Monday, December 03, 2007

Guitar Hero versus Violin Virtuoso

I said a bit about Joe Moretti's session at the recent Apple RTC meeting in Southampton. I forgot to mention he said he'd read that peripatetic teachers of guitar now outnumber teachers of violins in schools. His comment, if I remember correctly, was:
"Isn't that dreadful... why are so many kids being forced to learn violin?"
I couldn't find the report he referred to, but this one seems close:

Violin losing out to guitar in music lessons | News crumb | EducationGuardian.co.uk

a government-backed study has found that guitars and drums are, in fact, becoming the instruments of choice in the classroom.
Not everyone will share Joe's pleasure in this finding... but the solution seems obvious - do a Jimmy Page and play the guitar with a bow. :-)



I assume that part of the reason for this shift is that guitar and drums seem more relevant to children's experience of music. I'm reminded of the attempts to convince Daughter Number 2 that playing the flute was a good idea. Her music teacher suggested she should listen to James Gallway, but this failed to inspire. I tried Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull - but that was dad rock and that too failed to impress. Her sister, Daughter Number 1, seemed to come closest when she found the beatboxing flautist on YouTube. Relevance matters and dads (and teachers?) rarely manage to pull it off!


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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just a small point David - my comment on the guitar vs violin was tongue in cheek! But it does indicate a huge change in trends generally with instrumental lessons.

regards

Joe

Anonymous said...

For what its worth - my father was a friend of David McCallum Snr - a brilliant violinist - we were always giving him a lift to and from sessions! (I was about 6 and the Man from UNCLE was a big deal on TV!)

J