Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We Should Teach Music History Backwards

smithsonianmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 186 posts

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#21

Post by codazoda »

YouAreGreat wrote: post #9

The author observes that self-driven students of very selective parts of Music History are "driven by emotion rather than obligation" and usually start from a passion for some current music. This seems true enough. The next step, however, is a giant leap: > shouldn’t music history writing and teaching be done in the same backwards direction? No, that doesn't follow, because we are now talking about obligatory learnin…

True, but if you start with an artist I like today, and work backwards through some of her influencers, I'm likely to find I like some of those. Then repeat. I may find myself liking, or at least appreciaing, one after another.

I enjoy blues. I started with curiosity about current sound tracks on popular movies and TV shows. Then I followed it back to it's roots in rudemantry instruments played by African Americans in the Deep South. That, in turn, can be traced back to the music of Africa mixed with American Folk.

I feel like I have a stronger appreciation when I learn it in reverse.

Of course, I am not learning it in order to get a full knowledge of it, rather, I am enjoying it in reverse.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#22

Post by resu_nimda »

YouAreGreat wrote: post #9

The author observes that self-driven students of very selective parts of Music History are "driven by emotion rather than obligation" and usually start from a passion for some current music. This seems true enough. The next step, however, is a giant leap: > shouldn’t music history writing and teaching be done in the same backwards direction? No, that doesn't follow, because we are now talking about obligatory learnin…

Exactly. It seems like this author got really into Sam Smith, did a deep Wikipedia dive, then somehow extrapolated that into a wide-sweeping theory of pedagogy, with bold assertions like "That’s how we learn about music: backwards, always backwards."

There are so many counter-examples. I am instantly reminded of a childhood friend who was really into classical music. I don't think he arrived there working all the way back from present. I started listening to The Who because my dad had a CD of theirs in his car, which led to other classic rock. It had nothing to do with a backward time travel from whatever contemporary music I was hearing at the time. I think a lot of music learning happens more serendipitously like that, through friends, random encounters, etc. The historical research is definitely a part of it but this article way overstates it.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#25

Post by noname120 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #12
dghughes wrote: post #6

As a terrible programmer my trick is to read statements backwards. Maybe programming should be taught that way too not just reading of it but the history of it all the way back to Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace and even weaving looms.

I do code reviews backwards. Not sure why. I'm not sure it works better.

This makes sense.

Reading code forwards overwhelms your working memory because lots of information is at the beginning (e.g. class members).

If you read it backwards, you directly dive into the logic, while variable names give away what they're supposed to hold. As you progress further, you get a clearer view, and finally see how these variables are defined.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#26

Post by tsenkov »

bambax wrote: post #19

Not just music history, but history in general. History told forwards is superstition: trying to show that what came after was inevitable, when in fact it was one future among an infinite number of different possible futures. History told backwards makes sense: look for the seeds of post events, in the past. However the human mind loves nothing more than causation; we see cause and effect everywhere even where it's n…

I honestly can't imagine how this would work. Even in cinema I rarely like this approach (telling a story backwards). In music history I think it makes sense to go a couple of steps backwards (if you are just a fan trying to better understand their preferences), but if you are really interested - you have to start from the beginning and look how things have developed.

Same thing in programming - starting up with something you can immediately use like JavaScript or Python is a nice thing because it will 'fool' you (in a good sense) that you are now a programmer. (I once knew a successful person who told me "I never start a project I can't fool myself into thinking I can complete within a weekend"). You can only do a couple of iterations back, before it gets too complicated to go backwards.

It's like discovering the usefulness of an integral (Calculus) and then going backwards in order to understand it if you have no prior math knowledge and experience... I often read papers full with math I don't understand and I am forced to go backwards, but it only works because I hit a previous knowledge not so far back in that graph.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#29

Post by saghm »

ant6n wrote: post #28

That's how you should teach games. Start when the game ends, and the winning conditions.

Whenever I'm being taught a game, my first question is always "What's the goal?" I find that without knowing what I'm supposed to be trying to achieve, it's extremely difficult for me to remember all the rules explained to me beforehand because I have no context as to why they're important.

Re: We Should Teach Music History Backwards

#30

Post by falcor84 »

oraknabo wrote: post #20

Wouldn't this limit your study to only musicians that influenced current trends? I've definitely discovered a lot of music from digging into the influences of groups I like, but this seems like a kind of survivorship bias to only focus on the ones that have direct lineage to what's popular at the moment you're engaging in study.

I don't understand how it could be different. There has obviously been way too much music in the past to teach in it's entirety. We have to decide what to teach based on what we currently think is "important". And though we can try to fool ourselves that there is some measure of objective importance, at the end of the day, I'm pretty sure it always boils down to popularity within some milieu.
Post reply on HN