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  • Joanna Holmanjoannaholman@aus.social
    Oct 6, 2026, 12:18 PM

    Something I wish they’d explained better at school is that skills are transferable and often you’re learning how to learn. I see so many adults complain about how useless learning recorder in school music class was. The teachers weren’t into bad covers of hot cross buns, they were trying to teach musicality, sheet music reading, rhythm and handling an instrument that could be applied to other things in future using the cheapest, easiest to play, hardest to break instrument possible. I feel like the inability to see how learning things might be beneficial in indirect ways haunts a lot of people into adulthood to their detriment

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  • cognitively accessible mathgeonz@mathstodon.xyz
    Oct 6, 2026, 3:31 PM

    @eloisa @joannaholman
    Welp, in my experience working at community college, folks who are doing something with music more often stick to things and get the degree.
    I suspect it would hold for other skill-related activities, especially if there's a social element.
    The whole "performance time" is a lot like exam time...
    ... and then there is the brain coordination and how many parts of the brain work together with rhythm and math and language.

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  • AlexanderVIAlexanderVI@stranger.social
    Oct 7, 2026, 11:24 AM

    @geonz @eloisa @joannaholman All that, and to recap the original point - learning ANYTHING new is an exercise in learning how to learn.
    Music involves novel materials, vocabulary, technique, etc, and (especially in school) usually means working with other people to achieve a result none can achieve on their own.

    Unless you spend your life doing the exact same thing from age 10 to death, learning how to navigate all those kinds of things is useful.

    But it requires work, which people dislike.

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  • Eloísaeloisa@photog.social
    Oct 6, 2026, 3:52 PM

    @deirdrebeth @geonz @joannaholman as someone who had and enjoyed music and barely passed basic maths I fail to see that connection. 😅

    I can see it with language, though. Maybe the learned instrument/s and genres played a part on it too? 🤷🏻

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  • cognitively accessible mathgeonz@mathstodon.xyz
    Oct 6, 2026, 4:09 PM

    @eloisa @deirdrebeth @joannaholman
    Most folks who don't get math haven't had good teaching. We've got folks here who *get* how to teach maths to people for whom it doesn't come naturally.
    Last week I was at a webinar and a math professor talked about applying math to DJ ing and how it reeled his resistant learners it. The mmore he talked, though, the more I realized he also knew a LOT about the basic structures of arithmetic and algebra that so many people are told they're supposed to already know.

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  • Eloísaeloisa@photog.social
    Oct 6, 2026, 4:21 PM

    @geonz @deirdrebeth @joannaholman you're not wrong. In all my life I only had one teacher who actually made the effort to try to get me to understand it. Unfortunately it was too late, and wasn't even called maths. It was quantitative methods, from my Humanitities track in high school. That I liked.

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  • AlexanderVIAlexanderVI@stranger.social
    Oct 7, 2026, 11:48 AM

    @eloisa @geonz @deirdrebeth @joannaholman

    The math<->music link exists but you don't need a ton of math to just do some music.

    Western music theory does use numbers to organize itself, and if you really want to number up, look into classical Indian music and how it treats subdivisions.

    I didn't study math past the age of fifteen (which is when I started music, coincidentally), but have never encountered a musical situation where math was the stumbling block.

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  • DB Schweindeirdrebeth@mas.to
    Oct 7, 2026, 11:58 AM

    @AlexanderVI @eloisa @geonz @joannaholman

    You misunderstand my meaning. It's not a "you must know x to do y". It's "if you understand x, y is easier".

    Most musicians I know don't think about maths at all, they just innately know how things come together because of all the music theory knowledge.
    The mathematicians have an easier time learning music theory because it matches the things they already know.

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  • AlexanderVIAlexanderVI@stranger.social
    Oct 7, 2026, 12:37 PM

    @deirdrebeth
    Yes, you are right, I took that wrong - thanks for clarifying, and I agree completely.
    I suspect there's also something about the study habits and self-application of those who work hard to get better at math that is very applicable to learning music. This seems particularly the case for classical students - I can't think of many folk musicians who make a math-music connection, but I've known plenty of classical musicians who also did well in math.

    @eloisa @geonz @joannaholman

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  • AlexanderVIAlexanderVI@stranger.social
    Oct 7, 2026, 1:40 PM

    @deirdrebeth I had a quick gander at your profile and I can definitely say our views of life are not diametrically opposed, though I suppose on any number of specifics we might disagree. Interesting discussion nevertheless - thanks again.

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  • Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPETimWardCam@c.im
    Oct 7, 2026, 1:30 PM

    @geonz @eloisa @deirdrebeth @joannaholman At age 11 my maths teacher taught that mathematics is "the study of patterns". Which clearly includes music.

    The point at which I could no longer "get" maths - I could, at a push, learn stuff by memorising it, which I'm bad at, but I could no longer just "see" the patterns - was second year maths at Cambridge. I gave up and did something else for my third year.

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  • DB Schweindeirdrebeth@mas.to
    Oct 6, 2026, 4:46 PM

    @eloisa @geonz @joannaholman

    Did you understand the difference between 3/4 time and 4/4 time?
    How about 7/16 time?
    How about whole note, half note, quarter note?
    That's all maths, and if you do them wrong (say running 4/4 time on a 3/4 time song) you end up in a different place (with a different answer) than your peers.

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  • Eloísaeloisa@photog.social
    Oct 6, 2026, 4:57 PM

    @deirdrebeth @geonz @joannaholman not that I recall. In my country we have music very young (since primary) and we call them something else, we don't use numbers for it. But what you said made sense bc of what I remember from seeing drawn on the partitions. Now I wish they would've explained it that way back then. I wouldn't have given up organ. 🤦🏻

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  • Joanna Holmanjoannaholman@aus.social
    Oct 6, 2026, 10:43 PM

    @eloisa @geonz in addition to the maths and language related things others have mentioned, skills on the easy to learn recorder also transfer to other harder forms of music making. The mechanics of recorder have similarities to more advanced woodwind musical instruments like flute or clarinet, the sheet music reading skills transfer to almost any instrument

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  • VirginicusVirginicus@universeodon.com
    Oct 7, 2026, 10:41 AM

    @eloisa @geonz @joannaholman The general skill I learned from music is timing. I have no musical talent at all, but feeling how fast to do things, from how fast to push a lawnmower to how to synchronize six tasks in the kitchen, is valuable daily.

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  • Paul McKonepdmckone@cosocial.ca
    Oct 7, 2026, 1:34 PM

    @eloisa @geonz @joannaholman

    Music also supports people skills:
    - teamwork (playing with the band)
    - coordination (all together now)
    - turns-taking (leadership and followship)
    - tenacity (practice makes proficient), and
    - balance (harmony, melody, solo, silent).

    Seeing "plays <musical instrument>" on a resume tells me something about what it's like to work with the candidate.

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  • Gifliangiflian@techhub.social
    Oct 10, 2026, 4:38 PM

    @futzle @eloisa @geonz @joannaholman thinking about it, my university music theory classes, especially the 20th century ones, were good training for incident management in tech later on (analyzing logs, looking for patterns in graphs)

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  • Horachiohorachio@aus.social
    Oct 6, 2026, 12:42 PM

    @joannaholman I agree completely, although the mere thought of recorders reminds me of the painful years I spent teaching in a classroom next to the music room and had to listen to year 7s butcher ‘My Heart Will Go on’ … over and over again! 🤣🤪

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  • Shannon ClarkRycaut@mastodon.social
    Oct 6, 2026, 4:29 PM

    @joannaholman I think the key failure is in explaining to parents (not just to kids who might not listen) that most things in a well run school aren’t just about the obvious - ie homework really isn’t (or shouldn’t) be just about the answers to problems - it really should be about:

    The process to solve each problem
    Which steps in the process the kid is getting stuck on or making mistakes
    The practice of planning time management to get homework done & turned in
    Reading instructions
    Etc.

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  • Emile Snyderesnyder@mastodon.social
    Oct 6, 2026, 6:56 PM

    @joannaholman I have a lot of thoughts and feelings here :)

    Briefly, I lay most of the blame for this on how we treat children and learning: dictating what and when kids are supposed to learn, and using shame and punishment to elicit compliance.

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  • ghosts in the silicon ▒0@corteximplant.com
    Oct 7, 2026, 10:20 AM

    @joannaholman agree with the bulk of this, except that the recorder is the easiest to play instrument. we ghosts had 2-3 years of violin lessons by the time we were forced to learn playing the recorder and getting the fingerings on the recorder right was excruciating for us and we could never quite get the hang of it. the step of translating a pitch to a fingering was so jamming to our not neurotypical brain that we did poorly in music class while at the same time we had taught ourselves to play music backwards on the violin

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  • Cycling Stustufromoz@aus.social
    Oct 7, 2026, 11:33 AM

    @joannaholman can absolutely confirm that recorder is a good cheap start to music. Along with singing. And yes, I will also point out, that I did not learn well from the recorder lessons we had at school, because too few and not well structured to achieve the results. But I did learn from my grandmother teaching me beginner piano, then several years of classical guitar. And school choir. And church choir… then ….

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  • Urzlgooba42@mastodon.social
    Oct 7, 2026, 12:09 PM

    @joannaholman Worse still, they don't recognize when they're actively using those kinds of skills.

    How many times have you heard an adult say they never use algebra? Those same adults are projecting how much a tank of gas costs based on the unit price. They're getting in on a "2 for $5" and can tell you how much of a discount that represents.

    They're using those lessons while aggressively pretending education failed them.

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  • Max - Poliverso 🇪🇺🇮🇹max@poliverso.org
    Oct 7, 2026, 12:11 PM

    @joannaholman

    Recorder let me experience how beautiful was playing music. When you've never done it before, playing whatever instrument open a window on a whole world.

    I jumped into that window and I found my first keyboard, my first guitar, my first drums and then the bass and at the age of 30 I started studying the cello.

    If I removed from my life all the happiness I found in playing an instrument, both all alone in my room and with friends on a stage, an awfully lot of happiness would just fade away of my life.

    And it all started with that small, ugly recorder 😁

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  • Paul McKonepdmckone@cosocial.ca
    Oct 7, 2026, 1:50 PM

    @joannaholman

    Too many people (particularly politicians and business people) conflate education (here's some stuff that's good to know about how to think, learn, and be your best self) with training (how to do this job) and dismiss anything that is not immediately and directly applicable as frivolous.

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  • roque (ロク)roque@mastodon.social
    Oct 7, 2026, 2:34 PM

    @joannaholman Oh damn yes. I spent an hour teaching my ESL kids to write down words yesterday. The words weren’t important; learning to *pay attention* (especially to detail) was.

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  • EI9FEBEI9FEB@mastodon.radio
    Oct 7, 2026, 3:03 PM

    @joannaholman
    Or in Ireland the similar to play but even cheaper modern "tin whistle" (Flageolet fingering).
    Both are excellent choices.

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  • Kimkim@fedi.social
    Oct 7, 2026, 3:06 PM

    @joannaholman@aus.social At some point in the middle of primary school, an announcement was made to the effect of "Anyone interested in learning the recorder, meet in $room at break time". I reasoned that recorders were horrible squeaky things, and sod that.

    What the announcement should have been was "If you ever want to learn anything about reading music or playing an instrument, meet in $room at break time". Not being from a musical family, that was apparently my singular opportunity, and I missed it.

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  • Paul_IPv6paul_ipv6@infosec.exchange
    Oct 7, 2026, 3:18 PM

    @joannaholman

    this is so true...

    i used to rail on about graduation requirement and core education classes, how they were a collosal waste of time. it wasn't until i started teaching that i started to understand how hard it is to build core, fundamental skills without it feeling this way. it really made me appreciate just how good the teachers that i both enjoyed *and* learned from were at their job.

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  • Deb Nam-Kranednkboston@apobangpo.space
    Oct 7, 2026, 3:40 PM

    @joannaholman It drives me to rage when people talk about how much they don't need to learn algebra, geometry, or calculus because you never use them in real life. Actually, you do, but that's not the point. #Math teaches you to look for sufficient conditions and baseline logic. "Prove it", and not just geometry.

    Why people would argue against picking up those skills I don't--yeah, okay, we all know why at this point, which makes it even more outrageous.

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  • ThingsLeftUnsaid . 🇨🇦thingsleftunsaid@writing.exchange
    Oct 7, 2026, 3:36 PM

    @joannaholman I had a similar thought recently about trades at the time that I was in high school. No one told me about the jobs that my "shop classes" could lead to. They might have been assuming that it would be common sense to everyone... and to the teen I was then; it most certainly was not to me. I would have been more motivated with a specific goal to aim for. Hindsight I guess!

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  • MidgePhotoPhoto55@mastodon.social
    Oct 7, 2026, 3:48 PM

    @joannaholman
    I think it was often under-appreciated how many things may be effectively communicated to some people by telling them - writing it down for them to read and or saying them - while of course some others seem to, or need to, soak it up by demonstration.

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  • Jack William Belljackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com
    Oct 7, 2026, 8:24 PM

    @joannaholman

    I think the problem is, such people feel no *joy* from learning. I mean, there's a reason some of us are autodidacts and it isn't because we find learning a chore…

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  • Baron VonskinnbackVonskinnback@mastodon.social
    Oct 8, 2026, 8:15 AM

    @joannaholman none of my teachers conveyed the love of learning into me, I only discovered it after leaving school, away from their tired jaded attitudes & the mob violence they turned a blind eye to. It served only to demonstrate what institutional failure looked like...

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  • Professor StevensProfessor_Stevens@mastodon.gamedev.place
    Oct 8, 2026, 11:17 AM

    @joannaholman

    My pre-college teachers almost always answered, "Why are we learning this thing?" with some form of "Because it will help you with that other thing." I always left those exchanges thinking they should just be teaching us that other thing in the first place.

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  • Allpointsallpoints@mstdn.social
    Oct 8, 2026, 1:19 PM

    @joannaholman when I was looking for work right after getting my engineering degree, I lived in a part of the world that didn't have a need for my kind of engineer. On interviews, people would ask me how my degree was a match for their position. My response was always along the lines of, the core part of an engineering degree is training you how to solve problems. That always went over well and led to further discussion.

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  • Matthew Smithindigojo@mastodon.online
    Oct 8, 2026, 2:34 PM

    @joannaholman @ShaulaEvans I tried learning sax at school and I remember the fingerings being similar. Didn't mention it at the time because the recorder was considered an easy "child's instrument" and the sax was a grown-up instrument.

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  • Mary Williamsnightsong@mastodon.gamedev.place
    Oct 8, 2026, 9:11 PM

    @joannaholman Breathing, training your hearing, keeping time, hand-eye coordination, memorization by sight and ear, pattern recognition, spotting and correcting anomalies, developing muscle memory. In a group setting, there's also camaraderie, cooperation and...

    ...an actual group project everyone pulls their weight in.

    If you look at music as language, you're also reading another language and translating it aloud in realtime.

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