Balancing Literacy and Creativity

So much of music education is balancing literacy with creativity.

You need to understand how words work before you can write poetry. Words are the tools to express in that medium. 

But then, you don't necessarily need to be able to write in order to create poetry. After all, poetry can be spoken, too.

As music teachers, we can get hung up on the literacy bits. Making sure our students understand rhythm. How to count. How to read the staff. How to train the ear so it all makes sense.

And it's easy to forget that there are emotions and creativity that need to be nurtured, too. 

But then, we've all had students who were so bent on being creative, they threw literacy out the window.

Or, they were so impatient at the idea of learning the literacy components, they cast it aside in the name of being "creative."

The result?

They created music that had weird numbers of beats in each measure.

They were never able to write out their music for others to enjoy. Or even to remember their own music by the next lesson.

They never felt a sense of progress because all they were doing was making random stuff up every week.

And eventually, they quit music.

Literacy and creativity. When you learn music, you can't have one without the other.