What Could Become …

The point of trying to create an Education + Production System is built from a type of practicality from my experience.  I have been studying music for years; studying has included intensive playing as well.  One of the problems I've faced along the way is the "what for" of the music. 

I know that there is the "we enjoy hearing the music".  There was an attraction to the question 'what makes this song pull people into it'?  The music fits a type of construction.  Theory sits inside the foundation of the construction.  When I started to understand the theory, I started to look for why does it matter?  There must be something more, right?  Perhaps, perhaps not.  There have been musicians throughout time that didn't think that their music was something more, in fact some of them went out of the way to deny that there was anything other than a sound, an emotional expression.

I came to music late in life compared to my peers -- I floated around it as a child, not in it, and as a young adult I floated with it, not in it.  It wasn't until I started to realize that studying music was opening up the "story" of the peculiarities of my brain, and my brain issues, that I became devoted to trying to understand.  They say that adult learning is difficult.  They say that we tend to lose our ability to learn new things.  When I was younger, I used to think that that outcome was probably built from desire to learn as much as it was from the ability.  I kept teaching my body how to play an instrument -- guitar -- and yet my mind was nearly constantly challenging me to remember what it was I was learning physically.  

Reading music is not natural for me; in fact it is probably worse than learning a foreign language other than English, which is hardly foreign to the America we know today.  I've approached it as a process.  Know the notes and chords intuitively, and without really thinking about it while you are playing, and reading notes will follow.  This is not exactly the same as the immersion that others use, but it is part of the whole process of learning to get to the point where "music city" as I've envisioned it really is "music city".  What is that?  It is the place where a score sheet is all that is necessary for a "band" to play together the "right way" the first time ....

Music education is not just about reading music, except for some.  The limiters are like the musical artists who say that their songs don't have any other purpose or meaning than to express an emotion.  The music educator who knows how to read music and says that music education is "about music" is either hiding the truth for a reason or is just lazy about education.

Music education is about learning, communication, and knowledge.  The beginning of education comes from understanding how music score sheets, the Grand Staff came about.  It is when we start to open 'music city" from that perspective that the world can begin to change, when we can be empowered by the music, music we create & music we listen to ... .  It is when we open the music this way that we can begin to sense what could become.