music education

Darrell Criswell · From: Maryland, USA

I have always wondered if getting a bachelors degree or masters degree in music, maybe theory and composition dramatically changes a persons perspective of music. How different would this be from studying on your own and taking lessons as most people do. Do you become a better musician, etc.?

Mack Quinney · From: Texas, USA

Darrell,
Iâ€™m interested in this as well. Iâ€™ve been playing piano since I was six years old. Took lessions through college. (I am 55 now). I just got into jazz a few years ago and man what a new world that is! I learn something about music almost every day. I often wonder if I would be much further along if I had pursued a degree in music.

Iâ€™ll be interested in the responses to this.

Mack
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Darrell Criswell · From: Maryland, USA

Doug Jernigan told me about taking a Berklee College of Music correspondence course. I think the Berklee courses and instructional materials have a reputation as being very hard. Doug told me he learned a lot about orchestral chords and so forth. But what was most interesting to me he said he learned in particular the c6th neck of the steel guitar was a lot more difficult to understand and complicated than he thought, and he already thought it was complicated. He gave me the impression that he may have thought he understood it less after he took the course (pardon me if my paraphrasing of his thoughts is not exactly correct).

I took a few fiddle lessons and my teacher as a classical violinist who had learned young and said she considered studying music in college but she thought it might complicate or confuse her intuitive understqnding and spontaneous joy of music.

That reminds me of reading a biography of W.C. Fields who before a comedian and drunk was one of the greatest jugglers of all time (watch his juggling on youtube, he was phenomenal). WC read a book about juggling and he claimed it ruined him as a juggler because he started to think about doing things he did naturally.

Franklin · Posted 7 Jun 2018 11:29 pm

If you are talking seeing music and becoming a better musician on the pedal steel guitar and colleges giving us an advantage on the instrument? Although I did not go to a music college, I did study out of college level books such as George Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept.

Here's my take:

College teaches harmony and composition by viewing every instrument thru the same scale lens. Granted they have fantastic methods using scales for building technique, learning harmony, and practicing melodic lines through all octaves on all of the other perspective instruments. The pedal steel is so different from all other of those other college focused instruments. With some pedal arrangements we can play something like 28 unison pitched E notes, just to mention one unique difference. That in itself makes sight reading flypaper, as great readers can do on the fly, a near impossibility.

Here is the problem I found with trying to become a better musician on steel using the scale approach...The steel guitar is fretted with a bar (one finger) and its tuned triadic and I can not invert all chords. ......Frustration set in for me by trying to view the pedal steel through the same scale lens the scale curriculums dictate. I waisted five years on that concept.... Playing scales and scale patterns at the pace they teach way over complicates how the instrument can be played and is easiest learned....Scales are the easy path for the other instruments, not pedal steel.

My friend told me during his time at Berklee...He said the Jazz students were learning a completely different and exciting improvising concept called intervallic improvisation off campus by a saxophonist who was known deep in the NYC Jazz scene...After I studied both approaches it turns out that the Intervallic or stacking triads approach to improvisation was and is the simplest way I could view the fret board because of its tunings....

Learning basic theory such as chord formulas and substitutions is very important on any instrument. Beyond that, the scale approach applied to steel is like trying to master the guitar or piano with one finger. I waisted 5 years learning the scale approach around the same time Doug was doing the Berklee course....Luckily taking lessons from Lenny Breau and few other Jazzers in town led me to view the instrument using the simpler intervallic approach. My learning the fret board speed tripled once I stopped viewing it as a series of scales.

In the TrueTone part 2 interview I demonstrate the pro's and cons of both approaches with several examples for anyone who is interested in knowing more about the intervallic approach to improvisation.

Paul

Brian Hollands · From: Geneva, FL USA

I minored in music and am coming back to it along with taking up PSG after a long lay-off. I don't think learning theory would ever make you a worse musician unless you view it as a set of rules, constraints within which you must stay. It's not. Theory is a written/spoken language which both allows you to communicate with other musicians and provides an explanation of why things sound the way they do.

The problem I experienced with learning theory in an academic setting is that it was somehow disconnected from playing. I learned theory but I never learned any practical application of theory. I'd learn something like the difference between harmonic and melodic minor scale but I'd never use them - I'd go back to the dorm and practice all 5 positions of the pentatonic minor scale and never even think to ask why I'm playing a minor scale over a major progression??? I think the issue was a combination of myself being a young kid without a clearly thought out objective combined with the way theory was taught as an academic subject.

An example is an interview I heard in which Billy Gibbons said something to the effect that the most important notes in chord are the 3rd and the 7th. I don't ever recall hearing that in college - I knew what those notes are and what they do but in all that time I thought that the notes to emphasize while playing were the root and 5th...

Thus, if you want to learn theory I think you need to know why you want to learn it - what do you want to use it for?
1. Musical curiosity / why does a lick or progression work? This is most important to me as it will allow moving beyond simply having a bunch of memorized licks.
2. Communication with other musicians - critical if you're going to play professionally in my opinion.
3. It provides something of a tool kit - the more options you know that could work the easier it is to get what you hear in your head to come out of speaker.

To the OP's question, I don't find that knowing any theory changed my prospective on music other than, in my case, to perhaps bias me a bit against formula music. I like some things that are very simple but I also appreciate interesting chord progressions, clever bridges, etc.
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Charlie McDonald · From: out of the blue

Theory never hurts. Mine was dispensed in piano, separate group classes where we learned intervals, listened and identified them.
It seems determining their useful relationships was left to me, which is good, as there's a lot of discovery that goes on.

Scales were a part of regular individual classes, and their importance in rote patterns (beginning songs were scale exercises basically),
so what Paul said is making sense, the scale lens, whereas what I took of more value to me was intervals and their relationships.
The scale lens exists as a bias. It may that it would be inconvenient to take apart or explain theory when you're busy executing songs.

So, what I mean is, it's true what Brian said:

Donny Hinson · From: Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.

Allan Haley · From: British Columbia, Canada

Thank you, Paul Franklin. I'm going to dig into reading about (and practicing) intervallic or stacking triads. My understanding of that is pretty thin.

Al

Jerry Overstreet · From: Louisville Ky

I might be the least knowledgeable person here on this subject and I don't have any formal higher learning musical education so take it for what it's worth.

It's my opinion that any education you can get will help you in some way, but I can see how too much interpretation concerning theory can be really confusing to the layman. I've seen it happen here many times.

Someone poses a question about how to get a certain chord and then numerous replies. Some giving just the basics and then the discussion starts about another instrument playing a bass part, or how a chord can have several different names depending on the application, the key and the mode. They just throw up their hands is frustration. You can't learn it all once.

When people ask me about theory, I tell them to just learn the basics....what interval of notes make up a specific chord in a specified key. Study and memorize the major and minor scale intervals.

For example, in the key of G...G,B,D [1,3,5] is a major... add a b7 for a 7th chord,
1,3b,5b is diminished, 1,3,5+ is augmented etc. Look at your fretboard and strings and physically count the intervals across and up and down it if you have to, at least in the beginning.

Winnie Winston's book has a page that lists these things in an easy to understand text, or you can probably find many such things at many places online.

Just the basics if you please. If you can count, you can use intervalic note and chord theory, but keep it simple...at least until you understand the basics. This knowledge will get you through just about all situations.

I disagree concerning the value of scales and patterns. Many melodies can be played using just strings 5 & 6 on the E9th pedal steel and incorporating the A & B pedals by using the scale. Try it sometime. Just play the do re mi fa so la ti do bit starting in, say, open G at the 3rd fret and play the scale finishing at the 15th fret, using just strings 5&6 and the pedals where they are needed. I'm not going to write it all out. It's pretty easy to figure out.

Then pay special attention to the sound a group of notes makes and know where to find that on your guitar open, and with pedals/levers. So if someone calls out Fmaj7 you know the sound a major seventh chord makes and where to find it in a couple of places.

When attempting to teach someone unfamiliar with theory or the Nashville number system, keep it simple so they they can understand and apply it to their guitar.

Theory explained by application to the instrument is something they can understand and is practical in use.

IMO, TMI at one time is detrimental because people get confused and just give it up all together.

My youngest brother is a music major. He is an accomplished vocalist, musician on piano and french horn...I'm sure he could sit down at my steel for the first time, listen to the tuning and play a melody of some kind, in some fashion in just a short time as a result of his education and knowledge of theory.

Educating oneself in music theory is a lifetime journey. It's not something anyone can learn all at one time. Study and progress at your own pace as it becomes clear.
Start with the basic interval math and progress as you understand each level...but what do I know.

Dan Chambers · From: Iowa, USA

I was a Music Education major with dual certification in Vocal and Instrumental (Saxophone) and I wouldn't trade the knowledge and background for anything in the world. Things like the Circle of Fifths, types of scales and modes, and even Music History, should be of universal interest to musicians and music lovers of all types. Did my formal Music Ed Degree help me specifically on Pedal Steel? Beyond giving me an awareness of Music's Universality and Power, no. I'm 66 years old and I still believe that being a "student" is a lifelong commitment and a critical part of a vital life and a necessary part of staying young at heart. In the words of Bob Dylan "He not busy being born is busy dying"! Peace y'all.........
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Charlie McDonald · From: out of the blue

I'm with Dan. Music theory has enriched my life as well as my musical one. It's true that you can't learn it all at once,
making it last a long time.

A guy taught me how to improvise at the piano, forming a chord (like a grip) and noodling over the changes. It didn't do it for me.
The result was scalar, whereas if I know the distinction in a M7 and an m7 opens up the world of ninths and thirteenths and 'chord substitution.'
So then there are new notes, leading to new patterns, and creativity. Know the box to think out of it.

Dale Rottacker · From: Walla Walla Washington, USA

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