Re: OT rant from hell

[KB305@aol.com]

 >In a message dated 10/31/2000 6:43:50 AM Central Standard Time, torn 
scrawled:
 >
 >> or, maybe music educators will learn to stay closer apace w/'culture 
curves', & begin teaching turntablism (! & looping !) in schools..... 

 >for this to happen, music education graduates would have to learn it... 
 >and 
colleges would have to teach it... and people who have learned it would 
have 
to be willing to actually BE teachers.
 
 anyone?


Then a different DT said:

Given my experience in music education, the only way this wil happen in 
music 
academia is for the artists top turn white, die, and stay that way for a 
century or two.
<big snip>
I remember how freaked out my advisor was when I played a piece I composed 
for Electric Violin, Effects and Jamman...
 ------

I just had a discussion with this w my girlfried over a little vietnamese 
lunch... she teaches high-school art, and faces this same problem.  
F'rinstance, she's trying to get the school system to approve her grant to 
teach website design as art, and add it to the curriculum, or at least 
form 
an art/computing synthesis.  Same point: all these ugly webpages that 
confuse 
content with (poor) design.  Just like all them damn samplers and drum 
machines that sometimes substitute for music.  anyway, it ain't about what 
tools you use, as she said: if you have the training in the fundamentals, 
the 
classic properties, the basic theories, then you can make good stuff 
regardless of the tools you use.  I agree.  

(just curious: dt: where, besides the school of All Them Guys You've 
Played 
Wif, did you get educated?  Formally?  I ask you cause you're the highest 
profile amongst us, visibility-wise, etc.)

That brings us back to dead white guys: i often didnt care much for 
ear-training, sight singing, or counterpoint (but Schenkerian analysis was 
a 
REAL eye-opener!!!!), but I confess that knowing these basic building 
blocks 
sure makes things work for me today.  Most pap involves the simplest, 
basest 
stuff, harmony, rhythm, etc., to make it easiest for the McDonald's crowd 
to 
hear.  Not to say that a simple song in the key of F can't be beautiful 
also, 
but it's approached differently, isn't it?

When I went to NTSU, (most of) my composition professors had no problem 
with 
the weirder things I wanted to do, but often questioned why i did them -- 
so 
that i could see my motives.  (god, now that I have motives, I wish I 
could 
go back easily!)  
Any school that offered synclavier programming as a composition course 
couldn't insist on all DWMs.  I know that Dan Haerle in the Jazz Dept back 
there is teaching pretty full-scale courses in MIDI... but I doubt if 
they've 
written a book on the turntable yet!

Besides, the first step in breaking all the rules is knowing them.  

BTW, this is IMFA exactly the kind of stuff we oughta be talking about -- 
how 
to use this stuff for the purposes of good, not evil...

kb