Originally Posted By: Joe V
I agree reading is important.


That hit my hot button, and I have posted about this often.

For my dime, and queue up the broken record saying the same thing over and over, I say first teach them MUSIC. Not songs. The music that makes the songs be songs. Teach them the steps on a scale, why a scale is whole whole half whole whole whole half, and what half step and whole step means, why keys interact with each other (dominant, subdominant...) circle of 5th chord wheel and all that.

If you just teach them songs, they will never learn music. The kids that do the hero worship thing, as we all did when we were impressionable kids, see Van Halen and Malmsteen and Randy Rhodes and Steve Vai ripping those solos with more notes than can be counted without realizing that there is a difference between "musician" and "player". Those 4 guys I mentioned are "deep" musicians. Well schooled in the roots of what they are doing.

I think if you can make kids understand that the theory is the foundation that those buildings (songs) stand on, they may want to learn it.

Since I have only been one "me" through my whole life, I only know what worked for this one "me". Having started music very young with a teacher who beat theory into me proved to be invaluable for all the music years that followed. That being said, if kids just want to learn songs, what I think really doesn't matter much for them.