Throughout my 22-year teaching career, I have taught many wonderful students with loads of ability. My all-time favorite student was a twelve-year-old girl I taught early in my career. The first day she attended class, she was so nervous, she was almost shaking. She had just started junior high school, which meant she had just started learning English. At the beginning of the lesson, as I was asking simple warm-up questions to each student, I didn’t want to leave her out, so I asked her a simple one. “How old are you?” After I repeated the question several times and after her regular Japanese teacher gave her several prompts, she slowly began to...CRY. She eventually whispered an answer through her tears, but the whole situation just overwhelmed her. (I’m sure my being a 6-foot, 215-pound–at the time--gaijin didn’t help.)
But she didn’t give up. From that day forward, I don’t think she missed a lesson. (They were voluntary special lessons that were offered for free by a cram school teacher on Saturdays.) What makes her stick out in my memory, however, was how disciplined she was. In a very short time, she became one of the best speakers I’ve ever taught. She wasn’t chattering like a monkey or discussing Shakespeare. What made her the best was she tried so hard to use everything she had learned. When she began to speak, she used a slow, even pace and rarely paused or broke rhythm in the middle of a statement. She was precise and deliberate and she self-corrected. She couldn’t say a lot, but what she said was so well-said with so few errors. After a few months (six, maybe?), her family moved away and she was unable to continue attending lessons. For the life of me, I can’t remember her name and I would dearly love to see how she has progressed over the years. I’ll bet she became an amazing English speaker.
I’ll be she was a musician.
Why are musicians also such good language learners? There are two traits that both need. The first, and most obvious, is that musicians have good ears. This is very important for listening and pronunciation. Musicians pick up the rhythm of language more quickly, can distinguish words more clearly and can mimic sounds better. (That’s my hypothesis. I’m pretty good at these things and I was a decent musician back in the day.) Also, musicians sound more natural than most second-language learners, especially singers. (In my new job, I’d like to design a speaking/pronunciation course in conjunction with a voice teacher.) A musical ear is a huge advantage when you learn a language.
However, much more important than an ear is DISCIPLINE. I suppose there are a few mythical geniuses out there who can sit down at a piano when they are two and within a short time begin playing Mozart piano concertos. Must be nice. For the rest of us, though, it’s a lot of long, boring practice sessions running scales and squeaking out Mary Had a Little Lamb. (The people who deserve the most credit are the neighbors who didn’t call the police to report cat abuse during little Susie’s violin practice.) For months, the noise that came from my trombone probably sounded more like a flatulent hippo than music.
That’s why so many would-be musicians give up. It’s too hard. It’s boring. It’s frustrating. They’d rather be playing video games. “I still don’t sound like Eddie Van Halen and I’ve been practicing for two whole months. I quit.” But some make it. Some put in the hours of drudgery and make it through THE WALL. They persevere to the day when suddenly they realize “Hey. I’m getting pretty good. This is FUN!” That’s when they become real musicians. They WANT to go home and practice. They ENJOY getting up in front of their friends and family to perform. They LOVE to sit down and jam with other musicians. The long practice sessions and rehearsals are like a game. Their mother doesn’t have to push them anymore. They push themselves.
Learning a language is exactly the same. Practicing grammar patterns is the same as practicing scales. An SVO clause equals the C scale. Pronouncing a second language well is equivalent to getting a beautiful tone from an instrument. Those horrible hours practicing the clarinet after school are my grammar class. Your mother, who pushed and forced, who scolded and praised, who wouldn’t let you give up? That’s me.
Why do musicians spend so much time playing scales? Even at the highest levels, concert oboists begin warming up with scales. This is to develop and later, to turn on muscle memory. A drummer doesn’t think about what they are going to do on their kit. They just turn off their brains and let their hands and feet fly. (That’s right. I just said drummers don’t use their brains. Have you ever seen Animal from the Muppets?) When you speak a language, you have similar muscle memory, only I call it grammar memory.
When you speak (or listen), there are two elements: grammar and information. When you speak your first language, you don’t really stop and think about grammar. It just comes out naturally. Therefore, you can focus on communicating your ideas. On the other hand, when you speak a second language, the grammar is not automatic. Along with WHAT you want to say, you have to slow down to think of HOW you are going to say it. This slows down the process and often causes a breakdown. “It’s too hard.” But the more you practice, especially basic grammar, the stronger your grammar memory gets, the more smoothly you can communicate and the more confident you feel. Some people call this “thinking in another language.” Musicians are good at this. They already think musically.
Another part of musical discipline is practicing until it’s perfect. A piano player getting ready for a recital will play the same piece over and over and over again. They will isolate a part of the song that is particularly troubling and practice that one part until their fingers remember. They will not accept mistakes. The concept of “good enough” doesn’t exist. It’s either perfect or it’s wrong.
Developing your grammar memory is very similar, with a couple of differences. Language has patterns. A comparative sentence like “I am smarter than my brother” follows a general pattern that needs to be practiced again and again. However, unlike music, practicing the exact same sentence over and over doesn’t help. You need to add your imagination to the pattern. This is where jazz musicians have an advantage.
I do not mean to say that only musicians can learn a language well. Nor do I mean that non-musicians don’t have skills that will help them. Anyone can learn a language if they put in the time and the effort. An athlete brings their own type of discipline to the language classroom. So does a scientist. Visual artists are very often beautiful writers even when their English is still at a basic lever. (You have to read through the mistakes.) I still say that musicians (and mathematicians) have the most crossover. Music and language complement each other very well.
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