Musical creativity, biography, genre, and learning

Abstract

Creativity is valued and nurtured to different degrees in different musical genres. This chapter explores the informal learning practices of the communities of Western classical, Scottish traditional, jazz, and popular musicians, which reveal some important differences between these genres, and in particular between the Western classical musicians on the one hand, and three ' other-than-classical' genres on the other. In comparison with the Western classical musicians, the other three genre groups tended to spend more time listening to their own music, and to play for fun; to see the ability to sight read as relatively less important; to rely more heavily on improvisational skill and 'playing by ear'; to place more value on group than on individual practice; and to gain more pleasure from performing in their own genre.