Who here has any 'formal' music qualifications?

[WoJ]

Hi,

Just found out from my music teacher that I passed me grade 8 bass guitar with merit!

I also have piano grade 2 classical (what a waste of time), grade 3 jazz piano and some sort of begginer jazz ensemble something-or-other. I have grade 5 popular music theory and i'm awaiting results from a grade 8.

Who here has any instrumental grades/qualifications, do you think its helped you? Have you been able to move forward because you have the grades? Do you think now there should be more emphasis on 'technology' based grades so that uni's/schools/etc can have a better understadning of your 'technological level'. Would it actualy be feasible to have 'synthesiser' grades, or sequenceing grades?

Discuss

WoJ

[NotTheCommonDose]

[Hink]

congrats WoJ on your grade other than that I think I'll read the 'discussion'...

[WoJ]

err...good point.

I do feel that practical music exams are a bit pathetic in some areas. Like you can still probably pass if you learn no arpegio's what so ever, or no scales. I think its also that you can get through purley on luck - if you get asked to play a couple of scales that you can play easily etc. I always used to think of exams as anoying when i was forced to do them at a younger age, and i only realy scraped through. However i now see that its not the exam that important, its up to you to learn what the grades are teaching you! (how ironic), i never could be bothered with them, but i realise that exam's never test your full playing ability, and its not the exam thats the important thing.



WoJ

[thecontrolcentre]

congrats on the exam results ... aint got any qualifications, musical or otherwise, myself ... everyone i know who does tho' is a pretty good player , so i think it helps in that respect, and also helps you to understand music theory ...

BTW i just checked out your website, and it's unreadable in my browser (firefox on Windows ME)

[WoJ]

BTW i just checked out your website, and it's unreadable in my browser (firefox on Windows ME)

Nooooo. hmmm, well, not quite sure whats wrong there, I use firefox and it loads ok... ah well.

Could be a refering problem. could you tell me if this works, at least then i'll know its the page and not the domain. http://freespace.virgin.net/r.wojtulewicz/index.html

WoJ

[tee boy]

Im thinking of taking Gr8 in classical guitar, rock guitar, piano and music theory in the near future. I would like to teach privately, so Im thinking it might be nice to have shite on the wall.

As of today I have a couple of classical guitar grades but nothing to shout about. Hated music exams as a kid, so I stopped doing them as soon as I got a say, lol.

TB

[WoJ]

Location: Sunny Staffordshire

Staffordshire ay?

WoJ

[Kingston]

I have an equivalent of grade 8 in jazz piano and guitar, and progressed quite a bit self taught from that on, similarly with theory. At some point I also studied a bit of string ensemble arrangement.

Let's face it, it helps immensely. All the bullshit you hear from people with no musical education and the uselessness of it is easily tested: play with them. It's almost a rule those people are one trick ponies, able to do just the one thing they once learned. Stray a bit further from there, and they'll drop. Explaining and exchanging musical ideas is a lot easier with a common language as well.

There's a bit of a problem as well, especially with highly trained jazz musicians. They were subjected to narrow classifications while training and they might be almost blind to the world outside that. The proof is all the nu-jazz bands that all sound the same. That's the thing they learned in school and are unable to scretch.

One thing I find baffling is the purely classical "musicians". I use brackets because I find improvisation to be quite the essential part of musicianship. I've had enlightening conversations with people in leads roles in full orchestras, who have been doing it for 15-20 years, and they might have no clue on how to improvise. I find that extremely odd.

"yeah, just kind of float on top of that chord progression"

"huh?"

...one of the reasons one very rarely hears oboe or french horn improvisation anywhere.

[M'Snah]

It's almost a rule those people are one trick ponies, able to do just the one thing they once learned.

Dunno about that. Most blues players don't have a formal musical training, and that's never a problem when playing or jamming a standard 12-bar blues pattern .

EDIT: to stay a bit on topic: I don't have formal musical training, not even piano lessons. But I did read 'a lot' of musical theory and learnt my self playing piano and sight reading music.

[rp314]

A little bit of perhaps pertinent information from the past:

When Igor Stravinsky came to the United States he was generally considered one of the greatest composers in the world. However, since he had no degrees he technically could not teach at a university or conservatory. His education had been a combination of growing up in a musical home, his father having been one of the great "Boris Godunov's" of his time, and taking lessons from none other than Rimsky-Korsakov.

Music has that wonderful aspect to it that manifests itself in how one plays an instrument or how one's compositions sound. Them are your credentials.

That said, congratulations on passing the course.

[Hovmod]

...one of the reasons one very rarely hears oboe or french horn improvisation anywhere.

Hm. Just some thoughts -
Many concertoes call for cadenzas that are not provided by the composer. The performers often write these, and prepare them for performance. This might not satisfy your personal or the more traditional jazz kind of definition of improvisation, but it certainly requires musicianship at high level and a deep understanding of the "chord progression".
Also, many baroque musicians "battle" within the frameworks of loosely defined fugues, for instance, which certainly is improvisation. If you talk to them using jazz terms they might go "huh" but I'm sure that works the other way around as well.

WoJ, congratulations. I hope you get to where you want to go.

[Klemperer]

A little bit of perhaps pertinent information from the past:

When Igor Stravinsky came to the United States he was generally considered one of the greatest composers in the world. However, since he had no degrees he technically could not teach at a university or conservatory. His education had been a combination of growing up in a musical home, his father having been one of the great "Boris Godunov's" of his time, and taking lessons from none other than Rimsky-Korsakov.

Music has that wonderful aspect to it that manifests itself in how one plays an instrument or how one's compositions sound. Them are your credentials.

That said, congratulations on passing the course.

Great post. And surely an addition to Kingston's view. But I think Kingston is right that knowing what others might do in the next minute helps a lot, and one way for that is surely learning.
I don't have a formal degree, I don't even know what Grade8 is, basic or deep technical skills..., but congratulations! I used to think reading too many books about musical theory would kill the creativity of some friends at university, but that might surely be nonsense. I listened to thousands and thousands of classical recordings from earliest time on, loved that, and a "middle way" for myself is to occasionally play with musicians who like other music than I do. And then I sometimes take some classical piece, load it as midi into Kontakt2, delete some of the lead-voices (violins, trumpets whatever) and fiddle on, improvise. First it's lots of fun in hot nights without sleep, second you learn what you can't - and after that I check courses and books.

I definitely agree to what Hovmod says about classical music, especially in baroque times composers just "made sketches" for the musicians sometimes, and players could - well, we have no CDs of that time - go on like they thought was best.

To answer your question, WoJ, if there were such "degrees" for music I like, and the people at that place friendly instead of nose-speaking "techno is GOD and you're a dumbfuck if you think otherwise"-poshy-monsieurs, I'd surely love to go into such "courses". Would be nice, and helpful.
But this is a battle that is as old as music, and the stupid people aren't on ONE side of the discussion for sure. Both have strong arguments.
So there ARE some examples that show that you CAN be a most creative artist, and you CAN play with many other musicians just as a "I don't want all these courses"-musician. Sure, it might/must take longer to get the results the musician wants.

But as I personally think we live in times where there is a little danger ( a little, not more) that talking about postmodern variety and doing musical monotony goes so well together, this "I'll try it my own way" might be a good thing. It's not so important if this "I'll do it my way" follows after many degrees or without a degree.

[shamann]

Let's face it, it helps immensely.

I agree with you 100%. I have no formal training/qualifications, and in certain areas have always found myself at a deficit, especially when discussing music with trained musicians. I think those who insist otherwise usually do so only to make themselves feel better, sort of the "I'm okay, you're okay" of music.

But, of course, it isn't essential to make music, and certainly there is lots of evidence of that around. Nor will it lead to you making better music, also plenty of evidence of that around. What it will do (most of the time, there are always exceptions) is make you a better player, especially one that adapts well to ensemble and repertory playing.

Which is largely why I never pursued formal training very far. I took a year's worth of piano lessons, promptly realized I had zero interest in playing other people's music ever nor playing in live settings with others, and so lost interest in moving forward. Also, always frustrated me that the stuff I was interested in only came at advance stages of training (like rhythm analysis for instance).

One of the problems I always faced was that my thinking towards music comes from a writer's point-of-view (for which I do have formal training, as much as you can, and which I do professionally). There's really no equivalent to playing other people's music in writing, and so my brain seemed hard-wired against the concept. Consequently, I have a pretty good grasp of the concepts of meter and key and progressions and cadences and so on (which I've read about thoroughly), but I have a really poor analytical ear for it. It's one of the things I'd like to work on, but like C++ programming, it's just one of those deep-learning tasks that always get pushed down the list.

My wife has a bunch of formal qualifications (grade 8 piano, grade 2 in theory?, Bachelor's in Music for violin, etc). Consequently, she is infinitely more qualified to teach music to children (which she does) than I am (which I don't, thankfully for the children).

[james0tucson]

Who here has any instrumental grades/qualifications, do you think its helped you?

I have a university degree in music theory and composition. Oddly, I suppose, it caused me to get
a much higher salary at my tech job than I would have
otherwise. In the 1980s I worked in the music industry. I suppose it helped a bit, now and again, to have some music education, and the contacts I made in my school years certainly were very important at the time.

But generally, very few people have ever cared about my education.

On the other hand, I am not very creative, and I struggle to make the simplest music today. I don't know why it is. My understanding of the concepts is deep and complete. But my creativity and my ability to execute an idea is very poor. I can sit in with just about anyone, on keyboard or on guitar. I can look at any piece of music (ANYTHING, even 20th century and atonal stuff), and understand it. I can analyze counterpoint. or any type of orchestration. I suppose if I had organ chops I could have been a church choir director or something. Never was interested in anything of that kind.

I was always into computer programming (since the 1970s) and I ended up building my career around that. Today, I seek some kind of merging of computers and music. For the first time, I am seeing some realistic possibilities, because some of the stuff coming out of the VST world (and related), is showing promise. The consumer computing equipment is starting to be good enough to do synthesis and recording, and we are beginning to see reasonably useful software that is aimed at the goals of merging digital technology with music production.

Some people seem to believe we have reached some plateau, but the way I see it, we are just *now* starting to have stuff that is useful, and that this is the beginning of the climb.