from the student's perspective. Becoming my new favorite channel. Subscribed.
Bonjour, just discovering your channel, so interesting and rich. I am currently reading your "practice workbook" with delight. Many thanks and ready to watch your various videos with high interest. Thanks again .... Regards from France ( besides as a second and valuable benefit, your videos help me to keep practicing my english language )
Wonderful as always Leah; as a language teacher I absolutely agree with you. I love sight reading for example , approaching it as reading another language .
Great video! Thanks! I'm a beginner, less than 1 year, but I knew the keyboard from when my daughter was taking lessons in the 90s. At 73 I'm coming late to the game, but loving the journey! My guitar playing was "OK," but I struggled with jazz chords, and am finding it much easier on the keyboard. At my age I don't have the time to completely immerse myself in the academic approach, but I have studied theory, on my own, over the decades, and am more interested, at this late stage in my life, on simply learning my favorite pieces. And I should add that the metronome has really helped me to make the necessary changes, on time, and to keep the beat and rhythm! I should also add that I had a severe crush injury to my right hand (from my Navy days, at 19), limiting the use of the index and pinky fingers, So my finger technique is a little sketchy, but I do the best I can. I love your videos!! They have helped me a lot.
Cut your learning time in half with these piano practice techniques! Download your free workbook here: mailchi.mp/bccb1e32807f/practice-workbook-giveaway
I understand that our memorisation of music, sometimes called muscle memory, uses the same area of the brain as our sense of linguistic grammar. So, for example, if you are a native speaker of the Irish language, you do not need to think about the rules of grammar in a sentence, you automatically obey them without thinking. However, someone learning Irish as a native English speaker does need to consciously think about those same grammar rules...
I think we are listening to ourselves speaking our native language all the time, so that if something is wrong we noticed it. Similarly at the moment we speak a foreign language more or less properly, we become more and more aware of the wrong songs and correct them immediately. In my opinion it is not about muscle memory exactly.
@@Halley-z2z Maybe you are right, it's just I heard some say we use the same part of our brain... also for things like walking etc... it's automated, for most people. My mother tongue language isn't English and like most European languages, it has gendered nouns... but as a native speaker, as a child, I was not even conciously aware of this, it is so automated... yet every foreign language student has to laboriously memorize the gender of each noun. We native speakers know the gender instinctively... except with very rare words.
@@Halley-z2z "Conditioning"... that's the word I was looking for...... we are conditioned to follow linguistic rules of grammar, and maybe learning a piece on a keyboard instrument out of our head is also similarly a form of conditioning, where the movement of our hands are conditioned to follow a particular pattern, just as our speech is conditioned to follow particular rules of grammar... without consciously thinking about it.
One question about the equivalence with regard to accent. Well establish that acquiring a flawless accent (if you are not Steve Coogan!) is limited by age. So a nine year old Italian child who moves to the English speaking country will speak as native while over around 12 this capacity diminishes - see Kissinger or my dad who kept his Leitrim accent throughout over 60 years in London. Is there a parallel in music? Anyway, fantastic work you’re doing for us all!
Interesting question! I think people who were deeply immersed in music as children probably do have a greater instinct and facility for it, but that’s not to say that we can’t reach the same fluency later, it just takes more conscious work. I hope so, in any case!
Another fantastic vid. The great problem with music learning (and teaching IMO) is that it is almost entirely passive, as you go on to suggest. I have friends who are highly knowledgeable about music and are have a great love of listening, but have never had the opportunity or confidence to play a note. My personal view, with no evidence to support it, is that practical immersion as a player should come first (just as it does with language). Then, as a child might, you make mistakes, interact, try something out, and so on. Then comes the conceptual stuff. Of course, this only applies when you are young; the ideal would be for music to be a first language, like spoken language. My neice is bilingual (having been exposed to 3 languages since birth) and completely fluent in her 3rd. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we were bilingual in music and our mother spoken language? Thanks for your very welcoming, considered and insightful approach.
Could it be said that there are many flavors of musical languages? Dialects, slang, swearing, regionalities and even very different ones like western and eastern etc. ? I am almost fluent in blues for example. I can understand some jazz but cannot speak it. I understand classical and baroque but have a hard time speaking it etc.
I kind of feel strange saying that I am good at something but let's say other people told me I am good at playing the piano and speaking English. Whenever someone says, they believe I am just immensely talented, I think there is more to it. I try to tell them that actually I immerse myself a lot in these things. I constantly read and listen/ work in different English materials. I hear different dialects/accents, I read from many fields which is why my vocab has expended so much. And when it comes to playing the piano I have a huge list of pieces from different fields, different difficulties, different styles. And I often switch. I am also curious to look at things I haven't seen yet and the first thing I do is imitate. And certain skills just came when I had so much exposure into different directions. I am almost constantly listening to music or videos in other languages. Even when I don't listen to something - which may sound strange and somewhat disturbing - I could continue listen to music if I wanted to, it is clear in my head in the same key that it is in the original. It's not talent, it is just that I am so exposed to it, that I became good in it. It's not even a matter of time or luck, it is a matter of choice. And I consciously chose the material I am learning or exposing myself to. It's a habit and a structure in my life. It is interwoven with what I do daily. Of course, someone taught me the basic grammar of English and reading scores first but with curiousity and time it all went from that. As soon as I could read something, though, really bad, you couldn't stop me from reading and learning what else there was in the world. I started reading online fanfictions from my favorite children's cartoon and realized I only understood maybe 2 words in a sentence with 10 words (which were "I" or "is"). I looked up every single word from there using an online dictionary. I was okax with not understanding most of it. But I was driven to understand some day. Then I started to understand 3 words on average. then 4... and now it takes me weeks to see an English word I don't know. I really have to look for it in new fields that I haven't touched yet and I kind of do almost the same with piano playing. I don't hammer it down in one day. It's like water slowly working against a rock until it is smooth and formed. People don't realize what they can do if they put more energy into curiousity and operationalizing the big goal into tiny daily steps than being so strict with themselves and self-doubting. I believe what I can do, everyone can do with time and practice and most importantly patience and of course taking the time to actively think of the underlying processes. The most important grammatical structures in English and piano playing I didn't learn in school. I learned by connecting the dots at some point with enough exposure. It's the same reason I came to this channel. I want to watch every video of this awesome youtube channel because I believe this extraordinary teacher might teach me something new or help me think about things I have never thought about before. It's the same curiosity that drives me and which results necessarily in a better product which is me playing a piece that is just slightly better than it was one year ago. Strangely nobody says how fast I can type on the keyboard because everyone knows I am doing it everyday. It is the same with playing the piano. In both cases I know where the keys are even if I don't look at them. I don't need to translate the letter on the screen with which finger to use to type a certain key on the keyboard. It just happens. Over the years I learned many nuances and small things that differentiate me from someone who studied for 6 weeks boasting they can now play a certain piece after only 6 weeks. playing one song and building an actual skill are two different things. I get that people want to progress fast and maybe they just want to play that specific piece, that is totally ok. But whenever someone tells me "learn to play the piano like a grandmaster in 6 weeks", it's not that easy. the brain needs time. the rewiring needs time. learning a piece in 6 weeks is being super specialized whereas building a skill that helps you do all kinds of things is a whole different thing to begin with. To me, learnijg to play the piano and after all these years I still say that I am still learning to play the Piano even when people say "you shouldn't say that, you can already play!", I see it as craftmanship. I am crafting a skill, like as if I am putting a sword through fire, icy water, beat down on it and make it smooth, so that it becomes an exceptional sword. I put it through different stages and expose it to different things and I am crafting the skill by using different piano pieces, I am never just learning a piece, I am building the underlying skill and the end result is me performing to present the emotions in that piece to other people. All of that - sorry for the long text - just to say, I agree.
As a language teacher, I can’t but agree with you. Music learning and language learning could be taught at the same time with benefits for both skills, in fact both becoming a unique new skill with huge benefits for students of all ages.
❤
I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again: You are delightful! Thanks so much for your perspective.
the lovely accent is a bonus
Listening to this, I suddenly remembered the COVID lockdown, when people in France, like other places, applauded the healthcare workers every evening at 8 pm. I'd played the recorder in childhood, and taken it up again a few years ago. Suddenly I was in a situation where I just wanted to make noise, the louder the better, and everyone would approve it, after decades of worrying about disturbing the neighbours. It was terrific fun and I produced sounds from that recorder that I'd never heard before, and all in a good cause 😇. (Now I'm back to playing decorously, I don't want my neighbours to call the cops 😱.)
It's well known amongst medics and care staff that people who take up either a musical instrument or a foreign language when they retire are much more resilient against mental diseases that often ravage the elderly. I saw an academic paper produced jointly by the universities in Munich and Vienna (I might have the wrong universities) which showed how music improves the structure of the brain.
❤
It has to do with any in-depth learning project, doesn't have to be just these two popular ones, language and music. Could be Egyptology, Engineering, or English Lit. It's about the passion to work at it consistently. Gives you cognitive headroom, so even if you have age related loss, you have extra neural networks to make up for it. Source: Optimizing Brain Fitness, a Great Courses course.
Largely agree - though important additional points a) we have an innate capacity to learn a language but not a particular one. My daughter spent her first 13 months immersed in Cantonese but now can now no more speak it than I can (never wanted to learn) this highlights an important aspect of environment (having language/music around you but b) genetics also matter. Despite what Gladwell famously claimed 10,000 hours of practice will not make you a Beatle. McCartney fascinating in this regard - has always resolutely refused to learn ‘the dots on the page’ but at the same time has an instinctive grasp of musical theory. Mozart I suppose is the sublime example of environment/inheritance in perfect sync. Not for a moment suggesting that this should deter the rest of us from striving to become the best musicians we can be but the learning process will highlight our strengths and limitations - and what we need for what we want to do.
As a music and language teacher I am fully on board with this idea that language and music are highly connected. I improvise, and speak a second language and teach and study both in highly similar ways.
That was the clearest explanation and blue print on how to learn music language I’ve seen. I love how you contrasted it with learning a native language. I sincerely thank you and great work!. Thanks.
So informative thank you and makes total sense. I took up piano after a 45 yr gap. (Grade 2 aged 11) and am now at Grade 6 aged 63. I’ve had to tackle theory grade 5 to sit the exam. That extra knowledge has helped me understand the music better and so aid learning the pieces but so far I just get glimpses of understanding a score seeing patterns etc and am still relying heavily on repetition and finding it very hard going. I’ve just downloaded your effective practice tips so hopefully things can improve! Thanks again.
Hiya, With regard to being immersed from birth a great video to watch is International Irish Seán-nos dancer, Emma O'Sullivan.
She talks about growing up in Connaught and every week all would come to their little home, the kitchen furniture pulled to one side and everyone played music and danced.
I've seen experienced musicians in awe of children at the annual Fleadh in Ennis, Co.Clare for the same reason, mind boggling in a wonderful way.
Thank you very much for another great tutorial, David.
Something about you is very likable. Both your manner, presentation, and the way you're able to consider things from the student's perspective. Becoming my new favorite channel. Subscribed.
Thank you! 🥰
Bonjour, just discovering your channel, so interesting and rich. I am currently reading your "practice workbook" with delight. Many thanks and ready to watch your various videos with high interest. Thanks again .... Regards from France ( besides as a second and valuable benefit, your videos help me to keep practicing my english language )
Merci beaucoup! 🥰
Wonderful as always Leah; as a language teacher I absolutely agree with you. I love sight reading for example , approaching it as reading another language .
Thank you so much Leah :)))
Your right on one of the best informative videos i've seen. Congratulations Keep up the fine work.🎹Mark Roth drummer🥁
Very good stuff... I am amateur guitarist but you advice is really good....
❤❤❤❤❤❤ you are linguistic, psychotherapist and amazing music teacher.
Thank youuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Great video! Thanks! I'm a beginner, less than 1 year, but I knew the keyboard from when my daughter was taking lessons in the 90s. At 73 I'm coming late to the game, but loving the journey! My guitar playing was "OK," but I struggled with jazz chords, and am finding it much easier on the keyboard. At my age I don't have the time to completely immerse myself in the academic approach, but I have studied theory, on my own, over the decades, and am more interested, at this late stage in my life, on simply learning my favorite pieces. And I should add that the metronome has really helped me to make the necessary changes, on time, and to keep the beat and rhythm! I should also add that I had a severe crush injury to my right hand (from my Navy days, at 19), limiting the use of the index and pinky fingers, So my finger technique is a little sketchy, but I do the best I can. I love your videos!! They have helped me a lot.
Thank you! Best of luck 😊
Thank you for this video. I never thought about learning music as similar to learning language. So true. A great analysis 👍
Thanks Leah. Wonderful.
Cut your learning time in half with these piano practice techniques! Download your free workbook here: mailchi.mp/bccb1e32807f/practice-workbook-giveaway
I understand that our memorisation of music, sometimes called muscle memory, uses the same area of the brain as our sense of linguistic grammar. So, for example, if you are a native speaker of the Irish language, you do not need to think about the rules of grammar in a sentence, you automatically obey them without thinking. However, someone learning Irish as a native English speaker does need to consciously think about those same grammar rules...
I think we are listening to ourselves speaking our native language all the time, so that if something is wrong we noticed it. Similarly at the moment we speak a foreign language more or less properly, we become more and more aware of the wrong songs and correct them immediately. In my opinion it is not about muscle memory exactly.
@@Halley-z2z Maybe you are right, it's just I heard some say we use the same part of our brain... also for things like walking etc... it's automated, for most people.
My mother tongue language isn't English and like most European languages, it has gendered nouns... but as a native speaker, as a child, I was not even conciously aware of this, it is so automated... yet every foreign language student has to laboriously memorize the gender of each noun. We native speakers know the gender instinctively... except with very rare words.
@@Halley-z2z "Conditioning"... that's the word I was looking for...... we are conditioned to follow linguistic rules of grammar, and maybe learning a piece on a keyboard instrument out of our head is also similarly a form of conditioning, where the movement of our hands are conditioned to follow a particular pattern, just as our speech is conditioned to follow particular rules of grammar... without consciously thinking about it.
One question about the equivalence with regard to accent. Well establish that acquiring a flawless accent (if you are not Steve Coogan!) is limited by age. So a nine year old Italian child who moves to the English speaking country will speak as native while over around 12 this capacity diminishes - see Kissinger or my dad who kept his Leitrim accent throughout over 60 years in London. Is there a parallel in music? Anyway, fantastic work you’re doing for us all!
Interesting question! I think people who were deeply immersed in music as children probably do have a greater instinct and facility for it, but that’s not to say that we can’t reach the same fluency later, it just takes more conscious work. I hope so, in any case!
I love your videos, you’re such a queen ❤️
👑😊👑😊👑😊
Another fantastic vid. The great problem with music learning (and teaching IMO) is that it is almost entirely passive, as you go on to suggest. I have friends who are highly knowledgeable about music and are have a great love of listening, but have never had the opportunity or confidence to play a note. My personal view, with no evidence to support it, is that practical immersion as a player should come first (just as it does with language). Then, as a child might, you make mistakes, interact, try something out, and so on. Then comes the conceptual stuff. Of course, this only applies when you are young; the ideal would be for music to be a first language, like spoken language. My neice is bilingual (having been exposed to 3 languages since birth) and completely fluent in her 3rd. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we were bilingual in music and our mother spoken language? Thanks for your very welcoming, considered and insightful approach.
Yes! I run Music Together classes for this very reason.
Could it be said that there are many flavors of musical languages? Dialects, slang, swearing, regionalities and even very different ones like western and eastern etc. ?
I am almost fluent in blues for example. I can understand some jazz but cannot speak it. I understand classical and baroque but have a hard time speaking it etc.
100% - love it! 😊
Well said👍🏼
I kind of feel strange saying that I am good at something but let's say other people told me I am good at playing the piano and speaking English. Whenever someone says, they believe I am just immensely talented, I think there is more to it. I try to tell them that actually I immerse myself a lot in these things. I constantly read and listen/ work in different English materials. I hear different dialects/accents, I read from many fields which is why my vocab has expended so much. And when it comes to playing the piano I have a huge list of pieces from different fields, different difficulties, different styles. And I often switch. I am also curious to look at things I haven't seen yet and the first thing I do is imitate.
And certain skills just came when I had so much exposure into different directions. I am almost constantly listening to music or videos in other languages. Even when I don't listen to something - which may sound strange and somewhat disturbing - I could continue listen to music if I wanted to, it is clear in my head in the same key that it is in the original.
It's not talent, it is just that I am so exposed to it, that I became good in it. It's not even a matter of time or luck, it is a matter of choice. And I consciously chose the material I am learning or exposing myself to. It's a habit and a structure in my life. It is interwoven with what I do daily.
Of course, someone taught me the basic grammar of English and reading scores first but with curiousity and time it all went from that. As soon as I could read something, though, really bad, you couldn't stop me from reading and learning what else there was in the world. I started reading online fanfictions from my favorite children's cartoon and realized I only understood maybe 2 words in a sentence with 10 words (which were "I" or "is"). I looked up every single word from there using an online dictionary. I was okax with not understanding most of it. But I was driven to understand some day. Then I started to understand 3 words on average. then 4... and now it takes me weeks to see an English word I don't know. I really have to look for it in new fields that I haven't touched yet and I kind of do almost the same with piano playing. I don't hammer it down in one day. It's like water slowly working against a rock until it is smooth and formed.
People don't realize what they can do if they put more energy into curiousity and operationalizing the big goal into tiny daily steps than being so strict with themselves and self-doubting. I believe what I can do, everyone can do with time and practice and most importantly patience and of course taking the time to actively think of the underlying processes.
The most important grammatical structures in English and piano playing I didn't learn in school. I learned by connecting the dots at some point with enough exposure.
It's the same reason I came to this channel. I want to watch every video of this awesome youtube channel because I believe this extraordinary teacher might teach me something new or help me think about things I have never thought about before. It's the same curiosity that drives me and which results necessarily in a better product which is me playing a piece that is just slightly better than it was one year ago.
Strangely nobody says how fast I can type on the keyboard because everyone knows I am doing it everyday. It is the same with playing the piano. In both cases I know where the keys are even if I don't look at them. I don't need to translate the letter on the screen with which finger to use to type a certain key on the keyboard. It just happens.
Over the years I learned many nuances and small things that differentiate me from someone who studied for 6 weeks boasting they can now play a certain piece after only 6 weeks. playing one song and building an actual skill are two different things. I get that people want to progress fast and maybe they just want to play that specific piece, that is totally ok. But whenever someone tells me "learn to play the piano like a grandmaster in 6 weeks", it's not that easy. the brain needs time. the rewiring needs time. learning a piece in 6 weeks is being super specialized whereas building a skill that helps you do all kinds of things is a whole different thing to begin with. To me, learnijg to play the piano and after all these years I still say that I am still learning to play the Piano even when people say "you shouldn't say that, you can already play!", I see it as craftmanship. I am crafting a skill, like as if I am putting a sword through fire, icy water, beat down on it and make it smooth, so that it becomes an exceptional sword. I put it through different stages and expose it to different things and I am crafting the skill by using different piano pieces, I am never just learning a piece, I am building the underlying skill and the end result is me performing to present the emotions in that piece to other people.
All of that - sorry for the long text - just to say, I agree.
You understand it 👍💜