
If music lessons from your time in school bring back painful memories, read this blog.
Tim Horrocks and the team at One Education Music are changing how the subject is taught.
When you think of music lessons that you had in school you probably think of old Coomber tape players, watching Music Time on a TV wheeled around the school on castors and singing feeble songs that would leave Mary Whitehouse craving a bit more ‘edge’. If you were lucky, you might have been allowed to bang a baggy-skinned tambourine along to the teacher strumming Kum Ba Yah on an acoustic with a woven rainbow-coloured strap. A chosen few might even have been afforded the unconscionable privilege of whacking the Vibra-slap and pretending it was a rattlesnake. We could dream.
Ok, maybe it wasn’t as bad as all that. But, though well-meaning, music lessons always felt like an afterthought. Maybe a few got to play recorder and embarked on a playing career that culminated in a warbling recital of ‘Hot Cross Buns’ in front of assembly… hardly the stuff to inspire the next generation of Beethovens, Björks or Jimi Hendrixs.
Luckily, One Education do things differently. A peripatetic army of guitarist, pianists, trumpet players, violinists, beat boxers, whatever players from all manner of backgrounds as diverse as orchestra, jazz, hip-hop, gabba and rock, the One Education team might be seen as the children of the Coomber generation returning to schools to correct the wrongs of the past. Or, if you prefer, a dedicated team of seasoned professional musicians delivering engaging instrument tuition that incorporates modern, inclusive techniques.
As someone who suffered music under the Coomber regime, my number one priority it to take lessons as far as possible away from the glassy-eyed singalongs of old and make them as engaging as possible to young minds. And the great thing about One Education Music is that there’s plenty of room to move when it comes to teaching technique as long as the end result is kids being able to play, and being enthused by, their chosen instrument. Three years teaching guitar with One Education has given me time to develop a highly sophisticated matrix of techniques and methods that help me achieve this end…but it can boiled down to a few key points:
If you like what you’ve read but your child isn’t at a school served by One Education, there are a number of Music Centres (https://www.oneeducation.co.uk/teaching-and-learning/music/music-store) offering tuition, orchestras, rock bands and even a songwriting group. We always welcome new musicians – any age and any ability.