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Ok,this is a place holder for Megan and Anyone else who might be interested. My diatribe isn't here yet. But we can go ahead and discuss it anyway. I need to look up a couple things biological and musical because it isn't fresh in my brain anymore. I happened to be taking pre-med bio simultaneously with music theory about 11 years ago (yikes, it's been that long!)
To answer a couple of Megan's questions: I was 15 at the time and it was at a community college in CA. Community colleges in CA are an integral part of the post-high school education system out there, more so than in much of the rest of the country. There is no stigma for going to one. I happened to be going to one of the best in the state, Ventura College. http://www.venturacollege.edu
I had friends from there that went on to 4.0s at Berkeley and UCLA, and Ventura College was harder, even though the instructors were excellent. It was harder on an individual class basis, than any class I've taken at a university as well. The difference for me and why my grades went down at the University was a conscious trade-off, I took one and a half to two times the courseload I took at Ventura College and I didn't dilute it with music to give my brain a much needed break.
The Music department was small and underfunded, but it had an excellent teaching staff. Unfortunately a few of the best retired shortly after I was there. I still call Peggy, my voice teacher and mentor on a regular basis to keep in touch. Among other things she kept me sane during many of the conflicts with my parents.
The theory teacher was Dr. Burns Taft.
quote:TAFT, BURNS, Professor (1969) Music B.M., 1961, Yankton College; M.M., 1963, University of Colorado; D.M.A., 1970, University of Southern California
His primary instrument was piano, but he was later a conductor for the college orchestra. The composition of the music students in the college was also very diverse. You had the kids that were playing pop gigs on the weekends as well as "serious" musicians that went on to transfer to Julliard and other prestigous places.
It's been a while but he started our first semester of theory with practical acoustics, and actually incorporated a bit of Schenkerian analysis right from the beginning. I can't remember what text we used for the first three semesters. It was all all white textbook with black print on the front and no color anywhere in the book either. For our fourth semester, Counterpoint, our only text was Fux, and we worked through most of the excercises in the book. Incidentally, I just checked and he's still teaching the same classes I took from him 10 years later, though I'm sure he's elgible to retire.
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I'm reminded of a lecture I went to about cognitive science where the question was asked whether the first discovery of the Krebs cycle was qualitatively different from when the knowledge of the cycle is grasped by students.
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AJ, I'm not familiar off the top of my head with any text book that uses no color whatsoever, though I do know of several texts that incorporate Schenkerian theory into the beginnings of teaching. Most of them are too new for you to have used during that time, though. If you can remember which one it is, I'd love to know.
Fux, though...Fux I recognize (of course!). There are other counterpoint texts now that are based on Fux; species is still a very popular way to teach counterpoint.
Interesting that the theory classes started with acoustics. Some acoustics was required when I was an undergraduate (and I think it's required of the undergrads here, as well), but by and large it isn't really a mainstream theoretical topic per se.
I'll be honest, though...I really don't remember at all what the Krebs cycle is. My biology is ...yeesh...12 years in the past and hasn't been renewed since then. I know it has something to do with cells processing energy, but that's about as specific as my knowledge is.
I'm wondering, though, if you mean to compare it to part-writing (in which how you move from chord to chord in individual melodic lines is the essential point) or larger scale harmonic progression (i.e., functional harmony--tonic-predominant-dominant-tonic motion)...or both, perhaps?
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I can close my eyes and see the book but not the author. Unfortunately I don't have access to the book right now because it is in storage while my parents house is being rebuilt after the fire. But once they get everything out of storage Mom is supposed to be sending it to me.
The reason why he started with acoustics was more for the "pop" type people. They understood it better I think attacking it from that angle to begin with. And he only did like a week of acoustics, you know vibration and nodes and such. That naturally derived into the harmonic series which is where the 'theory' kind of started taking over.
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Ah, that makes sense, then, if you're dealing with a large number of non-classical performers (or non-majors, whose primary exposure to music is "pop"). It's interesting the difference in repertoire that gets used depending on the audience of the class. For non-majors here, the aim is very much either the REALLY well-known classical repertoire, or pop (well, what the theory world refers to as pop, which is anything that the rest of the world DOESN'T call classical ).
There's a text by Robert Gauldin that builds off Schenkerian theory (it's the most well-known one), but it didn't come out until 1997, which I think is far too late...
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These were "pop" type people who did want to major in music. Though some were going into music therapy and the like. It was just his way of getting them over the 'culture shock' that most of them experienced moving to classical music.
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duh... I'll call Peggy tonight and find out what texbook it was! She'll remember, she taught from it, though I never actually took theory from her.
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I like that idea; it might not be a bad idea to incorporate that into really early theory classes that tend to attract more audio tech majors (since I think they're usually only required to take a semester or two of theory).
Oh, btw...am I even remotely close on the Krebs cycle thing?
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Megan it is a bit of both... I've really got to have the krebs cycle in front of me from my bio book and a the basic 1-4-2-7-5-1 progression in front of me before I flesh it out. It made perfect sense 10 years ago but the old brain is a bit rusty.
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