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I really really hate the culture of music education. It’s so clear to me that these people devoted their lives to learning music and when they realized they couldn’t be a brilliant composer, they went into teaching music with the mindset of,
“Well I devoted most of my entire life to understanding the concepts behind this shit, so there has to be some way this can make me feel good about myself.” And then they take out that disappointment in the results of learning these complex concepts,
on their students. And it’s nothing about sharing a love of music. It becomes about degrading students for not knowing as much as them and not easily understanding these other worldly concepts. The worst thing I noticed is when it’s not just the professors doing it.
I saw so many students trying their best to suck up to these professors by acting snotty and giving off an “I’m not like those other students” attitude. They’d jump to be able to brag about already knowing stuff we’re supposed to be learning in class. The whole environment,
is disgusting and enough to turn anyone away from music. It kinda did for me. I only took 4 music classes after middle school. 2 of them music theory (in high school and college) and the others choir and guitar. The ONLY one of these classes I remember fondly is
guitar. And I think the sole reason for that is it was the first year of it being offered at my school and the teacher didn’t want to be teaching it. The first month or so was an awkward kinda “Here’s some theory and things to practice” type of thing. But after that,
he kinda gave up on teaching and I began to love the class. Classes would become me and @faded_home hanging out in a practice room, writing our own songs with our (at the time) rudimentary guitar skills and knowledge. And it was a blast! We’d also get to showcase our songs
and covers for the class. That’s what music is about. It also helped that most of the people in the class were either beginners or were just taking it for an easy A. The lack of snottiness and sucking up led to such a comfortable environment to experiment and have fun with music.
At the end of the day it’s an art form. And this weird elitist culture of gatekeeping the science and history behind making it is so fucking disgusting. I was going to attend GMU this semester for music production but I didn’t get accepted.
It was a 2 part audition, the first part was showcasing my portfolio of songs to the music production professor and the second part was auditioning on my instrument of choice for this like married couple that teaches jazz for some reason.
The production professor visibly loved my music and gave me great feedback. And then when it came to the jazz couple they expected me to sight read an entire piece of music on the guitar. I knew there was going to be sight reading but that’s all I knew was “sight reading”.
Sight reading in my past of music education has always been like singing 5 notes in a row. I have no idea how to read complex music in a weird key and play it on guitar. That doesn’t mean I can’t play the guitar. But it might as well have.
These people gave me the nastiest look and just refused to give me any feedback or say anything nice or encouraging to me. I knew as I was on Skype with them immediately, that I wasn’t getting into the program. I performed 2 songs that I had practiced for them, to which they gave
me absolutely no feedback and just went “Great, okay now do this.” What the fuck is that about lol. It’s ART it’s an art form. Idk I’m kinda just going on a tangent now. But, any music theory class I’ve ever been in has always made me feel dumb and lesser,
and like I didn’t belong there. And I’m discovering more and more that SO many other people have felt that way, in so many different music theory classes that I wasn’t even in. This culture is disgusting and idk I just like, read a YouTube comment that reminded me of this,
and I wanted to rant about it. I know so many other people feel this same way. I feel like such an inadequate musician when I’ve written quite a few songs that I’m very proud of. It’s such bullshit lol. It doesn’t seem to benefit anyone except for the people that are already
snobbish.
@faded_home sorry for tagging u in this thread lol, I’m not suggesting u agree with any or all of it I was just reminiscing on us taking guitar class together
