Furthering Education

Education is a trade off.  I lost some things at UNC-Chapel Hill and I learned some things.  While my music ed. degree was a complete bust, the core curriculum of the undergraduate music major was effective.  To prove its point freshman Music Theory 101 weeded out the musically faint of heart.  Really I mean "not academically proficient."  Many people possess musical talent, but music theory is a horse of a different color.  It is not necessarily connected to musical inclinations.  It is academic.  It is theoretical.  It can be difficult.  It was, because a handful of prospective music majors drop out of Music Theory 101 their first semester.  What is it that thwarts them?  One of the first things you are required to learn and write are the twelve key signatures.  Unless you have played the piano, can read music, or have had some previous schooling this could prove difficult.  It would feel difficult because you thought it was irrelevant.  "What does this have to do with singing in the church choir?"  The standards to be accepted to UNC-Chapel Hill are high.  Many prospective students are not accepted.  I was lucky enough to have been smart.  I was not the tip top of my class, but I could handle academia.  That meant you were disciplined enough to study, write, and pass tests,  and not drink beer like many did. After you learn to write all of the key signatures both sharps and flats, you being learning harmony.  I, IV, and V chords, authentic and plagal cadences, and then subdominant chords.  Ultimately at the end of second semester music theory you learn the Neapolitan  and  Augemented Sixth chords.  Usually you forget them quickly.  It was not until two decades later I remembered them and instinctively began to use them in my piano compositions.  They are a major part of my harmonic concept allowing the dominant seventh chord to resolve outward to the octave.  Relatedly another prominent feature of my concept of "Multi-tonality" are cadences.  I have invented cadences much more diverse than a simple V-I of IV-I progression.  I integrate bi-tonality, wrong note bass, and the phrygian mode into these cadences.  Many I believe never have been heard before.  Further many of my harmonic ideas never have been invented before.  It is surprising in the year 2014 we still are stuck in diatonicism.  The same vanilla chord progressions we have heard since the High Classic Period are being regurgitated today in pop music.  Even on classical radio stations they shy away from Twelve Tone Serialism, modal music, artificial scales and the Second Viennese School in general.  Who says Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern are not worthy of digestion by the masses?  It is because it is inescapable that the music industry uses music as candy instead of spice.  Instead of peaking interest or stimulating a desire it attempts to masturbate people at the most shallow level.  This has become the role of music today.  Sickly weak drugs that leave you tired, dazed, and dysfunctional.  This is not how music  was in the 50's, 60's, and 70's.  Because America was involved in major wars during this time, music was used to communicate ideas about social issues and politics.  It is not the right of record labels to castrate the art of music.  If they fail to support and recognize music's great vitality to people, they should step aside or be buried.  The great recording A&R man who said, "That's the sound I want, the sound of that sequencer or computer playing the part," should be shot.  Each and every band that steps on stage with a laptop and performs to a pre-recorded track should be booed.  It happens every day and has become the norm.  Over the last five years in particular, the music industry has conducted a campaign to try to make music that sounds amateur in vogue.  Square quantized bad samples are played devoid of any skill or expression.  And this is supposed to be something to which to listen?  No thanks.  A recent article in the Daily Beast confronted the slow death of the music industry mainly from free content.  It made many good points and suggested the music industry can experience a Renaissance.  Of course this is possible and it will happen.  We just have to wait for the dead weight with the full pockets to die off.  Ironically as they approach their deathbeds they begin to wonder what to do with all of that accumulated wealth.  It is happening right here in Fayettenam.  The rich elderly have begun donating money to the arts.  Consequently now we have a progressional orchestra and several venues to house their performances.  Even more ironically the majority of the members of this orchestra are from other cities.  They travel from as far as Charleston, SC to be paid to play in our orchestra.  Myrtle Beach, Pembroke, Greensboro, and other cities are represented in the "Fayetteville" Symphony.  Funny to me.  I know one of them who teaches trumpet at Methodist University.  Those same types of rich Republicans who filled their banks with Wall Street hedge funds should think about reviving the music industry.  At one time its revenue was a major component of America's GNP.  The same people that think skateboarding is a crime decided every human vice should be eliminated from our towns and cities.  Without dirt there is no clean.  Now we are soulless, eunuch-like, blobs of unknowing shit staring at our palms all at the request of the "record companies."