Another Example of Our MISeducation System. This Time It's Music.

[protectionist]

It seems like about every couple of months I discover another example of how far off the mark "our" education system is. Isn't it enough that we go through 16 years of schooling without a word being said about the LAWS that we are required to abide by ? And not a word is mentioned or instructed about guns or law enforcement, or how we NEED to behave when in a police confrontation ?..(if we want to stay alive that is).

So now it's music. Well, I might have known that our know-it-alls running the schools would botch that up too. I'm a music teacher in private industry, and it just came to my knowledge that one of our local schools is teaching kids to play the guitar, by reading standard classical musical notation.

For their edification, for most types of music (really for any type) the guitar and standard musical notation are not a well-matched pair. There might be an association for individuals (not orchestras) who play classical guitars, but to pair a modern electric guitar with standard musical notation, is about like pairing a Toyota with a horse saddle.

I use standard musical notation to play classical music by Bach and Beethoven on the violin and mandolin. But these have much fewer notes than a guitar. Looking at the long fingerboard of a guitar, you can find numerous choices of any single note. How many Gs are there ? How many Ds ? The disadvantage of the standard musical score is that it does not tell us WHICH G or D or A or C it wants us to play.

An advantage that standard musical notation has over tablature, is that it includes TIMING, which is generally absent from tablature, and from a musical notation that I myself invented, and which I give to my students. The inclusion of timing, in musical pieces that were written centuries ago, is merely a ramification of the fact that the 16th, 17th, 18th century folks did not have electricity, and electrical recording devices that we have today. In order for someone to know what the timing would be of a particular piece of music, without anything written, they would have had to have a well-qualified musician playing that music right in front of them - something that 90% of people were unlikely to do.

So, FOR THEM, without any electronic devices to play music, they needed written scores to ascertain what the timing of the notes are. FOR US, we only need to play the song/tune on our cell phone, tablet, CD, laptop, etc, and listen to it frequently enough, such that we know the timing of the notes very well.

So, what the schools are doing is teaching kids to play the guitar using a notation that is geared to the 17th century, while ignoring tablature, which is a much better notation, in that it is devised specially for the guitar (whereas standard musical notation is a general notation applicable to all instruments).

Maybe music teachers in schools could ask themselves this > when is the last time they saw the Rolling Stones, Beatles, or any Rock band, or Bluegrass band playing on stage, with a music stand in front of them ?

 

[Mr Natural]

I went to school in the 60s. Graduated in 1968.

Started learning trumpet around 1962 and had to learn how to read music. Shortly after, I picked up the guitar (British Invasion and all). At the time, guitar was not taught in school and Rock and Roll was not considered “real music”. Heck, we couldn’t even have a jazz band because the school board considered jazz to be inappropriate.

Getting back on topic, I never felt my ability to read music in any hindered my progress on the guitar. In fact, it helped make the Mel Bay books far more understandable.

Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to play in pit orchestras and dance bands. The charts have almost always been in notation as opposed to tab.

 

[protectionist]

I went to school in the 60s. Graduated in 1968.

Started learning trumpet around 1962 and had to learn how to read music. Shortly after, I picked up the guitar (British Invasion and all). At the time, guitar was not taught in school and Rock and Roll was not considered “real music”. Heck, we couldn’t even have a jazz band because the school board considered jazz to be inappropriate.

Getting back on topic, I never felt my ability to read music in any hindered my progress on the guitar. In fact, it helped make the Mel Bay books far more understandable.

Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to play in pit orchestras and dance bands. The charts have almost always been in notation as opposed to tab.

What is a "pit orchestra" ?

Also, I would not imagine that using classical notation would hinder learning the guitar, but it's just that classical composers composed music centuries ago, so they NEEDED the kind of musical notation that they had, because they had no electricity or recording devices, and the notation they wrote was the only way to convey timing of their music.

If those composers were alive today, I believe they would value my written charts or tablature, which do not have timing (and dont need it, since we have recording devices), but are better adaptable to particular instruments.

 

[Mr Natural]

What is a "pit orchestra" ?

The orchestra that accompanies a stage musical. It's usually under the stage hence the name "pit".

 

[merrill]

Music is in the lives of students is a good idea no matter what......

 

[ActionJackson]

I graduated in 1978. I was about the last generation (in my area of the country) that enjoyed wood shop, auto shop, metal shop, music class, etc. I took wood shop and music. I learned to play the trumpet and the drums. I enjoyed being a member of the marching band, jazz band, and concert band. I also raised three steers while in my high school agriculture class. Over the next few years and a couple of decades after I graduated, the public fool administration began to whittle away at all the things that made school worth attending. Today, they're learning that they aren't really a boy if they're a boy and that they aren't a girl if they're a girl. I think putting your kid in today's, modern Public Fool System is on the verge of child abuse.

 

[merrill]

Public schools are a best bang for the tax buck yet the Fake Repubs throughout the nation are cutting their budgets. Fake Repubs would rather our tax dollars support Privatized ALEC for
Profit Charter Schools. Then again Fake REpubs have been blowing our tax dollars like drunken sailors for the past 43
years.

This is made up sh-t coming from the right wing you know the folks that blow our tax dollars like drunken sailors....

"Today, they're learning that they aren't really a boy if they're a boy and that they aren't a girl if they're a girl. I think putting your kid in today's, modern Public Fool System is on the verge of child abuse."

Anything related to the above is between the PARENTS AND THIER CHILDREN not between big government Fascism and the families.

Political rhetoric sucks.