#weird essentialism & i'm thinking especially abt anecdotes i've heard re: vocal pedagogy where ppl have been subjected to (...)

[caroloftheshells]

long post re theory pedagogy again

the other thing about that vid (and another thing! lol) being that hierarchically a lot of the people doing the more interesting or out-there research and diversifying the field from a content perspective (and, tbh, demographically) are like grad students or early-career people who don’t even necessarily have any pedagogical flexibility & tend to be slotted in to teach lower-level theory courses-- whose outcomes are predetermined not only by general screwy nasm strictures but by whatever the professor down the line in the curriculum is teaching / expects people to know when they get there. and we get paid (much) less also than tenured professors. which is really a generic “thing about all academia” that doesn’t necessarily become a nefarious personal flaw on the part of said scholars and instead ought to be addressed at a structural level bc the scale of the issue exceeds individual instructors’ spheres of influence.

BUT music occupies such a fucked “totally separate from society” space in many ppl’s imaginations that it’s like oh man how dare it have the same issues as every other field of scholarship bc it shouldn’t “really” be a matter of scholarship in the first place. ie music is culturally rendered a “nothing matters just feel it” / “everything is ephemeral and there is only Innate Talent and nothing can be taught” sort of field such that any intellectualizing thereof &/or suggestion of learnabilty / non-innateness is deemed, like, boring & regressive by some people & i’d say especially people raised with a certain awareness of the “composer-genius” culture of wam education. like i’m completely on the “fuck partwriting parallel fifths are awesome” train as a matter of taste (for example) but that does not mean that learning what parallel fifths are-- and why some old european guys didn’t like them *bc they preferred it to sound like there was more than one voice and it’s easier to create that perceptually w/o an overtone effect* (eg)-- is going to like destroy your artistic Essence and make you a worse musician bc now you’re no longer an empty vessel put on this earth to channel brahms or whoever. & plus i think perpetuating the synonymizing of theory-as-field with wam harmonic rules not only is like factually misrepresentative of current research but also is sort of a self fulfilling prophesy such that ppl who would otherwise have completely fascinating things to say & questions to ask are discouraged from non-platitudinous & open-ended (theoretical) inquiry re the content and aims of their own rep & listening, and tacitly learn that composers’ ~~genius~~ descended from the heavens & you either get it or you don’t, you either “have talent” as a composer or you don’t, et cetera

#Which I Maintain is dangerous not bc i think there is a set method of learning all music(s) obviously but bc that's how you get like #weird essentialism & i'm thinking especially abt anecdotes i've heard re: vocal pedagogy where ppl have been subjected to (...) #racial discrimination; gender discrimination; fatphobia / discrimination based on having or not having a certain 'look' to go w your voice #& told they are 'naturally' inclined to sing or study certain genres of music & shouldn't try anything else (not even ranges! whole genres) #which is maybe sort of tangential but i think stems from this same deal of 'you just have to Feel it' & such #the idea of music as ephemeral and quasi-spiritually channeled such that you lose something if you approach it w scrutiny #or if you have to break it down in a way that; in its detail & precision; reads as divorced from immediate aesthetic judgment #the idea that there's some magic there not to be explained; that composition thus is a special ineffable pursuit for special people. bleh #& the... in depth research and nuance and hesitancy to have a snappy take that like ime culturally describes many theorists. is good #& is; again ime; something valued by several music scholars who sought it out as a Way Out Of a certain brand of meritocratic bullshit #toward a different brand of weird pedantry of course but i think it has its place despite being hooked academically 2 a toxic music culture #in the sense that; for sure; there are egregious issues; but the repertoire bias is unilaterally present in wam circles #& it's like well. your problem is 'with' the textbooks but since when has a so called 'voice degree' #at your average som / public institution without enormous fucking tons of money #unlike idk berklee lol #actually regarded choral singing; musical theatre; art song; rock vocals; et cetera with the same seriousness as a wagnerian opera career #and made a variety of music available from a performance perspective as well. i mean my undergrad was vaguely ok here but On The Whole... #bigger fish re funding in notated-music industry and degrees as job prep for shrinking market etc #anyway though...... i value myself too much to be a youtuber lol #imagine me appending that 'just saying things recreationally' post to this post #carol overreacts to life #theorycomp tag