berklee – Joe Bennett

A Night At The Opera: The Music of Queen #berklee

Posted by JoeBon December 17, 2019December 17, 2019in berklee, Education, musicology, Popular Music, SongwritingLeave a comment

On December 5th 2019, Berklee staged its annual Singers’ Showcase, and the theme this year was A Night at the Opera—The Music of Queen. As a lifelong fan, I was honored to be asked to write the program notes for the evening’s performance.

Each song entry features a reference to the original Queen recording, and the official video embedded, plus a description of the approach the students took for the Berklee version. Selected excerpts from the show itself will appear online sometime in the future, but for now you can get a great behind-the-scenes flavour of the quality of the performance by watching Marshall Lilly’s terrific drumcam footage.

Concert producer: Maureen McMullan
Words: Joe Bennett
Photography: Kelly Davidson Studio
Drumcam video: Marshall Lilly

The Berklee student performers, with special guest drummer, Berklee President Roger H Brown.
Photograph: Kelly Davidson Studio

Drumcam video: Marshall Tilly

Introduction: “I see a miniature libretto from a fan”

Popular Music Education: Foreword

Posted by JoeBon April 3, 2019April 5, 2019in Association of Popular Music Education, berklee, Education, music education, Popular Music, Research1 Comment

This post is taken from my foreword to The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Education: Perspectives and Practices (Bloomsbury, 2019). Editors: Zack Moir, Bryan Powell, Gareth Dylan Smith. Used by permission.

Popular Music Education. These three words, even though they have been at the center of my professional life for more than 25 years, continue to challenge and intrigue me because each one generates questions. What do we mean by ‘Popular’? Popular with whom, and for how long? Popular in the sense of widely distributed, or in the sense of culturally influential? When we say ‘Music’, which music… and whose music? The consensus reached long ago in conservatoires about the centrality of the European ‘common practice period’ has no easy parallel in PME, and popular music has evolved into so many forms and sub-genres that it is arguably impossible for any teacher or student to have knowledge of it all. And when we talk about ‘Education’, what, exactly, are we teaching? PME in high schools and in higher education deals variously with listening, performing existing music, creating original music, music technology, the commercial music industry, and (often controversially) the history of various canons, styles and traditions. Which of these should we choose to teach? Each answer to these questions breeds further questions. If we decide that our curriculum supports creativity, then our students will probably need to be songwriters, the song being the dominant creative product in most popular music. But how does one build a suitable grading framework for songwriting, when songs represent personal expression? What if the teacher’s definition of a good song is different from the student’s?

Berklee Indian Ensemble in #360 video

Posted by JoeBon January 15, 2019January 15, 2019in berklee, music productionLeave a comment

Sometimes music just speaks for itself.

Listen with headphones. For best results, use a 360 headset or phone with Google Cardboard (ambisonic mix will change as you turn your head toward band members).

Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice

Posted by JoeBon January 8, 2019January 8, 2019in berklee, music education, ResearchLeave a comment

In October 2018, Berklee announced the launch of a new initiative, led by the remarkable Terri Lyne Carrington.

The Institute was founded on a musical question, which is:

What would jazz sound like in a culture without patriarchy?

This morning I was viewing the video of remarks from our outstanding keynote speaker Dr Farah Jasmine Griffin (William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African-American Studies at Columbia University NY). Like a lot of people, when an inspiring speaker mentions artists, music or books that are new to me, I like to explore further – cue a brief trip down a Google ‘rabbit hole’. So here’s the full presentation, with citations below.

References

Musician as Physician #berklee #musictherapy

Posted by JoeBon June 29, 2018in berklee, Education, music and health, music education, ResearchLeave a comment

Musician as Physician: Interwoven Artistry for Complex Cancer Pain Management

Douglas E Brandoff, MD

Dr Brandoff opens with two vignettes; one where he describes a time of personal social frustration where he wanted to punch a wall (but played some classical piano instead – he demos it live!). His second example is a patient case (see slide).

As a palliative care expert and pain specialist, he gives us an overview of patient needs, in the context of his profession, and in the context of US healthcare. He considers opioids an important part of pain treatment, but acknowledges the rampant public health opioid crisis. We look at some disturbing stats of overdose deaths involving opioids in the US, correlated with heroin and fentanyl takeup, and a more local analysis of the picture here in Massachusetts.

Pain: The Intersection of Sensation and Emotion

Posted by JoeBon June 29, 2018June 29, 2018in berklee, music and health, music education, ResearchLeave a comment

Daniel B Carr MD MA, Tufts University School of Medicine

Dr Carr ones with a powerful statement: Pain itself is a disease. There are a number of causes, and types, of disease (heart disease, lung disease etc) but once they become established and manifest as pain, they have similarities. Dr Carr believes that having access to pain control is a human right. Pain is a public health issue. Pain professionals view it it as a disease, which can be understood as a combination of pathology, host and environment. Definition discussion (Williams and Craig, 2016).

Loeser’s Pain Model (1980)

Pain, Dr Carr suggests, is a public health issue (O’Brien et al, 2017) and lower back pain is argued to be a global disability.

Crossroads of Music & Medicine

Posted by JoeBon June 29, 2018in berklee, Education, music and health, music education, ResearchLeave a comment

Dr. Annie Heiderscheit, Director of Music Therapy, Augsburg University, MN

Dr Heiderscheit begins with an historical overview, which is fascinating – see photo. She presents this slide with minimal comment due to pressure of time.

We see some quantitative (and remarkable) stats relating to public health issues – economic costs of addiction, trauma and pain – but Dr Heiderscheit suggests that the human cost of these issues is literally unquantifiable. They affect our health, relationships, wellbeing, security, purpose, community and environment. “We can work to slap band-aids on gaping wounds, but if we don’t address these areas we are not achieving [societal] well-being”.

Popular Music Education… #apme

Posted by JoeBon June 26, 2018June 26, 2018in Association of Popular Music Education, berklee, Education, music education, Popular Music, SongwritingLeave a comment

Advocating for Popular Music Education – where do we go from here?

Steve Holley, Music educator

Steve begins with an overview of US music education generally, including high schools and universities, asking ‘why adapt now?’ and describing a necessary journey toward curricular adaptation. He takes us back to the mid-20thC innovators (USC, Miami, Berklee) who ‘took a chance on jazz’, and observes that the music education community thought they were crazy. Within 50 years of those early adopters, jazz in music schools had become mainstream. Steve believes that popular music education today is where jazz music education was in the 1950s, and predicts a similar trickle-down effect in future years, giving examples of schools where this is already starting to happen.

(Some of these ideas are explored in Steve’s recent NafME blog posts.

Steve’s overview of PME elements – a kind of manifesto for the opportunities he suggests institutions now have.

Teaching Song Production Analysis #apme2018

Posted by JoeBon June 25, 2018June 25, 2018in Association of Popular Music Education, berklee, Education, music education, music production, Popular Music, SongwritingLeave a comment

Misty Jones, Middle Tennessee State University

Practical Production Analysis: Helping Students Produce Competitive Songs

Misty opens by describing her particular students as ‘in the box’ producers – that is to say, they create the entire sound recording in a Digital Audio Workstation. The problem she’s trying to solve is this: the students’ recordings are just not ready yet [for the commercial marketplace]. So today, she will be sharing her approach to helping students to make their song recordings competitive, in the genre they want to produce in.

The approach starts with the assumption that students ‘have their chops down’ – that is, they can write melodies & lyrics, understand harmony, and can program beats. With this out of the way, the students are asked to work on these four areas:

Form/Arrangement
Instrumentation
Texture Variation
Production Techniques

Association for Popular Music Education #apme #songwriting

Posted by JoeBon June 25, 2018June 25, 2018in berklee, Education, music production, Popular Music, SongwritingLeave a comment

I’m in Nashville, at the #apme conference, hosted by Middle Tennessee State University. Popular Music Education is still a relatively young field, at least in terms of having its own conference (launched ~10 years ago) and journal (launched last year). More about AMPE at popularmusiceducation.org. Conference schedule here.

Coming from Berklee, perhaps I’ve become too comfortable with the idea that everyone talks about popular music pedagogy all the time. A lot of colleagues here are from institutions that have a long history of classical music education, but have only recently launched popular music programs. They are often seen as mavericks in their schools, and are viewed with some suspicion by more traditional teachers and departments. So there’s a palpable sense of community here, and even during this first morning of day 1 I’ve frequently overheard the phrase: “I’ve finally found my people!”.

On The Fringe (accessible networked music solutions)

Posted by JoeBon April 25, 2018April 27, 2018in berklee, Education, music production, Networked music performance, Popular Music, ResearchLeave a comment

Dan Nichols, University of Northern Illinois

ABSTRACT: Over the past several years, perhaps no single person has fostered collaborations with groups on the fringe of networking infrastructure than Dan Nichols of Northern Illinois University. In this session, Dan will explain how to reach partners with limited expertise and resources. Prominent software solutions like Artsmesh and Jam Kazaam will be explored.

Thus far, the conference has focused on high-bandwidth institutions with fast Internet2 connections. Dan’s presentation covers bringing networked collaboration to the masses, particularly those who do not have access to these network/hardware/institutional resources.

Dan begins with a description of Jamkazam, a free solution (that also offers a $299 hardware audio interface). After describing its features and virtues, he plays us a demo of multi-site bands jamming at SXSW 2014.

Tin Men and the Telephone #tinmendo #berklee #jazz

Posted by JoeBon April 18, 2018April 25, 2018in berklee, Education, Popular MusicLeave a comment

This morning, on the final day of my visit to Berklee Valencia, I attended a gig/masterclass with the remarkable Dutch jazz trio Tin Men And The Telephone. ‘Jazz Trio’ is really an inadequate term for this ensemble. It might better be described as ‘interactive iPhone jazz gaming with live humans’.

The setup is as follows: the trio is piano, upright bass and drums. The drummer has a MIDI drum pad and snare sensor. The bassist has an effects pedal. The piano has a MIDI converter attachment, feeding a MAX patch, with occasional effects processing of the piano signal.

Tin Men and the Telephone: Tony (piano), Pat (bass) and Bobby (drums). All of the musical information on the backdrop – drum loop (left), melodic fragment (top) and chords (bottom) is generated in real time by audience members using an app. Did I mention they’re amazing improvisers?

And…

How To Negotiate a Contract #berklee #cdbaby #diymusician

Posted by JoeBon April 15, 2018April 15, 2018in berklee, Copyright, Education1 Comment

Today I attended two presentations at the DIY Musician Conference. The first one, which I’ll get to in a later post (because it’s kinda techy and will take time to write up) was an open DJ session with Ableton Live. The second, which I’ll briefly summarise here, is a one-hour overview of contracts for independent musicians, presented by my estimable colleague Tonya Butler, Assistant Chair of the Music Business department at Berklee.

ABSTRACT: When it comes to getting signed as a musician, a bad deal can be much worse than no deal at all. In this session, Tonya Butler, a top negotiator, will be providing vital information on key music contract clauses while walking the group through the key negotiation points of each clause.

The DIY Musician #Berklee #cdbaby

Posted by JoeBon April 14, 2018April 14, 2018in berklee, Copyright, Education, Popular MusicLeave a comment

This week I’m at Berklee’s campus in Valencia, Spain. There will be some regular work-related meetings while I’m out here, talking about our study abroad options, and the four Masters programs. And this weekend, Berklee Valencia is hosting the DIY Musician conference, with speakers from the College itself, and from various parts of the music industry, including co-sponsors CDBaby (full list of speakers).

#BerkleeXR

Posted by JoeBon February 8, 2018February 10, 2018in berklee, boston, Education, media, music production, Popular Music, ResearchLeave a comment

Dancer at #berkleexr — Kate Gow, a Boston Conservatory at Berklee Dance student, using a Noitom motion capture system.

Yesterday I attended the inaugural Berklee XR summit, held on Feb 7th 2018 at the Berklee Media Center, here at Massachusetts Ave in Boston, part of the Stan Getz Library. The all-day event was envisaged by our estimable Berklee colleague and XR Professor Lori Landay. XR is a catch-all term (Cross Reality, or Extended Reality) and it refers to “technology-mediated experiences that combine digital and biological realities”. Augmented Reality (AR) is adding virtual objects to the real world, typically through a smartphone camera (Pokémon Go being a well-known example); Virtual Reality (VR) is creating an entire immersive world for the user to experience, usually via first-person headset technologies. VR is particularly used in games such as Doom VFR but also in non-gaming contexts, including medicine, education and law (not to mention dance).

As promised to the delegates on the day, I’ve listed below some of the urls we collected, from listening to the artists, colleagues, presentations and exhibitors. If you were there and you think I’ve missed any, please contact me here or @joebennettmusic and I’ll be glad to add to the list.