Did music lessons at school help with your musical life?

[lurksalot]

1 hour ago, Leonard Smalls said:

Music lessons in my schools (70s-early 80s) were largely a waste of time...

There was nothing in primary, just a bit of singing at assembly. 

And in secondary we had music in years 1-3, 1 lesson a week. They consisted of Mr Bird playing some music (usually Young Person's Guide, or The Planets, or for a contemporary feel (!), Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Yawn). Then folks would say if they liked it or not, though because he wasn't particularly good at discipline this usually meant him shouting above a general cacophony of rude comments. And then we'd do some very rudimentary theory. This theory would be tested at annual exam time. However, they discovered I had private piano lessons after I got 100% in the first exam (my mum's a piano teacher) so from then on I got different exams from everybody else - though this was usually about grade 1 theory when I'd already done grade 5... So music wasn't really a thing for us at school.

Though in 6th form, Mr. Q had the bright idea of forming a one-off band to play before a viewing of that banned anti-nuke film (wot I can't remember the name of). I played keys, Cossack played guitar and Mouse played his violin bass - someone rattled a tambourine in the background while we did a couple of BarclaysBankHarvest and Dylan songs. I was so fascinated by Mouse's bass that I took it up when I got to Uni - and strangely it turned out that the Hofner bass belonged to Mouse's brother, our very own @lurksalot!

My experience was quite similar @Leonard Smalls would you believe 😁 except we started with Mr Fogel the chalk chucker and then Crystal tips.

but yes Kevin Q did like the music for his spiritual celebrations . 
 

a bit odd that music was so low in the proceedings considering the headmaster’s son was one David Balfe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Balfe

 

but then , he didn’t go to our school 😂😂

[SteveXFR]

GCSE music lessons at school put me off learning more. It only covered jazz and classical. Anything else was "not real music". 

Our music teacher was very old and wouldn't even acknowledge anything modern.

[Nail Soup]

On 04/09/2020 at 17:18, Nail Soup said:

Just thinking back to music lessons at school (back in the seventies when I was at 'big school' aged 11-16)

I can say I learned absolutely nothing that has helped me in my musical life.

All our teacher did was to stand in front of a blackboard and make us learn the different clef and key signitures on the stave and that kind of thing. Never touched an instrument, occasionaly heard (classical) music and rarely did anything practical. Thinking back I'm getting angry at how bad those lessons were.

It wasn't till I left school and got my first bass that I learned anything. Essentially taught myself from books and friends.

 

Anyone have similar experience?

Or a better experience?

 

My (bad) experience was late 70's/early 80's at high school.