it was my third year

as i said before requiem for a high homicide enclave is my attempt to make sense of the latimes homicide report. i first encountered the blog, comments and maps reading about the death of los angeles high school band member michael pena and reading his story it brought back a lot of memories that i had long ago pushed aside.

i was teaching music sometime in 1997 or 1998 at john marshall high school in los angeles. the los feliz/silverlake area had been one of the more affluent parts of los angeles, but high home values and an aging local population created a dramatic change in the schools demographics starting in the late 80's. by the time i started teaching in 1995 many parents from the area were sending their children to private schools and the typical marshall student came from the densely populated apartment rows in echo park or hollywood. it was a challenging but rewarding job which alternated between some of the highest and lowest moments i have experienced in the classroom.

by my third year i was very happy with the way the program was growing. we (my wife was teaching dance and colorguard) both had grown accustomed to teaching in an urban school; for the most part kids are kids, its just when something goes wrong with them there is no "safety net", like when somebody gets really sick, it can throw a family into turmoil. not only do they have to deal with the lack of access to proper medical care, but then how they will pay the bills while a parent is sick. what happens next is that your student might just stop coming to school and start working to pay the bills.

by this time i though i had seen most everything, but teaching that day started as a real shocker. sometime in the morning word got back to me that 3 of my best students had beaten the living bejesus out of a freshman band member. i was in shock and really mad at those kids, mainly because it challenged everything i thought i had "taught" my students. there was a lot of crazy things that happened outside of school, but i thought we had created a culture where it was clear that "we don't do those things in our band". i was proud to show off to anybody who would listen that my kids were respectful of each other and knew that more was expected of them when they joined my program.

i was so upset and didn't even send them to the office. i just told them to go home and i didn't want to see them at rehearsal after school. for most kids this was the worst punishment i could give, being at home usually meant becoming the primary child care provider for their siblings. the next day all three students showed up and wanted to talk. after 4-5 minutes of ranting how they let me down and said something like, "in what world can you use violence to solve anything?" one of them sheepishly said "we had to do it, he is going to get us killed".

that is when i stopped talking and started listening.

the three of them took turns explaining the situation; they ride a number of city busses to school and everyday the same thing unfolds; as they are waiting for their next bus the local gangbanger harasses them and to which the freshman always has a quick comeback. over time the harassment escalates and of course my older students quickly realize where this is going. as they see it its too far to walk and there is no other way to come to school. they have tried to talk to the freshman, but he thinks its all fun and games. and then they explained there was only one thing the could do.

so i pulled in the freshman and we all talked it out. or i should say, they talked it out. at that point it really sunk in that no matter how much i though i knew about these students, i could really never fully understand what their lives were like outside of school.

carrot or sticks?

on august 16th 2007 michael pena was killed.

the police still don't have a suspect or a motive in his death, but what is clear in the la times article by sam quinones, is that michael led a double life as a los angeles high school music student and tagger who recently dropped out of school when he realized he was short the required credits for graduation.

my initial reaction was anger, i knew many "michael pena's" who lived double lives outside of school. how was this kid able to be in band and ditch school as much as he did? (as implied in the article) what about the drug use and tagging? i had many kids who had those lifestyles and i made it abundantly clear that that is wasn't going to be tolerated. if a kid was caught with drugs or tagging they were gone. fighting and stealing the same, but looking back who is to say my tough love did any good? these days when i catch up with many of my former students they seem to be still fighting the same battles in their late 20's as when they were 14 and 15 years old.

i think many coaches (music and athletic) try and walk the fine line between the carrot and stick to keep these students in school and out of the troubles they find when left to their own devices. with a little distance i think the more important story here is dichotomy of views; did we (the system) fail him? or did he continually make the choices that put him on that path? whether we like it or not at the end of the day i still think the school is being used as a substitute for parents, which will always fall short. i still worry about many of those students i met during my short career in LAUSD and what their futures might hold.

congestion pricing

my late summer read was james surowiecki's the wisdom of crowds which describes how crowds (large numbers of independent people who share a common interest or goal) when left to their own devices seem to make pretty intelligent decisions and how gives some descriptions about they arrive at them. also later in the the book he gives some interesting examples of how governments have tried to change the path of the herd. after reading about singapore's traffic incentive plan led me to reconsider how I grade and assess my musicianship students. basically they(the govt) increase the price of diving in the city center at peak traffic times during they day. if there is heavy traffic you can expect to pay 10x the regular toll to encourage you to drive an alternative route.

overall the musicianship classes are going very well and i have much of it already organized the way i like. each class is divided up into 4-5 segments in which the students sing diatonic sequences, harmonic patterns, melodies as well as play simple folk songs in all 12 keys. so about 90% of the time the class is singing either individually, in groups of 2-3 or as a whole. the biggest problem is the 'congestion' that arises from testing. many of the skills i teach are really a pass or fail type proposition. i already ask students who do poorly to retest later until they can really do the skill to combat laziness i have reserved the 'A' grade for the first test, but still want to encourage improvement. like most classes it only gets harder and after a while it becomes almost impossible to advance after a certain point unless a student is consistently working on the material.

the problem with having 4-5 'test' days during the semester is the amount class time spent on individual assessment. my plan is to try and alleviate this with 'congestion' grading. The students already have a subject calendar, those who go early will get extra points. 2 weeks ahead even more. i'll still teach at the same pace, but i bet enough will take me up on the offer so that class doesn't have to drag to a halt for testing.

back to school part II, transcription tips

get the music in your ear, sing it back to yourself, play it on your primary instrument and then try and write it down.

focus on what you hear well, most people hear either the soprano or bass lines the best.

work on one part or element at a time. if you are transcribing a pop tune, try and write down the form or harmony first. then go back to get the melody.

by having the harmony you can sometimes deduce the notes you are having trouble with through basic analysis. visa versa, the having the melody down cold can help you figure out the harmony also.

its pretty hard at the beginning. try to work consistently every day. if you can only transcribe for 15 min a day a first no problem. you shouldn't keep working if you get tired or have a headache. my ears are horrible when i am tired. for me its something i do when i first wakeup in the morning.

along those lines some days your ears just don't work. don't worry its normal. come back the next day and it all will be well.

work in small chunks, get 4 bars and then move on.

use a good rewind, computer based programs like itunes work very well. transcribing directly from a cd can be problematic. they don't like short rewinds.

pick something you like, life's too short.

back to school edition

do something musical every day
learn your language
transcribe by ear
analyze pieces you like
some pieces (your favorites) you will want to know everything about
keep on the lookout for things that make you go hmmm.
why does it catch your interest? what makes it different from the other pieces?
you might just focus on one element (form, harmony, melody, orchestration, counterpoint, rhythm...)

wash, rinse, repeat

those who can't teach

work summers.

back to school tomorrow. 4 classes, 1 student teacher and little sleep tonight.

upcoming...

life's too short II
tue, sept 25th
pbe and real quiet
@csuf (meng hall)

"now " and "then"

last night was a great example of what i find frustrating in undergraduate comp forums. i know that composition is one of the "black arts" of teaching, so i am really not here to throw stones at students our students. all of the pieces were very well prepared and performed (except for one piece that was so bad i thought was performance art), but it always frustrates me hearing pieces from young composers that sound 100-200 years old. may i strongly suggest that they you spend more time listening the "now" instead of the "then". you can reject it all of it if you want, but you should have a good idea of a majority of the art music composed in the last 30 years.

when i was in kansas, my first teacher, walter mays, did me the biggest favor by forcing upon me long listening lists in place of any actually writing. by keeping my away from the pencil he did me the best teaching possible for a very young and naive student and i was quite happy when i found a group of living composers that excited me. he started me in the 1970's and pushed forward, and then we jumped back starting with pierrot lunaire and filled in the gaps through the 60's. overall it gave me a sense of place and i have had many years to think about how i fit in to it.

we can evaluate our compositions in many ways; is it idiomatic and well orchestrated? does it have a consistent logic or musical universe that it resides? even if all those things are in place i'm not sure how writing in the "ars antiqua" style is a useful artistic exercise unless it is somehow connected to the now. i think it is one thing to write music that sounds like chopin and quite another to distill what makes chopin's music interesting and apply that to your own art. the journey to figure out how we fit the "now" and "then" into our own personal narrative is just as important as any pen and paper "technique" we can acquire.

band night?

i just finished my first week of classes and so far i am really happy with my classes.

last semester is another story.

i failed 11 students in my eartraining/dictation class. i didn't feel good about it and spent much of the break trying to figure out if it was me or them. i decided to start this semester by giving a pretest assignment to my theory classes to find out what they knew before class started. the results were more encouraging and my current students all were much stronger than the ones from last fall.

why could this be?

then i remembered a parallel from teaching 5th beginning band. let me digress...

every spring would spend a lot of time demonstrating and pretesting all incoming 5th graders to help them pick an instrument they would best succeed at. we had parent meetings, letters home, and many conversations with the students about playing in the band or orchestra in the fall. our two main goals were to put the student on an instrument he/she could be immediately successful on, and have a relatively balanced instrumentation. through this process i noticed a few unsettling patterns evolve every year.

no matter how much we tried and educate the parents about the program, there are some that fight it or choose not to participate until the last minute (the program was mandatory for all 5th graders). the problems that i started to see was that all these families who came in at the end (or not at all) were left playing the least popular instruments (trombone and tuba). this was mostly because parents cannot see their ten year old playing such a big instrument. we tried to combat this buying a class set so they could keep the one they rented at home.

for the first few years these students were the least likely to have any musical support at home. the result was high concentrations of students with little interest and parental support on the most needed instruments. the thing that really started to piss me off was when i realized i was one of those kids.

my parents skipped the "band night" and probably was pushed into playing trombone because that is all that was left. i instinctively knew there was no real choice and getting out of the house after school would be a good thing. what a wonderful way to start my musical career.

that all being said, i think that my fall eartraining class probably falls into a similar category.
it was added at the last minute and many students (not all, the other half were very hardworking) were probably late adds and transfers who might not have the best organizational skills and motivation for college.
maybe this is the reason for the high concentration of fails?

i wonder if their parents skipped band night also?

designer education

for those of you who think private school is worth it, read this.

status quo?

over this break i have been doing lesson plans for my spring eartraining and theory classes. as i sketched my classes out i realized that my goals were becoming much different than in the past. i wasn't worried about what i am supposed to teach, but really concentrated to what skills i think our students should know.

take music dictation, its still a big part of the high school ap music theory exam*** and its featured prominently in the eartraining textbooks, but is it really needed? i can imagine a time before recorded music, that it would be a very good skill to have. the ability to sketch down large amounts of melody, harmony and bass line for future study during or right after a live performance. i have taught it, and with smaller classes of high school students 4-5 days a week most students can be successful. but the real question is; how useful is this? the idea that we have to limit the repetitions and timing seems short-sighted because of current technology. what would bach do? (wwbd?) of course he would have a digital recorder and headphones to transcribe buxtehude into his G5 powerbook. although i still think he would make his kids tune the harpsichords with tuning forks until their hands bled.

with this being said, i have started moving into teaching transcription as an alternative to harmonic dictation. some of my best insights into music, where my transcription study sketches of music before i got hold of a score. (einstein on the beach, coronation of poppea) i still do some melodic dictation, but have a little different focus of audiation and/or singing and playing on the primary instrument, combined with paper and pencil.

with computers and cd players as the dominant technology, it only makes sense to teach our students how to best use the current technology. its been the staple of jazz musicians (including myself) for years. since consumer recording technology has been available since the 1950's why are we still using such an old pedagogy?

the other thing is that why do we still put any value into teaching 4-part writing? it still seems to be the teaching staple in most theory classes, and it is used to introduce "tonal counterpoint" but why waste the time on it? its not a pure counterpoint and its "rules" are arbritrary and confusing to many students. as a composer i cannot really think when i use this fake "keyboard harmony" for any use. i prefer to focus on the old school (fux/jeppesen/swindale) when dealing with any tonal harmonization. starting with 1st and 2nd species, 2 and 3-part writing gets them to focused on the outer voice writing first. by introducing 4-part writing before 2-part counterpoint, students are introduced to the tail (fleas) before the dog. there is no fundamental understanding of the difference between line and harmony. i love bach's music, but using it as a teaching tool is insane.

the main reason i write this is that i am very surprised why we are still teaching this way?
i know many great colleagues who grumble, but feel pressure to please their peers and chairs.
i hear students (at csuf and other schools) complain bitterly about how they aren't learning anything practical.

how long are we going to keep beating this dead horse?

counterpoint and ear-training do matter
but can we refocus the content to teach practical and useful skills for the students we are teaching today, not 50-100 years ago?


also....

fellow west coast blogger devin hurd has a great post on cornelius cardew's newly remastered cd, the great learning.




*** this "test" is a whole other problem. i get the feeling that all of this is a classic example where the test pushes artifical demand for a whole range of new and improved "educational" methods and materials. i'm not suggesting that i have a "better" method, i just feel that primary source materials by fux, zarlino, rameau, and heinichen(and many others) do a pretty good job laying out the fundamentals. its my job to translate them into useful information for my students.

winter break

the semester is over, but i still have final papers to grade and a lot lesson planning to do before over the break. i'm teaching an advanced fundamentals class and its been pretty long since i thought about what "advanced fundamentals" is. the department has some general guidelines of where they should be able to sightsing, but i really need to sit down and figure out what i want them to do. the music ed class will get to move from educational theory to practice teaching this semester.

if all goes well during the next 2 weeks i'm going to finally finish recording and editing retrace our steps. the timing is pretty good because we just committed to play at the synchromy concert at beyond baroque on feb 19th. this spring i'm also going to try and play monthly on sunday nights at mr. t's . i also expect the instrumentation to be more organic in the club also.

i recently decided that i'm not going to worry about having the exact instrumentation in the club anymore. trying to play 2-3 times a month with the same members isn't always possible, so i am going to treat each performance like a project. each show will be created around who can be there with a one or two invited guests to mix things up. this will be an interesting strategy to that will allow us play more consistently and explore a wide variety of music until the next batch of music is finished.

finals

the end of the semester is finally near, i think i have just survived the transition from secondary ed to college. i'm sure over the break i'll be able to process it.

overall its been pretty jarring. some my biggest mistakes were giving my students too much credit. i assumed that they would read the syllabus, and plan their work load accordingly. i wasn't the greatest undergrad student, but if i figured it out they could too? not always. as the semester progressed i realized that i needed to manage the classes like the high school students i just left. lots of deadlines, rewrites and constant reminders of what was in the syllabus. now that i know, it will be much easier to plan classes next semester, live and learn.

the biggest surprise is how these students react during finals. i gave the singing portion of the fundamentals test this morning and was intrigued by those who had been horribly failing (as well as skipping many classes and tests) thought that a good sightsinging grade would pass them. on the other hand i was also surprised how many "C" students didn't show up for the final and who will now fail.

with that all said, i think this is for me. now that i have a handle of what teaching college is really like its going to be much easier to adapt my goals to a stituation that i have now experienced.

don't get me wrong, i do have many bright/mature students who show up and do their work. i probably obsess to much over wanting to make my classes such that everybody can succeed. i guess its just surprising to see some students with potential not make much effort.

back to school

the last couple weeks i have been gearing up for my return to teaching, although this year is much different. class starts in 2 weeks and usually time of the year is all stress. part of it is worrying about the simple things, did they screw up my schedule? how many of my best students will have conflicts with my ensembles, is the music room going to be hosting math classes again?

well... this fall none of that will happen. i do have a small amount of stress for classes i'll be teaching at csuf, but really i don't feel like i'm in for the usual fall drama. right now my biggest problem is getting keys to my classrooms and office. ( i'll take that anyday, although how hard can it be to get keys made) also my schedule has turned into a real nice one; 4 classes, two days a week that range from freshman ear training to a mix of music education classes and supervision of some student teachers. i've signed up for the commute to work program and will be taking the goldline and metrolink trains to school. its going to be great giving up driving 350 miles a week.

for the first time in 11 years it will be strange not working with any ensembles. i know i'll miss working with the kids. i feel really fortunate to have been able to teach from the beginning to the end. (5-12) it was always a great to have that mix in your day; 5th graders who come in with so much energy, middle schoolers with their detached and awkwardness to high school seniors who are starting to get excited for their college years.

its hard to think that i might not ever teach those ages again. the conflicts that arise with composing and performing don't mix well with secondary schools. if it couldn't work out at a private school like viewpoint, i'm not sure if it would work anywhere else. when i started out teaching at 25 i never envisioned my life as it is now. i thought teaching kids was going to be my career. over time i realized i needed performing and composing in my life, i couldn't just give it up that easily. i'm happy with all the years i spent teaching younger kids and feel lucky for the time i had. its been a strange journey and i'm looking forward to the next step.

getting back to things

my job is getting in the way of my personal life. november and december are all about concerts, holiday programs, after school meetings, grading projects and writing progress reports. after coping with a few colds and a late night emergency room visit, i might just make it to the holiday break.

i have also spent a lot of time my ap theory class back on track. the students work very hard, but stumbled on 4-part chorale writing. once they started using notation programs (finale, cakewalk...) they were able to hear their homework and many errors dissapeared (missing notes, bad counterpoint). its another example how technology makes teaching easier.

one of the good things about being this busy is that i'm able to narrow my focus on composing. the distractions are easier to keep at bay. i don't think its the most healthy thing mentally and physically, but i have been able to plot out a few new pieces. rehearsals for the pbe are starting tomorrow and we will be recording our new cd over the holiday break.