Q&A: Merv Young

What can a student gain from a formal music education?

A formal music education provides you with a technical approach and guidance, and opens your mind to various styles of music that you might not have heard before. The discipline of a regular practice regime can also help your progress.

The early stages of learning an instrument can be isolating, so just having that personal interaction with someone encouraging, who points out the positive aspect of your playing, or makes it clear where you need to improve, can be useful. It can also help you overcome technical issues. When I was teaching, I'd see so many students banging their heads against a wall trying to understand a concept or technique. Then I'd give them a small nudge, and they would have a light bulb moment and realise what they were supposed to be doing.

It's important to have different teachers. We all have different approaches and having that insight can be useful. It's important to access a broader set of resources which will help improve your playing.

What common challenges do people face as they make the step from player to teacher?

Just because you're a great player doesn't mean you can pass that information on to somebody else. How you go about it depends on whether you have a seven-year-old, a 17-year-old or a 77-year-old in the room. If a student is struggling to hold down a chord, is it because they're elderly with arthritic fingers, or because they're a young child and their hands are too small to reach across the frets? You have to adapt to your students.

A big chunk of that comes from experience. The advice I always give to people who want to get into teaching is to start teaching right away. Before you start getting ideas about setting up a music school, find out if you like it. It's not for everybody – there's a personality element to it. Start teaching some friends or some family members. Just as with performing, you don't get into teaching to make loads of money – you teach because you are driven by a passion for your subject.

Does teaching an instrument make you a better musician?

My aural skills, which were my weakest when I was a student myself, became very good when I was teaching. Somebody will turn up and say, ‘Can we work this bit out? How do I play it?’ I was having to work with my ears all the time, which I wasn't doing enough of when I was learning, as I was focusing on other things. I'm sure that if you were to ask several teachers, they would have a different version of that same story, where their skills have naturally improved because of their job.

That process you have as a teacher where you're having to analyse everything all the time, looking at why different resources and strategies work for one pupil and not another – this makes you take stock of your own abilities and where your strengths and weakness lie.

Is it valuable for students to learn both popular music pieces and classical repertoire?

For me, music is music. There are many good contemporary artists that have just as much validity in the ongoing history of music as the great classical composers of the past. It's just healthy to have that broad education. If you are actively listening to and playing both popular and classical music, then you will pick up a range of techniques that you might not otherwise acquire.

Contemporary musicians don't tend to be very good at reading music, but then classical musicians don't tend to be very good at improvising – in an ideal world it would be great if everybody could do both.

To find out more about the qualifications and diplomas offered by London College of Music Examinations visit lcme.uwl.ac.uk