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Gerinski 
Prog Reviewer
Joined: February 10 2010
Location: Barcelona Spain
Status: Offline
Points: 5093
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 Topic: Would Prog benefit from better music education?
Posted: March 18 2015 at 19:16 |
I don't know much about other countries, but in my native Spain and in Belgium where I have lived for 13 years, music education for kids in basic public or even private school is next to nothing. I studied in semi-private school in Spain and yes, I remember having had some music lessons and learning what a whole note, a half, a quarter, an eight note etc were, doing some very basic exercises hitting wooden blocks or triangles etc, but the music education was close to non-existent.
Only because I decided to take private music lessons at the age of 16 (guitar and singing) I could learn a bit of more serious music concepts and theory.
Actually I already liked Prog before that, taking some music lessons was not the gate-opener but only a facilitator to understanding better some of the things I liked listening to (I was too lazy to practice at the required level and gave up the lessons after 1.5 years).
My question is, do you think if kids in public school received more music education this could help Prog getting more popular? For sure, it's not needed to have any music education to enjoy Prog, but perhaps having it can help seeking qualities in music which can be satisfied by Prog better than by most mainstream Pop music? If you get your son / daughter to have some music education, will he/she be more prone to appreciating Prog?
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LearsFool
Prog Reviewer
Joined: November 09 2014
Location: New York
Status: Offline
Points: 8618
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Posted: March 18 2015 at 19:44 |
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Probably won't increase prog's popularity. Remember that Tupac Shakur attended The Baltimore School for The Arts, studied acting, poetry, jazz, ballet, and music theory, and yet brought that education to a career in rap.
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Isa
Prog Reviewer
Joined: February 26 2009
Location: California
Status: Offline
Points: 152
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Posted: March 18 2015 at 20:23 |
Absolutely. My buddies and I in high school all got way into prog, and we were in all of the different ensembles at the school. Our own musicianship really prepared us for the intensity that you get in prog; and I remember going to band festivals and hearing people play Dream Theater and Rush during lunch from their stereos more than once. I'm actually a music teacher myself, and use prog as part of my music appreciation class (along with classical and artsy jazz of course). The kids love it  , and I think they're really starting to get the concept of enjoying the beauty and depth artistic music as opposed to superficial commercial music.
Edited by Isa - March 18 2015 at 20:27
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The human heart instrinsically longs for that which is true, good, and beautiful. This is why timeless music is never without these qualities.
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Gerinski
Prog Reviewer
Joined: February 10 2010
Location: Barcelona Spain
Status: Offline
Points: 5093
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Posted: March 18 2015 at 20:26 |
 Lear'sFool wrote:
Probably won't increase prog's popularity. Remember that Tupac Shakur attended The Baltimore School for The Arts, studied acting, poetry, jazz, ballet, and music theory, and yet brought that education to a career in rap. |
I don't even know who he is 
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LearsFool
Prog Reviewer
Joined: November 09 2014
Location: New York
Status: Offline
Points: 8618
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Posted: March 18 2015 at 20:29 |
A very big name in the history of hip hop. For many, his background is surprising.
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Polymorphia
Forum Senior Member
Joined: November 06 2012
Location: here
Status: Offline
Points: 8856
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Posted: March 18 2015 at 21:00 |
I really don't think my music education directly helped me like any music. Although
my guitar teacher did encourage me to explore, which eventually led me
to discover prog.
Lear'sFool wrote:
A very big name in the history of hip hop. For many, his background is surprising. |
There are plenty of people in pop and hip-hop who are no idiots.
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LearsFool
Prog Reviewer
Joined: November 09 2014
Location: New York
Status: Offline
Points: 8618
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Posted: March 18 2015 at 21:05 |
Polymorphia wrote:
I really don't think my music education directly helped me like any music. Although
my guitar teacher did encourage me to explore, which eventually led me
to discover prog.
Lear'sFool wrote:
A very big name in the history of hip hop. For many, his background is surprising. |
There are plenty of people in pop and hip-hop who are no idiots.
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Aye. Never meant to insinuate that. My apologies for accidentally insinuating that.
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Polymorphia
Forum Senior Member
Joined: November 06 2012
Location: here
Status: Offline
Points: 8856
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Posted: March 18 2015 at 21:15 |
Lear'sFool wrote:
Polymorphia wrote:
I really don't think my music education directly helped me like any music. Although
my guitar teacher did encourage me to explore, which eventually led me
to discover prog.
Lear'sFool wrote:
A very big name in the history of hip hop. For many, his background is surprising. |
There are plenty of people in pop and hip-hop who are no idiots.
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Aye. Never meant to insinuate that. My apologies for accidentally insinuating that. |
You didn't insinuate it. You reinforced the opposite point, I agree with that point.
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Progosopher
Forum Senior Member
Joined: May 12 2009
Location: Coolwood
Status: Offline
Points: 6393
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Posted: March 18 2015 at 23:22 |
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I have read that Flavor Flav (the guy who wears the clock necklace) is a musical prodigy who can play anything. As to music education, I would like to think it would have a positive effect for Prog but I am not sure. One of the best musicians I know, who plays bass and classical guitar, used to like Prog when he was a teenager but no longer. And this guy knows music - he transcribed Telemann pieces for the electric bass and performed them. Many of the stars Proggers tend to disparage, the hugely successful pop stars, actually know their music very well. They perform what they do because the money is good. This sort of thing has been going on for a long time. Glen Miller was apparently an excellent trombone player, but you wouldn't necessarily hear that in his big hits from the 30s and 40s. Barry Manilow is known for being an excellent jazz pianist but he never performs it, while new waver Joe Jackson is classically trained. The best effect I could see would be a wider appreciation of Prog but that may not translate into greater prominence and sales. I saw Jeff Beck perform at the B.B. King Festival of Music which went on tour about ten years ago or so. Most people there were for the blues and roots rock. I heard a lot of people say that Beck was an incredible player but his music was not their style. These people could hear how good he was, and appreciated it, but didn't like it.
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The world of sound is certainly capable of infinite variety and, were our sense developed, of infinite extensions. -- George Santayana, "The Sense of Beauty"
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rogerthat
Prog Reviewer
Joined: September 03 2006
Location: .
Status: Offline
Points: 9869
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Posted: March 19 2015 at 01:57 |
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I have never seriously pursued formal music education though I can sight read up to a point. My cousin sis learnt piano for quite a few years and even performed a few pieces of music on stage when she was in school. Let alone prog, she doesn't listen to any music with even a semblance of an instrumental intro or busy arrangements. E.g she tuned out of Sing for Absolution very quickly when I played it on the speakers. My father doesn't listen to Western music but he loves getting to the heart of the songs he enjoyed, like trying to figure out what raag it is based on (I do that too). He too has no training while his sister who learnt classical singing for a few years is less interested in that aspect. Appreciation of music exists for many dimensions of which the technical side is only one. Education is not a guarantee of stoking interest in the technical side of music.
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tamijo
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 06 2009
Location: Denmark
Status: Offline
Points: 4287
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Posted: March 19 2015 at 03:14 |
The world allway need more education, but i doubt it would help prog. But do prog need help ?
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Prog is whatevey you want it to be. So dont diss other peoples prog, and they wont diss yours
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moshkito
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 04 2007
Location: Grok City
Status: Offline
Points: 16148
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Posted: March 19 2015 at 08:35 |
Hi,
I think I was lucky, and sometimes in the case of this board and some of its folks, unlucky!
Born into a house that ended up with over 3K LP's of classical music, and I ended up having a rock music collection that got as far as 2500 LP's ... though now 1500 CD's and 1500 LP's!
I didn't really need a lot of music education as I had already heard a lot of different things as well, so when we had a course on history of music in my Senior Year, I was almost bored having to hear the "hits" again ... and I already thought there was much better stuff out there ... and our class had a field trip to Chicago to go see Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar as well as Richard Kiley in Man of La Mancha. And spent the early afternoon at the Art Institute and admiring that huge El Greco!
Not everyone in this board, has had that much exposure to music, and that always means that they will likely enjoy the comments and appreciation that their friends give them and share with them, and thus a top ten is easily devised. But I can not fault our class for not appreciating or not knowing there was music out there ... in 1968 and 1969, if you did not know there was music out there, you had your head buried in the sand, and you were an idiot! Plain and Simple!
Personally, I would like to see more arts studied and specially music ... not that I think that popular music is the weakest and simplest forms of all music, but certainly the one that requires the least knowledge and understanding for playing, albeit there are many folks in rock and jazz that certainly are well educated musically.
Think of it as the "Dead Poets Society" ... how you can wake up people's sensibilities and beauty ... but I would not suggest (ever) that none of this is not available in rap or any other music ... it's just that we have not looked.
"Progressive" as we know it, is a bit of a joke. Most of the bands selected, are not even progressive in their own musical abilities and work, to be given that denomination, and I think that this was the main reason why so many folks, including Rick Wakeman, for the longest time made fun of it. Either that or he had a few too many beers!
I would think that teaching things a bit would simply make all the arts more important to one's life ... but I seriously doubt that it would help progressive. What became known as "progressive" was a feeling, a scene and a response to a social environment, and that kind of feeling does not exist in every generation and we have not seen anything with that much strength in all the arts since, which ought to tell you that it was a major artistic movement, not a minor one. Some folks here do not see this and only think of all this music as songs and hits ... and that is one way to lessen the value of an artistic scene and movement. I often say, they simply don't care about the arts, so why would they care about progressive?
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Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
www.pedrosena.com
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twosteves
Forum Senior Member
Joined: May 01 2007
Location: NYC/Rhinebeck
Status: Offline
Points: 4070
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Posted: March 19 2015 at 09:11 |
The great prog came from Europe and England and that is not a coincidence---that part of the world enjoys a wider variety of music as part of their culture than Americans do. I am equating education to exposure. 
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omphaloskepsis
Forum Senior Member
Joined: October 19 2011
Location: Texas
Status: Offline
Points: 5902
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Posted: March 20 2015 at 01:31 |
Yes, that's why Scandinavian countries have a disproportionate large number of progressive rock bands and yet Texas has more people then Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and Norway combined.
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Rednight
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 18 2014
Location: Mar Vista, CA
Status: Offline
Points: 4807
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Posted: March 20 2015 at 06:07 |
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A resounding yes!
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout
Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 37575
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Posted: March 20 2015 at 08:21 |
A resonating not in the slightest.
If it were true, (which it ain't), then anyone who has studied music at any level would naturally gravitate to Progressive Rock, yet they don't. It also implies that anyone who creates and plays Pop music is educationally lacking or only doing it for the money.
Increasing the level of music education in schools wouldn't make a ha'peth of difference one way or the other. People who are knowledgeable in music are not drawn to Progressive Rock and those who like progressive rock are not necessarily knowledgeable in music theory. In several of the discussions where music theory raises its head I cannot say that I have noticed a level of music theory knowledge that would explain people's predilection for Progressive Rock (or Jazz or Classical music come to that). It is rare for me to find anyone who knows more than even my own rudimentary basic knowledge. [and my knowledge is extremely poor in that respect, I certainly could never pass an examination in the subject].
Exposure to lots of different kinds of music wouldn't make a blind scrap of difference either, [bearing in mind that this kind of "education" is not what Gerard is talking about in the OP], and while it may make someone feel superior and elitist, it doesn't actually qualify as an education in music any more than looking at great works of art in a Phaidon Press coffee-table Art-book would make you an expert on fine art, reading Nietzsche and Satre would make you a great thinker, or having Andy Warhol's Einstein print on your wall makes you a theoretical physicist or an aficionado of the Pop Art movement. This kind of argument would suggest that librarians are well-versed on every facet of literature and shelf-stackers in your local supermarket are knowledgeable on nutrition. Exposure to different kinds of music in large quantities may possibly broaden your mind, but not even that is a certainty and is dependant not on how receptive that open mind is but on how discerning it becomes. There is a thin line between being discerning and being disparaging.
Edited by Dean - March 20 2015 at 08:50
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What?
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moshkito
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 04 2007
Location: Grok City
Status: Offline
Points: 16148
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Posted: March 20 2015 at 08:37 |
twosteves wrote:
The great prog came from Europe and England and that is not a coincidence---that part of the world enjoys a wider variety of music as part of their culture than Americans do. I am equating education to exposure. |
I'm inclined to think that the media has a lot to do with it. When the media is really visible, this is easier and I would suggest that in America and in some places in Europe, the media was much more visible, than in many other parts of the world.
The main issue in America is that it is about 4 or 5 different countries that do not share a whole lot artistically, even! NY is completely different than SF, or New Orleans, for example.
I will agree with pretty much everything Dean said above. Better written than myself.
Edited by moshkito - March 20 2015 at 08:42
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Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
www.pedrosena.com
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TODDLER
Forum Senior Member
VIP Member
Joined: August 28 2009
Location: Vineland, N.J.
Status: Offline
Points: 3126
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Posted: March 20 2015 at 08:43 |
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When I took music theory class in college...the teachers were more interested in the Grateful Dead and cringed giving me the "deer in the headlight" look whenever I mentioned Progressive Rock. I was outnumbered because the name Grateful Dead is up there with other popular names like McDonalds, Target, and Wallmart and to be honest, no one cares or would have a reason to. Kids today are attending "School of Rock" to play like Keith Moon or Jimi Hendrix, but Bill Bruford is an alien to them. "Oh, is that the guy who played with YES?" "Well, maybe someday I will find the time to check him out, it's all good."....Is it?
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Gerinski
Prog Reviewer
Joined: February 10 2010
Location: Barcelona Spain
Status: Offline
Points: 5093
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Posted: March 20 2015 at 15:09 |
Obviously there can never be any direct correlations. Explaining motorcycle technology to your young son does not imply he will become a fan of technically advanced motorcycles, maybe he will become a fan of simple old-fashioned Harleys. That is of course clear.
Obviously a lot of people have had extensive music education and they may have Pop, Disco, Bluegrass, Rap or whatever as their favourite music. And most people enjoying Prog do not have formal music education. That much is also clear. Yet, I think there can be some probabilistic correlations, even if possibly tenuous. Exposure is not musical education in the sense I was referring to in the OP, but it can make for a sort of '2nd tier' kind of education. People with a wide music exposure may be more prone to becoming interested in, perhaps not learning music theory as such, but in understanding some concepts which can help him/her understand the features and differences between all the stuff he/she is hearing.
I guess that many people with a lot of education in cinema are not too excited with the big blockbusters, as successful as they may be, and have a bit more elaborated and artistic cinema as their favourite movies.
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Polymorphia
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Joined: November 06 2012
Location: here
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Posted: March 20 2015 at 15:37 |
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Some of it wouldn't seem as "weird," I suppose. Then again, prog can be pretty weird music, even with the concepts behind it explained.
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Would Prog benefit from better music education?
