What a Teacher Learned from Being a Musician

Chaz Pugliese, UK and France

Chaz Pugliese is a teacher and teacher trainer associated with Pilgrims, UK, Chaz works out of Paris, France. Apart from MI, Chaz is interested in task design, creativity and motivation, and spoken grammar. E-mail: chazpugliese@gmail.com

I am a teacher and a teacher trainer. I’m also a ------ guitarist, I play solo and in a band. In this short article I want to talk about how making music has helped me develop as a teacher. There is a lot that music and teaching have in common, so much so that it wouldn’t be entirely wrong to compare a song to a lesson. For example, you have to ‘own’ a song, and make it yours in order to play it right. I believe something similar happens when one works with people: you need to draw the people nearer, feel the group, ‘own’ them in some respect.

Here I want to focus on five elements that have had an impact on my teaching.
The first one of these elements is tempo: as a musician, an awareness of tempo is indispensable because you need to know that every song proceeds at a certain speed. Play it too fast and the song will feel rushed, play it too slowly and the tune wobbles and falls apart. You need to sense the natural rhythm and get in the groove, as the jazz folks would say. As a teacher I’ve found that an awareness of how the group moves on a given day is a must, and that failing to do so may result in mismatching.

The second element is pacing: this is the skill of playing within tempo. Let me explain. A tune sometimes may jump back and forth between a swing and a funk groove: a musician has to be able to pick up on this sort of groove change or s/he’ll miss the boat. Musicians may be playing a fast tempo tune, but may decide to play long, slow notes, creating an interesting tension (jazz icons John Coltrane and Miles Davis were unrivalled masters at this). And vice versa: the tempo may be slow, but you may wish to double up and play fast (an example: a blues tune played by Charlie Parker or Ornette Coleman). This is the dynamic of pacing. This happens in the classroom too. As a teacher I’ve learned that it is important to know when to speed up or slow down.

Timing, the third element, is about having a sense of the moment. It boils down to playing the right note at the right time, which I guess must be the holy grail for any improvising musician! Comedians, too, need to have this skill: if the punch line comes too late or too soon it’ll dampen the impact of the joke.

In my teaching I have found the skill of seizing the moment invaluable. I believe this is similar to the thinking behind the decision to abandon the lesson plan and do something completely different that would fit the here and now better, for example.

Strongly related to timing discussed above, quickness is the speed of thought of action. When I play in front of a crowd, I am acutely aware who it is I am dealing with and I know that I need to be prepared to accommodate the needs and the feelings of the people. And I need to do it fast. Quickness does not have anything to do with speed, however: it demands complete control, there is no feeling of haste. The importance of timing and quickness lies in the fact that any group is a universe in a constant state of becoming. Decisions must be taken quickly, crises must be dealt with on the spot.

Silence. In music, too many notes played can horribly clutter the song or the solo leaving the listener gasping for fresh air. Skilled musicians know that they must learn when NOT to play, and let a note sink in, give the listeners time to make sense of the music and make the performance much more meaningful this way.

Teachers are notoriously afraid of silence: this shows particularly when we ask questions in class, three, four times in a row thus machine-gunning our learners. It’s almost as though we feel compelled to fill every space, and we end up playing too many notes, as it were, stifling our learners. I’ve learned from watching and listening to accomplished musicians when I should stay back and let the students take over.

A few other thoughts, to conclude: in music, as in teaching, you fail miserably if all you provide is information. Nobody, and I mean nobody, wants to go and hear a musician practice his/her scales, especially if admission isn’t free! I have learned that on a stage as well as in the classroom: less information and more experience is the rule.

The other one is about the value of simplicity. Unlike the folks who run Starbucks, I believe that too many choices actually spoil the message, when making music as well as when teaching. Blues great B.B. King once said: ‘You heard me right, sir. I don’t use any fancy effects, just my fingers, an amplifier and this here Lucille (BB King’s famous guitar). And I only need to play three notes to tell a story’. Sometimes keeping it simple pays off.

Please check the Teaching through Music and Visual Art course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Train the Trainer course at Pilgrims website.