Who says you cannot learn from your children? Take music for example. I like a wide range of music but don't ask me to explain the technicalities.

Once or twice (and I do mean once or twice) I've tried to strum a guitar.

And at a push I can pick out the first five notes of side two of Tubular Bells II on a piano. But beyond that I can do nothing. I can't even sing in tune. Even the basics leave me baffled. They always have.

For years my eldest son, who is now 15, has played the piano and for years I have been left in awe at his ability to read music and to understand things like keys and time signatures.

To me it is an incomprehensible world where maths and hieroglyphics combine and where the level of dexterity needed is beyond understanding.

Where music is concerned I am a listener and a spectator. And I've never given much thought to what goes into playing. But I have been made to think again.

My youngest son, who is 12, has been learning guitar now for a few years now. And his electric guitar is his pride and joy.

He'll wander off quietly and sit down picking out chords (hunched over and listening intently to the sounds he is making often without switching on the amp).

But since one weekend when he watched Jack Black's School of Rock four times his interest has reached new levels. He plays his guitar literally every day.

So we now conversations like this.

"Dad, can you put on track 10 – Oasis?"

"Ok."

"Can you hear the rhythm guitar?"

"No, where's that."

"It's there, behind the vocals."

"Well, yes I think so, yes."

"Now can you hear the lead guitar, that's Noel?"

"Not sure."

"It's there, it's that bit... it's really good."

This is new to me. In more than 40 years of listening to music I've never dissected it before. I've just accepted it, enjoyed some songs, hated others but never really thought about how they are put together.

And I struggle to follow what he is trying to point out.

What is so difficult? It's so straightforward, he seems to be thinking. So he picks up his guitar, kneels on the floor, flicks the CD to a new track and begins to play along to Half the World Away.

I listen, I watch and, to be honest, I marvel. Slowly I am beginning to appreciate that playing three minutes of rock or pop is far from easy.

I watch as his fingers lift and press down on the strings in a seemingly ever-changing and complex pattern.

The final notes die away and I say: "That's really, really good."

He gives one of those pre-teen shrugs, gazes down and looks away.

He looks down and his face doesn't show it but secretly he's pleased I think. Maybe he's quietly dreaming about being a rock star.

But while he's doing it he's teaching Dad a thing or two.