Pop musicians in the academy
Together with Adam Bell, I'm planning some in-depth writing about the phenomenon of pop musicians (like me) teaching in formal, classically-oriented institutional settings. This post is a loosely organized collection of relevant thoughts.
What even is "pop music?"
As far as the music academy is concerned, all music except classical or folk is "popular." People who make bluegrass or death metal or underground hip-hop might be surprised to learn that their wildly unpopular music is referred to this way. In the past few decades, jazz has moved out of the "popular" column and into the "art" column. I myself have made a small amount of actual pop music, but for the past few years have mostly been involved in the production of artsy electronica.
How classical musicians learn: an absurd oversimplification
Classical musicians learn The Western Canon by performing and analyzing scores. The defining instrument of this music is the piano. All vocalists and instrumentalists are expected to be able to think in pianistic terms. Students are part of a pyramid-shaped hierarchical structure with long-dead composers at the top, followed by long-dead music theorists, followed by living music theorists and conductors and academics, and so on down to the individual section player. There is a contingent of living composers whose role in the hierarchy is confused at the moment. Most student composers are expected to operate within a tightly bounded tradition, whether that's common-practice tonality or one of the various schools of modernism. The analysis of large-scale structure happens only at the very advanced level, if ever. Recordings are something of an afterthought. Jeanne Bamberger divides musical concepts into three levels of complexity:
Classical people start at the bottom and work their way up. Pop musicians, as we'll see, start in the middle and work their way up, and only sometimes down.
How pop musicians learn: an equally absurd oversimplification
Pop musicians learn from the vast, amorphous ocean of songs from many eras and genres. They learn this music by ear from recordings, in informal peer-to-peer settings, or from dubiously accurate tablature on the internet. While there are plenty of pop keyboardists, the music was guitar-centric from the sixties until about the nineties. Guitarists start by learning chords, but not their functions. They then learn the pentatonic scale and/or the blues scale. If they go on to learn other scales, they do it by adding notes to the pentatonic box. While keyboardists do tend to read music, guitarists and singers tend not to. They only learn the full scope of chord-scale theory, functional harmony and voice leading if they are very advanced, or if they pursue jazz or classical. At that point, they usually enter into formal training. In the past few decades, the guitar has been pushed out of its central place in pop music by the computer, the sampler (which is also a computer), and the DJ deck (which increasingly is just a control surface for the computer.) Electronic musicians know even less formal music theory than guitarists, and are usually operating one hundred percent by ear, by trial and error, and through study of recordings. The importance of recordings in contemporary pop can not be overstated. Most of the music exists in no other meaningful form. Electronic musicians use recordings as a major source of raw material, from samples of individual snare drum hits up to remixes of entire albums. Pop is notoriously simplistic and formulaic in its harmonic and melodic content. Hip-hop often has no harmonic content at all. Pop rhythms are Afrocentric and syncopation-heavy, but extremely repetitive. Most of the creativity in pop lies in the manipulation of timbre and space.
Naturally, the widely different conceptions of music held by the classical and pop worlds leads to widely differing pedagogical philosophies. Entering into grad school, these are the things I would have expected any music major at such a high level to know:
The major scale and its accompanying common chord progressions and modes. Same for the various minor scales, pentatonics, and blues. Common combinations of the above: e.g. major plus blues.
Rhythms: rock, folk, country, dance, funk, hip-hop, Afro-Cuban.
Songwriting: conventions of the above styles.
Improvisation: freeform/textural; rhythmic; melodic; basic jazz.
Music tech: recording, MIDI, use of loops and samples.
Instead, these are the things that NYU expects their graduate level music majors to know:
Common-practice tonal theory, voice leading, and figured bass, in excruciating detail. Four-voice chorales, basic counterpoint, and very simple phrases and structures.
The ability to hear and sing the above musical concepts.
The history of Western European aristocratic art music from the 1500s to the present; twentieth century avant-garde and academic experimental music; maybe Duke Ellington and a few token jazz musicians.
I would treat all of the above as requirements only for classical performance, composition, and theory majors; they would be elective for everyone else. The harmonic preferences of upper-class Austrians in the 1700s are quite different from the harmonic preferences of the bulk of Americans in the 2000s. We still like diatonic harmony, but not to the exclusion of all else. We’ve incorporated a massive body of African harmonic practice known as the blues, as well as ideas from every other corner of the earth. Pop musicians tend to come away from academic music theory feeling baffled by its seeming irrelevance; I was no exception.
What this particular pop musician brings to the table
I have spent a lot of time performing, which is great preparation for teaching. If you can hold the attention of a bunch of drunken strangers in a bar, then you can hold the attention of a bunch of groggy undergrads in a classroom. Since I myself was a relentlessly skeptical and anti-authoritarian music student, I expect the same attitude from my students. I expect to have to be interesting and relevant, and use the height of my students' eyelids as a gauge to see how well I'm doing at it. Electronic music production has also been spectacularly good training to run a music classroom. It has instilled in me a fervent belief in the power of the remix. I can best critique and inspire student work by remixing it; and I can foster a genuine community of practice among my students by having them remix each other. The remix raises difficult and essential questions about authorship, ownership, and originality, questions that are germane to any form of music. There's a political side to the remix as well. I believe that musicians in 2014 have not only a right, but a positive obligation, to make active use of the artifacts of our culture. I believe that there is no meaningful musical expression that doesn't acknowledge the ocean of media we're all immersed in. I realize that copyright law is an obstacle to the remix-centric approach to music-making. Widespread civil disobedience by musicians is the best solution to that problem.
Some stories from the trenches
There's an NYU professor who I like and admire. She has a PhD in music and conducts cutting-edge research on it. In the course of a discussion with her, it emerged that she had never heard of the blues scale. I named the pitches, and she played on the little keyboard she had in her office. She thought it was neat. I was horrified that it was the first time she had ever encountered it. An advanced electronic music production student at Montclair State was working on a remix of a Marvin Gaye song. He wrote a synth string part, and was dissatisfied with it. We opened it up in the sequencer, and figured out the problem: he was using correct voice leading. His harmonization would have sounded great with real strings, but on the synth it sounded non-idiomatic and awkward. We replaced the chords with a bunch of droning parallel fourths and fifths and it sounded way better. My intro to music tech students at Montclair were highly resistant to the idea of producing their own pop tracks at first. They were reluctant to play their work in progress for me, and even more so to play it for the rest of the class. This was in spite of the fact that their tracks ranged in quality from pretty good to incredibly good. It makes sense, they're all musicians, they have good instincts. But they either had no experience coming up with their own ideas, or they were used to being relentlessly criticized by their composition teachers. (The conspicuous exceptions were a rock musician and a jazz musician.) The class quickly warmed up to the assignment, and by the end of the semester I was having to chase them out of the room at the end of class. But their anxiety and self-doubt was heartbreaking.
Super-preliminary bibliography:
Agawu, K. (2014). Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions (p. 288). Routledge.
Bamberger, J. (1994). Developing musical structures: Going beyond the simples. In R. Atlas & M. Cherlin (Eds.), Musical Transformation and Musical Intuition. Ovenbird Press.
Bamberger, J. (1996). Turning music theory on its ear. International Journal of Computers for Mathematical Learning, (1), 33–55.
Bell, A. P. (2013). Oblivious Trailblazers: Case Studies of the Role of Recording Technology in the Music-Making Processes of Amateur Home Studio Users. New York University.
Biamonte, N. (2014). Formal Functions of Metric Dissonance in Rock Music. Music Theory Online, 20(2). Retrieved from http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.14.20.2/mto.14.20.2.biamonte.php
Butterfield, M. (2010). The Power of Anacrusis: Engendered Feeling in Groove-Based Musics. Music Theory Online, 12(4). Retrieved from http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.06.12.4/mto.06.12.4.butterfield.html
Chapman, D. (2008). “That Ill, Tight Sound”: Telepresence and Biopolitics in Post-Timbaland Rap Production. Journal of the Society for American Music, 2(02), 155–175.
Clayton, J. (2009, May). Pitch Perfect. Frieze Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/pitch_perfect/
De Clercq, T., & Temperley, D. (2011). A corpus analysis of rock harmony. Popular Music, 30(01), 47–70.
Dillon, S. (2007). Music, Meaning and Transformation: Meaningful Music Making for Life. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Retrieved from http://eprints.qut.edu.au/24153/
Duignan, M., Noble, J., Barr, P., & Biddle, R. (2004). Metaphors for electronic music production in Reason and Live. Computer Human Interaction, 111–120.
Eisenberg, E. (2005). The Recording Angel: Music, Records and Culture from Aristotle to Zappa (p. 246). Yale University Press.
Elliott, D. J., & Silverman, M. (2014). Music Matters: A Philosophy of Music Education (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Eno, B. (1979). The Studio As Compositional Tool. Down Beat. Retrieved from http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/interviews/downbeat79.htm
Everett, W. (2004). Making Sense of Rock’s Tonal Systems. Music Theory Online, 10(4). Retrieved from http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.04.10.4/mto.04.10.4.w_everett.html
Fosnot, C. T. (Ed.). (1996). Constructivism: Theory, Perspectives, and Practice (p. 228). Teachers College Press, Teachers College, Columbia University.
Frere-Jones, S. (2005, January). 1 + 1 + 1 = 1. The New Yorker. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/01/10/1-1-1-1
Gelineck, S., & Serafin, S. (2009). From idea to realization-understanding the compositional processes of electronic musicians. Proc. Audio Mostly, 1–5.
Green, L. (2002). How Popular Musicians Learn: A Way Ahead for Music Education. Ashgate Publishing Group.
Hewitt, M. (2008). Music Theory for Computer Musicians. Course Technology PTR.
Hewitt, M. (2009). Composition for Computer Musicians. Cengage Learning.
Hewitt, M. (2010). Harmony for Computer Musicians. Cengage Learning.
Hoadley, C. (2012). What is a Community of Practice and How Can We Support It? In D. H. Jonassen & S. M. Land (Eds.), Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments (2nd ed., pp. 287–300). New York, New York, USA: Routledge.
Holm-Hudson, K. (1997). Quotation and Context: Sampling and John Oswald’s Plunderphonics. Leonardo Music Journal, 7, 17–25.
Jaffe, A. (2011). Something Borrowed Something Blue: Principles of Jazz Composition. Advance Music GmbH.
Jones, L. (1999). Blues People: Negro Music in White America. New York, New York, USA: Harper Perennial.
Knowles, J., & Hewitt, D. (2012). Performance Recordivity: Studio Music in a Live Context. Journal on the Art of Record Production, (6). Retrieved from http://arpjournal.com/1929/performance-recordivity-studio-music-in-a-live-context/
Lethem, J. (2007). The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism. Harper’s, February, 1–22.
Lowe, G. (2012). Lessons for teachers: What lower secondary school students tell us about learning a musical instrument. International Journal of Music Education, 30(3), 227–243.
Malawey, V. (2010). Harmonic Stasis and Oscillation in Björk’s Medúlla. Music Theory Online, 16(1). Retrieved from http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.10.16.1/mto.10.16.1.malawey.html
Margulis, E. H. (2013). On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind (p. 224). Oxford University Press, USA.
Marrington, M. (2011). Experiencing Musical Composition In The DAW: The Software Interface As Mediator Of The Musical Idea. The Journal on the Art of Record Production, (5). Retrieved from http://arpjournal.com/845/experiencing-musical-composition-in-the-daw-the-software-interface-as-mediator-of-the-musical-idea-2/
Marshall, W. (2009). Unlocking the Groove: Rhythm, meter and musical design in electronic dance music. Music Theory Spectrum, 31(1), 192. Retrieved from http://wayneandwax.com/academic/mts-butler-unlocking-groove.pdf
Marshall, W. (2010). Mashup Poetics as Pedagogical Practice. In N. Biamonte (Ed.), Pop-Culture Pedagogy in the Music Classroom (pp. 307–315). Scarecrow Press.
McClary, S. (2001). Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Mcclary, S. (2004). Rap, minimalism, and structures of time in late twentieth-century culture. In D. Warner (Ed.), Audio Culture. Continuum International Publishing Group.
McGranahan, L. (2010). Mashnography: Creativity, Consumption, and Copyright in the Mashup Community. Brown University. Retrieved from http://gradworks.umi.com/3430142.pdf
Milner, G. (2009). Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music (p. 416). Faber & Faber.
Monson, I. (1999). Riffs, repetition, and theories of globalization. Ethnomusicology, 43(1), 31–65.
Moylan, W. (2007a). Understanding and Crafting the Mix: The Art of Recording (p. 396). Taylor & Francis.
Moylan, W. (2007b). Understanding and Crafting the Mix: The Art of Recording (p. 396). Taylor & Francis.
Negus, K. (2011a). Authorship and the popular song. Music and Letters, 92(4), 607–629.
Nelson, P. (2012a). Kudos: Marc Weidenbaum. Hilobrow. Retrieved August 07, 2014, from http://hilobrow.com/2012/03/02/marc-weidenbaum/
Ratcliffe, R. (2014a). A Proposed Typology of Sampled Material Within Electronic Dance Music. Dancecult, 6(1), 97–122.
Regelski, T. A., & Ph, D. (1992a). Music Education for a Changing Society. Diskussion Musikpädagogik, 38(08), 34–42.
Roberts, T. (2011a). Michael Jackson’s Kingdom: Music, Race, and the Sound of the Mainstream. Journal of Popular Music Studies, 23(1), 19–39.
Ruthmann, A. (2012). Engaging adolescents with music and technology. In S. Burton (Ed.), Engaging Musical Practices: A Sourcebook for Middle School General Music (p. 233). R&L Education.
Schloss, J. G. (2013). Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-hop. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Seabrook, J. (2012). The Song Machine. The New Yorker. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/03/26/the-song-machine
Söderman, J., & Folkestad, G. (2004). How Hip-Hop Musicians Learn: Strategies in Informal Creative Music Making. Music Education Research, 6(3), 313–326.
Stewart, A. (2000). “Funky Drummer”: New Orleans, James Brown and the rhythmic transformation of American popular music. Popular Music, 19(3), 293–318.
Tagg, P. (2009). Everyday Tonality. New York & Huddersfield: The Mass Media Scholars Press. Retrieved from http://tagg.org/html/FFabBk.htm
Thibeault, M. D. (2011). Wisdom for Music Education From the Recording Studio. General Music Today, (October).
Thompson, P. (2012). An empirical study into the learning practices and enculturation of DJs, turntablists, hip hop and dance music producers. Journal of Music, Technology & Education, 5(1), 43–58.
Turino, T. (2008). Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Van der Bliek, R. (2007). The Hendrix Chord: Blues, Flexible Pitch Relationships, and Self-standing Harmony. Popular Music, 26(2), 343–364.
Weisethaunet, H. (2001). Is there such a thing as the “blue note”? Popular Music, 20(01), 99–116.
Wiggins, J. (2001). Teaching for musical understanding. Rochester, Michigan: Center for Applied Research in Musical Understanding, Oakland University.
Wiley, D. (2005). Teacher as DJ. Opencontent.org. Retrieved April 15, 2014, from http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/227
Zak, A. (2001). The Poetics of Rock: Cutting Tracks, Making Records. University of California Press.