Outstanding Teachers at the University; Music Department

from the University in your community. My name is Dave ?Kasel? and this is another of our special Friday editions on outstanding educators, and we'd like to welcome Dr. Childs who's from the department of music. of music, i think it is, not physics... That's right... ...who's going to explain a little bit about the a process and the area that he is in. Yes the department, in which I teach called musicology composition, sort a fancy name. The courses that I teach are an area of music theory. It is a sort of musical grammar, musical literacy. Teach musical alphabet. We teach how to spell musical words. We tell people how various composers have put them together. Okay, so it's kind of an approach towards music that is more than just playing but less than the entire gamut of all music. Yes it's a technical study of what it is that goes into making of a musical structure. How it is that the sounds are combined in various styles to make sense. If they do [laughter]

or none at all. Or none at all. Our are John Cage example. Well John Cage would say that the sense lies with the listener. Right. And the music is in your head. And he is saying something that to a degree true about all music. We find as we are teaching in music theory that most of the things that we tell people about are things that they already understand intuitively and the process of education is to a large measure one of bringing forth terminologies and definitions with illustrations so that they have some way to name the phenomenon that they've already experienced. And when you say intuitively, what do you mean? I'm not sure that that's an accurate term. Intuitively implies that- But I mean we don't sit and say that that was X sort of music. We say that was a nice piece of music or whatever. But if you if you do a little bit of

experimentation and lead the student down the primrose path playing chord progression and then ask, give them multiple choice say they have a, now after this did you expect this and then play a or did you expect this B do you expect this C whatever then you can have demonstration that they new what to expect. It might be intuitive to a degree you. The structures underlying musical logic might have to do with a mental organization. On the other hand it is impossible to discount a factor of inculteration. We hear a great deal of music in certain ways from a time were very young and I suppose you could make the argument you've heard a certain progression 40,000 times, you just don't know what to call it if you hear that way again, that sounds right. And anything other than that is alien. Yes.

Of course, theorists keep trying to find the golden fleece and demonstrate through number symbolism or whatever other sort of mysticism that they want to indulge into why these things are necessarily the case. Sort of like numerology. Yes some of those make convincing cases. After all an digressing end of physics for a while, the physicists have demonstrated many aspects of musical acoustics which do suggest things to music theorists about ways of organizing sound. Is it, for instance, merely a coincidence that tonal music makes particular use of a certain interval, the three to two ratio which happens to be the distance between the

second and third partial of the harmonic series. Whatever that is. The harmonic series is the phenomenon of a string vibrating say in segments. When it vibrates as a whole, it produces one frequency and halves to produce as a frequency. Double. Double the frequency. Or if you press the string in the middle you got two strings vibrating at exactly double. And if it's a third of the length of the string, then it produces the third partial which is what we would call a perfect fifth above the second partial. Well, musicians have been aware of the significance of numbers long before they knew what created the harmonic partial series or even that the partial series existed. They did it with experiments of stringlings and so forth and. The Thomas Edison approach versus. Oh I'm talking far back as well but Pythagoras is the approach where they just said

give me this and I'll play with it and make it sound good. Yes, I'm not sure what doctrine we ought to hold to in terms of priority that number over the learned response in terms of the individual listening to music that has been selected- selectively filtered by imposition of number ratios. We've got that too. Yeah. What we do in a theory class is largely dependent on on the topic of the day. We tried to give our students a foundation. but, I'm here mainly about music majors who are required to take the theory courses, foundation to understand how the most significant styles of the past have worked. Since there's no universal agreement as to how they work we chose the

text that we agree with and then try to hold students' hands through the technical exploration of all that. And to to learn that they have to hear classroom demonstrations, they have to try their hand at writing some musical structures, they have to take courses where they sharpen up their perceptions, play this chord and tell, I play the chord for them they tell me what it is that I've played in that sort of the process all that and a series of courses called aural skills and the students love those courses. They just, Hmm. They just beat down to get in there because where else can you just sit in a classroom and have a teacher say play you a melody and all you have to do is write it down. It's a joy. And when you go into teach this enjoyable class what sort of approach are you taking? Are you trying to teach a

method? Are you trying to teach them what other people have done, and say this was successful here's what you can use? In order to understand what the possibilities are for them, I think a pretty thorough understanding of a consistent style or stylistic approach from the past is a valuable method. There've been various experiments in pedagogy and design of these courses over the past twenty five years. And we've had considerable experimentation of our own. I feel myself slipping into a bit more of a conservative stage. Not exactly back to basics. When I was in school, there was only one right way and everyone learned that one way and then in the heyday of my early teaching years, those old ways were being thrown over. Just to be different. To be different we had

There's a new math in theory. Well that was valuable to but I'm afraid the disadvantage of throwing everything at the student at once in an attempt to produce a synthesis is that the student really has to have a good grip on something before the student is able to play with that and while I am a little more conservative in my approach these days I I don't try to sell the students the idea that this is the truth with a capital T. It is a truth. Or relative to other truths. That's right. Okay, that's an interesting perspective.Well Well what about, in talking about truth in general I think this is a good place to John drop it in especially since we're talking about being more concerned. There's a movement afoot and I don't know whether it's conscious, unconscious or whatever, but a lot of students are moving through the university saying, essentially, 'look I'm going to get out and work in a

tool making factory. What sort of function does music serve in my life? I mean I can listen to it. It won't change really how I listen to it other I'll know what progression there is and I'd be able to identify the notes or whatever and that sort of class, but it isn't useful to me.' What sort of use is there in music education? Or I should say music and learning it in an educational process. I think that music reveals to us a great deal about our humanity, our mentality, the way our mental processes work if you will in addition to being seen as an emotional outlet an occasion dancing or mourning or whatever I think that the truism that people like know what they like is really a that they like what

they know and I think that to any student or person wishing to have a richer fuller life ought to find out what there is in the world. And in terms of music I there are some styles that I find less interesting than others I'll be willing to tell my friends that but I'm less willing to tell my students that. Or they might guess from the examples that I choose or the texts that I choose. There are certain kind of music and I do find particularly interesting. However I think that the the value of work of knowing these things is a very personal thing. If a person is going to be a professional musician he may actually have to know some of the things that I teach and in my classes. At the risk of being an incompetent musician

the specialization that you refer to go in our culture and and vocational orientation is something that I frankly fight against. The traditional in music theory was long ago in Bach's day that the same person was thought to be an educated musician if the same this one person could play the violin, play the keyboards sing, teach, compose and the musical positions available in those days expected those abilities in one individual. Granted we have perhaps better performers today we have perhaps more prolific composers. We have people with better teaching techniques because of specialization. But, I don't want to send someone out to perform music if they're just going through the motions. And, I don't wanna send someone out to write music if they don't know and understand what's

been written before and I don't I don't want to send someone out as a person to teach other people about music, if they're not curious enough about what makes music go to to inspire a spirit of curiosity in somebody else and their students want to inspire them to grow and change. So that's the ultimate goal of education for you? I believe it is. Okay, Well I thank you very much for being here the time has just shot by. Thank you Dr. Childs. Well thank you for having me. And appreciate it I hope a lot of people come and take your classes in music. This has been University in Your Community. I've been speaking with Dr. David Childs from the music department here at KMUW. This is the University in Your Community. We've had production by Eric ?Walkover? [music]

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