The way music is taught

[neueliteratur]

Hello,

It's my 3rd year studying music, and I've seen a couple of different music schools and some private tutors. And here's something I've been wondering: why this giant gap between what the teachers say is important in music, and the exercises that they make the students do?

This drives me crazy, and although I'm good friends with my teachers, there's always this little voice at the back of my head that says "are they retarded?! how can they stand this contradiction between what they're saying and what they're giving me for homework?"

In jazz, the assignements we get consist in reading exercises, harmonizing exercises, scale exercises etc. which is of course important. But most of the teachers say things like "at the end of the day, technique is secondary. What's important is having something to say. Keep it simple. Construct your solos. etc" but never do they propose any exercize that takes that philosophy into account. "Do me 3 cycles of rythm changes, but first you're gonna start out angry, and then you're gonna calm down towards the end", "keep that rythmic motive you started out with at least until the bridge, and then develop it with arpeggios", "write out in 2 paragraphs what you want to say through your improvisation" etc.

In composition, I thought I was going to get told things like "for next week, compose a quartet at 120 bpm, which starts out sad, then become kind of happy-sad, and then ends in a happy ending", or remarks like "OK that was cool, but that Ab kills the general emotion expressed in this passage, I want you to think about that note, and come back to me with 5 other possibilities" or "I know what you mean, but that transition was awkward, try it this way" but instead they are talking about the parallel 5ths that I forgot to correct. And at the same time, they say things like "don't worry about the details. Make sure you clearly understand your intention. You should learn to hang onto the initial idea, and not just be capricious." But never do I get homework that helps me to develop those aspects.

My question is, am I wanting something that does not exist? If things are this way, maybe there is a reason. Please share you opinion. Thank you.

[jancivil]

well I sure can't speak for/explain anybody else...
but I can tell you where I find congruence with that.

'technique is secondary' is a try at projecting an overview for the future ['at the end of the day'], once you have the necessary technique.
we want to get to a point where we are beyond the consideration of the mechanics and just do the damn thing.

I personally think that teaching what to/how to compose is foolish. You have already exercises in mind, so give them to yourself, you know, and see if they're worthwhile. I wouldn't know what's wrong about teaching yourself how to compose with the tools you're given [at the end of the day]. But I'm skeptical about "for next week, compose a quartet at 120 bpm, which starts out sad, then become kind of happy-sad, and then ends in a happy ending" as a real good expenditure of your time. It's so arbitrary; at some point if you have compelling reasons to portray that in a form, do that. Even for film scoring pedagogy, that seems kinda Mickey Mouse.

they SHOULD be teaching technique, even to the extent of restricting the curriculae to technique IMO.
RE: "talking about the parallel 5ths that I forgot to correct" I don't quite get how that's the same stream as composition study, IME that's more of a prerequisite area.

"that transition was awkward, try it this way"' their way?
Nossir, I don't like it.[/Mr Horse] If you're to be a composer, there will come a time where you'll know the thing is awkward and the idea is to have the chops to sort if for yourself, your way. You feel me?

I'll even reiterate, I don't think people can be taught to compose but given a focused curriculae to get your chops up to the gig. I learned what a composition is in applied music, the teacher questioned every decision; 'doesn't work so well, try this instead' applied to models, and I analyzed the big piece I played in detail, a thesis...

[Ogg Vorbis]

After experiencing much the same as you described, I think the conclusions I came to were:

1) They don't know HOW to teach musical content (neither would I)
2) They can teach technique and since there seems to be a limitless supply of technical things to work on, they can focus here (and actually measure progress)
3) The assumption could be that students bring natural composing talent to the picnic (or not) and if you drill on foundation, the natural talent will be able to start to shine through in time (or not, if it's missing)

Also if a prof. looked at my string quartet and said, "That Ab breaks the emotion of your inner expression," I would look at them like, "WTF???"

[neueliteratur]

Thank you for your replies.

Yeah, my examples sounded kind of stupid but I wanted to illustrate the idea that teachers are supposed to be there to identify the student's fear and help him surmount it by giving him adequate exercises.

If the teacher sees that the Ab note is there out of fear (fear of trying out other possiblities) and not out of choice, he should point that out, and give adapted assignments, not to train the student to learn a pre-defined model, but to make him deal with his fear and empirically overcome it.

And ideally, at the end of the year, the student must have transcended various things he used to be afraid of, and feel freeer than before or whatever.

Sorry for whining about it here, but I just wanted to know how other people deal with this.

[stratum]

Such disagreements happen because musical performance skill is about two completely different skills. One is called "procedural knowledge", the other is called "declarative knowledge". Procedural knowledge is like knowing how to ride a bike. Declarative knowledge is information about how people ride a bike. One cannot teach someone how to ride a bike by just telling him/her about how to do so. Practice is required. Once you mastered these two, there will be another challenge: The art of riding a bike.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_knowledge (see the section 'Cognitive psychology')
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_knowledge

If you are interested in learning about how these two relates to music performance, this book is about it: http://www.amazon.com/The-Science-Psych ... 0195138104

[jancivil]

I never read about how to read a bike. I was put on one and eventually I stayed up on it and learned to make it work. I'm sure I had training wheels at first. At one time because I couldn't find something better, I got so good at 'the art of it' I became a Bike Messenger! a Gravy Dog, in fact.

However there are people that, if you throw them in a pool of water with no instruction they will just sink. But you know how to swim only by swimming.

Those wikis pose 'Know how' vs 'know of'...

'Declarative Knowledge' uses this: People have used many methods to try to gain knowledge.
including a couple of dodgy ways to 'know': argument from authority and listening to witnesses...

I do like this: "Of the three ways in which men think that they acquire knowledge of things—authority, reasoning, and experience—only the last is effective and able to bring peace to the intellect." - Roger Bacon.

[wrench45us]

If one were taking say a film class, instead of music, where there's a lot of technique and even technology to learn, I would hope teachers would spend time teaching technique -- editing, shot selection, panning, hi-key, low-key, chroma filters, rather than ask for a short romantic comedy. Study some great examples of how masters used the techniques to express themselves.

You're the artist, you're supposedly the one with something to express. The teachers job is to teach the techniques you use in expressing what you want to express.

Again, if one took creative writing, I'd hope to learn how to write clearly, with rhythm and flow and story arc and character, dialog and scene detail, not how to write sad, how to write happy.

[NKF]

you can teach people to write , you can also teach to compose. The process is the same. You can't teach creativity. You can teach tips to be creative ....

By doing exercises, studying other works. Learning all the little areas that fit together ie form, counterpoint, harmony , orchestration ...

It is very easy to teach in that you can clone anyone as all the material and how to is there. I suppose you can't teach how to be original but again, i would say you can teach people how to approach making music that will increase the odds of being original.

[neueliteratur]

Again, if one took creative writing, I'd hope to learn how to write clearly, with rhythm and flow and story arc and character, dialog and scene detail, not how to write sad, how to write happy.

That's what I was talking about. I wish my composition or jazz instrument teachers would teach the musical equivalent of "how to write clearly, with rhythm and flow and story arc and character, dialog and scene detail".

Instead they are teaching orthography and grammar.

[xamido]

Because those basic technique are to be implanted on you before you can play the fancy stuff. The exercise are boring and monotone since they are intended to teach you motoric skill first, your fingering, your sight read and chord playing. That's the point. Once you have mastered the basic technique, you won't have difficulty to advance your music.

If you think your basic is good enough and they only teach basic stuff, then stop learning from them. Advance your study somewhere else.

[JumpingJackFlash]

I'm afraid one of the fundamental truths about formal education is assessment. You need a certain mark to pass the course, and there's a whole load of statistical mumbo-jumbo that goes on behind the scenes to analyse everyone's marks, rank them in order, then rank the course providers in order and, ultimately, determine who gets the most money.

In practical terms therefore, you need something you can easily assess.
Arts subjects have always been difficult in this regard as there is so much subjectivity involved. However, course providers get around that by devising modules which are more objective. That's why most composition students start out studying Bach Chorales and so on, because they can be easily assessed (on how stylistic they are).
Very few examinations give you free reign over what you do, because it cannot be assessed. They all give some criteria; "in the style of..." for example, purely to make it easier to grade.

Formal education is fundamentally flawed and can only get you so far. As you have realised, to truly be an artist, sooner or later you pretty much have to forget the restrictions and just do what you want. You won't get a degree that way, but you might become a good musician.


(For the record, I speak as a teacher in formal education).

[jancivil]

I entered conservatory a couple years older than a freshman's normal age.

I had strong opinions on things by then myself. My view today is that when you have strong opinions on what you ought to be taught, around this point one ought to begin to determine one's own course of study accordingly. I knew to study composition academically wasn't for me after a year at CCM. the people I knew that were excellent composers were thinking on a higher level than the regular curriculum as far as I could tell. but the excellent teachers I had anecdotes about were talking about philosophy and in the abstract, making analogies...

"What does the rhythm of everyday speech give you in terms of form... listen to a spoken language that you don't speak, as pure rhythm" is the kind of thing I would bring up for a student. as I did for myself.

One of my strong opinions as an older person now is that expecting to be taught a creative art tends to be fraught with disappointment. Get the mechanics like it's trade school and figure it out from there.

At Evergreen State in Olympia Washington, one was charged with writing up one's curriculae. You'd have to show something to get in there apparently.