The London International Music Show 2008

In this clip, Sir Ken Robinson talks about the way in which creativity and intelligence are often seen as mutually exclusive.

“It’s still remarkable to me that most schools don’t treat music or art or dance as seriously as they treat mathematics and English…”

It’s every musician’s guilty secret. What was the first proper song (i.e not a Grade 1 exercise or nursery rhyme) you learned on your chosen instrument?

As a guitarist, my first was utterly predictable — The Animals “House of the Rising Sun“. Inexplicably, my next was the melody line to the Beatles’ Norwegian Wood, a song I didn’t like then and don’t like to this day. Which didn’t stop me practising it endlessly in my bedroom to the distress of my family.

Some choices are even less explicable — as if the songs are automatically buried deep in everyone’s subconscious, like the fight-or-flight reaction to danger.

My eight-year old son, who’s learning the piano, has taken to playing “Smoke on the Water” on my guitar — although I swear I’ve never played it in his presence and we don’t have a single Deep Purple track in our house.

These thoughts have been prompted by an entertaining series of videos on the homepage of the “Take it Away” initiative from the Arts Council. “Take it Away” aims to make instruments and tuition more affordable for aspiring musicians, especially younger people and those on lower incomes.

The scheme allows individuals to apply for a loan of up to £2,000 for the purchase of any kind of musical instrument, and pay it back in nine monthly instalments (with a minimum 10% deposit), completely interest free. “Take it Away” operates through a network of nearly 200 musical instrument retailers across England.

In the videos, musicians recall their own early experiences — I was particularly taken by the woman who said she wept when she learned her first Donny Osmond song; and the man who was bought a Bruce Springsteen songbook, even though he knew none of the Boss’s songs. To this day, he can do a unique version of how he thought “Born in the USA” should sound.

Check out full details of the scheme on their site, or better still talk to them at LIMS ‘08. And if you’ve got some embarrassing early musical memories of your own, do share them here on this blog with other LIMS attendees and exhibitors. Click on the “Your Comment” button and unburden yourself.