Socialist/Liberal ideologists put down USA

[joihan777]

I enjoy music of almost all sorts, not fond of twangy country/western or rap. The first concert I attended was at Winterland in San Fran, saw Focus, Robin Trower and Yes. The last concert I attended was at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View Ca., saw the San Francisco symphony.

 

Now while this may or may not be considered music I liked it and thought it might be worth sharing.

 

cick here

 

Maybe I'm weird but I thought it was pretty cool.

 

Haha, the was a very cool 'rainstorm'! I love 'out-of-the-box' thinking and that was definitely worth 1.5 mins, Thanks!

[Edstock]

Maybe I'm weird but I thought it was pretty cool.

Neat!

[Ron W.]

I love 'out-of-the-box' thinking

 

 

I think that's why I like it as well, it's just different.

[retro-man]

I enjoy music of almost all sorts, not fond of twangy country/western or rap. The first concert I attended was at Winterland in San Fran, saw Focus, Robin Trower and Yes. The last concert I attended was at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View Ca., saw the San Francisco symphony.

 

Now while this may or may not be considered music I liked it and thought it might be worth sharing.

 

cick here

 

Maybe I'm weird but I thought it was pretty cool.

Somebody I know linked to that on Facebook not too long ago. It is cool. Let's call it a "conceptual performance piece".

[Roadtrip]

What you say is true. What we see here is a productive, holistic result of both competition and the public sector. It is not lost on me (and I hope not on you) that the televised performance was brought to you on KCTS 9, Seattle's Public Television station, that the "School of Jazz" CDs are produced by KPLU, the NPR station out of Pacific Lutheran (private) University in Tacoma (possibly the greatest jazz radio station in the US, if not the world - just listen for an hour or so, then switch to one of the many commercial stations on the market here and tell me which one is giving you better quality. "The market" cannot or will not - evidently - provide that level of quality when it comes to music. You and I may appreciate Bartok and Ellington, but "the market", not so much), and of course these kids are all being educated in, and this music program provided by (though there are many who would point to it as a great waste with no practical application - hence my "it's only music" remark), the Seattle Public School system. Quincy Jones himself was a Garfield graduate.

 

In short, you have here a great example of public sector entities nurturing excellence-producing competition. That's the way it pretty much worked in the America I grew up in. Lest we forget.

 

I was in Denver last week for a sales conference, and I had dinner with my boss one night. During our conversation, I told my boss (who's from Seattle) that my latest favorite place is Seattle. When he asked why, I started talking about all these amazing high-school jazz bands they have in the Seattle area, and how the community offers such strong support for them -- which not only speaks to the charitable spirit of the community, but also the fact that members of the community in general have their collective priorities in order by supporting such a cool thing as jazz music in their schools. My boss didn't have much to say in response, but I wasn't surprised: For the most part, he reserves his enthusiasm for sports.

 

In an earlier post, I pointed out how one of the organizers of the Essentially Ellington competition said that "There must be something in the water in Seattle that breeds great jazz bands." I take the phrase "something in the water" as a metaphor for community support.

 

So the role of the public sector in all this is not lost on me, either.

 

I think it's fantastic that the public television station, KCTS 9, would offer the use of a soundstage for these kids to record videos of their music. I also appreciate how KPLU has supported them though it's "School of Jazz" series. (I plan to buy one of the CDs for myself for Christmas!) There's also a lot of "free" promotion that goes along with this. And who knows how much financial support these programs receive from private donors. And it's not just financial. No doubt these schools' jazz bands (especially Garfield and Roosevelt's) have big local followings of people who actually show up for their concerts and festivals. (A friend of mine is an adjudicator at the Reno International Jazz Festival -- he had the privilege of adjudicating Roosevelt's Jazz Band I, and says they're the real deal, the "whole nine yards" as he put it -- and it sounds like a fun event to attend, to listen to all these youngsters blow their tops and swing their butts off.)

 

I have my biases, of course, but I would never, ever support cutting funding for music education in the public schools. But there's no escaping the reality that programs like these are very expensive -- and not just from a community- and public-support perspective. Imagine how expensive it is for the parents as well (I shudder to think how much a good bari sax costs these days). You've got the cost of the instruments (in many cases, multiple instruments) and private lessons and annual fees ($480 per student annually for Garfield's Jazz I program). And you've got all the equipment (a nice Steinway in the band hall, elaborate recording equipment -- 64-track boards, mics, sound-deadening partitions, the works! -- upright basses and other instruments that the kids' families can't afford (Garfield is an inner-city school). And band trips aren't cheap, either. Garfield's band went to Europe last year. That's a lot of candy bars and car washes and bake sales or whatever else high-school musicians do these days to raise money.

 

But the community's right there, supporting them all the way (and not just Garfield and Roosevelt: There are a number of other really good programs in the Seattle area). I think it's a wonderful thing that the community offers so much support for these programs. And the property taxes that go to pay for these programs is only a small percentage of the overall cost. The rest of the support is purely voluntary on the part of members of the community. The amount of support these high-school jazz bands receive from the community is very, very cool. That's why I think Seattle is my latest favorite place. (I don't know if I'd like all the rain, though.)

[Roadtrip]

Roadtrip, thank you for the perspective... that was an inspiring post!

 

Thank you for your kind words! I credit those kids on the videos. They inspired me.

 

Sheesh... Kids these days!

[retro-man]

I was in Denver last week for a sales conference, and I had dinner with my boss one night. During our conversation, I told my boss (who's from Seattle) that my latest favorite place is Seattle. When he asked why, I started talking about all these amazing high-school jazz bands they have in the Seattle area, and how the community offers such strong support for them -- which not only speaks to the charitable spirit of the community, but also the fact that members of the community in general have their collective priorities in order by supporting such a cool thing as jazz music in their schools. My boss didn't have much to say in response, but I wasn't surprised: For the most part, he reserves his enthusiasm for sports.

 

In an earlier post, I pointed out how one of the organizers of the Essentially Ellington competition said that "There must be something in the water in Seattle that breeds great jazz bands." I take the phrase "something in the water" as a metaphor for community support.

 

So the role of the public sector in all this is not lost on me, either.

 

I think it's fantastic that the public television station, KCTS 9, would offer the use of a soundstage for these kids to record videos of their music. I also appreciate how KPLU has supported them though it's "School of Jazz" series. (I plan to buy one of the CDs for myself for Christmas!) There's also a lot of "free" promotion that goes along with this. And who knows how much financial support these programs receive from private donors. And it's not just financial. No doubt these schools' jazz bands (especially Garfield and Roosevelt's) have big local followings of people who actually show up for their concerts and festivals. (A friend of mine is an adjudicator at the Reno International Jazz Festival -- he had the privilege of adjudicating Roosevelt's Jazz Band I, and says they're the real deal, the "whole nine yards" as he put it -- and it sounds like a fun event to attend, to listen to all these youngsters blow their tops and swing their butts off.)

 

I have my biases, of course, but I would never, ever support cutting funding for music education in the public schools. But there's no escaping the reality that programs like these are very expensive -- and not just from a community- and public-support perspective. Imagine how expensive it is for the parents as well (I shudder to think how much a good bari sax costs these days). You've got the cost of the instruments (in many cases, multiple instruments) and private lessons and annual fees ($480 per student annually for Garfield's Jazz I program). And you've got all the equipment (a nice Steinway in the band hall, elaborate recording equipment -- 64-track boards, mics, sound-deadening partitions, the works! -- upright basses and other instruments that the kids' families can't afford (Garfield is an inner-city school). And band trips aren't cheap, either. Garfield's band went to Europe last year. That's a lot of candy bars and car washes and bake sales or whatever else high-school musicians do these days to raise money.

 

But the community's right there, supporting them all the way (and not just Garfield and Roosevelt: There are a number of other really good programs in the Seattle area). I think it's a wonderful thing that the community offers so much support for these programs. And the property taxes that go to pay for these programs is only a small percentage of the overall cost. The rest of the support is purely voluntary on the part of members of the community. The amount of support these high-school jazz bands receive from the community is very, very cool. That's why I think Seattle is my latest favorite place. (I don't know if I'd like all the rain, though.)

Yeah, it's pretty dark here right now :P Well, even as I was writing about "public", it was in my mind that something like 75 or 80% of KPLU's revenues come from listener subscriptions - of which I am one, and have been for the last 20 years or so.

[joihan777]

Yeah, it's pretty dark here right now :P Well, even as I was writing about "public", it was in my mind that something like 75 or 80% of KPLU's revenues come from listener subscriptions - of which I am one, and have been for the last 20 years or so.

 

NICE.... right now I'm checking out Jazz24.org, KPLU's online site.... very sweet! I'm glad you guys didn't hold back!

[Roadtrip]

Quincy Jones himself was a Garfield graduate.

 

Garfield also claims Jimi Hendrix as one of its own. If so, this possibly explains Hendrix's extensive use of the "sharp nine chord" (augmented ninth chord) in his music, which was, in my opinion, one of the factors that set Hendrix apart from his peers at the time. Made him sound like a pioneer, gave him that wild, electrifying sound, etc., when otherwise he would have been just an ordinary blues guitar player. (The same applies to Stevie Ray Vaughn.) Blues licks can be pretty mundane, but they take on a whole new life when you add that sharp ninth into the harmonic mix. And Garfield High boasts that they have had a jazz program in place since 1960. I don't know what happened, but Hendrix had to have learned that augmented ninth chord from somebody. He certainly didn't invent it.

 

Jazz players and composers had been using the augmented ninth chord for decades. Monk, Mingus, you name it. I don't know who first came up with it, but a good bet would be Duke Ellington.

 

Quincy Jones... I don't know much about him, other than the fact that he's something of a fixture in the music industry. I do know that he came up as a bop trumpet player but wisely got away from that (he probably got the shit scared out of him by hearing the likes of Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan, and Fats Navarro...). In my mind, Quincy Jones's finest hour was when he conducted the Count Basie Orchestra in the "Sinatra -- Live at the Sands" (1966) album, which is one of the greatest jazz recordings of all time. Sinatra was at his best. He was so good that he was actually swinging the band -- and this was the Count Basie Orchestra, mind you. And I know that Quincy Jones went on to produce some of Michael Jackson's albums in the 1980s, which made countless millions for everyone involved. Which I guess is cool. But not near as cool in my book as that Sinatra/Basie album.

[goinbroke2]

geez..I listen to the news channel in my truck on the am radio...

[retro-man]

geez..I listen to the news channel in my truck on the am radio...

Follow Roadtrip - you'll get it. Roadtrip, I like your knowledge about music.

[Edstock]

Follow Roadtrip - you'll get it. Roadtrip, I like your knowledge about music.

Me too. The Duke was amazing, a genius.

[Roadtrip]

Follow Roadtrip - you'll get it. Roadtrip, I like your knowledge about music.

 

Thanks! In a previous life, I was a music-performance major (trumpet). I front-loaded as many music courses as I could (Music History, Theory I and II, Form and Style, Classical Counterpoint, Composition, etc.). This was at Eastern Montana College (now called Montana State University at Billings). Don't laugh! There are some great players from Montana, most notably, trumpeters

and

. I got to hang out and jam with Walrath a few times. He's not exactly the most personable guy I ever met, but I credit him for turning me on to Lee Morgan (you can hear a lot of Lee Morgan's influence in Jack's playing, and as someone said, "Jack has a tone that could fill a circus tent"). Jack was in Ray Charles' band, and later, in Charles Mingus's band, and has made a name for himself in the elite NYC jazz scene.

 

We had a fairly decent jazz ensemble at Eastern. I had lots of good experiences, like when we went to Romania for three weeks in 1979 on a State Department-sponsored exchange program. The audiences we played for were incredibly receptive; they would throw roses on the stage at the end of the concerts while clapping in unison -- goosh! ... goosh! ... goosh! ... -- demanding an encore. We got to perform an hour-long live concert that was broadcast nationwide on Romanian state-run TV. The band played some Sammy Nestico thing that featured me on flugelhorn. I was so nervous during this particular performance that I was sweating through my shirt! While we were in Romania, we learned that jazz music was forbidden by the government to be taught in the schools and universities (the communist government deemed jazz as a form of Western decadence). Nonetheless, we came across some seriously good jazz players while we were there. (The government forbidding jazz in music education was the equivalent of telling a child not to go into that closet, there's nothing to see....) In particular, we met a pianist named Adrian Neagu, who had some INSANE chops. Adrian told me (he spoke something like six languages) and I quote: "the conservatory didn't show me a fucking lick. Everything I learned was from records and tapes I borrowed from the U.S. Embassy." Somehow, my director, a guy named Frederick Kaufmann, was able to arrange for Adrian to come to the U.S. and teach as a graduate student at Eastern the following year. Which was really, really cool. We formed a hot little quintet (well, we thought we were hot) that made a little money on the side on weekends.

 

Also, that following year, the Eastern Jazz Ensemble went on a two-week tour in Southeast Alaska, where we performed and gave clinics mostly in remote villages and stayed in people's homes (where they treated us like royalty). We got to travel the Alaska Marine Highway, where we would set up impromptu jam sessions. We also travelled by seaplanes, and "The Goose" (one of those seaplanes that lands on its belly), and short trips on Alaska Airlines 727s that would land and take off on gravel runways. That place is incredibly beautiful. Mountains that shoot straight up out of the ocean.

 

Another valuable experience I had at Eastern was when they brought in Clark Terry to give a clinic and perform at a concert with our Jazz Ensemble. I'm not sure why, but Clark Terry's name doesn't come up much when people talk about bop trumpet players. But here's a little-known fact: Clark Terry was sort of a mentor to, and informal instructor of, Miles Davis back when they both lived in St. Louis -- well before Miles Davis went on to "greatness". (I put the term "greatness" in quotes because I am NOT a fan of Miles Davis as a trumpet player. Some music critic said that "Miles Davis's tone sounds like a man walking on egg shells." In my mind, that violates the spirit and intent of what the trumpet is all about: which is to project forcefully, in almost a regal sense. I also think Miles had weak chops in terms of facility; in many instances, he sounded downright lazy in terms of covering the changes. I give Miles Davis credit for assembling some great bands and discovering some great players, as well as testing the envelope and moving jazz forward.) But I digress. For me, as a trumpet player, to meet and take instruction from and perform with Clark Terry was something I will never forget.

 

Clark Terry is the real deal. He played with Count Basie from 1948 to 1951, and with Duke Ellington from 1951 to 1959. He was the first African-American musician to be hired by NBC, for which he played solo chair on "The Tonight Show" orchestra, first led by Skitch Henderson, and later by Doc Severinsen (who is also an amazing trumpet player -- one of my heroes when I was a kid). To my knowledge, Clark Terry was the first guy to use the flugelhorn as a solo instrument in a jazz context. And Clark Terry can make that thing talk and walk and laugh and sing.

 

Check it out. Here's Clark Terry performing a 60-second solo on Monk's blues chestnut "Straight, No Chaser":

 

 

Here's Clark Terry blowing his top with the Tonight Show Orchestra:

 

 

He's got that circular-breathing thing happening. He's also got some incredible -- repeat, INCREDIBLE -- chops.

 

Here's Clark performing a recent rendition of his trademark "Mumbles":

 

 

Clark Terry is something like 89 years old now, but he's still happening! He has taken it upon himself to advance the cause of jazz music for many years, giving clinics and workshops and whatnot, and in doing so, inspiring thousands of musically inclined youngsters towards jazz greatness. It was truly a privilege for me to meet Clark Terry, work with him, and perform with him. (He's also a very nice man, very approachable and humble and funny -- much more so than other accomplished jazz clinicians I've encountered.)

 

Clark Terry is a national treasure.

 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I was working part-time at a glass shop, wondering what I was gonna do about a paper that was due in my "History of Western Civilization" course -- which I had absolutely zero interest in -- when the phone rang. It was the director of my music department, Mr. Kaufmann, saying that an agent for the Glenn Miller Band called, and they are looking for trumpet player. "Holy Shit," I thought, "This is my big opportunity!" I called the agent -- some guy named Herb, in Reno -- and he said that the band will be performing at the Fairmont Hot Springs resort, near Butte, and they need a second trumpet player...

 

For the next five years, as a professional musician, I got to:

 

Listen to Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, and Coltrane on a boom box in the back of a motor home by day, only to perform "Moonlight Serenade" and "Chattanooga Choo Choo" by night

 

Meet, get to know, and perform with some fantastic musicians from all over the country

 

See all of the lower 48 states — most of them multiple times

 

In a different band, called “Terry Moretti and Company,” perform in a Playboy club in Buffalo, New York (with a strict and explicit warning: Stay away from the Bunnies – or else!)

 

Perform in the Casino Lounge in the Flamingo Hilton in Las Vegas six nights a week for four weeks at a time, twice a year, for four years

 

Perform in Aruba, every February, for three-week engagements

 

Take lots of Sunday nights off when we were performing at the Great Gorge Resort in Northern New Jersey, and take a train into The City, and then head straight to the Village Vanguard — probably the most famous jazz club in the world

 

As for the latter, I was able to see one of my idols, Tom Harrell, at the Vanguard, performing with the Phil Woods Quintet. When I went into the bathroom during a break between sets, I was shocked to find Tom Harrell in there, having a rather animated conversation with the wall. I didn’t know what to think about that. It scared me. All I knew was what I knew about his music — which is great. I had no idea at the time that Tom Harrell was suffering from Paranoid Schizophrenia.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itOTVvqOIjA

 

When I was in Aruba, our band had to swap sets with a band from Argentina called “Supernova.” It’s a stupid name for a band, to be sure, but these cats were not to be taken lightly. They could do anything, and everything they did, they did well. They had a guitar player, a guy named Hector, who, when he sang, sounded like Christopher Cross. He had an amazing quality in his voice, the rare type of deal that you know it when you hear it. And when he played his guitar, he could do Pat Metheny, Wes Montgomery, Hendrix, Clapton or anyone else you could think of. And what I mean by “do” is meet or beat them at their own game. Unbelievable.

 

I was under contract with the Moretti band, but I stole away in the middle of the night after having been paid. It was a pain in the butt: I had all kinds of gear, including a Fender Rhodes Piano, that had to get to the bus station in Nashua, New Hampshire, and then had to go to Denver, where my folks lived and where I called home two weeks out of the year. I was really paranoid about this breach of contract I was committing, fearing the worst. But I was a stupid idiot young kid in terms of understanding contract law: My contract with Moretti was completely un-enforceable. In retrospect, I I let Moretti hang my contract with him over my head when I was offered the opportunity to audition for the "City Lights" show in Las Vegas, as well as the the opportunity to play in one of the house bands in Aruba (God, I love that place!). In both instances, I spoke with my boss, Terry Moretti, and he threatened to sue me should I breach our contract. Well, I walked. I breached my contract late one night back in 1985, and no one has since filed suit for damages. I should have known better.... I really liked Aruba...

 

Then I got back to Denver. Local gigs were hard to come by. I was participating in a jam session at "El Chapultepec" and there was a 17-year-old kid, a kid trumpet player named Greg Ginsbert blowing double G's and sounding ever-so-much like Lee Morgan.

 

It was roughly at that point where I decided to throw in the towel and attempt to get a "real" job...

[Ford Jellymoulds]

Funk Brothers

[retro-man]

Roadtrip,

 

Wonderful history! Thanks. I knew you had some fairly deep musical history back there. And thanks for the Clark Terry links. amazing.

 

My musical history is much more mundane: Grandpa started teaching me to play the harmonica when I was 2. I got good enough at it that my parents bought me a piano for my 5th birthday - a beautiful used Hamilton upright. My mother didn't drive at the time - and the only piano teacher in the neighborhood wouldn't take me until I was 7-1/2 because my "hands were too small". So, there I was with a fairly musical ear and this piano in the house for 2 years. By the time the piano teacher got to me 2-1/2 years later, I was playing almost whatever I listened to by ear, and it was pretty much impossible to teach me how to sight-read. I would pick my way through the music "every good boy does fine....." eventually she would get frustrated and play it for me once, then I would have it. So I never learned to read. I got good enough to be invited to do a few parties and weddings when I was younger - but I lack the theoretical background that you picked up in your education. I kind of regret that. I also regret that I didn't recognize the potential value of rigorous classical training in developing coordination or rather "unlinking" of the right and left hands to open up syncopation and more complex playing than what I'm capable of. (Sometimes dream of taking some more lessons. Just haven't gotten around to it yet.) But I can play well enough to amuse myself. My biggest "gig" in recent years was being invited up on stage (without prior audition of course) to play a couple numbers with the jazz trio at the Dalian (China) Hilton when I was there on business a few years back.

 

Anyway, your story is worthy of a web archive. I enjoyed it. Also good as an illustration of just how far a passion will - or won't - take you, and the kind of choices we make in life. My younger son wanted to be a guitar player just like John Mayer. He has an amazing ear, voice, and aptitude to pick up instruments (and took a few years instruction from a guy, Fred Tibbets, who had played with Tower of Power, Sly and the Family Stone, and toured with Miles Davis), and is even quite a good composer. His mom was like "You'll never make it. Why don't you do something practical like Accounting or something?" I'm like "What's the worst that could happen? He ends up managing the local Guitar center and playing with his band at the local tavern on weekends, or working as a sound engineer at the radio station, or teaching, or.... At least he'll be around what he loves." Right now, he's trying to follow his brother's footsteps into Industrial Design.

[Roadtrip]

Retro,

 

I wasn't quite sure how to respond, re: music theory and sight reading. I was thinking of telling you something like, "Well, there are a lot of successful musicians who never learned how to read music." But that's not really true. Yes, there are some (Frank Sinatra, for example), but they are exceptions.

 

A valuable thing you have going for you is your ear for music. Having a good ear, in my opinion, falls under the realm of "God-given talent," and is extremely difficult to teach. I saw lots of fellow students drop out of Music Theory because, no matter how hard they worked at it, they couldn't connect the link between the music and the notes on paper. Music theory training covers three ear-training essentials:

 

1. Sight singing. This is where you look at music notation on paper, and using a simple syllable like "Lu," you sing the melody. The instructor will play the pitch of the first note in the melody, but after that, you must figure out every thing else, taking the time signature, the key, the values of the notes (eighth notes, dotted eighth notes, quarter notes, half notes, etc.), and their relationships with one another (i.e., intervals) into account. The hardest part is in knowing (hearing in your mind's ear) how the intevals are supposed to sound, but beginning music theory trains you in that. (Example: In the song "Mary had a little lamb," the interval between "Mary" and "had a" is a perfect fifth, and the interval between "had a" and "little" is a major second. And so on and so forth... In Music Theory I, you get extensive interval training, with the instructor playing two notes in succession, and you must identify the interval.) With this sight-singing ability, you can actually look at a piece of music on paper, and even without singing it out loud, you can hear in your mind how it sounds. Why is this important? It goes a long way toward explaining Beethoven's greatness, because by the time he completed his third symphony, he was stone deaf, yet he went on to write some of the best music of his career.

 

2. Melodic dictation. This is where the instructor will give you the key and time signature and the pitch of the first note of a melody (and if necessary, which part of the measure the melody begins on), and then play the melody a few times, and then your job is to write the melody down in the correct musical notation. This also helps to train you on that link between what the melody sounds like and what it looks like on paper. Jazz musicians call this "transcribing," where they transcribe the notes they are hearing by putting them on paper, and then analyze how they sound in relation to the accompanying chords. Here is a link to a really impressive example of someone's actually animating a transcription (putting the notes to paper at the moment the notes are played) of John Coltrane's solo on "Giant Steps":

 

 

3. Harmonic dictation. This is where the instructor will give you the key, time signature, and usually the pitch of the soprano voice (the top voice) and the bass voice, and then play a series of chords. This is almost always done using Bach chorales with four voices (bass, tenor, alto, and soprano). Your job is to write down each of the four voices of each of the chords in succession. This is meant to test your understanding of how harmonic voicing works in Western harmony (in terms of rules that were established by J.S. Bach -- rules such as the leading tone always resolving up, the seventh of a seventh chord always resolving down, and avoiding parallel fifths and octaves, no exceptions). Again, Music Theory I trains you in knowing how these harmonic relationships work.

 

People who are blessed with a good ear for music tend to have no problem with this stuff, as long as they know the rules, just as the best math students do well when they've learned the rules.

 

But is gaining an understanding of music theory really necessary for becoming a successful musician? I would say yes, in the same way someone who aspires to become a good writer tends to write better once he or she knows the rules of grammar. But then he or she becomes even a better writer after studying all the elements of style and form and composition, which, in many ways, is similar to what they teach in music Form and Style and Composition courses.

 

I was thinking that Music Theory is something that can't be self-taught because of the ear-training component, but then I found a book online -- you guessed it: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Theory.

 

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/159...hemolehillgroup

 

Since this book also includes a CD, I assume it contains all the ear-training material that would go along with quality music theory instruction.

 

Knowing music theory is really helpful in understanding why something sounds the way it does, whether you're on the receiving end or the giving end. Here's an example: I remember back in the late 1980s, when a song called "Sign Your Name" by a guy named Terrence Trent D'Arby was all the rage, because of its "mysterious" sound. It was mysterious, alright, but only in the way that the main part of the melody was a simple dominant-tonic chord relationship (V7 - I) in a minor key. To be specific, a C-sharp 7 chord to an F-sharp minor chord. Here's your music theory in action:

 

Notice how the third of the C-sharp 7 chord, which is E sharp (not to be confused with F natural, since all chords are built in thirds), resolves upwards to F sharp. This is because in the key of F-sharp minor, E sharp is the seventh tone of the scale, the leading tone. The leading tone wants, must, begs for, and insists on resolving upward to F sharp.

 

Also, notice how the B of that C-sharp 7 chord (B is the seventh of a C-sharp 7 chord) resolves downward to the A of the F-sharp minor chord. It's the only natural place for it to go, and any other place would sound unnatural.

 

This is exactly what J.S. Bach was doing, oh, some 275 years ago. And just like the rules of math, the rules of music theory aren't going away anytime soon.

 

This only applies to music that has a tonal center (i.e., a key -- and even if the key changes, as they frequently do, that means there's merely a new tonal center), which encompasses 99.9 percent of all music that is enjoyed by people who live in Western Civilization. But then, when you get into the back half of Music Theory II, you learn about harmonic techniques of 20th-Century composers. Some of it's really good, like Bartok, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich. Some of it's really horrible, like Bartok, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich. Some of it, in my view, doesn't even qualify as music, like that of "serialist" composers Shoenberg and Berg (that 12-tone-row stuff, in spite of its logic, sounds like hell).

 

Aside from the theory, you can learn and teach yourself some piano chops a lot on your own. There are tons of instructional materials that can show you chords (and their assorted voicings) and exercises and techniques. Still, they are no substitute for a good teacher.

 

I'm a shabby example of why this is so. I took up classical piano several years ago (my goal is to be able to play some of the Beethoven warhorses, er, piano sonatas, in their entirety). I can read music -- and all the music includes the fingerings -- so why not? What I end up doing is "wood-shedding" passages until I get them right, night after night after night. And, yes, I eventually get some things accomplished -- after years of doing things this way. But then I think about piano players who accompanied me for trumpet recitals during my first go-round in college. I'd give them a sheet of music, say, for the Haydn Trumpet Concerto, and they could play it, usally perfectly, the first time they read it. The thing is, they were also my age at the time, which means that they had only been playing for 10 years or so. After a seeming short little time of 10 years (from our perspective), they had the technique and the sight-reading chops to be able to do this. My question is, why can't we? I say the single biggest reason we can't is because we are unwilling to submit ourselves to private piano lessons, the step-by-step approach that that entails, and the discipline that is necessary to practice what the instructor assigns. (As I write this, I'm glad you got me to thinking about it, because I know it's true. I've got a really nice keyboard, an Alesis QS8, that has 88 fully weighted hammer-action keys and a shitload of impressive grand piano sounds. Maybe some lessons and eventual improvement would justify the purchase of nice baby grand.) You shouldn't hold back, either. If you're passionate enough about music, then be humble: Find a teacher you like and take lessons. You're a smart and educated and accomplished person, which means that you are no stranger to accepting challenges. And challenges are exactly what a piano teacher will offer you. (And again, I'm really glad you got me to thinking about this, because it's something I should do as well. Life is too short. I'm never gonna break 80 on the golf course, no matter how much instruction I pay for or how much I practice, but as for my piano goals, I could do this...)

 

I'm glad you were in favor of encouraging your son to pursue music. Even though his mom is probably correct (that he's never gonna make it), "make it" is a matter of perspective. I never made it past the metaphorical minor leagues of music, but I still love music, and it will always be an important part of my life. I thank God every day for the wonder and joy music has brought me, and for the fact that it continues to do so. Appreciation for, love for, understanding of, and being involved with music is a priceless gift. Music is the most powerful form of communication. People who appreciate music know this. In reality, sometimes passion, raw talent, and hard work is not enough to achieve one's goals (a lot depends on pure luck and circumstance), but if the passion and appreciation for music were there in the first place, the love for and enjoyment of it never dies. Me, I'm like the monster in "Young Frankenstein" who goes to pieces when he hears the violin music.

 

P.S. Thanks for your kind and thoughtful words.

[Edstock]

He ends up managing the local Guitar center and playing with his band at the local tavern on weekends, or working as a sound engineer at the radio station, or teaching, or.... At least he'll be around what he loves." Right now, he's trying to follow his brother's footsteps into Industrial Design.

Beats sucking out septic tanks for a living. . . .