Informal music and musicians

Trevor Mason
Jul 11, 2014
6 min read

Updated: Mar 2

Popular musicians largely teach themselves, but what sorts of spaces do they use? We asked a few music educators.

‘The Space’ is where it all happens – the performance, the workshop, the rehearsal, even the brain. Unfortunately, the physical space can often be overlooked in favour of the creative process. However, a good space enables and nurtures the artistic process.

It helps people to feel comfortable, encourages freedom of expression and is a safe place to work with others. It is important, therefore, to understand the issues and challenges facing those who use music rehearsal spaces.

Imitation

So called "informal” musicians tend to be a community of peers where artistic and technical discipline is implicit, rather than of one leading ‘master-musician’ with greater skills. Popular musicians largely teach themselves or ‘pick up’ skills and knowledge, usually with the help or encouragement of their family and peers. By watching and imitating musicians around them, popular musicians often make reference to recordings or performances and other live events involving their chosen music. Andrew Peggie has listed the non-musical factors, in no particular order and in any combination, which can spark initial interest (p.10, London Arts, 2002):

instinctive curiosity
peer group pressure
attraction to a particular sound/shape/colour
attraction to a physical sensation of playing or singing
the urge to communicate – or attention-seeking
the need for approval – or asserting individuality
remote role models (eg. TV, recordings, film)
activities already embedded in everyday culture
a possible mental, social, class or cultural escape route

The needs of different genres, and the artistic expression within a genre, may require different patterns of organisation. Keith Negus in his book Music Genres and Corporate Cultures suggests how we organise ourselves influences the music we make: “…musical sounds and meanings are not only dependent upon the way an industry is producing culture, but are also shaped by the way in which culture is producing an industry” (Negus, 1999, p. 13).

Jacques Attali goes further saying: "Music, the organisation of noise… reflects the manufacture of society; it constitutes the audible waveband of the vibrations and signs that make up society” (p. 4, Attali, 1977).

The idea that many musicians have taught themselves by watching and imitating musicians around them, rather than more traditional methods, is worthy of further investigation. But while we’re talking about definitions perhaps its useful to consider musician Andrew Peggie’s take on what he has called ‘rough music’ in his article Tuning Up: “direct, noisy, energetic, sentimental, quickly assembled and usually transmitted orally… [which] invites participation and instant gratification, perhaps at the expense of sophistication” (Peggie, 2002, p. 19).

This definition encapsulates the aesthetic and emotional aspects of informal music.

Transition & progression

Keith Negus provides an eloquent insight in his book Music Genres and Corporate Cultures (1999, p. 2): "A number of us had made the transition from back rooms and bedrooms to performing regularly in pubs, community centres, youth clubs, parties and then more recognised venues. I had become a participant member of a passionate, competitive yet convivial and somewhat idiosyncratic music scene…. After stints in numerous bands, I ended up performing with the lesser known and more embarrassingly named Coconut Dogs, who released a couple of singles and played numerous clubs, bars and provincial venues before sinking into ever deeper obscurity."

Organisation and inclusion

Keith suggests how we organise ourselves influences the music we make: “…musical sounds and meanings are not only dependent upon the way an industry is producing culture, but are also shaped by the way in which culture is producing an industry” (Negus, 1999, p. 13).

It would be misleading to think such musicians are ‘outside’ or independent of the music business, or that they are only tenuously connected through their consumption and appropriation of various products (instruments, amplifiers, recordings, etc.). Clearly, amateur or voluntary musicians involved in music-making on an informal basis contribute to the wider music industry.

Where informal music takes place

Those who run music rehearsal spaces may not realise the importance they play in connecting musicians to the wider music industry.

Music rehearsal rooms are crucial to the amplified, instrument-playing, popular music sector. Usually when informal groups start they rehearse at home. It is not until parents or neighbours get so annoyed with the volume required for an amplified band are they forced to practise in an undesignated environment, such as a garage or basement. Commercial and professionally equipped practice rooms can offer useful meeting places where people can exchange ideas and practice with potentially far reaching artistic benefits.

Little research has been undertaken on the ingredients needed for a model of good practice in a music rehearsal space that is conducive to high quality participatory music-making.

Making your own music

Some writers have highlighted the prevalence of music composition and songwriting as a way to assert one's own creativity. One writer, Christopher Small in his groundbreaking book Music, Society, Education said: "They [music listeners] receive the product, but have no involvement with the process of creation, which is complete before any performer even approaches the work. The adventure is over and the explorer safely home before anyone learns anything of the journey… it could be that we would be better occupied in making and performing our own works of art than in continuing the endless repetition and contemplation of the works of these long-gone masters… we shall regain our lost confidence and creative power only in rejecting them, albeit lovingly, as a young man may need to reject his over-dominant parents before he can grow to full adulthood” (p.30-32, Small, 1977).

Interest has shifted from the creative process to the production of music as a commodity, and the values of the consumer society are coming to dominate culture.

Schools

Schools have for a long time played a major role in the development of informal musicians through the provision of resources such as rehearsal spaces and instruments, formal and informal performance opportunities and, most particularly, large numbers of young people with shared musical interests.

Lucy Green has argued in her book How Popular Musicians Learn “…this input by the school traditionally occurred almost entirely outside the classroom… largely unsupervised and often flew in the face of the music department’s ethos” (Green, 2001, p. 146).

Andrew Peggie too, in his report Tuning Up suggested: "…music educators also have unrealistic expectations of what constitutes appropriate skills for a vocation in current popular music, where the imperatives of fashion, entertainment, personality and media savvy are just as important (if not more so) than technical skills on an instrument… contact with charismatic teachers and animatuers are an important element of the educational process" (p.8, London Arts, 2002).

In 2006, a group of professional music educators in London were asked to give examples of where they had seen informal music take place. They came up with the following:

pubs & bars
on the streets
recording studios
workshop session/jam
commercial rehearsal spaces
youth clubs & community settings
school facilities (outside of school hours)
at home - living room, garages, garden shed, bedrooms

The music-making in these spaces are often arranged on an informal basis eg. conversation with the landlord/owner, agreement between friends, etc. Such spaces are often privately owned and not networked to similar spaces, hence their overall economic significance goes unnoticed.

In the book Routes into Teaching Music, Rick Rogers suggests freelance or community musicians: "…can make that vital connection between what goes on in schools and what goes on in pupils’ musical lives elsewhere" (p. 77, Rogers, 2005).

Music groups who play together for any length of time find an identity and empathy.

Playing music of one’s choice, with which one identifies personally, with like-minded friends, and having fun doing it must be a high priority in the quest for increasing numbers to make music meaningful, worthwhile and participatory.

Andrew Peggie again: "For most people most of the time in most other cultures, music is a messy amalgam of sounds, ritual, dressing up, movement, hero-worship, sex, religion and celebration. To discuss music purely in terms of its sonorous parameters… doesn’t convey anything of the emotional engagement involved" (p.9, London Arts, 2002).

Making spaces for informal music-making within the community have far reaching implications for social and cultural policies. By better understanding how informal music-making works will at least legitimise a rewarding pastime if nothing else. Andrew Peggie again: "Localised networks of studios, rehearsal spaces, performance venues (pubs, etc), tied together by informal alliances of promoters, producers, more established musicians and youth workers probably represent the best conditions for alternative talent to flourish. At an infrastructural level, the promotion of unusual partnerships is probably the best way to exercise intervention" (p.20, London Arts, 2002).

Weekend Warriors

The Weekend Warriors programme in the US and Australia welcomes new and lapsed amateur musicians who can play a few chords, keep time or hold a tune, on a 5 – 6 week experience. All the gear is provided, a rehearsal space is arranged, leading to a gig. Coaches and mentors steer the participants through the programme.

References

Andrew Peggie - Tuning Up: A new look at instrumental music teaching (2002, London Arts, Sound Sense, Mayor of London)
Keith Negus - Music Genres and Corporate Cultures (1999, Routledge)
Lucy Green - How Popular Musicians Learn (2001, Ashgate)
Christopher Small - Music, Society, Education, 1977
Jacques Attali – Noise: The Political Economy of Music, 1985 University of Minnesota Press