help me with my class?

it needs to be pointed out

Think you mentioned books? If so (or even if the students don't read these, might give you some more ideas), maybe try David Byrne's How Music Works and, re the relatively modern side of "classical", Alex Ross's The Rest Is Noise.

Yes, Alex Ross can tell you all about how America saved classical music after WW2, just like it saved Europe.

I have a textbook and I would like to provide supplemental readings, but they would need to be pdf or somehow reproducible because I can't have students buy anything else. If anyone has pdf copies of these books they want to share with me that would be cool! I have The Rest is Noise on kindle but I can't do anything with that :(

i can't stand "some people have musical/artistic brains, some people are dullards" esp backed by pseudo science. i find it bourgeois and alienating. a student could get frustrated and think "well, maybe im just hard wired to not get art" and give up.

love that Naxos link. no right way to listen. your personal experience is valid. also this is very useful to bring up wrt live performance, where what the audience hears is different from what the performer hears. even in those cases it breaks down further, what one performer hears on one side of the stage will be different than what another performer hears on the other side of the stage. or maybe a performer is so fixated on getting this one part right that the entire concert is defined by it, whereas the audience experiences it in a completely different way. all these subjective experiences co-mingling together, a meta description of "the concert was good/bad" can only ever be an attempt at approximation.

so much misinformation and general assery about how to enjoy music out there!

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera)

it might be good for you to provide them a particular example to ridicule because they will run into it and learning to take anything anybody says about music with a grain of salt is pretty helpful. nicolas slonimsky's "lexicon of musical invective" is a fun collection. (you don't have to give them a copy of it but you might read from it? idk.)

"you belong here" is one of my north stars in terms of education in general
i'll be ok with this stuff -- i was intimidated out of participating in musical conversations for a good portion of my life, so being inclusive is a primary goal in teaching this class. they're going to be well taken care of in this regard! they are in the right place and belong there.

I'm trying to track down a Jlin interview where she talks about asking someone with formal music training if they could teach her more about music theory, and they opine that they could only mess up her creative flow. There's no one entry point to music, and no wrong one imo

here we go! I was somewhat off but I enjoyed this anecdote

You mentioned that you don’t play any traditional instrument proficiently. Do you find that your lack of music training liberates you while making music? Or would you like to know more about things like music theory?

For me, music theory is more of a hindrance. At one point I was trying to learn how to finger drum, so I decided to take piano lessons to strengthen my fingers. I actually had a professional piano player who studied at Juilliard, a prestigious music school in New York, tell me that she could not teach me. I wanted her to show me some basic things on the piano and played her some of my music. After hearing some tracks, she said there was no point in teaching me because I already had everything I need. Then she recommended another teacher to me who had mentored under her. I went to his house, played him some of my music once again, and after some sessions he said the same thing: he couldn’t teach me because he would be undoing what I already know. He said my innovation might be undone by learning this instrument. So I got turned down twice and realized that I’m never going to learn how to finger drum.

http://www.electronicbeats.net/native-instruments-komplete-sketches-jlin/

gershwin famously had the same issue. he tried to get european composers to teach him how to compose, but ravel said something to the effect of "Why become a second-rate Ravel when you're already a first-rate Gershwin?"

personally i disagree with ravel's judgment on this issue but i understand why he was concerned

related to the "training" discussion:

How to Play Guitar, by David Fair

i love the instructions for Rhys Chatham's guitar trio http://www.rhyschatham.net/g3english/GuitarTrioScore.pdf

esp the special note for drummers

For the first set on the high hat, you can start out with a basic quarter note beat, and gradually, over the 20-
minutes, get more complex and frilly, evolving into a kind of Max Roach kind of high hat solo kinda thing,
maybe. Anyway, may the force be with you, it always works out fine. Don’t worry too much about this
section, you’ll know what to do by instinct, I promise.
For the second set, hit the drums real hard, yet somehow poetically. The snare drum sound has gotta be
AWESOME… I like LOTS of fills, so pull out every over-the-top fill lick you know and use it in this piece.
Lots of ride and crash cymbals. Don’t be afraid, out of politeness, to be a rock n roll hero, i.e., don’t hold
back.
What I’m saying here is that this piece is essentially a 20-minute solo for you, first on high hat, then on the
full kit. Listen to the record to get an idea of what I’m after. The recorded version (David Linton), though
the definitive one and completely inspired, was a bit tamer in terms of fills than the one Jonathan Kane (of
Swans fame, who joined the band later) used.
Anyway, you get the idea, I’m sure you’ll do great

simon frith is a good resource, also contains this classic of music appreciation

https://books.google.com/books?id=BPdIfT6scIoC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=frith+performing+rites+poison&source=bl&ots=Z6K6ddb2ib&sig=Tq1Ze_L3F6_yxffVATA3wcQujHY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiJqL_1wuLYAhVSjK0KHezDDWAQ6AEIQzAD#v=onepage&q=frith%20performing%20rites%20poison&f=false

There is no way possible that Poison can EVER be on top. Them little underdeveloped chromosomes don't got cock big enough to fuck an ant. So all you fucking whores out there who praise the ground Poison walks on are in shit. METALLICA RULES and that will never change.

Letter from LaDonna to Metal Mania, May 1990

my favorite in the mock instructional video genre is this one by lol coxhill:

https://vimeo.com/85724438

xxxpost Gershwin was one of the great songwriters---still is; I could turn on the local jazz station right now and hear a demonstration of that, like as not. His orchestrating chops weren't equivalent---maybe they would have been, if he hadn't died young. But, to me, he's a bit like any number of perhaps overly ambitious/prematurely satisfied rock and pop stars in that respect (also some jazz artists).

on the other hand you have a guy like mussorgsky, where all the other russians like balakirev kept trying to "fix" his "mistakes" and what he was doing was actually totally awesome. wish there were more orchestrators who didn't know what they're doing in the same way that mussorgsky allegedly didn't.

i love music

i also love music and hope to transmit some of that love to my students
there are 12 of them btw

Required reading:

https://www.amazon.com/Hatred-Music-Margellos-Republic-Letters/dp/0300211384/

'Customers who bought this item also bought… The Hatred of Poetry.' Sounds about right.

Both books only serve to deepen one's love of music and poetry btw.

If you ever get into the concept of perfect pitch, this clip is kinda interesting, musician guy has raised his kid with a rigorous ear for music and tests him out. It's pretty amazing his ability to parse really complex chords.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhLNXXxbfNA

xxxxxpost Gershwin, pop-rockers, others reaching beyond/below their greatness: it's all about being fully aware and accepting your own limitations, your *own* gifts. Also testing them, but figuring out how far you can/should push. Also sometimes it helps to ask yourself, "What would I think of this, how would I hear it, if I just came across it"---without any hype, incl. self-hype, incl. what you're trying to do and how this fits the inner saga (although all of that's also part of necessary self-awareness). Worth a discussion with students, seems like.

"gifts": no, make it "capabilities", re talent x skills. Editing is 4ever.

good advice for coping with snobs (from naxos)

Coping with Snobs

Snobs are everywhere, in every field. Baseball snobs sneer at neophytes who don’t know Ty Cobb’s lifetime batting average or Willie Mays’ hat size. Computer snobs roll their eyes if you don’t know ROM from RAM.

Classical music snobs can be some of the snobbiest snobs of all. They assert their superiority by showing off their knowledge and declaiming opinions. Often their snobbery masquerades as helpfulness, but snobs have a way of making ignorance appear to be shameful.

Nobody should feel ashamed of ignorance. If a classical music snob tries to shame you at a concert, don’t take it personally. They’re just showing off, and may be unaware of diminishing others.

Classical music has a reputation for snobbery, but in fact the audience is full of wonderful people who aren’t snobs at all, people who come to enjoy the beauty of the music. These people know that what really matters is your willingness to open your mind and heart to the music.

A good crescendo sequence that comes to mind
Starts about 4:30 here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W6CjO0H2j0s
From Rainbow - Stargazer

opera snobs are even worse, like ilx rolling trap thread level of bad

I have no idea what you're talking about there. Btw, it's not the rolling trap thread it's the rolling face tat thread.

Rolling face tat thread has always been anti-snob, thus names like “rolling face tat thread” “rolling snap thread” “rolling super fruity swag thread”, animating spirit of the thread has been an openness to styles typically derided

i was just referring to snark level of rolling face tat thread, not its egalitarian scope. the way you guys tear each other apart on there (or used to), that's like opera fans with their psychotic pro- and anti- certain singer stances

itt jnj talking out his ass

an open forum for people to talk smack about all kinds of opera

Rolling face tat thread has always been anti-snob, thus names like “rolling face tat thread” “rolling snap thread” “rolling super fruity swag thread”, animating spirit of the thread has been an openness to styles typically derided
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Friday, January 19, 2018

kermitdrinkingtea.jpeg of course

i'm glad those threads are more welcoming than i thought they were
i turn off when i see interpersonal bickering (universally dull imo) or incomprehensible clowning (my fault for not getting it)

anyway i have a youtube channel now!

pre-WWI recorded music, minstrel shows, ragtime, cakewalk, Sousa, etc, would by no means call myself an expert i may need your help, thank you. for some reason* i am really excited about telling them about the gigantic shift that occurred once music started to be recorded and played at home (not family singalongs, but records!) and the resulting explosion of music. i remember learning that and finding it so compelling to contemplate. also my gpa worked for RCA so i was familiar with the gramophone and the doggie. i'm trying to stay away from forcing them to learn the pet things i am interested in but i'm sure a little of that is inevitable.

i thought maybe the oklahomans was like grapes of wrath/okies/oh susanna/i've been workin' on the railroad?! if that's not it, i have no idea tbh.

* the reason is obvious, this is the kind of music dork i am

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Thursday, January 18, 2018 2:04 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ok, some good books I've found on this topic

Greg Milner - Perfecting Sound Forever - This is excellent on the way that recording techniques shape our ideas about music, very accessible and entertaining as well as enlightening, lots about the 'sound tests' where a soprano would be on stage and the curtain would pull back to reveal it was a record, etc.

Susan Schmidt Horning - Chasing Sound - On a similar topic, but going in-depth into the changes in engineering through the years, good anecdotes about the earliest recording studios

Mark Katz - Capturing Sound; How Technology Changed Music - A series of scenes on the topic, feels like four random chapters from a much larger book. Good stuff on cultural impact of the phonograph, how it led to styles changing and becoming unified as musicians heard each-others work, then skips forward 80 years to a chapter on turntablism. Comes with a website with extensive audio examples.

David Wondrich - Stomp and Swerve: American Music Gets Hot, 1843–1924 - Less academic, more enjoyable opinionated narrative on the leadup to jazz and blues, comes with an excellent CD covering the early years of the century, not what you're looking for but would reccommend generally.

so helpful!! thank you!
i need to spend some time today gathering resources.

Byrne's How Music Works also looks at music x technology, incl. how listening experiences evolved, incl. for professionals, incl. what engineers and producers told him going back to the beginning of his recording career (and what he told himself in home tape "sessions" in teens) also considerations of live performance & presentation, going back to busking in Berkeley etc in late 60s (fave is the tour where dancers got the players doing some dancing and vice-versa). The finale goes back to ancient Greeks, having sympathetic fun w "music of the spheres" and then how that concept influenced later composers, The ebook has music excerpts, but haven't heard it.
xpost Greg Milner's book is among those mentioned on the thread about the Centuries of Sound archive, with links to it and each section (starting w 1859-60); also Mr. CoS shows up on there to talk about the tracks and artists, as he adds more: Centuries of Sound - pre-jazz-era recorded music

lot of good old pop music and trivia on this radio show:

The Old Codger: playing 78 RPM records like they're going out of style!

https://wfmu.org/playlists/OC

Updates:

* first night of class tonight, feeling pretty prepared for the first week at least. i think i have week 2 under control but we'll see...
* i have a playlist on my youtube channel "is this music?" that should be fun
* chose "in a silent way" as my students' entrance music. it's interesting, palatable, they have probably never heard it. i have the complete sessions, probably going to play disc 2 :)

psyched!

in undergrad, my intro to anthropology prof started each class by playing us a piece of music and asking us to try to guess what country it was from, which I remember quite fondly as a fun/challenging intro to understanding diff music traditions. My most vivid memory is being baffled by the sound of portuguese

oh man in a silent way great choice

sterling example of how in recorded music editing is indistinguishable from composition

Wonder if it would be worthwhile for them to compare Miles' version (or versions, if you're playing takes from the box) with Zawinul's own, from his s/t album (which I haven't heard in ages, but was a late-night favorite for some of my friends and me, even though I was never that big on Weather Report, aside from Mysterious Traveler and Tale-Spinning). I read somewhere that his composition of it drew on (sense?) memories of being a shepherd boy in the hills of Austria.

forks contributing to this thread by self-promoting his shitty playlists and dragging personal beefs into it is A++++ posting

was thinking that too... play miles and then play zawinul and be like 'these are the same song did i just blow your mind'?

Oh yeah, reminds me: Giddens wrote that his students didn't gasa avant jazz, until he played them some reworkings of early jazz; think he might have incl. this one, well-described by xgau:
Air Lore [Arista Novus, 1979]
Demonstrating not only that ragtime (Scott Joplin) and New Orleans (Jelly Roll Morton) are Great Art consonant with Contemporary Jazz, but also that they're Corny. And that both Great Art and Corn can be fun. Which is why the somewhat stiff, if not corny, readings of the themes, especially "King Porter Stomp," don't get in the way. Although just what could get in the way of Henry Threadgill improvising over an explicit pulse for a whole album I can't imagine. A
Nor that it has to be Corny, or corny but yinow that whole Ancient To The Future thing, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Sun Ra, Archie Shepp & Horace Parlan's Going Home and Trouble In Mind (even Shepp's reworking of commercial funk with an atonal solo, on "Mama Too Tight", way before Ornette's Prime Time, which itself may have been a response to Beefheart & Magic Band, especially when he was still playing sax and the whole act was sometimes tagged as "Howlin' Wolf meets Ornette Coleman). Not too far from "Bourbon Street," on
The Complete Basement Tapes (or "If Dogs Run Free," where D. might be saluting Mose Allison).

xp, not my fault if the truth hurts pal

you're literally the worst poster on ilx

perhaps drag the personal beefs to another thread; Lechera teaching a class.

Excited to hear about the first lesson LL!

Perhaps I missed this, but: what age are your students?