Teaching theory through songs they already love

I trained in a conservatory where theory came first and pleasure came later, if it came at all. It produced accurate players and a striking number of adults who no longer touch an instrument. I decided early that I would teach in the other order.

A first lesson usually begins with a song the student already loves. We find the chords together, slowly, by ear and by trial. Within twenty minutes they are playing something recognisable, and the questions start arriving on their own: why does that chord feel sad, why does the chorus lift, why does this one note sound wrong.

Motivation is not a personality trait. It is a repertoire choice.

Those questions are the syllabus. Relative minor, secondary dominant, suspension, voice leading - each one enters as an answer to something the student wanted to know. I still teach scales and reading, but they arrive as tools for a job that already exists.

The risk is obvious: a student can spend a year playing four-chord songs and learn very little. So every piece is followed by a small transposition, an ear-training minute, and a written bar or two. The pleasure buys the patience for the technical work, not the other way round.

Eight years in, the number I care about is retention. Students who choose their own repertoire in the first month are still playing two years later. Motivation, it turns out, was never a personality trait I could diagnose. It was a decision about what we put on the music stand.