for one moment of kindness and empathy. It was the morning of 27th June 1983, I was 14 and I'd been to see Supertramp at Earls Court the night before. During my music lesson I started crying, something I wasn't prone to do. My classmates started sniggering and the teacher asked me why I was upset. I replied that I'd enjoyed Supertramp so much that I didn't think I'd ever be that happy again. He then went on to tell my class that this was a great example of how music can stir one's emotions.

With hindsight I was right to be concerned... I don't think I ever have been that happy again.

Or, to give him his full due, William A. Nutter, LRAM, LLCM.*

Firmly entrenched in the Patrick Moore school of music teaching, although he did somehow manage to teach me to read music and the rudiments of harmony by the time I was 14, so there must have been some method in his madness.

______

* Why, 40 years on, I can still remember not only his name but his middle initial and his qualifications while frequently unable to recall my wife's mobile number is one of life's sweet little mysteries.

Every good boy deserves favour.

Er...that's about it. Haven't a clue what it means. Miss Gush was the teacher. She was a bit like Kate Bush without the looks.

We did have an English lesson once where we were told we could bring in the lyrics to a song and read them out loud and we'd talk about them. I chose Band On The Run. Nobody could think of much to say about it and I admitted I couldn't either - I confessed I chose the song just because I liked the tune. Quite embarrassing as I recall.

1. At the start of each school year, each boy had to stand up in music class and sing some 'standard' (Song of the Western Men for example) in front of everyone else and the teacher would make an assessment of soprano, alto, tenor, bass or useless ... If the latter then you didn't make it into the choir.

2. The senior music teacher came into class one day, paid very little attention to the kids, then went off into some extended classical piano piece. At the end, we all clapped.

3. And the third thing was trying to look up the female music teacher's skirt, when we were going downstairs after class and she stood at the top and watched us go.

These days I still can't sing - was never in the choir - and I own an acoustic guitar but I'm terrible. Music at my school? Largely pointless for most kids i think.

Edit: prompted by Sven's post above, we also had a spell where we could take in records to play to class. I think i selected a Bilyl Joel LP. Someonw else brought in Trout Mask Replica. I was not a cool kid.

Being a music teacher is my long-term career goal! I'm starting off as a private piano (and ukulele) teacher, and the aim over the next few years is to get a teaching diploma and find work in a charming primary school somewhere. Keep your fingers crossed for me...

at my school, the bad lad brought in 'If You Don't Wanna F**** Me Baby, Baby F*** off' by Wayne County & The Electric Chairs. On brown vinyl. One verse in, and the needle was yanked off the disc, and the boy told to leave the classroom. 'I'd better f*** off, then' he said.

I did six months of trombone lessons at school when I was eleven with a sweet old gent who offered you sweets as a reward for a good pucker and was fond of teaching the First Years new fingering techniques in the trumpet storage area.

Everyone played something because you got out of lessons to go for your 15 minute blow with this musty old chap. Christ knows why I chose trombone, because I had to carry its enormous case home strapped across the pannier of my 5-speed Raleigh. From above I must have looked like a blazer-clad Jesus on a wobbly crucifix. Also my arms were too short to reach 7th position, which meant I'd occasionally let go of the slidey bit, which would fall off with a clatter.

With the old fellas' help I made it to Second Trombone in the Third Orchestra (Massive Trivia: First Trombone was played by Fazakerly of these parts). Third Orchestra was home to the raw beginners and the no-hopers - we sat next to the kid who played the comb and tracing paper - and even our own parents would fake heart seizure to avoid going to our concerts.

Now I think that bloke must have been a saint - smiling encouragingly through all those dreadful farts and parps on the instruments he loved, by kids who he knew were only months away from discovering guitars, and would soon be lost to classical music forever.

my music teacher wore an ill-fitting wig and dressed like Frank Muir.He had no idea what Rock 'n' Roll was. His daughter was a looker though.
Now,if it had been like this

was called Mr Morris. I think. It's just that everybody called him Tchaik, and still refer to him as such 40 years later. (Christ, I left school 40 years ago this summer to join the big bad world of commerce - another story). Anyway, thanks to Tchaik I was a member of the school choir that performed Handel's Hallelujah Chorus at the school speech evening. It was fabulous and I still get a shiver up my spine whenever I hear that piece of music.

I did have form as a singer, being a member of my local church choir until about 12 years-old. In 1967 I was in the choir for the wedding service of Alan Ball and his local sweetheart Lesley Newton. There were other members of the World Cup squad present but I can't remember which ones.

It must have been fun to have been part of this High School band.

Poteet High School Percussion Ensemble - Karn Evil 9, Pt 1

was a prize dick..used to slag everything i liked and encouraged his class to listen to "real music"..y'know..the straits etc..he would back up his argument by taking the piss out of me, my taste in music, hair and clothes in front of the rest of class...
i was pleased with the attention

And she was an utter waste of space. Exactly the type which OFSTED was set up to hound. We'd spend half an hour, twice a week, reading back-copies of Smash Hits whilst listening to War Of The Worlds. Occasionally, a few of us would be allowed to venture into the Practice Rooms where we would tit about on the snare drum and acoustic guitar therein contained.

We learned nothing.

One week, a student teacher was on placement. A person who, once qualified, would be a proper teacher. In two lessons, we learned more about music than we had in the previous two years. We sat, fascinated.

Mrs Tipp sat grinning a rictus grin of horror.

The week after the student had moved on, Mrs Tipp had moved forward and it was Bring In Your Records time. We each brought in a treasured record. I brought Kraftwerk's Trans Europe Express. Nick Mannell had Escape by Journey. Dave Noyes brought Setting Sons. And so on.

Fran Mould brought the single release of Purple People Eater by Sheb Wooley.

Mrs Tipp looked at the pile and decided what would be played first. As Purple People Eater rang out, the class collapsed in fits of laughter. Fran ran out in tears, closely followed by Mrs Tipp.

The next week, it was back to Jeff Wayne and whatever Heppo and Mark were writing which hadn't been ruined by girls tearing out the pictures of David Sylvian.

1. My first music teacher would read a book to us in class, a biography of Mozart written for children, about his childhood triumphs at the courts of Europe.
All through the book the child prodigy turned famous composer is referred to as "little Wolfgang", causing much snickering from the class.
2. The same teacher decides that because my dad is a professional double bass player I am the obvious candidate to play the cello in the Christmas play, and no amount of protesting from my side will change her mind.
I get blisters on my fingers while trying to learn to play this awful instrument, and I am then forced to play it at the very front of the stage in front of the rest of the school dressed as a goat!
3. The next teacher told us from the start that we could use her lessons to do our homework or study for tests in other subjects.
This made her very popular with most kids ( I never did my homework, on principle, so I just sat there, bored... )
4. One time she reveals to us that she is trying out for drama school and acts out a scene that she has prepared.
Well - scene is too strong a word...she's reading and "acting" a poem written in regional accent.
Not her region, which is painfully obvious. And she can't act.
We never hear about drama school again and she stays on as music teacher the whole time I'm there, she's probably still working there today.
And she probably hasn't taught anyone anything about music, ever.

Mr Dowdeswell. We had to take a 'creative' subject, and I chose music. After being thrown off everything else.
We soon came to realize that me being in the same room as the Cathedral choir was going to lead to a less than 100% pass rate at O level. It did imbue me with a deep love of Mozart though.

The other one has been charged multiple times with child abuse, enabling me - and my brother - to tell our parents "see - told you that something wasn't right with Mr XXXXX"

once punched... yes punched.... a 14 year old classmate full in the face. He was not a nice man. Although compared to some others he was Miss Jean of Brodie.
Oh happy days.

I was a cathedral chorister as a kid. That's about the most thorough musical education available, and there's hardly a day I'm not bended-knee thankful for it. John Sanders and Mark Blatchly were the men responsible. Geniuses both.

As for school music teacher, they were all memorable in different ways. Mr Fox, who gave every impression of being dangerously unstable and flung board rubbers (and sometimes chairs) around, and was occasionally seen to jump up and down on his piano in rage. Brilliant musician, though, and taught me plenty.

Then I got a music scholarship to the big public school in the next town over, and basically spent my whole life in the music department. After a few heads of music, we ended up with Mr Busbridge. He really shook things up, because suddenly here was a head of music who was as evangelical and pushy about music as the PE lot were about rugby. I imagine he put a lot of the rugger-bugger establishment's backs up.

At any rate, without him (and a couple of others), my school life would've been considerably more miserable than it already was. Cheers, Mr. B.

Bloody hell, it was a selection of piano playing spinsters and Mhairi's Wedding day in day out in my school.

And his first name too.

We used to call him 'Tudor Brick', which was deemed to be the height of wit. I can't remember what his real surname was, or anything else he taught us either, so that was 5 years well spent.

that I should learn to play the cello at primary school. Neither I nor my parents (so they tell me) had any say in which instrument I should play - there was a vacancy for a cello and for one of the woodwind instruments. Presumably because I was tall even at the age of 7 (growing to be 6ft 3in), It Was Decided that I should take the cello.

I hated it. Not so much the cello itself, to which I was mostly indifferent, but I despised the peripatetic cello teacher. She was the kind of crabby old bitch who made up for what she lacked in the essential skills of guidance and support by using calculated sneering and excessive sarcasm. That, coupled with having to carry this fucking coffin-in-a-bag home and back twice a week, hasn't left me with the best memories of learning the instrument, and by the time I was 13 I was finding any excuse to skive my weekly lessons.

Amazingly, my high school had a compassionate Head of Music, because he asked me (actually *asked* me) if I fancied moving onto the double bass. I did (once I'd established that it was taught by a completely different teacher.) Despite it being bigger than the cello, and thus more of a pain to transport (something I eventually got round by leaving it at school and practicing in my lunch breaks), I fell firstly in love with the instrument before - in that way that teenagers do - growing to resent it. I even campaigned for the right to play an electric bass in the school orchestra (eventually learning that a cheap Yamaha and its practice amp and connecting wires weigh just as much as a double bass and yet aren't a convenient shape that can be strapped to one's back.)

When I left school, they kept the instrument, of course. So I saved and, eventually, bought one of my own. It's sitting next to me. It needs dusting.