In this talk at the SIG ” Writing and Literacies at the April, 2019, AERA , Toronto conference, In this presentation I reflected on what’s involved in understanding learning from such a lifewide/lifelong perspective and described 4 cases of young people’s formal and informal music education from the middle class graded piano examinations through to self-taught use of Youtube videos. I examined these cases of music learning as “literacy events” showing how they can be understood in terms of tensions between both vernacular and high culture as well as progressive and traditional modes of teaching. The challenges of progressive literacy education – validating a whole range of out-of-school multi-literate social practices are brought into sharp relief through the stories of very different kinds of meaning making in music.