Why Learning Music Is More Important Than Picking Out a Melody
Most people start learning how to make music by amassing small pieces: scale shapes, chord names, discrete rules that promise something like understanding and progress. At the beginning, this makes you feel productive — there is movement. But as these go, rote memorization can easily frustrate over time. When something they haven’t memorized, or highlighted before comes up in a song or passage), the student “freezes,” not knowing how to handle the new “thing” (something for which they have no response.) Music comes to seem like a collection of exceptions rather than a common language.
When theory is perceived not as a string of rules but rather as a network of relationships, that’s when you start to grow musically. Notes are heard in relation to one another, through tension and release, chords behave differently in different contexts of form, and rhythm influences how sound is is emotionally experienced. Once students know why something works, they can then break from the rigid formula. They can think their way through musical situations, make sound choices and rely on their own ears instead of doubting every decision.
It also changes how practice feels. Without mindlessly repeating patterns, the learner hears with attention. A scale turns into a map of sound, not just an order of notes to play in some technical drill. A chord progression is a story in its own right, one that goes somewhere, not just a random sequence to be remembered or looked up. This transformation makes practice more stimulating and mentally engaging, which of course results in better retention and faster progress – but without the feeling that you’re grinding away.
And then there’s the transferability of understanding. Once you get the hang of underlying principles, information flows seamlessly amongst instruments, genres and creative activities. An idea you picked up while studying harmony can become something that informs your improvisation, composition or sight-reading. This kind of flexibility can not exist with a purely surface based learning via repetition. It’s knowledge that lets musicians grow organically rather than beginning from zero every time they delve into something new.
And music is a living language, not a fixed system after all. Improvisation might start to sound formulaic at first, memorization might be useful in the beginning, but it cannot carry long-term growth. Through the lens of clarity, structure and meaning, participants gain an underpinning that allows for self-assured creativity. Understanding turns music from a mystery into an exchange, where each new sound fits rationally inside a larger organism.
