Normally I don’t look at videos from Apple.com marketing as all that, say, “un-natural”. However, this video of an innovative Chinese school is interesting. At a time when many US schools are just now recognizing the value of project-based learning through technology it shouldn’t be surprising that other countries around the world are doing this too. But in this case, it kind of is surprising – China isn’t exactly known for this type of innovation.
An interesting list of things getting real for professional orchestras around the US.
I cannot remember a time when so many US orchestras were simultaneously in such difficulty. Whatever patchwork solutions are achieved in the month ahead, system changes are required across the sector in the long term. These are not isolated instances so much as symptoms of an underlying paralysis.
I had a very smart professor tell a class of percussionists some good advice: “Only insects specialize”. The dream of making a living only doing classical orchestral music is over for the vast majority of musicians, and as educators we need to lay this truth bare.
Must-read piece by Michelle Jones on the biggest problem in music ed. today.
Universities are slow to change. The bureaucrats and academians (yes, I made up this word) are not as open-minded as one would think. They want to protect their jobs more than they care about the students that merely pass through their halls. It’s self-preservation for them. By creating more graduates, they increase their numbers and tenure. Since only a tiny minority of the music school graduates land the coveted symphony jobs, those that don’t usually end up doing a career not in their chosen field, or end up teaching themselves. Universities expand to meet the demands of the higher population of students going to college, and they expand the departments where people want to major. Since most universities only want professors who have masters or doctoral degrees, those who have these credentials get the jobs. Those who usually have these credentials also were a product of the same university system where the goal is to get and keep their job. Many of the university professors that I have encountered throughout the past twenty-plus years have not had to create their own businesses and make a living as freelance musicians. They have had the regular job of teaching as their “fall-back” and have not been forced to make the same decisions that today’s students face.
She also includes a handy list of suggestions that will surely (but not hopefully) fall on deaf ears. Among my obvious favorites on the list:
6. All music students should learn about recording arts. I’m not asking that each musician learn every detail of a mixing board, but rather to understand the specific microphone placement and recording of their chosen instrument(s). Most musicians will have some experience with recording during their lifetime, especially if they are submitting a recorded audition for a symphony orchestra.
7. In addition to learning about recording arts, all music students should learn how to play to a click track/pre-recorded track. This is especially helpful to have some experience with this, as many of the jobs that require a symphony are film and television studios.
8. All music students should learn how to amplify their instruments electronically. They should learn the difference between pickups and microphones, wired and wireless, amps and speakers, direct-input boxes and pre-amps, etc. More and more of today’s jobs include specific amplification of instruments for live settings and large venues.
How long before our generation is allowed into the universities to start making these important changes? Five years? Ten years? Will we have much of a classical music industry by then?
Great over-thorough analysis of the first two measures of Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream by Nick Jaworski.
“Striking” does not mean “bad”. Far from it, I find it strangely compelling. Clearly, there are two guitar parts playing simultaneously – each guitar individually panned (placed) into the left and right ears. It’s the guitar in the right ear that lags behind.
I’m totally a sucker for this kind of writing. Be sure to check out Nick’s other project, Leading Notes. Nick gets it, and he’s a big voice for our cause.
Great article by Jason Timothy.
My argument is not that one style of music is better than another. It’s that sometimes when you create your own path, it may take longer, but it’s more likely that you’ll find your own sound, and in doing so, a much deeper satisfaction.
As someone with extensive theory training, I wish a stronger middle ground existed between Timothy’s point of view and the classical “no parallel fifths” approach to theory.
While his argument is certainly well meaning, I’d argue that every musician on his list exploits some commonly agreed upon conventions of western music. Tonality, for instance. The function of chord progression, however strong or weak. These aspects are intuitively known to most trained musicians regardless of theory knowledge, but the rulesy approach administered by most professors is off-putting.
Consider a musical universal like time cycles. These are approached in many different ways with many different specifics, but the idea of starting, stopping, and repetition is present in every form of music on the planet.
Now consider a Western universal aspect like chord progressions. Whether the subject is Chopin, Debussy, Eno, Aphex Twin or anything else on Top40 radio, chords and their functions are almost universally present. Even in Schoenberg the dissonance means nothing without the cultural context of the tonality he tries to avoid.
Music theory is culture, and just as the Webster made a strong call for his dictionary to take a descriptive rather than a prescriptive approach, so should music teachers and professors. The basic facts of music are rarely addressed in favor of endless and pointless exercises like Schenker reductions and Hindemith dots and fugues upon fugues upon fugues!
I’d conclude the real issue at stake here is not whether or not to learn music theory. I think it is nothing less than the fact that how music theory is taught needs to be significantly overhauled to maintain relevance for the modern musician.