Final Thoughts

Well, the semester is closing and I'm finishing up my portion of the theory blog. I think I'm going to blog on blogging. I have truly benefited by reading some blogs over the past few years. Composer and my friend, Jay Batzner, has a blog on the sequenza21 website that I have enjoyed as he and I haven't seen one another in over 2 years and his blog creates reasons for emailing one another and debating stuff. It's fun. My favorite blog is the blog by Zach Braff. You know Zach, he plays J.D. on Scrubs, the best show on television... right along side of The Office and Big Bang Theory. (See it all comes back to theory). Anyway, Zach's site is incredibly useful for finding new music artist that are being recorded on independent labels. You know, I enjoy Shostakovich, Elliot Carter, Webern, Mozart, etc. just as much as the next guy. But there is nothing like the poetry set to music by these independent artists. Thanks Zach Braff.

As for my experience in blogging. I enjoy it, but unless I have another class that requires a blog I probably won't continue in this endeavor and here's why. It comes down to the same reason I don't get into myspace and facebook. Not everyone needs to be entitled to your opinion. I use "your' in the global sense. I am always brought back to another great show that ended too early because Phil Hartman's life ended too early. Yep... News Radio. When it comes to the internet I remember hearing Joe (played by Joe Rogan) say, "Putting stuff on the internet is like peeing in a pool. Once it's in there, you can't get it out." I encourage all of you who do choose to blog to keep this very basic concept in mind and choose your words wisely.

Thanks Dr. Berry for such a great semester. I really enjoyed the class a lot. Kudos.

Ryan

Blogging in the Classroom

I love the blog. I think it is such a cool way to communicate and post ideas. I think, for an undergrad class, having a more concrete system of posting would be really beneficial, such as posting each week by a certain time and making everyone responsible for knowing what was on the blog. As grad students, we, more the most part, did that anyways. We just check the bog before class to see what has been said. It is a really good way for people like me, who don't really speak up a lot in class to add in our two cents, or for the discussion to continue past class. I think I would also require students to respond to posts. Though we did a lot of discussion on the blog, actually having responses to some of our ideas from our peers would have been cool.

Thanks for a great class.

Thanks for a great class

When I signed up for this class I had heard many things - good things - about what I would be learning and doing. I have to say that not only has this class lived up to my expectations, but I have learned and become more aware of things that I completely didn't expect. I also think this class fell at an opportune time for me personally since this is the first semester that I am actually teaching college students. In fact, in some instances, my methods students have become guinea pigs for some of the concepts and teaching ideas I have learned in this theory class. I hope to further expand on these ideas as I continue to teach here and elsewhere in the future. Thanks for such a valuable learning experience!

Order of the Theory Sequence

This is something that we discussed a while back when talking about when/where counterpoint should be taught in the theory sequence and the subject was brought up again in the myriad of "discussions" that have occurred while talking about post-tonal theory. For what it's worth here are my two cents.

The more I delve deeper into music, the more I feel I must agree with my counterpoint professor from Alabama - a great way to start music theory is to actually begin freshmen students with a basic counterpoint class. With the possible exception of just teaching students note-names (and we all know there are entering freshmen who don't know even this basic material), a beginning counterpoint class would essentially take care of the basic knowledge that professors complain about having to spend so much time reinforcing during that first year of theory. Not only that, but it has the potential to get students excited about theory from an early stage since you can actually begin to write "pretty" music not long after beginning the class.

After that, I would then offer the traditional four semesters of theory, with an extra requirement of a post-tonal theory class as a fifth semester. It has been argued that it shouldn't matter where in the sequence that post-tonal theory is studied simply because it adheres to so few, if any, traditional rules of theory. I am of the belief that it helps to know where you're coming from to be able to know where you're going. I don't think, as Abby said in class recently, you could really gain a good understanding of post-tonal theory without first knowing the music that it stemmed from.

Jazz in the theory classroom

I've been vaguely aware for some time that a large deficiency exists in my musical knowledge and skills. A deficiency that, especially as a horn player, has never really been addressed. I know next to nothing about jazz music, or at least, no more than your average person on the street. This has become more apparent to me now that I am regularly playing in a brass quintet. I have noticed that when we have the opportunity to play jazz charts, I end up relying on the other players in the group to set the style and feel of the piece. I couldn't tell you what makes up a jazz scale. I'm not even good at sight-reading jazzy rhythms - I think mostly because I have had such little exposure to it. While much of this I can remedy on my own, I believe incorporating a better study of jazz in the theory class could greatly help. Why are the basics of jazz music not covered, or just skimmed over, in theory classes when other 20th century music is hammered in? What about those music students who don't have the opportunity to play it or learn about it on a regular basis? Should we let their only academic exposure to it come from the historical perspective? Thoughts, anyone?

Soap boxes

So I gave a 2 hour review session for the sophomores on Thursday before their final on Monday, and only 5 people showed up, and one of them was via webcam. Even though this was a highly disappointing number, that isn't the point of this post. The point is that I ended up spending about 20 minutes or so explaining why I am willing to make a career out of theory. They just can't understand why I'd want to spend my life resolving augmented six chords correctly. As musicians, theorists or otherwise, it is our job to help the students to see why this stuff is important, and also interesting. If my career was going to be resolving chords correctly for a few decades, I'd quit now. I had to rant about how theory is about understanding a piece inside and out, and I actually think that theory has the potential to be the most comprehensive discipline in all of music. For that conversation, though, I think face to face would be better. But to sum up my post, even if our students don't understand how something can be truly interesting, we have to seem like it is. After all, monkey see, monkey do holds some truth for undergraduate underclassmen.

Learning by doing

One of the most interesting things about taking this class this semester was getting to sub for Jeannie when she was gone for choir stuff. I tried to integrate the things we learned about in class into my lessons, and also what I was Dr. Martens doing in the same class the section before. Unfortunately, the first lesson I gave was a disaster, and kind of for the things I tried to add. I think that all the things we've learned in this class can be wonderfully useful, but they must all be balanced with your own personal teaching style. I was trying so hard to teach like we learned, or to teach like Dr. Martens, that I didn't teach like Taylor Johnson. I plan to incorporate our new ped ideas, but by adapting them to serve me, not me to them.