NYT Op Ed: "we're teaching music to our kids all wrong"

[Docbop]

1 hour ago, KuruPrionz said:

I'm from Fresno, spent most of my life there. The diversity is amazing, street festivals would present all manner of Asian, Hispanic, African, Indian, Native American and European traditional musics. I liked some of it more than others, that could have simply been the group that was playing the music or their choice of songs. I don't like all the "American" music I hear either, so it goes...

After growing up in L.A. then moving to Boston. Oakland and other cities and coming back to L.A. I really might the street festivals and different community sharing their food , music, and culture.   My short time as a traditional college music major the one class that I really enjoyed was Music History because it taught about the music as relates to the art and life of people at the times and how it influenced and inspired the composers.    That's why removing art and music from school programs is such a great loss, the music help glue all history and math and appreciate creative thinking all together. 

[KuruPrionz]

36 minutes ago, Docbop said:

After growing up in L.A. then moving to Boston. Oakland and other cities and coming back to L.A. I really might the street festivals and different community sharing their food , music, and culture.   My short time as a traditional college music major the one class that I really enjoyed was Music History because it taught about the music as relates to the art and life of people at the times and how it influenced and inspired the composers.    That's why removing art and music from school programs is such a great loss, the music help glue all history and math and appreciate creative thinking all together. 

I sort of got my music history off the street celebrations, I'm grateful to have heard all  those musics from around the world played live by the people who brought it from their homes. On the other hand, I took a 2 semester class on Art History, the teacher was fantastic and it changed my view of that important aspect of humanity. That and visiting museums in SF, LA and Pasadena (some of those visits were field trips in the class) really opened my mind to another important form of creativity. 

[AROIOS]

3 hours ago, KuruPrionz said:

I'm from Fresno, spent most of my life there. The diversity is amazing, street festivals would present all manner of Asian, Hispanic, African, Indian, Native American and European traditional musics. I liked some of it more than others, that could have simply been the group that was playing the music or their choice of songs. I don't like all the "American" music I hear either, so it goes...

I love Brazilian Jazz, Bossa Nova, MPB, and early 90's J-Pop. There is unique and refreshing beauty in their styles of composing, arranging and singing that we simply don't experience here in the States.

[CyberGene]

How about some odd-meter weird harmonic cluster Bulgarian female choirs? 😉

 

 

[RABid]

I graduated high school in 1977. My first instrument was piano. I took lessons from a very good teacher that mixed classical, popular music, exercises and theory. My second instrument was drums. After joining high school band as a freshman they showed me how to hold sticks. Everything else I translated from piano or learned by playing along with records. I also picked up trumpet and sax my senior year because the band needed more horn players and I learned fast, again relying on piano and drums as a bass.

 

As a senior in high school everyone expected me to either major in music or engineering. I went up to University of Kentucky and tried out on both piano and percussion. As part of the percussion tryout they had me play a xylophone. I had never seen one up close but I played my Bach piece with no trouble. Afterwards the Dean of Music, Dean of Piano and Dean of Percussion sat with me and talked about expectations. There were no questions about what I wanted. To preform, to teach, to compose. The main focus would be performance and I would have to do a 30 minute to 1 hour solo performance in a concert hall that was mandatory for graduation. That was their goal. Train me to be a performer above all else. I left feeling proud that I was accepted with two options, and uncomfortable with such a narrow focus. I never contacted them again and chose not to major in music. As far as I was concerned, they were teaching music wrong.

[KuruPrionz]

43 minutes ago, CyberGene said:

How about some odd-meter weird harmonic cluster Bulgarian female choirs? 😉

 

 

Beautiful music, thanks for sharing!!!  I could be wrong but it sounds like a fantastic blend of Middle Eastern time signatures and melodies with European harmonies. Geographically speaking that would make sense in a historical context. 

[CyberGene]

16 minutes ago, KuruPrionz said:

I could be wrong but it sounds like a fantastic blend of Middle Eastern time signatures and melodies with European harmonies. Geographically speaking that would make sense in a historical context.

You’re absolutely right. The arrangements were made by Bulgarian classical/academic composers who kept the original folklore melodies and ornamentation and added Western European harmonies. These arrangements were predominantly written in the second half of the 20th century during the communist period (pre 1989) and were virtually unknown outside Bulgaria. However some French producer popularized them in the West later. BTW, because they are not entirely authentic folklore, some purists over here dismiss it as inauthentic and non-folklore at all. I don’t know, I was born in 1979 and was too young to follow their development and communist context and only remember hating our pure folklore but being fascinated with these modern harmonies that reminded me jazz which I was obsessed about at the time, so East marries West 😉

[KuruPrionz]

20 minutes ago, CyberGene said:

You’re absolutely right. The arrangements were made by Bulgarian classical/academic composers who kept the original folklore melodies and ornamentation and added Western European harmonies. These arrangements were predominantly written in the second half of the 20th century during the communist period (pre 1989) and were virtually unknown outside Bulgaria. However some French producer popularized them in the West later. BTW, because they are not entirely authentic folklore, some purists over here dismiss it as inauthentic and non-folklore at all. I don’t know, I was born in 1979 and was too young to follow their development and communist context and only remember hating our pure folklore but being fascinated with these modern harmonies that reminded me jazz which I was obsessed about at the time, so East marries West 😉

What is interesting about that concept "the old folk songs were "more authentic"" is that folk songs always change over time anyway. Somebody changes the melody (forgot the original, never learned it, can't sing that high (or low)) etc. I thought it was beautiful music and that's all that matters to me!!! 

[bill5]

15 hours ago, AROIOS said:
Means for ends. I (and many of my fellow cavemen) simply use tools like BIAB and arranger boards to minimize our dependence on band members.

Yeah, I get that it could be convenient esp for stuff like a drum track or even for live gigs to supplement. But what I mentioned before is something else entirely... 

[MathOfInsects]

1 hour ago, CyberGene said:

How about some odd-meter weird harmonic cluster Bulgarian female choirs? 😉

 

 

This is awesome. It reminds me of the gorales from Poland's Tatra mountain. Those close clusters.

[Lou Gehrig Charles]

On 9/29/2023 at 6:49 PM, ElmerJFudd said:

I do see a lot of adult players come in and out of GC lesson rooms, but there are still kids playing guitar, bass, drums and keys, preferring rock music and even the lineage of it all.  Learning from the oldies.  School of Rock assembles pickup bands and assigns songs and parts.   So it’s not dead, they know the music - it’s the text book.  
 

Our town has a School of Rock franchise and there are just over a hundred kids there.  If I had to guess I'd say about 60 of them are guitar students, so it's still a super popular instrument with the kids.  Either that or maybe their parents push them into guitar so they don't have to buy a piano for the house !  It's also noteworthy that most of the singers are girls for whatever reason.

[harmonizer]

re the comment that Billie Holiday had a range of only a little more than an octave, I initially doubted it. And I wondered if it might have been a comment about her vocals near the end of her career - there is a famous recording of her from the late 50s singing with a couple of famous tenor sax players soloing on it, where she sings with heart-stopping emotion but visibly degraded vocal tone. So I went for earlier recordings, and found Blue Moon and Moonglow on youtube. On these two songs I heard here go only as high as a G (a note I used to be able to hit when I was 55), and she hit only briefly with it sounding like it was it a little bit hard for her to reach. And I only heard her go as low as F (just over an octave below that G). This is an unscientific sampling, but I am now inclined to believe the statement about her range. I just never noticed it before because she does so much with stretching and playing with rhythms and expression. I imagine transcribing the rhythms of her singing would be as difficult as doing it for Van Morrison.

[Stokely]

As audiences don't seem to care, live music is dying anyway (to me anyway, talking rock/pop only) due to canned performances.   Doesn't really matter how you teach the kids as long as there are a few people out there who can make karaoke tracks.    Just swivel to acting lessons!

[CyberGene]

Not sure how relevant this analogy is but I’m wondering if people thought the world was going to die with the decline of opera. It is a concrete mix of different arts and requires specialized set of performers’ skills and training. But the world is still spinning, even though opera has not been the leading entertainment for more than a century I think.

 

Can this be extrapolated to music, the way you think of it: specific set of instruments, played in specific genres, with particular (live) skills, using particular music elements in place of others. What I’m trying to say is, the world may still keep existing even without people playing guitars and keyboards? I may not like it but why would one ask me 🧐

[Lou Gehrig Charles]

17 hours ago, RABid said:

The main focus would be performance and I would have to do a 30 minute to 1 hour solo performance in a concert hall that was mandatory for graduation. That was their goal. Train me to be a performer above all else. I left feeling proud that I was accepted with two options, and uncomfortable with such a narrow focus. I never contacted them again and chose not to major in music. As far as I was concerned, they were teaching music wrong.

Similarly, my brother went to U. of Michigan and he considering taking Saxophone classes after taking them all through school starting way back in about 5th grade.  He eventually decided not to do it, though, once he learned the primary goal of the program was to generate a new crop of musicians every year for the school's marching band.  On the one hand, being in the marching band at a Big 10 school would be a pretty good plum on the resume of a career musician, but he wasn't going into music as a career, so he didn't do it.

 

He's got my dad's old acoustic guitar now....  Maybe I can convince him to sign up for lessons at GC or School of Rock!  Cheaper than a new Miata.

[ElmerJFudd]

44 minutes ago, Lou Gehrig Charles said:

Our town has a School of Rock franchise and there are just over a hundred kids there.  If I had to guess I'd say about 60 of them are guitar students, so it's still a super popular instrument with the kids.  Either that or maybe their parents push them into guitar so they don't have to buy a piano for the house !  It's also noteworthy that most of the singers are girls for whatever reason.

In my experience in some cultures males are less comfortable expressing themselves via singing (or dancing for that matter).  But, if given many positive experiences early in life they are just as capable of singing as any kid.  Now, at the start of puberty (grades 6-?) there's no accounting for anything.  If they have been singing and the voice change goes smoothly for them there is a better chance they stick with it to adulthood.  If the voice change process is drawn out, embarrassing at all (late start, or wild swings where they can't match pitch or find their octave for a season or two) then it's very difficult to get them back into it.  

[Lou Gehrig Charles]

35 minutes ago, ElmerJFudd said:

In my experience in some cultures males are less comfortable expressing themselves via singing (or dancing for that matter).  But, if given many positive experiences early in life they are just as capable of singing as any kid.  Now, at the start of puberty (grades 6-?) there's no accounting for anything.  If they have been singing and the voice change goes smoothly for them there is a better chance they stick with it to adulthood.  If the voice change process is drawn out, embarrassing at all (late start, or wild swings where they can't match pitch or find their octave for a season or two) then it's very difficult to get them back into it.  

LOL That would be me!  I'll be over here hiding behind the two-tier keyboard stand if anyone needs me.

 

One of the things that eventually drew me into playing with others is because I am so quiet otherwise.  But I draw the line at singing.

[Docbop]

That reminds me of when a little kid (regrettably) in parochial school at and every class had do something in the Christman show.  My first grade class was just going to sing a song.   So we had weeks of rehearsing our one song and it comes to the day of the show and we do a final rehearsal.   Afterwards my teach pulls me aside and tell me I have something difference for you to do.   I want you just move your mouth like your singing, but don't sing can you do that, sure whatever you want Miss Stinky Arms.    So the big show, my parents are there, and time for us to do our song.   I figure if I don't have to actually sing I can act like one of that singers on TV so I'm grinning like crazy,  flailing my arms all over, and over acting my part.    Hey she told me not to sing, right.   People in the audience are laughing and that's just making me go for it more.   We finish and I'm getting stink eye from a couple students,  Miss Stinky Arms is trying to hide,  people are applauding and I'm still grinning.  So our class was a hit.  

 

Now the darkside of all this being told not to sing at such a young age left a lasting impression to never sing that my voice is that bad.   Which getting into playing music was a major drawback for a long time, singing even horribly is an important part of practicing and learning.  

[RABid]

LOL. For years I thought I could not sing. I turned 60 before I realized that I could actually sing. The issue is I have maybe a 5 step range. It is hard to find songs that fit.

[David Emm]

1 hour ago, RABid said:

LOL. For years I thought I could not sing. I turned 60 before I realized that I could actually sing. The issue is I have maybe a 5 step range. It is hard to find songs that fit.

 

Nothing wrong with that you can't fix with a pair of pitch shifters and big brass balls.