Education in Music

We love music, as evident from our combined CD collection (which is more than 2000 CDs and counting). More importantly, I (we) love playing music and this is evident from the number of musical instruments at home: 1 piano (ubiquitous in Singaporean homes), 1 portable Korg keyboard, 1 venerable Yamaha EL-90 electone and 1 ukelele. We also have musical instrument apps on our ipads/iphones, including drum sets, modern synthesizers, classic pianos, guzhen, and the ocarina. Wibblewamble prefers to sing, hence we make a great pair, but i digress.

A question was posed to me during lunch as we were talking about learning music. When i mentioned that i do play the piano (or actually keyboards), I was asked: "So what grade are you?"
This is facinating from so many points of view (when i say facinating, i mean it is a bugbear of mine lol).

• It reflects our Singaporean attitude of measuring one's success using a formal qualification system.


• It shows our kiasu competitive streak in wanting to compare against others.


• It demonstrates plain ignorance in trying to apply an exact science to an inexact art (the engineer in me gave up trying to define one's level of musicness).

There is no leveling up for music and there is no direct comparison. Much like college drop-out Steve Jobs (may he rest in peace), even if you have grade 8 in Piano, does not mean you can play better than someone who has a lower grade. It just means you passed the examinations and you managed to play 3 examination pieces well. Whoopdeedo.

Because of this need for paper qualifications by local parents, some piano teachers do teach songs to their charges for the sole purpose of taking examinations, changing songs only when one examination is passed, often to the next set of examination pieces. Is this any way to learn and appreciate music? When i was younger (but old enough to discern) I once told my piano teacher, "if you teach me only examination pieces, i quit now." Of course she did not, and she even embraced music other than the classical pieces she was great at and we even shared pointers (i came in with experience on this) on playing pop or jazz or even rock pieces (Joplin FTW!).

Coming a close second as facinating question of the day is "what brand if your ukelele" Once again, this obsession to compare! Especially if the next question is "how much did you buy it for" *facepalm* Sometimes we have to learn that not everything has a dollar or extrinsic value.

For the record, it may seem like sour grapes that i didn't pass my ABRSM grade 8. But also for the record, I only took ABRSM grade 3 and grade 7, about 3 years from starting the formal piano lessons (when i was 12). And aside from piano, I was under a scholarship from Yamaha for Electone (completed grade 5 (w fundamentals), teacher's grade, if you must know), and also doing drums as well (grade 6). So paper qualifications-wise, i do have some, although one ability that i'm thankful for is that my ability to replicate a song (or at least play a version of it) after hearing it. More importantly, i feel, is that i enjoy myself playing music and do try to spread this joy to the people who listen. One day, i hope to pass on this joy and this love to our offspring, in the hope that she'd view music the same way we do, and i'm sure she'd do better not to cringe when someone asks her "so what grade are you?"