Music Bailout

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Monday April 02, 2012 · 3:20 AM PDT

2012/04/02 · 03:20

Music Schools like Juilliard and Curtis in this country have always proclaimed themselves to be the "best of the best" and "cream of the crop". You will get no argument from me that they indeed represent the .001% of the musicians or music students of this country and often the world. Yet, the question and argument remains as to what exactly is the purpose, meaning, and validity of a music school that serves as a giant filter for our nation's music career want-to-be's. Isn't the purpose of a school to educate the un-educated, to transform the unskilled into the skilled? Wouldn't an outstanding group of music educators be those who guide the public to a greater understanding of tonality and meter, instrumental executive skills, music literacy...

Yet, this is not what Juilliard does. Juilliard acts as a giant music agency. A giant filter. We, our nation's public, falsely hail the administration and faculty of Juilliard as the nation's best music educators, when in fact they are in most cases probably the most toxic of all our nation's music educators.

It is one thing to:

    1) proclaim yourself as the greatest musician of all time
    2) line up the public's future music students
    3) audition them
    4) reject the student's with low achievement
    5) accept the student's who already learned music
    6) go on sabbatical.

than to:

    1) study and research how humans learn music
    2) line up the public's future music students
    3) audition them
    4) identify high and low achievement students
    5) accept all
    6) apply a valid curriculum upon all of the students.
    7) work hard and do more research...

Juilliard truly represents our nation's mindset. It is a fixed mindset. There is no possibility of growth- to create a music culture (public) that understands more and more about music. There are those that are gifted and those that are not gifted. No need for music education. Odd, such a fixed mindset would eventually lead to a culture where there are less and less people with the "music magic" and more and more people without that magic, then there is no one to even listen to the people with the magic because they are so without the magic they don't understand music magic, then enter the federal government (National Endowment for the Arts) with grant money to bail out those with the music magic from the masses of people without the magic. Then set up a bunch of non-profit orchestra's with board presidents who are rich enough to say there son's and daughter's must attend Juillard. And you have a music culture based upon deception.

Propoganda is the Opposite of Culture

SomebodyX249

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Wednesday March 21, 2012 · 2:42 AM PDT

2012/03/21 · 02:42

Of all the farces that pours out of the USA's media on a daily, weekly, and yearly basis, the manufactured polarity of good and bad music is by far the most laughable collective reality our culture plops out. The quantity of music critics who banter about their endless streams of word salads about music expression sends a slip of confusion into any music consumer. Yes, sarcasm rules this essay, for the lonely American music critic (in the context of our friendly American Music Industry) is what I shall rant about hereafter my blinking cursor.

In my life time as a composer of 51 years, as if I was born a composer, every once and a while I will attract a musician to play my music, like a spider waiting for a bug, I spin my web as best I can making it as sticky as possible to keep this bug of a non-composing musician in my realm, a musician who is skilled enough to play my music, yet does not have the personal strength to proclaim his or her commitment to my web spinning. There have been three times in my lifetime where I have heard the phrase, "Your music is so good, how do you do it... but I don't know what is good or bad music... I am not a critic...". Now this vague phrase contains many meanings, some of which don't bode well for me, like going out a seventh date with a woman, proposing to advance the relationship to a higher level, and she says, "I just don't know...". But, this musician's comment is so packed with a culture of lost mindset. The musician stated above understands the music, but cannot assess personal or emotional value to it, therefor he or she begins to look for an monetary value, or perhaps a good old American Music Industry critic's popularity value. Then, there is no responsibility. Yes, orchestral musicians maintain a boon on this topic, we can just sit there behind our stands, play the same music (historically), get paid a salary (ever shrinking), and the conductor takes all the fallout if the "magic" does not happen.

So, in a culture where personal, emotional, and social development have taken a back seat to economic and monetary development, we need someone to tell us what to do. It is our marketing propaganda system who tells us what to do with our money, because personally, emotionally, and socially we don't know what the hell to do with our money. Enter the American Music Industry and you have the recipe for propaganda (the opposite of culture). We are endlessly barraged with mindless music critics on the radio, especially NPR, the TV shows cool celebrities as part-time music critics, movies even show good and evil characters in stories with their music choices (my personal favorite propaganda - cause it works so damn well - you vilify a character in a story and then put them in a scene listening to x type of music). And the list could go on and on about what the American Music Industry does to create the illusion of the "must and need to have" music.

Then something happened in the late 1990's and early 2000's- the whole internet thing. And people began to share electronic music files, and the music industry could not figure out why people were not downloading all of the same music. The public did not have a single taste for music. In fact it was extremely varied. Record stores closed by the thousands. And the downloads continue. I find free music on the internet constantly. I haven't paid to listen to music for years, I say happily. Yet, I guarantee that the American Music Industry is working their butts off in an attempt to get everyone to like that single hit again, because on NPR there are radio hosts who tell us about their and others music downloads, the "must have" downloads. They need a song that has the same effect as fast food French Fries. And, yes, they work our children really hard with this on the Disney Channel- cool wealthy young characters who have everything, including the good music.

But, above all else, the hardest reality I (or we) face is the reality that our public school music education system is not working. I wish it was working. It simply isn't creating an educated consumer, one that can comprehend the music he or she is listening to and then subsequently making a choice to purchase.

Music Ownership

SomebodyX249

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Thursday February 09, 2012 · 12:26 PM PST

2012/02/09 · 12:26

Ah, my first blog entry on the Daily KOS. I feel so driven and purposeful. First I must destroy a bit of the anonymousness of my entry with a basic description of what I am. I am a composer, amongst other things I do in my life, but I do emphasize music composition as a life goal to most of the people I meet. It is an extremely difficult career, for life in the United States of America during this era is extremely difficult for any musician who dedicates his or her life to the creation of formal concert music. So, I, for some reason, hear symphonies, string quartets, piano quartets, trumpet concertos, ect... in my head and then I go through the process of writing them down on paper. I am addicted to this. This process is now a requirement in my life, for I have made it sacred. Anyone who stops me is evil.

Enough about me. An interesting thing happened on my drive to work. I am a music teacher. I have to feed a family of four. I heard a NPR interview that simply boggled my mind, angered me, and with a final choice to turn the radio off, driving silently with the drone of my clicking 17 year old car engine. The interview was with a famous person who discussed his music. This was not an individual who performed or created music, he simply had a list of music tracks on his computer device, and this music was his because he had it on his list. He used his music for exercise routines and he gave his music to others while he did his exercise routines with them. The mind boggle was NPR's emphasis on the music being his, as if he owned it - and no one else owned this music. We must forget that other people created, performed or sang his music. NPR then proceeded to publish this individual's music list on their web site. Let me get on thing clear, nobody owns music. Emphatically, you cannot own music.

But the Music Industry (now there is a corporate entity that boggles the mind- music and industry) of the USA continually cranks out mind numbing propaganda that convinces everyone, especially our youth, that they can own music that they currently own and can resell to you. We used to etch it on discs slap interesting art on it and sell it in malls. Now we simply click on a link and it is downloaded on your device (devices produced it sweat shop factories). No need to practice the violin. Just click away and it is all yours. But, it is not yours and it never will be yours, or mine or anybodies. You can't own music.

Even all of the machinations that I do to write music down on paper and then play it for him or her does not make it mine. Writing it down on paper then signing my name to it does not make it mine. Music is not here, socially, between us for the benefit of ownership exchange. Music is an infinite possible arrangements of tone and rhythm patterns - with a syntax. We do need a syntax, so musicians can get together and agree how to make the stuff. One more myth to break, music is not a language, I cannot order a pizza with tonality and meter or tone and rhythm. Music is not words.

When I compose music I am using the same stuff that other composers use: chords, meters, orchestral timbres. Even when I combine them in a unique way, I still use the stuff of others. But, continually my fellow composers fuss with each other, especially in the formal music category, about who is creating the newest sounding music, the most unique music of all time, sacred newness. Call the attorneys and judges for a settlement on what is copyrighted. Call the corporate lobbyist to write laws for our representatives to enact laws about who owns music and who can and cannot sell it, or best of all: who can and cannot give it away for free.

The humor in all of this "music ownership for resellers" is that music will survive this reseller ignorance. Time will pass. Eras will move with the moon and sun, and our children's children will look back on what we attempted to do with music and giggle.

Music is for creating and sharing, and yes indeed all music is good, for that is another topic: how the Music Industry isolates music styles into tribes - my music is good, yours is bad. Music isn't with us to be owned, it is here for us to express ourselves. And now I must return to music (writing it that is), for it owns me!

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