The Hidden Curriculum of Musicianship: What We Don't Teach, but Should

Lately, I have been reflecting quite a bit on my own research identity. Not the academic kind involving CV lines or publications, but the deeper question of what I actually care about in music and teaching. That process unexpectedly nudged me into this piece: a small attempt to articulate something I have sensed for years but rarely put into words.

I have been sitting with a recurring realisation these past few years, something that shows up in teaching, performing, supervising, and even when I am casually listening to other musicians. We often talk about music in terms of techniques, skills, genres, or content, but what allows musicians to function at a high level is something far less visible. It is structural in nature, not decorative. It lives in time-feel, tone, articulation, and the internal sense of gravity that pulls a phrase forward or holds it back. And for some reason, this layer is rarely taught explicitly.

Most musicians pick these things up through gradual absorption. You rehearse enough, you survive enough gigs (seniors shout at you for rushing), you mimic enough recordings (gear acquisition syndrome, anyone?), and eventually, something in your playing makes sense. But this process is slow, inconsistent, and dependent on luck and exposure. Some people get there faster because they happen to be around strong players. Others take a decade. Most never fully understand what they are sensing. They adapt instinctively. And while that is a perfectly valid way to learn, I often find myself wondering why we do not articulate the underlying mechanics earlier.

When I examine what good musicians are actually responding to, it is not merely harmony or rhythm in the simplistic sense. It is the microtiming of a hi-hat ostinato, the envelope of a bass note, the contour of a phrase that aligns with the harmonic rhythm, and the subtle adjustments in articulation that change the perceived direction of the groove. All these small structural behaviours accumulate into what we call intuition. But intuition, when you break it down, is simply structural logic that has been internalised without language.

This forms the basis of most of my research and practice. I am not trying to invent new theories or claim to discover anything revolutionary. I am simply trying to name what musicians already know in their bodies. I have reached a point in my career where I no longer feel compelled to perform virtuosity or chase novelty for its own sake. What interests me now is clarity: helping students understand why certain musical decisions work, why some grooves feel grounded while others feel unstable, why tone affects momentum, and why ensemble fluency is more than chemistry. These things are teachable if we are willing to describe them structurally.

Across instruments, traditions, and contexts, the same principles recur. Time-feel is not a vibe. It is a relationship between subdivisions, weight, and articulation. Tone is not cosmetic. It determines how a note enters the ensemble’s shared pulse. Form is not a template. It is the large-scale behaviour of tension and release. Even decolonising work, which people often misunderstand as cultural tokenism, is fundamentally about seeing how different musical systems encode structure differently and how these perspectives can sharpen our listening.

If I have a mission, and I say this carefully without the grandiosity people sometimes attach to such statements, it is to make these invisible mechanics visible. Not to oversimplify music, not to reduce artistry to formulas, but to give musicians a more precise map of the landscape they are already walking through. A student who understands why something works is more confident, more adaptable, and less likely to feel lost. And if my work can shorten that journey for even a few people, then it feels worthwhile.

Music will always contain mystery, but the craft need not be opaque. There is value in revealing the structures beneath intuition. It helps musicians grow deliberately rather than accidentally, and it allows educators to teach with honesty rather than rely on vague metaphors. If I can contribute to that shift, even in a small way, then that is the direction I want to keep walking as we enter the next phase of teaching, research, and practice in Singapore’s contemporary music landscape.