entire education system seems to be based around teaching people technical skills instead of musicality
Right, because what’s considered “musical” is highly subjective and would be useless without the theoretical knowledge to analyze and describe others’ playing and apply it to your own. Good luck playing jazz without knowing what a II-V-I or major scale is. I’ve taught guitar part time and most of my students were 12 year olds who wanted to play like Kirk Hammet but didn’t want to learn theory, guess what? They sucked and had no idea what to play that wasn’t memorized tabs. Once I convinced them to just learn A minor on the low E string after a few lessons they could thrash improvise riffs as well as anyone, some of them even discovered modes (mostly phrygian) all on their own by just fooling around at home! Creativity comes with experience, experience comes with a base level of knowledge about what you’re doing.
I agree, theory is very close to essential. But for me it wasn’t enough, but it is for others. I wonder, though, what would happen if you bypassed theory entirely and just taught them to play by ear; that, I think, is the truely valuable skill that the theory is scaffolding for. It’s not so much that they know what frets to play for a minor scale on the e string so much as they are learning what that scale sounds like and training themselves to navigate on the fret board. I think that’s basically the Suzuki method is an example of a hear first, play second approach without reference to theory initially.
At any rate, I’m mostly criticizing reading-first (or worse, reading only) methods.
My problem was I extremely lazy and anxious, too terrified to make a mistake, so I just did everything as robotically, without paying attention, and as long as I played the right notes, my teacher was happy, so I was happy (in my own terrified, stay-of-execution way).
Right, because what’s considered “musical” is highly subjective and would be useless without the theoretical knowledge to analyze and describe others’ playing and apply it to your own. Good luck playing jazz without knowing what a II-V-I or major scale is. I’ve taught guitar part time and most of my students were 12 year olds who wanted to play like Kirk Hammet but didn’t want to learn theory, guess what? They sucked and had no idea what to play that wasn’t memorized tabs. Once I convinced them to just learn A minor on the low E string after a few lessons they could thrash improvise riffs as well as anyone, some of them even discovered modes (mostly phrygian) all on their own by just fooling around at home! Creativity comes with experience, experience comes with a base level of knowledge about what you’re doing.
I agree, theory is very close to essential. But for me it wasn’t enough, but it is for others. I wonder, though, what would happen if you bypassed theory entirely and just taught them to play by ear; that, I think, is the truely valuable skill that the theory is scaffolding for. It’s not so much that they know what frets to play for a minor scale on the e string so much as they are learning what that scale sounds like and training themselves to navigate on the fret board. I think that’s basically the Suzuki method is an example of a hear first, play second approach without reference to theory initially.
At any rate, I’m mostly criticizing reading-first (or worse, reading only) methods.
My problem was I extremely lazy and anxious, too terrified to make a mistake, so I just did everything as robotically, without paying attention, and as long as I played the right notes, my teacher was happy, so I was happy (in my own terrified, stay-of-execution way).