This essay explores the benefits and
limits of teaching and learning music in
a changing technological environment,
where both students and instructors are
faced with the perpetual problem of
keeping up with new methods of
practicing music for the purpose of
maintaining competence. The essay
critically reflects on the argument that
present societies overvalue technical
instruments, at times giving consumers a
false hope of achieving quick results in
a brief period of time, and with the
unintended consequence that playing
techniques can be compromised. The
idealizing of mechanical devices has
become strongly associated today with
sophisticated taste and class. Following
Mumford and Postman, the essay argues
that these technological tools should be
seen as posing a challenge to
instructional values and to human
agency. This essay concludes that while
we cannot help the fact that tradition
is constantly being renewed, in part
through technological change, the role
of teaching that learning music needs to
be focused on are historic values which
incorporate experience and reciprocity.