B. J. Music Ed.

2005 22:2, 125140

doi:10.1017/S0265051705006108

C 2005 Cambridge University Press

Copyright

Adult learning in traditional music

Peter Cope

Institute of Education, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, UK

[email protected]

This study is based on interviews carried out with 13 adult learners of traditional fiddle
playing. The average age of the learners was 56 and they had been learning to play for
between 2 and 20 years. All of the interviewees had taken music at school but none of
them had been stimulated to participate further in any significant sense. The aspiration to
learn to play the fiddle had various sources. Learning usually took place through traditional
workshops and through the medium of the tune rather than through scales and exercises.
Only one of the participants took regular conventional individualised lessons. They tended
to take a pragmatic stance with regard to technique, looking for technical advice when they
came up against barriers to progress. The music they played was within an aural culture
and most of them learned by ear although they tended to regard notation as a useful
supplement. All of them played in some sort of social context and all of them described
an immense sense of pleasure and achievement from their playing. It is suggested that this
kind of informal learning may have implications for learning to play instruments at school.

Introduction

This paper is concerned with the development of instrumental skills amongst adult
learners of traditional music. The study of traditional music seems to imply the use
of ethnomusicological methodologies, but although the research techniques might be
classified under a loose ethnographical heading, the current study does not adopt an
explicit ethnomusicological framework. Gates (1992: 293) points out that [T]he rubric
ethnomusicology, for instance, curiously refers to all the worlds music but that of the
West!. Even this observation is not entirely accurate, since the rubric does routinely refer
to Western traditional music and is exemplified by such works as Cookes (1986) study
of traditional fiddling on the Shetland Isles. In the unusual case of an ethnomusicological
perspective being applied to Western classical music (Kingsbury, 1988; Nettl, 1989, 1992),
its power is in making the familiar appear strange Nettl adopts the strategy of showing how
the customs of the Western musical academy might be explained to a visitor from Mars.
In the normal course of events, our cultural perspective on classical music is not made
explicit. For example, Wicks (1998) has this to say about the study of music in American
universities.
We do not have Theory of Music in the Elite Western-European Tradition in the
curriculum, we have Music Theory; not Appreciation of Music in the Elite WesternEuropean Tradition, but Music Appreciation. (Wicks 1998: 55)

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Anything outside this music (with which we are so familiar that it needs no qualification)
has, by implication, an otherness about it, which requires the explicit adoption of ethnomusicological techniques. Cookes study has many features which give it this sense of
ethnomusicological otherness. It was carried out on a remote set of islands some 100 miles
to the north of the UK mainland and much of the evidence is historical, relying on the
testimony of older people looking back. In this way, it is safely partitioned from us, both
geographically and temporally an interesting work but with no apparent relevance to
current music education practice.
But cordoning off other styles of learning means that there is little research in the
development of skill in the playing of musical instruments outside conventional tuition in
classical music, as the BERA Music Education Review Groups (2004) survey of current
music education research makes clear. With the exception of Greens (2001) recent work
on popular musicians, the focus in both music education and in the psychology of music
has been on learning to play through the classical conservatoire model. This is partly
because, as Sloboda (2001) has pointed out, the majority of formal performance-based
education is directed towards allowing a minority of people to play works from the classical
canon. Research in formal instrument education is almost bound to focus on this style and
its conventions. But a large proportion of active musicians acquire their musical skills
informally (see, for example, Finnegan, 1989) and it is curious that there is so little research
on such a common learning style, albeit one which takes place outside of the establishment.
One other consequence of the focus on formal classical tuition is that there is virtually no
attention directed towards the learning of musical instruments by adults, apart from those
relatively young musicians completing a formal classical training in the conservatoire. Adult
learning in general, especially in its new conceptualisation as lifelong learning, has attracted
considerable research effort, but it tends to be centred on learning directed towards some
kind of economic or career benefit. This focus stems largely from the governments interest
in learning as a means to enhance national economic performance. On the face of it, music
does not have a significant part to play in preparing a flexible, multi-skilled workforce,
although there is sometimes a token acknowledgement of its cultural significance. The
1998 green paper on lifelong learning (DfEE, 1998), suggests that learning helps us fulfil
our potential and opens doors to a love of music, art and literature (DfEE, 1998: 7). But it
proceeds to make no further reference to them. It is clear that the papers concern is with
learning related to working life rather than to leisure or to culture. Although adult education
has traditionally embraced learning for its own sake recent policy developments in lifelong
learning, as Field (2002) makes clear, have concentrated solely on interventions designed
to improve the skills and flexibility of the workforce (Field, 2002: 21).
The recent publication of Greens (2001) work on learning by popular musicians is an
exception to the absence of research on generative skill development outside the classical
genre. Green looked at the way in which popular musicians learned to play outside formal
instrument tuition. She was able to identify a number of key features of their learning, such
as enculturation, an identification with the music usually achieved through listening to
and copying recordings, and playing in social groups with their peers. Their approach to
issues such as notation and technique tended to be pragmatic. They learned to play much
of their music by ear, rather than from sheet music, although some of them could read
it. Their attention to technique tended to occur later on during their learning and resulted

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from a perceived need to improve their playing. Green concluded that informal learning of
instruments is an effective route to adult participation and conjectured that it might be more
likely to produce a longer-term commitment to music than conventional formal tuition.
The efficacy of formal tuition in leading to active adult musicianship is not known. A
1967 American study (Lawrence & Dachinger, 1967) suggested that 37% of those who had
taken formal tuition continued to play into adulthood. Interestingly, their sample contained
a small number of self-taught musicians, 100% of whom remained musically active as
adults. There is no reliable research indicating the proportion of adults who play instruments
in any particular genre. What research there is suffers from a lack of clear criteria about what
constitutes musical activity. A 1994 survey carried out for the Associated Board of the Royal
Schools of Music reports that 22% of adults claim to be able to play an instrument (ABRSM,
1994). In the absence of a published full project report, it is impossible to say whether this
represents genuine active musicianship or a memory or a more passive aspiration. But, for
example, the ABRSM report states that 14% of the 22% of adults who claim to play (i.e.
3% of all adults) play the recorder. It is hard to believe that 3% of the adult population,
approximately 1 in 30 of us, regularly plays the instrument we typically learned in primary
school, especially given recent research which suggests that the recorder puts children off
(Curtis, 2002). Hence, the conclusion that one in five adults plays a musical instrument is
also not entirely convincing and is certainly unsupported by everyday experience. A recent
survey of participation in arts in England showed that 9% of those aged 16+ had played
a musical instrument in the last 12 months and 3% had performed to an audience (Arts
Council of England, 2001: 28). But again it is unclear what level of activity these figures
really represent.
The study of adult learning in music is unlikely to have any major benefits for the
economy and it would undoubtedly result in focus on a wider cultural spectrum than
the relatively narrow base of current formal instrument tuition. Mark (1996) points out
that studying adults learning to play musical instruments could be a source of valuable
information about teaching and learning in school music.
Ethnic and cultural musics are, and have been, taught successfully for a long time
through informal education or education in natural settings outside of the schools.
(Mark, 1996: 119)
Method

The researcher attended two workshops, one a weekend workshop in Shetland-style

traditional fiddling offered at the University of Stirling, and the other a single session of a
weekly workshop in traditional fiddling offered in the central Scottish town of Falkirk. The
Stirling workshop was tutored by a traditional fiddler well-known in Scotland. Eight other
learners attended the workshop of whom six were adults (over 18). The adult participants
were asked to take part in the study by consenting to an interview to take place after the
workshop was over. The Falkirk workshop was larger, and organised into three classes,
beginners, intermediates and advanced, each of which had a different tutor, usually a guest
traditional musician. Seven participants from the intermediate or advanced classes agreed
to be interviewed. The researcher also attended, as a participant, a number of sessions in
which the musicians played.

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Interviews were carried out by arrangement with each participant. Given the
geographical spread of the sample, participants were offered a choice of a telephone
interview or a face-to-face interview at a location of their choice. A semi-structured format
was used with the schedule being constructed around musical life histories. Within this
framework, the focus was on topics concerned with learning to play, including topics such
as practice, technique, tuition and opportunities for performance. The researchers own
experience of learning and playing fiddle music did not explicitly inform the interviews but
it might have been expected to reduce his outsider status as far as the respondents were
concerned. Interviews varied between 30 and 80 minutes in length and were subsequently
transcribed for analysis. Analysis of the transcripts was iterative, with the identification
and progressive refinement of common themes. The results section illustrates these themes
with extracts from the interviews so that, as far as possible, the participants voices are
the source of the evidence. Thirteen musicians were interviewed. The age range was from
4076 (mean = 56) years and there were nine males and four females. The characteristics
of the sample are shown in Table 1.
Table 1 Characteristics of the sample of musicians
Letter code
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M

Gender

Age

Time learning fiddle (years)

M
M
F
M
F
F
F
M
M
M
M
M
M

57
53
40
42
50
60
64
72
76
55
61
43
63

8
4
7
2
3
4
5
8
5
4
5
20
5

Results
Musical Background

The musical backgrounds of the group were interestingly diverse. All of the adults in this
group were able to recall involvement in music at school, few of them, it has to be said,
with any degree of enthusiasm.
We basically listened to classical music and analysed it and different styles of
music. (D)
I went to school in the fifties and I think then it was more important to have a corporate
sound and individualism wasnt encouraged . . . We sang together and she went round

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and stopped people from singing and that upset me as a child. I remember there was
one boy who could not sing more than a couple of notes and certainly wasnt singing
what I was singing and she stopped him from singing and he was upset about it. (F)

For some, their early experience had involved taking instrument lessons of some sort.
Most of them had taken piano lessons for a few years but only one, a primary school teacher
(G), had continued playing into adulthood. The predominant impression of these lessons
was not a positive one.
It was very parrot stuff . . . just to pass exams but it was all from following the music,
very mechanical. I never actually learned any music, I dont have any tunes that I could
sit down and play. (B)
I had a horrible teacher who was a bit of an ogre and sort of slapped my wrists if I
didnt learn all my scales. (D)

K took only three weeks of piano lessons which were terminated by the teacher who
handed him a brown envelope, containing a message which referred to my powers of
concentration and ability, to give to his mother. C took piano lessons for a year and hated
it but also played the tuba in the school orchestra for two years. This did not seem to have
facilitated any genuine engagement with music.
I had been shoved into various music things when I was a child at school, overeager
parents but not really enjoyed it . . . I remember very little about it it just shows how
very little I enjoyed it. (C)

C also remembered her music teacher enthusiastically getting me and some other folk
involved in playing some hand bells at one stage and I just found it very tedious.
Three of the participants had learned to play the classical violin while they were at
school. One (H) had to give up because of illness but the others (I and J) each had around
seven years of tuition. For I, this continued into early adulthood before work and family
commitments re-directed his interests. J was competent enough to win local prizes and to
play in the regional school orchestra until he left school when he announced that he would
not be playing any more.
I was about 17 and I left school and started working and I came home one night and
says to my Dad Im not opening a fiddle again and I didnt. I was sick fed up with it.
Id had it for years and years and your life was full of it I wanted to go out and play
football and do other things. He was very very cut up about it, probably because he
saw that things could maybe have progressed. (J)

A and D both learned to play the guitar during their late teens, outside school, and continued
to play in adulthood. Their interests at that stage lay mainly in pop music, although both
moved towards traditional folk music as they got older. B took fiddle lessons for a couple
of years in his early twenties but then gave up and didnt return to it for 20 years.
The stimulus to take up or resume fiddle playing when it happened varied from
one individual to another. For many of them, a chance encounter with traditional music
rekindled their interest. For F, it was visiting her sister in Scotland and hearing her play in
a traditional band.

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When I went to visit her, the people were there and I was sitting listening and I was
thinking I want to be joining in on this. (F)

For several of the older musicians, retirement presented an opportunity to take stock of
their interests and to branch out into new activities. M described it in the following terms:
The way I look at it is that this is my selfish time of life. I did my duty to the kids with
swimming clubs, scouts, everything like that but now theyre big enough and I can
devote my time to my own pleasures. I get a great satisfaction from playing. (M)

Learning

Taking regular individualised lessons in what might be regarded as the usual fashion for
instrument tuition was exceptional for these learners. Only one (D) had weekly individual
lessons from a tutor. Most of the others attended weekly group workshops at the Falkirk
workshop or at classes run by the Adult Learning Project in Edinburgh.1 This type of
tuition differs from the conservatoire model in class size and in focus. Classes are typically
large (up to 20) and the medium of tuition is the tune, rather than scales or exercises.
Traditional music teaching and learning typically focuses on tunes (Veblen, 1996) and all
of the participants in this study were learning in this way. Typically, each week the class
would be taught a new tune by ear. The tutor would break the tune down into phrases
and each phrase was learned by repetition so that the tune was gradually built up. In this
system, technique is not a central issue, and where technique was explicitly discussed by
tutors, it tended to be in terms of bowing styles and ornamentation. This has considerable
motivational advantages but can lead to difficulties for individual players. Most players
were aware of this trade off between motivation and technique.
Up until now, just being able to play the notes has been my main concern, but I am
getting more and more interested in technique. (B)

But the focus on tunes did not mean that they were unconcerned with technique.
I am conscious of technique when I practise . . . I try not to just bash through the
tunes . . . I am conscious that I have to be conscious about my bowing. (F)
I am trying to concentrate more on producing a good tone rather than just playing the
notes as fast as I can. I am getting more pleasure from getting a good tone than from
actually playing the tune. (B)

Some felt that more focus on teaching basic technique would be useful.
Some tutors are very good at technique. What I miss is the explanation of technique
and the exercises to develop technique we dont get that at all. Which of course,
your conventional music teacher would give one. (H)

And sometimes the focus on the tune could divert attention away from developing decent
technical skills.
Youre really concentrating on how to get the notes right and youre not putting too
much thought into the bowing. If you get the notes right youre quite happy even if you

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have the bowing wrong. And then when you go home and try to practise it, and you
try to get the bowing right, its difficult because youve not been watching the way the
bowing goes. (J)

It is clear that, unlike in a conventional one-to-one tutor relationship, technique is left very
much to the individual and many of these learners recognised that they had to take extra
steps outside the workshops to get some advice about their technique.
My fiddling wasnt getting any better and I kind of realised that there was a certain
amount I could teach myself but that I needed to find out people who really knew why
it wasnt quite working. (C)

It is interesting that these problems could be solved with only occasional individual lessons
which were often booked from workshop tutors.
She [workshop tutor] picked up on the thing that had been keeping me back
enormously was the fact that my bowing arm was very stiff and I worked on that
and it has made a huge difference to me. (F)
Practice

Most of the learners reported that they tried to practise on a fairly regular basis, generally
everyday although the other demands made on them by work and domestic commitments
sometimes interfered with the intention. Reasonably regular practice was part of the
commitment to learning which was a strong feature of each of the learners. But this
commitment was underpinned by a sense of enjoyment which was important to maintain.
I quite often practise because I find it a really relaxing thing to do and if I am doing
that, then I will tend to just play through the tunes I really like. (C)

The length of a practice session tended to be about half an hour but often this was extended
because of enjoyment.
Some days I could go an hour and a half. It would start with ten minutes I wouldnt
expect any more than 10 minutes. But it could easily run on to my God is that the
time?. (K)

J contrasted his current attitude to playing with his experience of practising as a child.
I now want to play the violin when I didnt want to do it when I was younger I think. I
now find that two hours is not really long for practising I used to think that it was an
eternity. (J)

For most of the time, they practised tunes rather than exercises or scales, but some did
concede that scales could be useful.
I find that if I do scales before I play tunes, I am better in tune . . . but I dont like doing
them. (F)

E practised in front of a mirror in order to try to correct problems with holding the fiddle
which she had developed at the beginning. She was unusual in using exercises which were
devised by the tutor with whom she had taken the individual lessons.

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At the moment I am doing exercises which the tutor has suggested which are bits of
tunes that I want to learn to play properly. (E)

For C, there was a more focused practice when she was working on technique.
When I was doing stuff with technique . . . I could easily play one tune for an hour, just
trying to get the bowing engrained. (C)

The enjoyment which playing brought was tempered with a realism about the difficulties
which arose, with expressions of occasional frustration at perceived lack of progress.
Some times I think its going really well and other times I think its crap. (G)
Ive been trying to develop vibrato for about the last 2 or 3 years getting nowhere
with it but I keep trying. (H)

The commitment to continuing to play was underpinned by an awareness of the long-term

nature of the project they had undertaken.
I can remember asking [tutors name] how long it would take for you to become fairly
confident and he quite seriously said about seven or eight years before you get through
that pain barrier . . . It takes a long time to learn to play the fiddle well unless you
are really dedicated and you are learning from a young age when you pick things up
quicker. (A)

The view that maturity was not necessarily an advantage in this sort of activity was shared
by others in the group.
I do regret not learning something at school . . . it is so much easier to learn when
youre younger . . . when I go to some of these workshops and you see these young
kids . . . their learning capacity is greater at that age, they absorb it faster . . . I think their
fingers are more dextrous as well. (D)
What I do find frustrating is that I have learned so late and you see youngsters in
the class just remembering the tunes and being able to play, sometimes I find it so
disheartening. (F)
Use of notation

Musical literacy is a prominent feature of formal instrument tuition where it is regarded as

an indispensable part of learning to play an instrument. In traditional music, playing by
ear tends to be regarded as the normal form of access to playing. The tutoring that these
learners received was based on playing by ear.
They take it bar by bar or line by line and we play it over and over till we get the feeling
of the tune so its really by ear that you are learning. (I)

For the most part, these learners took a pragmatic view of notation, viewing it as useful
but not crucial. Those who could read music usually attributed what skill they had to a
previous more formal experience, often their piano lessons. F, for example, had picked up
the rudiments of reading music from her piano lessons as a child but had developed her
skill as a result of singing in a choir.

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I joined a choir when I moved down to England and I started having to read music
quite seriously because we were expected to sing whatever we were singing straight
through first time. (F)

Those who had learned an instrument conventionally in the past sometimes found the
transition to learning by ear to be difficult.
They teach you tunes by ear and then you get the music. Ive never done it this way
before its totally new to me. It can be quite difficult. (J)
That was the good thing about the workshop was that they do teach by ear. Its
tremendous. When I went there I found it extremely difficult to pick up but after a
few weeks you begin to appreciate learning by ear. (H)

But there was strong support for the virtues of learning by ear, even from those who had
started as readers.
I can do both and I think when I learn by sight I dont learn it as well because Im not
listening as hard. I think when you have the paper in front of you, your ear switches
off to a certain extent. And theres quite a few have reneged against learning by ear.
All the time Ive been there theres been a handful who always need the music before
they can really get going. And I think theyre missing out. (G)

At least half of the learners referred to the advantages of learning by ear in terms of its effect
on listening but there was also a strong identification with its place in the aural tradition of
the music they played. These views were expressed strongly by A who was dubious about
the place of literacy in the culture of traditional music, particularly for playing in ceilidhs.
In his band, he reported, they . . .
stand up and play, and play without music because then you can concentrate on the
performance and make eye contact and look at the dancers . . . to me there is nothing
more sterile than two or three musicians sitting on a stage with their music stands in
front of them playing for a dance. (A)

Playing with music was not an option for pub sessions, a major social focal point for
traditional musicians.
If you are in a busy pub, people arent going to give you a piece of music and bring out
a music stand, it isnt that kind of culture . . . It means that you are very limited when
you go into a session or you are in a social atmosphere where people shout out two or
three tunes and people will start a tune and off you go. The ones that need music will
struggle then. (A)
Learning from recorded media

About half of the learners referred to the importance of listening to CDs of traditional music.
This was partly to increase their knowledge and repertoire.
If I go anywhere in the car I listen to tapes so Im listening to music all the time so
you get tunes in that way. That gets them into your head and once theyre in your head
you can work on them (L).

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But it also gave them a feeling for what they were aiming to do.
The other thing is that you can have the music and have your own shot at it, but if you
have a CD of someone good playing then you know what it should sound like. (H)

Learning tunes from tapes and CDs was part of the ethos of learning by ear. Workshop
tutors often encouraged learners to tape the music they were learning so that they could
continue to work on it between.
I use tapes at the workshop the tutor will play the tunes either slowly or at speed and
those of us who want to can tape it. (H)

Although several of the musicians reported learning tunes directly from CDs, there was no
sense of attempting to copy particular sections in the way described by Green (2001) for
popular musicians. They tended to use CDs to learn melody lines.
If I didnt know the tune I would listen to the CD until I was familiar. Then I would play
it with the CD, even if its a fast tune. I could learn slow tunes quickly but I couldnt
learn quick tunes quickly. (G)

As this extract makes clear, the speed of the tunes made it difficult to learn them from CDs
for some learners. There were various strategies used to cope with learning fast tunes from
CDs.
I also use CDs quite a lot. For instance, if you cant get the music, copying the music
onto a tape means you can then use the tape, the stopping and starting facility, to work
away at it. So you learn it by ear off a tape from a CD. (H)

Others transcribed the tune from CDs into notation before they learned them.
CDs are a different ball game. I just write it out in lines. I do night shifts so to fill in my
time I do something like that. (J)

Some of them acquired the notation for recorded tunes from other sources, such as friends
or the internet and used it to support their learning by ear.
If I cant quite hear on the tape, I can usually work out from whats written on the page
the twiddly bits that I havent quite got. (C)

A few of them made even more ambitious use of technology to help them to learn tunes
by ear.2
The workshop gave us that ABC midi and you can play it at any speed you want . . . Ill
take the speed up until my fingers lose it and then go back a couple so that my fingers
are still keeping up the control . . . Theres no doubt about it, after two weeks you were
playing at speeds where you werent playing it before and this is without losing the
fingers. (M)
Social context

One striking feature of all these musicians was that music was a social activity for them.
They had all joined or created a significant social context which acted as a medium for

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their music and a stimulus for their continued learning. One of them contrasted the social
nature of traditional music with his experience of learning the violin as a child.
We played alone and thats hard I was fortunate, my mother was a good pianist, and
I practised with her which was a help your ears coming into play there if youve got
a pianist with you. Playing with other people is more interesting theres all different
skills. (I)

Playing in pub sessions was a major activity for many of them. The reasons were partly
social.
I like the company, I like the chat, the social side of it. I think that is probably what
drives me with the fiddle to a level that I can comfortably go into a pub somewhere
with other people and enjoy a two hour session. (A)

Many of them also identified the musical benefits of playing in the spontaneous and
unplanned setting which sessions provide.
A strange thing sometimes happens at sessions when people around you are playing
tunes and you are sort of doodling away and you eventually get into the way of it and
you can get to a sort of plateau where you find yourself playing tunes you dont even
know its a sort of hypnotic thing. (L)

But there were sometimes difficulties when the disparity between their competence and
that of other musicians was too great. This usually manifested itself as an inability to play
at the speed which jigs and reels usually entail.
Ive occasionally been but I find its a macho scene . . . They start to play and its who
can play the fastest and thats not what its about as far as I am concerned. (H)

Workshop organisers often tried to ameliorate this difficulty by running slow sessions where
the pace of playing was maintained at a level more suitable to beginners.
The slow session is excellent. I do think there is great value in all playing together at a
speed where even the slowest can take part because it does encourage the newcomers.
(H)

But another way round this problem was for learners to organise their own social
groups of players of similar ability. E played regularly with groups of friends whom she had
met on a trip to a fiddle school in Donegal. They met at one anothers house to play and
sometimes combined this with paying a tutor to come and give them some support and
advice. D played at lunchtimes with friends from his work. B discovered, shortly after he
started playing, that there were other local people who were learning to play instruments.
Interestingly, they started off by playing classical music because one of the learners was a
cellist but it wasnt really satisfactory . . . it sounded pretty horrific. After the cellist left the
area, they switched to Scottish traditional music and shortly afterwards formed a ceilidh
band which plays for local functions.
Playing in a ceilidh band was regarded as an aspiration that was a logical development
from session playing. As J put it, Im practising for some day when Ill maybe be able to

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get into a wee ceilidh band. F had joined a group which had started to play for country
dances, an activity which she found immensely rewarding.
It is amazing how the night goes by, it is a fabulous thing to do because people are
so invigorated by dancing and everybody is laughing . . . It is the best thing I have ever
done in music . . . the whole atmosphere is so nice. (F)

C played in three bands, one of which was a ceilidh band with regular bookings. She
had realised after playing for only 18 months that playing in a band was what she wanted
to do and, with other musicians from the Adult Learning Project, she spent six months
putting a repertoire together. They then launched ourselves onto the ceilidh market
rather ambitiously but got away with it. C spoke with conviction about the social nature
of the way she played music in groups. This was partially a function of her interaction with
other group members.
You kind of bounce off people when you are playing a set which you know really well.
You hear something that somebody else has done and the next time you play it you
think, if they are going to do that, if I put this on top of it, it will sound really good. (C)

And communication with the audience was also an important feature.

There is a huge enjoyment in getting a reaction from the audience because what
you have done had worked well I suppose, and I mean there are certain points in the
evening where we know everyone is just going to go ooooh because something about
the music kind of makes them to do that and its very satisfying. (C)

She contrasted this freedom to improvise with her early experience of orchestral playing.
There was a sense you sit and play in the orchestra, you read what is on the page,
you play loud when it says play loud and you shut up when youre supposed to shut
up . . . There was no sense for me at that age of anything communicative about the
whole process or anything like that. (C)

The importance of an appropriate social context for playing was underlined by all of the
musicians.
I mean I think it certainly helped enormously. [Without it] I might be a little more
inclined to forget about it for a while. (B)
Ive thoroughly enjoyed my time since I retired, mingling with all these different people
and everything; its really good. Everybodys friendly and willing to help. (I)
Discussion

The sense of both the pleasure and the challenge experienced by the participants of this
study is striking. The amount of time which some of these musicians were devoting both to
learning and to various forms of participation and performance was not trivial. The power
of music, as a social practice, to have significant impacts on peoples lives is evident from
their accounts. Several questions arise about the nature of their learning, the difficulties
which they encountered, their participation in music as a social activity, and, for some of

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them, the failure of past musical experiences to engender the commitment and involvement
which was clearly awakened in adulthood.
The contrast between learning through the formal classical system and learning
informally has been noted before (Finnegan, 1989). The learning involved in this study
was much less structured and organised than that associated with conventional tuition. In
fact, regular individual tuition itself was the exception rather than the rule. The approach
to technique was pragmatic in that the learners tended to consider technical issues when
they seemed to offer them a way past some barrier to progress. Although there was some
indication that more consideration of basic technique might have been useful in their
tuition, there was little appetite for the sorts of exercises and scales that figure in formal
classical tuition. The medium for learning was the tune and even where exercises were
used they tended to be based on tunes. The culture in which they were playing places
significant value on learning and playing by ear. This is reflected in their views on notation
which were also pragmatic. Some of them would use notation as an aid to learning a tune
but, even for those who were more dependent on notation, the goal was to be able to play
fluently by ear, a crucial skill for the sort of social playing to which they aspired.
There are some interesting resonances with Greens (2001) work on popular musicians,
whose approach to technique and to notation were broadly similar to those reported here.
In both studies, the musicians reported an enormous sense of enjoyment of their musical
activity. But there are interesting differences that seem to stem from the different musical
cultures and associated expectations. Greens musicians spent significant amounts of time
copying from specific recordings of music so that they could reproduce the sound of
particular bands. This is not a feature of traditional music where there is no demand for
cover bands and no expectation of this kind of imitation. Furthermore, traditional fiddle
tunes are often played at a speed which makes it difficult for learners to copy them. The
fiddlers did learn from CDs but seemed to use them largely for acquiring new tunes to add to
their repertoire. On the other hand, a feature absent from Greens account is the significance
of workshops as a source of tuition and this again seems to be a result of a difference in
the cultures. The workshop is a well-established learning context for traditional musicians
and may be related to the longer tradition of informal learning within a community. One
characteristic of the workshops described is the mixture of ages old and young learn
together, although the reported perception of greater skill and learning capacity of young
people was a source of some frustration to the adult learners. This mixture of ages does not
seem to occur with popular musicians.
Another feature common to all the musical experiences described above is the
importance of some kind of social context in which to play. Without exception, all of
the musicians were involved in playing with other people. They participated in activities
such as lunchtime sessions with colleagues, ceilidh bands and sessions in pubs. In a broad
sense, there is a link between the kind of social contexts they discovered and made and
with Scottish culture but it would be too easy to infer a simple relationship between
the musicians and their national location. One of the musicians (F) lived in England, for
example, and had travelled to Scotland specifically for the workshop. Her social musical
contexts, which included playing in a country dance band, were not located in Scotland.
Finnegans (1989) study of music in urban England showed that, for most people, there
are many possibilities of music-making in different traditions. Country and western music

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Peter Cope

had an enthusiastic following, including performers, although its cultural origins are in
the southern states of the USA. There were several ceilidh bands in her study, playing a
varied repertoire, including English, Irish and Scottish music. MacKinnon, (1993) suggests
that, to a large extent in the modern world, culture is something we choose rather than
something we possess. Musical taste can vary dramatically within one parent culture and,
in contrast to Cookes (1986) Shetland fiddlers, most of the musicians in this study were
from Scotlands heavily populated central belt. They had clearly chosen traditional music
in the same way as Greens (2001) musicians had chosen popular music.
Their choice implied elements of social context which are distinctive. The culture
of traditional music is not uniform but informality tends to be a common feature and is
exemplified by the pub session, which has characteristics atypical of the Western concert
tradition. Although sessions present a performance opportunity, they exhibit an ambivalent
relationship between musicians and audience (MacKinnon 1993). Musicians face each
other rather than face the listeners and the performance is more intimate and inwardlooking than a concert (Fairburn, 1994), a feature which makes them less threatening for
inexperienced musicians. There seems to be an ideal, at least, that sessions should be
characterised by openness, inclusiveness, and an acceptance of learners, although these
ideals are subject to tensions when, for example, newcomers pay insufficient regard to
established conventions (Stock, 2004). One tension reported in this study occurs when
learners competence significantly limits their capacity to participate. Learners often
reacted to this difficulty by setting up their own groupings which allowed musicians
of similar competence to play together. The pleasure they derived from these kinds of
social participation is evident in their accounts and clearly forms a significant part of the
motivation for continuing to play.
Many of the participants referred to a perception that learning as an adult was more
difficult than learning as a child. They observed younger learners picking up skills with
apparent ease. There is evidence that facility with both cognitive and motor skills, both of
which are significant in learning to play a musical instrument, declines with age (see, for
example, Ketcham & Stelmach, 2001). This raises questions about whether starting to play
in maturity places limitations on learners. It seems unlikely that adults would be able to
reach the levels of virtuosity to which conservatoire training is directed and this partially
might explain the lack of research interest in their learning. But any disadvantages stemming
from this late start are compensated for, to some extent, by their commitment and their
increased awareness of themselves as learners. In terms of their own criteria, most of them
were successful; many of them were able to play music to a level which allowed them play
in sessions and to join or form bands and they enjoyed themselves.
The commitment of the participants is significant for a number of reasons. First of all,
the considerable efforts directed towards teaching children to play musical instruments are
presumably motivated by aspirations that they will continue to play in adulthood. For these
musicians, in nearly every case, there had been previous involvement in music that had not
produced the commitment they were now showing. More than half of them had taken piano
lessons, for example, and all but one had given up. It may be that adults have a perception
of greater control over their activities. Part of the reason for the increased commitment in
adulthood may be that participation is intrinsically motivated. Perceptions of autonomy
and of competence each increase the strength of intrinsic motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000).

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Ryan and Deci also present evidence that external rewards, such as testing, deadlines
and competition, can undermine intrinsic motivation. This may have implications for the
dropout from playing in school to playing in adulthood. Nevertheless, it remains curious
that people with such obvious enthusiasm for active musicianship were not stimulated by
opportunities provided when they were younger. Their accounts of school music are similar
to those given by Greens (2001) popular musicians. In the case of the musicians in this
study, it may be argued that these experiences occurred before current curricular changes
in school music took place. But there is no evidence that the pedagogy of instrument
tuition (rather than classroom music) has changed dramatically over this time period. For at
least some of the participants, their earlier formal tuition was perceived as over-formal and
restrictive. They were critical, not so much of the focus on notation as the concomitant lack
of concern with what Green describes as developing the ear. The retrospective analysis of
at least one of them was that he had no tunes from this period of his life, an interesting turn
of phrase which illustrates the importance, in traditional music, of owning tunes through
knowing them by heart rather than having to rely on music. There was a clear feeling from
another player that the formality of the classical genre had inhibited her musical expression,
something that she was clearly enjoying exploring in her present musical activities. In fact,
in the case of C, the contrast between her negative memories of school music and her
current enthusiasm for playing in her band is especially striking. Sloboda (2001) points out
that the classical orchestra is dependent on the subjugation of the cultural project to the will
of the conductor who is subjugated in turn to the composer. Cs memories of participating
in this kind of activity show a clear antipathy to this way of working.
Green (2001) suggests that there are different paths to musicianship and calls for a
more open attitude to music-making and towards active amateur musicians. For school
instrument tuition, this might imply less formality, a respect for other cultures and their
practices such as playing by ear, a more relaxed approach to technique and to reading
music, a willingness to allow learners to take more control over their own learning, the
facilitation of meaningful social contexts. Such an approach could be justified solely on
the grounds of inclusion (Allan & Cope, 2004) but, if it resulted in the kind of commitment
exhibited by the adults in this study, it might considerably increase the likelihood of children
continuing to play into adulthood.

Notes
1

The Adult Learning Project Scots Music Group is a community education project based in Edinburgh
which aims to make the traditional music, song and dance of Scotland widely available to everyone
by offering classes, events, workshops, social gatherings and publications. It is extremely popular,
routinely attracting around 400 learners each session. See http://www.alpscotsmusic.org/
There are now computer utilities available which allow the user to slow down CDs without altering
the pitch. These may facilitate learners access to CDs. See, for example, http://www.ronimusic.com

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