Text is coming!

I've not blogged on MySpace since March 11. Although I've blogged elsewhere a great deal. I've separated my blog sites because my research has expanded in three distinct and disparate directions at this point. And a fourth one is looming.

As is often true with research, you are left with more questions than answers if you are a truly good researcher and one thing you learn when you do research is that the questions you had at the outset were often NOT the questions you should have been asking in the first place. I teach music education research courses at Northern Illinois University and this is one of the maxims I explain to my students, all of whom are novice researchers and are totally flummoxed sometimes by how twisted and torturous is the researcher's route to a final understanding.

So I started out with a simple mission: to learn about rock music and rap enough that I felt competent to edit and write a music teacher training text aimed at methods teachers, as am I, who prepare college students who are planning to teach music in the public schools. In my case, my special area is "general music" which is taught in elementary schools mainly, Grades K-5 -- and in middle schools as "exploratory" courses in the arts and technology.

The very first thing I found out, that I did not expect, was the sheer staggering volume of rock music. We're talking thousands, maybe millions, of pieces of music. How to sift through that? How to decide what music should be in the text, knowing that only a tiny fraction of the total genre can possibly be included? rankem.com is a website where anyone can rank rock bands and solo artists on a scale of 1 to 10 or something like that in terms of the quality of their performances and their music (assuming they write their own original stuff). When you join rankem.com, they tell you that there are 400,000 rock bands and rappers & solo artists to be ranked. 400,000. And that's not all of them. I got through 10 and gave up the first time. I take my time and try to consider every aspect of each artist/band -- probably not a very efficient way to go about it. I'll keep working on it. Of course, I don't know anywhere close to 400,000 anyway. So most of them I skip over.

So my first task was to back-pedal. I first of all began consulting other texts that have been written and asking experts -- people who know music and who have been listening to rock music for a number of years. And I got a pretty good sense of "classic" rock bands that need to be included. Groups who started out in the 60's and 70's. That seems pretty easy, actually.

Where it gets muddy is beginning in the mid-80's up to the present day mainly because of the lack of perspective one gets after a certain amount of time has passed. So the text is going to focus quite heavily on "classic" rock -- blues-based -- Beatles and Led Zeppelin, KISS, Black Sabbath, Aerosmith -- that kind of thing. And then the Seattle movement -- Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Metallica originally -- and possibly some brief mentions of alternative and post-alternative and alternative-metal and post-progressive and so on -- Indie groups.

I believe this will be a realistic perspective and amount of information to include.

The next thing that happened, and that I did not expect, was to fall so vioilently and passionately in love with the music. Not with all of it, I confess. But -- the most surprising was my wild love affair with heavy metal and grunge. In the beginning, the first time I listened to Sad But True of Metallica, I had to turn it off because I thought it harsh and violent and discordant. Can you imagine??? Sad But True sounds quaint and "classic" to me now. I, who now enjoy listening to Throwdown and Seether and Opeth and death metal even. It was a total shock to me, to find out that one needs to develop "ears" for rock music just as one needs to develop ears for John Coltrane's music or atonal music or Ligeti or Whitacre or late Stravisnky. We in classical music trivialize rock music to the point where I am truly disgusted by it.

The result of the latter situation is that music educators -- both at the K-12 level and in higher education schools of music -- have lost credibility with our students who KNOW the value and quality of this music and have known it -- since childhood in most cases. We are so outdated. We've turned our field into a field of dinosaurs. I hope it's not too late and that my text is the cutting edge of a very widely accepted trend.

But before that can happen, our students need to be educated in and about this music. I find my students really know very little about rock music beyond their favorite artists or perhaps music their parents played around the house when they were growing up. They don't know ABOUT it at all. Very little of the history and nothing at all about how to play it or re-create it (learning how to play covers) or how, God forbid, to TEACH it to young people.

Most of all, they do not see the parallels between rock music and classical music -- and there are TONS of those. They are-- as I was -- completely misled by the performance practice -- the sound and style -- and do not hear the underlying melodic and harmonic structures, the formal organization, the metric and rhythmic traditions. So the technology drives the rock music genre and music educators need to know that the technology is one layer of meaning -- not the only layer.

Alice in Chains

I've written a lot about Alice in Chains on this blog and on Twitter and Facebook. I had looked forward to seeing and hearing them live on March 20 in Chicago. I had looked forward with more anticipation to hearing them than almost any other musical event I've ever attended in my life; a life FILLED with musical experiences and performances, some of them historic and epic. Eva Marton's American debut at the Metropolitan Opera. The world premiere of Leonard Bernstein's new opera, A Quiet Place, at The Kennedy Center, with Mr. and Mrs. Reagan in attendance. Herbert Von Karajan with the Berlin Philharmonic performing all Four Brahms Symphonies at Carnegie Hall. Arther Rubenstein's farewell concert at Carnegie Hall, playing both Brahms Piano Concertos. In one evening. The Wagner Ring Operas at Lyric Opera of Chicago a few years ago. U2 at Soldier Field in Sept. 2009. Luciano Pavarotti's American debut as Rodolfo in La Boheme at the Met. And the list goes on and on. Nonetheless, the physical and emotional excitement I built up to the Alice in Chains concert was other-worldly and far exceeded any of the previous concert experiences, in terms of sheer excitement and anticipation.

I wonder at myself. It's true I love Alice in Chains's music and that love has not wavered since I first heard them on the Black Gives Way to Blue Album back in October of 2009. Although now other bands and musicians have come along and have become much loved and admired, Alice in Chains remains in a category uniquely their own.

I decided to stand in the mosh pit for Alice in Chains. That was probably my first mistake. A metal-head crowd is a VERY different animal than the crowds at U2 or KISS or Led Zeppelin 2 or, good heavens, Yes. I worked my way to the front and was in the second row back from the barrier. Facing the very center of the stage. I used 2 canes to help me stand for hours. To preserve some sort of strength in my back and legs. I am a woman who doesn't stand around. Nonetheless, I arrived at the Aragon Ballroom (or "Brawlroom" as it is somewhat wryly called) at 7:40 and I stood on my feet until nearly 10. For me, that is quite a record.

The opening band only played for 30 minutes and I tolerated them. Alice came on at 9 sharp. I was not disappointed really. They sound very much the same as they do on their CDs. And it was truly thrilling to see them up so close. They have the sweetest faces, all four of them. I mean, they might be bastards in real life but they LOOK and SOUND like angels of a sort. Jerry is particularly gentle looking although I've heard he has a razor sharp, rather dry wit. Will is just beautiful. He seems innocent in a way I find hard to define. Totally un-debauched or marked by excessive drinking or drugs or whatever. Mike Inez resembles paintings from the 17th century court of Louis XIV. Sean is earnest and rather funny. They have all retained a somewhat boyish look. Which accords oddly with the dark, intense and sombre lyrics of many of the songs, particularly those by Layne and Jerry.

I got badly jostled and it was mind-numbingly loud in the pit. The young men around me JUMPED so vigorously to the beat and shouted and screamed out the songs so loudly that at one point, my ear felt like the drum had actually popped. It was very hot and sweaty too and smelly. Someone was smoking pot somewhere nearby. I now know what it felt like to be packed, standing up, in those cattle cars that took Jews to Auschwitz. Not enough room to move and smelly and somewhat frenzied. So I stood it for 4 songs and then elbowed, clawed, and "beg your pardon"-ed my way to the back of the hall where I gasped for the cool air coming from the outside. I also got a drink and -- lost my BlackBerry! I had been tweeting my darling while watching Alice. Telling him about every little move on stage and each song and he was so sweet and funny and told me if anyone fucked with me to let him know and he'd HURT someone.

Never. Not ever, not once in my life has a man ever offered to do that for me. Not that I've wanted him to. But M. makes me feel so cherished and cared for. I've never really been "taken care of" like that. I long for it, like a powerful opiate or narcotic. I yearn to just be his woman. I am frankly besotted. My longing for him and Alice in Chains and losing my BlackBerry -- which meant I could not message M. for the rest of the night and -- as I feared -- could not sleep all night worrying about me in that crowd, alone, up in Chicago. I cried myself to sleep that night in the hotel, knowing that M. must be a) hurt that I stopped talking with him; or b) seriously worried that some accident or other mishap had befallen me. It was a night of really amazing emotional trauma for me in many ways. And the background music for this particular movie is the song Rooster and Again and No Excuses by Alice in Chains. And Private Hell -- which was how I felt when I finally got back to my hotel room.

There were other incidents that day. Some more traumatic than others. But in all, it is a day I will not forget in a hurry. To my dying day.

My therapist once told me: you've never been really touched, Glenda. Your emotions are locked away in a place where you can take them out and use them or not, at will. Well -- that has ended. Rock music once and for all has been the key to unlocking, unleashing emotions so powerful I didn't know I was capable of them. It changes everything. The way I see other people, the way I see events and most especially, the way I see relationships in all their ramifications, ups, downs, falsehoods, and transcendent joy. I've told Ben I want to read The Brothers Karamazov. I want to read really fine literature with my newfound compassion for the plights of the characters as they struggle for understanding and enlightenment through their human interactions. Meanwhile: I stumble on toward some kind of light, some kind of deeper realization of my own power as a woman and as a human being. Accepting and even loving my human frailty and thereby that of others, those I love--M. the man I love.

Make new friends.....

Looking back

It’s so interesting to me as I listen to Billy Joel and Elton John and others from my music past. The addition of rock music and rap to my music listening vocabulary has greatly enriched my aural palette. It’s quite remarkable. I don’t love New York State of Mind any the less for having learned to love Cyanide or No Excuses or Do U C the Pride in the Panther? Or any of the other hundreds of songs and raps in my huge iTunes library that is about to get even larger as I embark on a new group of songs and artists that people have recommended to me. I’m listening to New York State of Mind right now. It’s a great song. Billy Joel is a gifted songwriter, no question in my mind of that. I’m like the matriarch of a very large family. Love each new baby as s/he comes along. Just make a new space in my heart and head for each new song and artist. But also like that matriarch, as my memory grows longer (in this case, larger), the old familiar ones remain enshrined in their own unique places. It’s quite a relief to my friends that I’m planning on subscribing to the Lyric Opera again next season and that I am still crazy about Poulenc and Mozart. A relief to me too. Like the old folk song: Make new friends, b ut keep the old; one is silver and the other gold. Really that’s a terribly sentimental thing to write but I unashamedly believe it.

Academia Starts Rockin'

When the Oxford University Press music education text rep. met with me, one cautionary message I got from her is that a textbook like the one I propose to publish, will be the first of its kind and therefore may be quite difficult to market. In fact, she said, I need to think carefully about who my target audience is; I need to define this far more clearly and precisely than I have done so far. I've been mulling over her words since late January when we met. It's a problem because at this time, the target audience I had in mind were college music education methods classes, such as the ones I teach myself. Specifically, I want to target college general music methods class teachers -- a sub-group of a larger group of methods class teachers.

Methods classes are a requirement in any education program you can name. These courses prepare students to teach in a K-12 classroom setting--in my case, general music K-8. The courses have to cover a lot of ground. Given the testing environment in today's schools, and the fact that arts education programs are being eroded or eliminated to make room for more reading and math intensive instruction time, music and art and PE and other "specials" courses are more and more needing to incorporate language arts and math, not to mention accommodate special needs students of all kinds and diagnoses into their curricula. This makes the college preparatory course (aka methods) much more complex and difficult than it was traditionally.

My general music methods courses consist of two types of activities: workshop-style hands-on lessons I design to provide a model for students as to how such activities might be taught to children; and pedagogical theories and practices. Methods courses also provide opportunities for students to "practice teach" on each other using the various pedagogical principles they learn. With standards and educational reform and the need to learn assessment and technology for the classroom, the methods class can be over-full of material or content that must be included.

This makes the issue of what repertoire is to be taught in a K-8 general music class difficult because there is little time to spend on developing a large body of repertoire that students can and should use to teach musical concepts to children. For the most part, they are going to leave the methods class with only a vague or hazy concept of suitable repertoire for the classroom. They will rely on colleagues, on available materials in the school where they are hired, on their student teaching experiences, and on materials they get in workshops at conferences.

So I'm writing a supplemental text for K-8 general music methods classes that will prepare them to teach musical concepts and skills using rock music and rap. The text has to contain enough historical information that it is a viable resource for the students who will use it; it has to include sample repertoire but more importantly, the text needs to show students how to choose and select repertoire on their own that is suitable for the classroom; there must be instructions for playing and teaching basic electric guitar and drum set. The book needs to set out the basics of synthesizer and software editing for producing and recording rock music and rap in the classroom. In my opinion, the book needs to describe ways in which rock and rap music are composed/created according to the traditions in those genres -- not according to traditions more suited to composing/creating music in the Western art music (aka classical) traditions.

We're talking major iconoclasm here. Teaching music to kids using music that comes out of a "non-notation-based' (horrors!) tradition of creating/composing. Music that is vocal music with lyrics/texts that may or may not be age-appropriate for K-8 students. Music with a psycho-social context and not a "high" art cultural one. Music that for the most part cannot be judged or assessed in terms of "quality" because we are too close to its source, its genesis, to know if it can stand the "test of time" or whatever other criteria one chooses to use in judging or assessing quality in music. All of us in musical academe are highly trained in the Western art music tradition and we're going to judge or asess the music on that basis, through that lens because our schema, our understanding of music, has been shaped and formed by our training and in some cases, long years of experience.

Rock music and rap are distinct genres of music that need to be judged, assessed, on their own merits and according to standards that apply to those genres specifically. Yet, do those standards even exist at this time? I don't necessarily DIScount such magazines as Rolling Stone and the music critics in them, but how much of what those critics say is based on deep knowledge and perspective of the music and how much is based on pop culture understandings and viewpoints? And rock and rap ARE pop culture -- so isn't it more appropriate that pop culture critics should be considered arbiters of good taste?

In spite of the obstacles, there is a distant roar happening right now in music education. We, as a profession, are beginning to consist of people in their late 30's and 40's. People who have never known a world without rock and rap music. Who grew up listening to it. Who know the artists and in some cases, have themselves played in rock bands, composed and performed raps. Those of us in our 50's and 60's are beginning to notice the roar and become fascinated by the possibilities. Or else we're retiring and leaving the decisions up to the younger generation. Inevitably, rock music and rap are going to enter the academy. As jazz did 40 years ago. Jazz studies programs are to be found in nearly every school of music in the world now. Can rock and rap be far behind?

Jazz studies programs focus on performance of jazz. Jazz is still not taught in general music methods classes in most schools of music other than perhaps how to create a unit on the blues or a general historical discussion/unit during Black History month. The main reason for this is that general music methods tend to be taught be former general music teachers. General music teachers, for the most part, are female and have a vocal/choral background. Maybe piano like I do. These individuals are far less likely to have played in a jazz ensemble or to have received jazz studies training in their college programs. They may be totally uncomfortable with improvisation of any kind other than perhaps body percussion or pentatonic improv using Orff barred instruments. Further, many general music methods teachers are classically-trained singers and genuinely opposed to children in their classes listening to the vocal techniques you'll hear prominently used by most rock singers: males singing in a very muscular way in the highest reaches of their range. Rap may be ok since it's mostly spoken but the dialect and language usage may be problematic in some cases and since general music methods teachers will most likely not be rap fans, they may not know of raps that ARE suited for the classroom and yet are still attractive to kids who love rap.

So the OUP rep was right. I'm putting myself way out on a limb here. I'm wondering if I need to refocus the book and NOT try to create a methods text. Yet: I teach general music methods. I wish there WERE such a text. I'd certainly have my students buy it and we'd use it. The way I intend to focus the book is on how you can create "bridges" to understanding all music through using rock music and rap as your foundation for learning. In other words, triple meter is triple meter. Whether it's in a song by Yes or in a Viennese waltz. I want the book to de-mystify rock music and rap for methods class teachers & their students. Can I achieve this goal???

Social Networking

This is not about rock music and rap although it is related to my increasing absorption in, and knowledge of, those musical genres. This is about social networking. Specifically, I want to write about my experiences with Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. I'm also a subscribed member of LinkedIn but I don't really use that site. Perhaps as the book nears completion and I am immersed in marketing and training connected to the book, I will use LinkedIn more as it is mainly a networking site for professionals. It has a totally different interface and "tone" in general, from any of the others.

I am first going to talk about Twitter. Tweets (the messages you send on Twitter) are short (max. 160 characters) statements that you make. At first you make them to cyberspace. It's rather like talking to yourself. No one is "following" you, unless you've been invited by a friend to join Twitter who already uses it. In that case, you;d start out with one "Follower". Then, you search for people and YOU check a box to follow THEM. I began by searching out rock musicians. In the beginning, I searched -- naturally -- for musicians that I knew about. In other words, famous ones. That's how I started following Slash and Steven Tyler and Joe Perry and Black Eyed Peas and Paul McCartney and a host of others. I began by Following about 100 rock musicians and rappers. When you choose to Follow someone, you see all of the tweets that they send. They, however, do NOT see yours unless they choose to Follow you back. You can try to contact them by typing an @ before their Twitter user name. Supposedly, that will show up on their "stream" of messages. They may or may not respond. Most famous people do NOT respond. Well, not to me anyway. Maybe they respond randomly to some messages. I've had NO luck whatsoever contacting ANY famous person that way. So a word to the wise: if you want to contact a celebrity who is on Twitter, you may wait a very long time for a response, if you EVER get one.

But my messages eventually drew responses from strangers, all of whom are rock musicians --not famous ones -- or rock music fans like me or rappers and MC's. And so I began, one at a time, to build a Twitter community. I now have nearly 600 twitter Followers and I Follow about 550. My community now includes rock musicians at varying levels or stages in their careers. Some have music available via iTunes and other internet Mp3 sites like Amazon. Some have not reached that point. Some are doing very well in their careers and are starting to tour as well as put out new albums and so on. I've got about 10 rappers in my Community who are doing very well indeed. Touring in the US and in Europe, putting out albums and so on. I continue to build my Community mostly because my name is now on a number of Twitter "Lists" and I've built my own Twitter List and registered it -- that means my name is now circulating quite widely on Twitter.

It has been simply the most amazing experience. I've met some genuinely wonderful friends on Twitter. Most of them are young men. Charming, friendly, very excited about their music, very encouraging to me of my text and my attitudes generally. I've also got a number for friends who read my Tweets because they enjoy my musical analyses of the music I'm learning about. These are not rock musicians but they love the music, as I do now, and they are excited to read about the inner workings of it. I also tweet back and forth with some music educators whom I've met on Twitter, one of whom has assembled an impressive Twitter community of K-12 music teachers. We share a lot of information back and forth.

In some ways, Twitter is the sounding board for my text. Since this will be the first text of its kind, it's important for me to understand how my perceptions of the music and the artists compare with those from musicians actually in the field. Twitter has helped me to formulate my ideas and test them out with experts in the various genres. A lot of people on Twitter send out links to their newest album or they send YouTube links showing them performing and even rehearsing. These are such valuable resources for my research that I can hardly begin to understand HOW valuable. They are living, breathing, cutting edge, real, and tremendously insightful and informative. Wow! I'm just starting to comprehend the vastness of knowledge we will all have at our fingertips in this increasingly streamlined digital age. I mean, one picture is worth a 1000 words? One 10-minute video of a band rehearsing a new rock composition is worth 10,000 words. At minimum.

I'm on Facebook too. I check in once a day or maybe twice. I find Facebook to be more about keeping up on news of friends and family. Some of my rock music contacts are on Facebook but I tend to just write comments now and then or just read what they write. It doesn't seem like the place to get into serious discussion for some reason. I've met a heavy metal fan, a woman, from Seattle and we've actually become friends. We e-mail each other once a week and just talk about life and Metallica (she's a lifelong, very devoted Metallica/metal music fan). But she loves all kinds of music and has seen and heard a lot of very good music indeed so we talk about that and her job as a surgical nurse --high stress, fast-paced -- and her hope to find a husband one day. She's in her mid-40's, never married. Beautiful person -- and very attractive -- one wonders why she cannot find a simply marvelous partner!

MySpace is something of a trip. I need to write a separate blog about that someday. I mostly lurk on MySpace because ALL of my friends on there are rock bands -- and most of them -- although increasingly, that is not the case -- are very famous. Green Day. Led Zeppelin. Motley Crue. Guns and Roses. The Grateful Dead. And so on. I mostly just read their postings about new albums, world tours, that kind of thing. It gives me a glimpse into their professional lives. However, I've also met a number (that is increasing) of young, not famous, musicians and bands on MySpace. Many of these have asked me to listen to their music and comment on it. I've been flattered by that but also reluctant to say a lot to some of them because I'm still a novice at these musical genres and in some cases, I really can't listen to their music. Screaming metal. I just cannot stand it. It actually HURTS my throat to listen to it. Their vocal cords will be in SHREDS -- and these are YOUNG men -- with a lot of years (hopefully) ahead of them in which they will need to have voices: voices to talk to people about their music, voices to whisper love messages, to chastise children, to shout for joy, to sing Happy Birthday to a beloved parent -- our voices are among our most important and cherished personal possessions. We're JUDGED by our voices! And they are RUINING theirs at such young ages. Ugh. I am opposed to it. But ... my perspective is unique as a singer myself of opera, and a person trained in bel canto singing techniques, and as a former voice teacher myself. So I just can't do it. Can't listen. I listened to one screaming metal band and sent a message suggesting the frontman should "be sure and take voice lessons from someone who can help protect his voice". They never responded. Probably think I'm a fusty dusty old curmudgeon. So be it. I'd be seriously remiss if I didn't send a warning.

My Changing (or Not) Tastes in Rock Music

This rock/rap research journey has taken so many twists and turns. For one thing, the music that captivated and enchanted me from the outset has remained captivating and enchanting, almost without exception. I feel confident that is because the music has genuine merit musically and not just emotionally. In fact, as I live with the music longer and listen to a song for the 50th time, I keep finding more and more excellence in it.

On the other hand, there is music that at first I found unattractive at worst, bland and uninteresting at best. One group whose music has really grown on me is that of Guns N' Roses. I've struggled mightily with the issue of GNR's music because I so dislike Axl Rose's whimsical and seemingly random vocal technique. He sounds fine and then he sounds dreadful: harsh, scratchy, squeezed and strained. But I've come to absolutely adore the music of Guns N' Roses, Axl's vocal vagaries norwithstanding. I think 50 years from now when music historians tell the story of classic hard rock, the ORIGINAL band Guns 'N Roses, will stand as one of the top, if not the top, bands in rock history. If so, it will be in SPITE of Axl's on-again off-again vocal performance. Because I find their musical compositions simply incredibly excellent from every standpoint. I'm citing many GNR songs in the text because so many musical concepts are embodied in them.

Another band that has grown on me is Radiohead. I cannot find enough superlatives to describe how simply magical their music is. They sound great and the songs/compositions are filled with all kinds of marvelous chord progressions, metric variety, textural innovations, and just plain beautiful sound. I think Paranoid Android is kind of like Beethoven's Eroica Symphony: a completely new approach to an art form that raises the bar for alternative rock very high indeed.

I've blogged about 30 Seconds to Mars before and I'll say it here: this is a game-changing band. Jared Leto is a Paul McCartney for our time. It may not be recognized now but I am certain it will be and soon. I was part of an effort to turn 30 Seconds To Mars into a major #trendingtopic on Twitter when This is War, their last -- epic -- album was released back in late Fall 2009. It was one of the most exciting efforts I've ever been part of! This is War is that kind of album that you just can't listen to one song: you must listen to it all the way through. It is really an opera or perhaps a choral cantata is a better comparison.

I started out with a total adoration of Aerosmith and U2. I have not forgotten my old loves. I'm the type that never forgets a lover, that remains friends with them after the passion has ended. I am fight phobic and so I and my lovers have always parted peacefully, by mutual agreement, at least on the surface. U2 is still my spiritual anchor in rock music; and Aerosmith will always be my first love. Like the boy I loved in junior high school. My first taste of woman's passion. Never forgot that, or him -- even though he's now balding and overweight and old like the rest of us! Hs! But grown up love is different from adolescent love. It carries with it all the pain and joy and passion and disillusion that maturity brings to us.

And in terms of my "grown up" love for rock music, Alice in Chains remains for me the most beautiful sounding rock band I've heard yet. Beautiful singing, gorgeous Debussy-impressionist harmonies, deeply emotional lyrics and performances. At the end of the day, when all is said and done, I return to Alice in Chains. They are the A section of my rock music listening rondo. They aren't for most people: I think grunge is an acquired taste. But my love for opera, for drama, for lush harmony, for beautiful vocals -- inform and direct my tastes.

Random Thoughts, Specific Purposes

The Oxford University Press music education text rep. visited with me for an hour. She is interested in the Rock/Rap text. Also in my course pack which I developed in 1995 and have used for all of my elementary general music methods courses, with adaptations and additions, every year since then. I was surprised she was interested in the Course Pack after all these years of my using it ... but that is in fact why she contacted me in the first place, not because of the Rock/Rap text.

So I told her about my rock/rap journey, waxing poetic as I tend to do, on the subject. She listened, asked a few questions, and looked at the mss. I have completed so far and then gave me a LOT of advice. Some of that advice was nuts and bolts: How many pages? Paperbound or hard bound? What about copyrights & reprint permissions? To whom is the book going to be targeted, in terms of market? Will there be an accompanying DVD or CD or both? Table of Contents? The sorts of details that any publisher needs to know in order to assess the potential costs & profits of a book.

Then, she asked me some much more difficult-to-answer questions.

Such as: what [about your text] will compel professors to require their students to BUY this text? It is a "supplementary" text -- I'm fully aware that methods courses teachers--and I'd be among those, I'm afraid--are not going to just drop all their accustomed repertoire and processes to use this book in place of what they use now. What's to prevent them ordering their complimentary desk copy -- and letting students borrow that single copy to use for lesson plan ideas for the unit they're doing on "including popular music in your teaching"?

Also: she told me "your passion for this music is driving the book right now. That has to change. The book must be centered upon, and driven by, issues of teaching and learning music; NOT on your personal journey of discovery of musical treasures and gems to be found in rock music and in rap".

I had a little taste of what she means in that last statement. Yesterday I did a workshop for my undergraduate music education students. The first lesson I took them through was the one where students are to compare how Schubert and Metallica treat the issue of children's fears of the night and of the dark in their respective compositions The Erlking (solo art song) and Enter Sandman (heavy metal rock). That lesson seemed successful; they liked it. One of the students asked me if I knew Iron Maiden's Fear of the Dark piece as well. I was grateful for his idea.

But the second lesson I took them through was comparing three different artists' renditions of the song Johnny B Goode. First of course, I played them the Chuck Berry original. They obviously responded very positively to that. The second version I played for them was a reggae version of Johnny B Goode by an artists named Peter Tosh. The students LOVED the reggae version! The third version I played was that of Judas Priest. Now: I LOVE the Judas Priest cover of Johnny B. Goode. But....my ears have become accustomed to the "screaming" vocal techniques of heavy metal singers, in this case, the brilliant voice of Rob Halford. But the voice majors in the room yesterday flinched at his first scream, covered their ears, asked me to turn it down and then suggested I turn it off after the first verse! They buzzed among themselves most energetically and I could see their reactions were largely negative.

I have to agree the voice major students: this style of singing is NOT a good model for children to hear in our music classrooms! I should have, on reflection, played the Grateful Dead cover -- which has close vocal harmony and some added instruments from the original version--and no screaming -- quite lyrical singing in fact. That was a rather dramatic example of my personal passions or tastes ruling over my pedagogical understanding -- and what I need to convey in this text to people who are becoming music educators. I'm sure that's what the rep intended by her charge.

As for what about the text will compel methods class teachers to require students to buy it: that is a far more perplexing and frankly, daunting, question. As the rep pointed out: this would be the first text of its kind. That means marketing it will need to be very focused and clever so that a niche market is created. I told her that all of the composition chapter will be written by living, working rock musicians. Quotes from rock and rap musicians will be throughout the book. The chapter on rap is being entirely written by working rap musicians. I'm merely an editor for them. I had hoped to be able to have some small contributions from people like Quincy Jones about Michael Jackson's music; or from rock composers who have achieved fame in their field. I tried contacting Steven Tyler for that purpose. To no avail. I will continue to work on contacting Cheap Trick who are down the road in Rockford IL.

It would be wonderful to contact any rock composers or rappers (I'm interested particularly in Mos Def and Common) who have become famous for their music and who would supply some kind of essay or quote or something more extensive for this text but I don't know how to do that and I've no idea if such a project would be of the slightest interest to them. The VH1 folks might be helpful as VH1 does a lot of PSA's on TV and has a rather extensive grants program for music education. That may be the route to follow. Meanwhile, I keep slogging on. I think if I had contributors who have achieved wide recognition the book could use that in marketing strategy.

The other part of the book that I think will be very valuable will be the Technology for the Classroom chapter written by my cousin Paul Geluso who is a well-regarded recording engineer in New York city and who teaches courses in studio recording at New York University. His mom and sister are both music educators so he understands that point of view as well as the professional studio environment and working with rock music as well as music from classical, jazz, and other genres.

Some of the childlike joy and passion have evaporated for me. Not that I have ceased to love the music or listening to it. But, as the Oxford U Press rep said: the time has come to change focus. And wear my "teacher trainer" hat. But as I told her "I always tell my students to teach the music about which they are most passionate because that joy, that enthusiasm, conveys itself to their students. Kids know when you are faking it. I was always very successful at teaching my kids in elementary and middle school about opera. They caught my passion for it, the wanted to share in my enthusiasm." I am hoping that sense of joy and commitment will shine through the pages of the book even though the focus of the book from MY point of view will have to be more down-to-earth and practical than I might prefer!

Penny Road Pub/Visiting a Rock Club

Saturday Feb. 13 I again stepped way outside my comfort zone and went to Penny Road Pub about 50 mins from here, in the NW suburbs of Chicago. I went to hear Days of the New, an Illinois band that plays an exotic blend of alternative rock, grunge, and world music. Travis Meeks, their leader and frontman, is a magical musician. The only way to describe his riveting, mesmerizing music, his gorgeous voice, the world percussion sounds. All couched in lush chordal progressions that are often modal and feature the slow hypnotic harmonic rhythms that you hear in Alice in Chains and other grunge bands. I love their music!

I was at the pub for 7 hours total. That's because Days did not start until 12:30 a.m. Some mixup with the sound check. Anyway, though I typically retire to bed no later than 11, I was not about to miss this. I bought my ticket way back in November and was determined to see them perform. So I spent the evening listening to about 8 other bands. In varying stages of development, musically and technically. Some classic hard rock bands, one band that easily and skillfully moves between alternative rock and jazz, one band that was spot-on terrific, one that was what I would call screaming metal -- had to leave the room -- my throat felt raw after about 5 minutes of the frontman's anguished, harsh screams. My opera singer ears just can't bear it although it is part of the genre, I know -- it's fine -- just not for me. And nor would I want children with their fragile, as-yet-undeveloped voices to adopt such a singing model. So I'm not including that style of metal in my textbook. Believe me, they'll discover it on their own if they are so inclined.

I heard 7 straight hours of rock music and out all that, only THREE songs that I know. An Alice in Chains cover by a band called A.D.D. (with a frontwoman singer, excellent!) and two Days of the New songs that I know because I listen to their music a lot. All the rest of the songs were unfamiliar. I think. When the volume is that loud, I cannot really hear chords and melodies and things -- just noise -- so it's possible that songs I do know were played and I didn't recognize them. Very possible.

The visit to Penny Road was extremely enlightening. If/when I go again, I'll hang out in the cellar. I like the young, somewhat raw groups and the ceiling is so low down there and the room small so they don't crank up the volume to ear-splitting levels. You can sit barely 5 feet away from the performers. I love that. I could watch the guitarists stepping on buttons to change the sound, I could see them adjusting the amps, I could hear them tuning up. So in a way, that's more valuable for my research purposes than going to Soldier Field and sitting in the nosebleed section along with 90,000 others, an entire football field's length and just about the same height away from U2 -- as I did in Sept. Of course, the U2 concert was a marvelous spectacle and I just love U2 -- love their music, their sound, Bono, The Edge -- all of it. I'm a U2 fanatic. But I think I would give 1 year of my life to hear/see U2 in that cellar at Penny Road Pub. Sitting 5 or 7 feet away from them. Listening to them talk to each other, talking to us, their audience. Looking them in the eye, hearing Bono's glorious voice with minimal amplification -- just a simple microphone -- watching The Edge adjust the controls so that he maintains his beautiful, subtle guitar sound. Perhaps if I visit Dublin some day.......

Going it Alone

My life's path has been a long series of detours. Some people's lives, most of the people I know in fact, go through fairly regular childhoods, grow up, get married, have kids, have a career, have ups and downs, sorrows, tragedies and great joys. Marriages, births, more marriages, graduations, family life, occasional deviations, grow old, start thinking of retirement, travel, estate planning, and so on. I'm the weirdest person in my acquaintance in terms of how really whacked up my life's pathway has been. Not one aspect of my existence has been "mainstream". I think if there were fairies present at my birth, standing around making wishes and predictions, they must have been drunk on strong liquor and said the type of things one says when one has had too much to drink and loses inhibitions and caution.

I was born to a woman who was an irresponsible teenager, she was quite out of control and I was the result of her date screwing her out behind the school at her high school senior prom one warm May night. In that time and place, if you got pregnant, you got married and she was no exception. That was a disaster. And she ran off when I was 2. A year later, I got committed to a TB sanitorium for four years as a result of a mistaken diagnosis (they thought I had TB of the hip-- and instead, I had a dislocated hip that they held immobile by a cast from my head to my feet so that it would never in my life have the proper muscle alignment). Four years in a sanitorium high on a mountaintop, isolated from the world so as not to spread infection. Mom remarried and came back during that time and when I got out of the hospital, I had a new stepfather and started living in a new family. I never really adjusted socially to public school and my physical handicap also made me different. Kids don't like "different". I think it's a good thing that special needs kids are educated with their non-disabled peers now. It's good for both sides. Non-disabled kids get used to the idea that we're not all physically and mentally and emotionally perfect.

So my life has never followed traditional lines. No marriage, no children. Professional singing career, conducting career. Worked for, and became close friends with, Leonard Bernstein. I loved living in New York. New York is a city that is FILLED to the BRIM with unconventional people. I felt more at home there. You could find a community of just about any type there.

Now in my approaching senior years, I've embarked on a journey of discovery and excitement, learning to know and love and understand rock music and rap. And once again, many aspects of this project I'm having to do alone. There is no such text in music education. This is good and bad. Good because I'm on the cutting edge of a new trend in music education (probably). Bad because I'm on the cutting edge of a new trend in music education (probably). Bad because the marketing strategy will have to be very clever and unusual. Because the wheels of academe grind exceedingly slow. Which is the understatement of the year. To get methods class teachers to buy this text will be a true miracle. Yet, if I don't write this book, I'll never have a happy day in my life again. If I write it and it gets published and flops, I'll never have a happy day in my life again. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.....and so on and so on.

The other lonely aspect of this is that there is virtually NO one in my circle of friends with whom I can share this music. Thank God for social networking like Twitter and MySpace. I'd be completely isolated and out on a limb. I'd probably, in fact, have given up on this by now. I certainly would not have met the rock musicians and rappers that I've met and who are going to be consulting authors -- and, it turns out, composers/performers for the text too. So I feel LESS lonely than I might feel.

I'm going to live rock concerts. I don't intend to do this for very long mainly because I don't have anyone to go with -- and I feel lonely going there with loud, celebrating crowds of YOUNG people (for the most part), just looking out of place. I don't always FEEL out of place. I find rock fans to be very social and friendly. At the U2 concert, I was talking to no less than 8 or 9 people sitting around me by the time the concert ended. Saturday night, I'm going to Penny Road Pub in Barrington, IL to hear Days of the New, a grunge/alternative band from here in Illinois whose music I LOVE to PIECES. I'll be alone there. I hope I can chat with people. I wish I could meet Travis, the frontman/leader of Days/New. He's autistic, however, and doesn't want to interact much with people. So I don't know if I'll get to meet him. Their music is like a lot of grunge: very lush harmony, slow harmonic rhythms, mixed or odd meters. His lyrics are not so uncompromisingly despairing and wretched as Alice in Chains's lyrics.

I guess my biggest disappointment is that I'm going to hear my beloved Alice in Chains on March 20 and although I bought 5 tickets, hoping to entice students to come with me, it turns out there is a big jazz & steel band concert at School that same night -- an unexpected addition to the concert calendar -- and so I may not have anyone to go with me. The show is sold out and there are no seats in that place (Aragon Ballroom). I cannot physically tolerate standing up for longer than about 30 minutes so I'm not sure how I will survive. I was going to sell all my tickets and not go. But.....I cannot miss this opportunity to see and hear them. I feel emotionally tied to them and I am vested in their success and want to support them. James Hetfield, in a Metallica documentary, said that he couldn't care less if people buy the CD's: he appreciates MORE that they take the time and trouble to come and see them perform live. I was quite surprised by that statement of James's and I thought of that when I found out the Aragon has no seats and I thought of not going.

So.....although I've met lovely rock musicians on Twitter and MySpace and I'm sort of an "angel" to the band at our university who is letting me observe their rehearsals and get involved generally in their music and their career, it still feels as though I keep walking this lonely road. It may be a loneliness of my own choice. That is always a possibility. But I cannot help it. I am so passionate about this project and this music. I must see it through to its conclusion, no matter at what personal emotional cost. Rock on! \.../

My Research, New Music Education Text

I teach music education at Northern Illinois University. It's my 10th year here. Taught at University of Vermont for 4 years before that. Got my doctorate in 1996 from Temple University in Philly. I'm an east coast native. Only been here near Chicago since 2000. My life's work has been music. I lived in Manhattan and sang opera professionally for 10 years in New York and I have taught vocal/general music grades K-12 for many years in addition to that. Worked for Leonard Bernstein and so on. Lots and lots of life experiences, most of them in music. I've sung with symphonies, conducted full scale opera productions, all kinds of interesting musical activities.

Never in my adult life have I been a "fan" of popular music, especially rock or rap. But last summer, when Michael Jackson died, I began a journey, an odyssey, of discovery and extreme joy that has been life-changing. I didn't know MJ"s music much -- Billie Jean and the Jackson 5 stuff. Not much else. Didn't follow his life or career at all. I'm very uncomfortable with screaming, hysterical crowds and have avoided them all my life. When it came on the news on June 25, 2009 that he had died at age 50, the news program I was watching showed a video called "Black or White" with the song. I'd never heard it. I went upstairs to my computer and downloaded the song from iTunes and that was the beginning. Spent 6 weeks listening to MJ's music and watching the videos, all of them. Hours and hours. Fell completely and irrrevocably in love with MJ's music, with his dancing, with his vision of the world. Found myself grieving his passing deeply. What could I do? I felt deeply compelled to DO something.

Serendipitously, I was teaching a summer grad course and we had a guest lecturer, Dr. Jere Humphries, who is one of the most well-known music education researchers in the world. He lectured to my class about how in music ed, we teach only DEAD music by DEAD composers. Something clicked in me. I decided to write the first ever music education methods text preparing music teachers to teach children music literacy and listening skills using rock and rap music--the music that they listen to and love. Almost without exception. The book will be called Beat It! After the MJ song and of course, with reference to 'beat' as an element of rhythm.

Of course, I needed to learn about rock and rap music. 40 years' worth. So I've downloaded 100's of tunes to my iTunes library. I listen 9 to 10 hours a DAY. I've read a number of books such as Slash, and bios of Jimmy Page and Aerosmith and Richard Barone and The Beatles and U2. I'm meeting living rock musicians and rappers on Twitter and Facebook, something I never in a million years thought I'd be doing.

I'm in awe of the sheer immensity of wonderful--beautiful--music I've found and keep on finding. I am shamed by the ignorance and intransigence of my academic peers who dismiss this music as being inconsequential. It is the symphony, the sonata allegro, the concerto grosso, the opera, of our era. And we have largely ignored it. I've become devoted to hard rock and heavy metal. And I guess, based on my ADORATION of Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam, grunge. WHO'D HAVE THOUGHT????????

I've delved deeply in rock culture because it is so much an integral part of the art form. The U2 360 degree tour concert in Chicago on Sept. 13 was the first rock concert I've ever attended. I also went to Mos Def's concert at House of Blues. Mos Def is a GENIUS! I am now a MEMBER of House of Blues in Chicago and go there regularly to concerts. I'm on FIRE with excitement and have started to write the book. With a little help from rock musicians I've met on Twitter who are going to write for me about the composition process and other things.

So if you have any comments to add, please do so! I want this text to be ALIVE and living and breathing and RELEVANT above all. I rely on the wonderfully insightful and skilled observations from rock and rap musicians. I'm merely the coordinator, the editor, if you will, channeling their words and ideas. \..../ Rock on!

Slash and Myles Kennedy

Slash announced on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, that Myles Kennedy, singer for the band Alter Bridge and others, will front his band on the 2010 tour that is part of promoting his new solo album. Wow! I COULDN'T be happier. I feel a proprietary interest in Slash's tour and his album. I believe he is under-appreciated in the extreme. Not in terms of fans--he has a gazillion of them -- they hang onto his every word and utterance on the social networking sites. Slash has only to write some very brief and mundane statement: "I'm going to the store to buy some milk" and he'll be answered or commented upon by hundreds of impassioned, really loving messages from fans and followers. I assume they are mostly young rock musicians and rock music fans -- the language and writing style that some of them use makes me think many of them are teens. Maybe even younger. It's touching. Young people long for role models, for people to love and fantasize about, and idolize. It's part of growing up. Both genders seem well-represented among his fans, at least judging from those that I take time to read.

I think Slash's wondrous guitar playing and his acute musicianship will bloom and shine and rise to unexpectedly sublime heights with Myles as his partner on stage. I hope and pray he hires a really good videographer to make a sort of documentary about it. When I read his autobiography, his pain and anguish at the debacle of Guns and Roses was plain to read. Not just in the "between the lines" sub-text, but also in the actual words and thoughts. As I read the book, my heart ached for him. I thought a lot about Mozart while I was reading "Slash". Mozart was prone to all kinds of personal weaknesses and above all, he was surrounded by people who did not for one moment understand the depth and power of his creative genius. He suffered a great deal from the cultural Philistines around him who could not understand what his music represented. It has in fact taken many many years for us, in this day and age, to appreciate the rare and exceptional musical mind that Mozart had.

A source of great pain to Mozart was how eager and excited he was just by the ACT of creating music and then seeing/hearing it performed; yet he had to deal with unscrupulous promoters, aristocrat audiences who had not even the slightest idea of what they were hearing -- that they were being presented with the most rare and precious jewels of music that they could not really appreciate at the time -- and performers whose egos were way out of proportion to their talents.

I think Slash's musical life has in many facets reflected some of the angst and struggle that beleaguered Mozart. I also believe that we have yet to fully see the remarkable range of talents, understandings, vision, and creative genius that Slash carries within himself. He has my blessings for sure. I can hardly wait to hear and see Slash perform live. I hope the tour comes within a reasonable distance from Chicago. I honor and treasure musical gifts of genius, be it in rock music, opera, jazz or hip hop/rap. I am eager to transmit that thought in my music education text.

Observing a Rock Band Rehearsing

Legend Haz It, an alternative/hip hop/jazz fusion band, consists of 7 young men. Most of them--Dan and Colin, drummer and keyboardist respectively; and all but one of the other instrumentalists are jazz studies majors at Northern Illinois University, where I teach music education. The MC/frontman, Keith, is also an undergraduate student at NIU. They have been together a few years. I believe Colin is fairly new--he's a sophomore at NIU. Dan and Keith met as Freshmen in the dorms at NIU and the idea for the band was something they cooked up together.

Dan is the "go-to" person (drummer). He's an amazing musician, I can tell that from what little exposure I've had to him. Keith, the MC/frontman, is simply a shining light of a person. On stage, he is dynamite. Off stage, he is modest, funny, energized, respectful and enormously musically apt. Colin, the keyboardist, is simply a miracle. Hears a song ONCE and starts playing and playing WELL. Of course, the Beatles and most other rock musicians started their craft at young ages. I'm sure age has a lot to do with it because in the teen years, boys, especially, are quite willing to take risks. In fact, risk-taking in all forms is a common element to teenagers and you have to be willing to take risks to play in a band with no music, no instructor, no conductor, perhaps precious little training...just an ear and a lot of nerve/guts and determination. That reckless abandon never comes back in life to most of us. We get more and more cautious and aware of our shortcomings and where we stand in the world as we age. That knowledge puts a damper on a lot of experimentation and doing things wrong until we can get it right. I would guess that rock musicians in their teens do a LOT of trial and error. I could be wrong.....

The Legend Haz It guys are FUN; sweet and outgoing and respectful. I just want to hug them ALL! I think if I ever had a son, I'd want him to be like any of those guys. They are articulate; eager to share their knowledge and they didn't seem to resent my asking questions or making little suggestions. I offered them my iPod to download a few tracks I had that they didn't know, and they were appreciative.

They certainly do not fit the "sex, drugs, and rock and roll" image of rock musicians. Keith is obviously a deeply faithful individual. His smile is so innocent, considering his urban upbringing and the things he's probably witnessed in his young life; Dan and the others are more the type that eat organic food and campaign for alternative energy than druggies or even consumers of alcohol. I was in the room with them for over 2 hours yesterday and not ONCE did I hear the F word, or anything like it. What I heard was things like: yeah, like.....that is so COOL! or "Hey homi! Do that again, man. I LIKE it!" My being there might have put the brakes on .... but given their rather serious and respectful manner generally, somehow I don't think that's entirely the situation.

What's amazing for me, a choral conductor and "acoustic" classical musician, generally, is that they don't talk among themselves about the music they're playing AT ALL. No one says "Key of G" or anything about what key they're going to play in. They just start playing and ... they all start playing in the same key. And we're talking transposing (brass) instruments here! I'm blown away. Never have I been in a music group that didn't discuss what key we're going to sing in or play in. Of course, they may have worked all this out beforehand but I know in at least TWO of the cases (they were learning covers), they played the track right then and there for the first time, while I was in the room. True, they knew the songs from prior listening; most of them were singing along with the recordings -- but they'd NEVER played it as a band before. Totally awesome. It's like "bush telegraph" or something. Or maybe someone lifted an eyebrow signaling concert "Ab"? Yikes.

For each song, they first got the groove going, keyboardist and drummer taking the lead. The bass guitar came in next. Keyboardist would sometimes say a word or to to the bass player as they started out. (Key maybe??) Brass instruments chimed in with accents and took solos later on. After a few measures, the band sort of "settled" into a pocket (got that term from my drum set instructor). Once that happened, they took off into the main chorus and went on into the improvisations and solos -- they are jazz musicians by training and experience so they know when to start and end solos -- part of the jazz craft. They played the first chorus and bridge and some solos and then stopped -- and mumbled something I couldn't hear, but the gist of it was "back to first chorus".....they would then break off playing that song and go on to a new track/song. They learned 3 new covers in the time I was there. Efficient and effective rehearsal technique. Little time wasted in information not needed. They signaled each other by looks from time to time and sometimes I'd hear the keyboardist shout over the music to the brass players sitting opposite. He's just say a word or two like "here! go!" But very little, really.

There were passages that didn't go so well. Particularly the brass players were stumbling around a bit. As soon as they'd break off playing a song, the two of them would work together on what I would call riffs -- working out problems they had during the song. No one yelled at them though or corrected them even. I think everyone knew that given a little time, they are all good enough musicians to work out the problems for themselves. Very democratic! And respectful. And running through all of the rehearsal a thread of laughter and joyfulness. They LOVE making music together. Their faces just light up when they hear the new song on the CD. Brass players started practicing fingerings right away as did the bass guitar player. Not making sounds, just listening to the CD and fingering where they think the pitches are.

Can we make use of that way of learning new music in schools??? Wouldn't kids LOVE that instead of always DRILLING pitches and rhythms??? Why not put our bands and orchestras into chamber size groups and let them figure it out on their own???? The teacher can move around among groups answering questions. But let the kids figure it out for themselves. I'm SO EXCITED by this idea!!!!!!!!! Revolutionize music education!

I didn't ask a lot of questions. I felt as though I wanted to just let them do their thing, make notes, and talk later. But Dan kept coming over to me and explaining things, without being asked. He's just wonderful and he and Colin are so delighted that a music faculty person is taking serious interest in their work. Lucky band who gets Dan for their drummer, is all I can say. Of course, maybe Legend Haz It will remain that band. I don't know what they envision for the long term. I will ask Dan how they know what key to play in. I mean, they match key on the recording too. Maybe there's a key that rock musicians like to use a lot?

Keith explained to me what an MC is, as opposed to a "rapper" only. I didn't know the terms. He is very critical of himself and says "I'm struggling to become an MC". I told him that his performance of Legend Has It (their theme song) had my heart RACING and I was ready to jump up and pump my hand up and down and the whole scene! He laughed and kind of did an "Aww shucks" little shuffle with his feet, and then danced across the room in a kind of joy. He's mesmerizing onstage.

I will talk with Keith -- he's eager to talk -- about rapping and his craft and how he works on new material and so on. I'm going to try and get an interview with Dan and Keith and maybe the others too taped and maybe I'll submit it to WTTV (PBS) or some other radio or TV station -- I'd like to get them some publicity as a way of showing my appreciation for the ways they are helping me out with this text project. They are so GOOD too; I want to help them in any way I can! More later.

P.S. Dan Pratt filled me in with some information after he read the above blog posting. He explained that as they are all jazz majors, they must take jazz music theory (from Prof. Art Davis) and Art has them listen to chord progressions and identify them -- their actual pitches and keys--by ear. They develop what amounts to perfect pitch and they can instantly hear altered chords, 9ths, 11ths, flatted 5ths and so on and so on. As jazz musicians, chords and chord progressions are their stock in trade. So that's part of their training. I doubt whether most rock musicians, at first anyway, will have had that kind of intense aural skills training.

I'm invited to sit in on their rehearsals this semester. I'll get a very good idea of how they function, learn new songs, rehearse and perfect songs they know and so on. I could not have a BETTER opportunity as far as my research is concerned. These men are right here, in my school and we are becoming friends, in spite of our age differences. Their lightheartedness and friendliness match my outgoing personality perfectly! It's just what I hoped would happen! Now if I could only work with a classic hard rock band such as Cheap Trick (right up the road in Rockford, IL) I'd have everything I could possibly want in the way of resources for this text!

Teaching Music with Rock and Rap

The first phase of my textbook research has pretty much gone as far as it needs to go. I may add songs, I may delete others and I will undoubtedly continue to discover more rock and rap songs that are either recommended to me by others, or that I encounter from the wide variety of sources that exists. I'm going to watch the Grammy's this year, something I've never done, and will prepare for that by making sure I've heard all of the nominated songs at least once so I have some context for what I'll observe about who/what gets awards and who has been nominated and so on. Otherwise, awards shows are just glitzy collections of famous or not-so-famous musicians or actors, gathered together dressed to the nines, to see and be seen for the TV cameras and public. With some kind of hyped up modern day Ed Sullivan show to break the monotony of people reading all those little 3x5 cards "And the winner(s) is/are...." Someone needs to come up with a new and more exciting format. How about a living roulette wheel or something? Sometimes it SEEMS like a roulette game.

Back to my text. I am now examining the songs I've chosen for the text more closely and developing ideas for instruction in a general music class (K-8). It's interesting because some songs I've chosen originally for one purpose are turning out to be better suited for another purpose. Example: I thought Michael Jackson's Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough would be a good example of the tritone interval. And of course, it is. But: why would we want to teach the tritone interval in a general music class? High school AP theory, yes. But we don't generally teach aural recognition of intervals in general music class. So I thought: maybe I need to discard this song. Then as I listened to it again, I noticed something else about the song. It is a marvelous and very clear example of polyphonic compositional technique with layered rhythms and so on. That brought me to another idea. What about a series of lessons on texture in music -- homophonic (chords supporting a melody or perhaps a melody harmonized with block chords like the Beach Boys or The Eagles did) or polyphonic (independent melodic lines that create linearly conceived harmony, in contrast with chords that are vertically conceived sonorities). MJ wrote polyphonic music almost exclusively. The Eagles are perfect examples of homophonic texture. Early rock and roll is almost entirely homophonic texture; alternative rock is predominantly polyphonic but switches back and forth a lot.

So at this stage, I'm focusing on the 30 or so rock songs I've selected for the purpose of teaching musical elements. Rap will be in its own chapter with its own history/timeline and essays by rappers on composition, sampling beats, and so on. I may include some information about the fusion of rock and rap in groups such as the Black Eyed Peas and many others. The group from my university (and from Columbia College in Chicago) called Legend Haz It is hip hop fused with alternative rock and jazz. Strong elements of jazz. But with a clearly rock beat and a lead guitar, etc. Somehow they make it work! They've invited me to sit in on their rehearsals (they write their own material) and I'm very excited and happy about that. It doesn't necessitate my traveling anywhere except to campus which is less than 2 miles from my house. And I know the guys quite well although they are not music education majors. But they know I'm a professor here and they are very pleased at my intense interest in them and in their music which I think is AWESOME. So I'm no threat to them and they've agreed to answer questions (at an appropriate time -- I don't want to interrupt their rehearsing. I told them I'd like to be a fly on the wall. They laughed and said it would be great if I were to come and sit in.)

So the materials for the text are pouring in like foods out of a cornucopia. It's very very exciting and the most gratifying project I've EVER undertaken.

Just My Point of View

I was reading some biographical information about Alice in Chains yesterday on the internet. I'd not read much about them apart from some background information on the album cover of their 2009 recording Black Gives Way to Blue. I knew that the album's songs were, almost without exception, written as various ways to honor, respect, and mostly, mourn, the death of Layne Staley who was a co-founder of the band and was its frontman and principal songwriter. Little was said in the album liner notes about Layne Staley beyond that he died in 2002 and that the band nearly disbanded as a result, and then resurrected itself under the leadership of Jerry Cantrell, Staley's co-founder and the lead guitarist and backup vocalist in the original band.

I've made no secret of the fact that I love Alice in Chains's sound, their style, their vocals, their songs, their texts (dark as they are) and their extraordinary ensemble, unity of affect. This is obviously a personal reaction and while I consider that my opinions about rock music are as valid as anyone's, I freely admit that there are groups and songs that appeal to me for what possibly are non-musical reasons.

Music preference is a much-studied phenomenon in the field of psychology of personality. My own doctoral dissertation dealt with music preferences (choral music) among 6th and 8th graders. In my study, I found that boys may have different musical preferences from girls; at least, at that age. My study in fact found very significant differences in musical preference according to gender. Mine is one of the few studies that did find such significance. The results of my study may partly be accounted for by the fact that I was studying their preferences for "standard" repertoire choral music as contrasted with their liking (or not) for a piece from the 13th century that was highly idiomatic and rather primitive and raw compared with the others. The girls greatly preferred the choral music that was traditional; the boys were significantly more likely to prefer the 13th century piece.

I had to find other studies to corroborate my own findings and the only one I found that focused on preferences according to gender was done in the early 1980's with male and female college students. That study found that women were more likely to prefer pop and R&B/soul. Men were more likely to prefer hard rock and heavy metal. The study was done in the 80's before alternative rock became known; or before rap became a global musical genre. Also of course, as the subjects were all college students in the 80's, there weren't many minorities represented who might have preferred other genres such as rap or funk or Motown/soul. The author of that study and I both concluded that music preferences are different according to gender although there are exceptions to the rule of course. I could only find information that might explain this in the field of psychology where studies have shown that males are far more likely to take risks, to search out the different, the individualistic, the non-mainstream in the arts as well as in other areas of life. That we, in our culture, encourage boys to be individualistic and adventuresome; girls on the other hand are enculturated to be in groups and to conform, to maintain the peace or the status quo generally.

Psychology aside, the fact remains that people have musical preferences. I'm no different. So my blogs and my comments on Twitter and on MySpace are colored by the lens through which I form my own musical preferences. If the results of the foregoing study can be believed, I'm one of a minority among women whose popular music preferences tend to correspond more closely with those of my male peers than with my female peers. I like some mainstream pop and R&B but now I find I much prefer rock: the harder and more metal, the better.

My close friends, those who do not love classical music best, love folk music. Not indigenous ethnic folk music, but music by Peter, Paul and Mary or Bob Dylan (although he's arguably not a folk artist), or the Kingston Trio or Pete Seeger or the Weavers. In my case, being closely associated with the women's community, most of my friends love women's music. Holly Near and Cris Williamson etc. I actually actively dislike folk music of this type with the exception of a few individual songs. For me, this music is close in sound and affect to country western music and I find it boring or annoying in the extreme. Give me a hard rock or heavy metal band ANY day. Or else give me jazz or classical music. I try to be tolerant. It's hard at times. My friends just get OFF on that folk music. Or women's music. Whatever you call it.

Getting back to Alice in Chains: what IS it about them that sets me on FIRE?? I can give all the usual musical reasons and somehow they don't answer the question adequately. Other groups have a wonderful sound, great harmonies, use odd meters, feature good vocalists who sing in harmony and so on the list grows. Of course, Alice in Chains are a total "package" and include all of those features. But so does Pearl Jam. STYX. And Yes. But THEIR songs do not reach my innermost soul the way Alice in Chains's music does. Metallica comes close with a few of their songs. But I find Metallica's songs almost self-consciously perfect examples of the genre. For all its power and drama and vibrancy, their music is neat and tidy. Theatrical in a classic way.

Alice in Chains's music on the other hand is not neat and tidy. There is an emotional vulnerability and rawness; a refusal or an inability--to "suck it up and deal"-- about Alice in Chains's music that prevents them from being neat and tidy. Oh, they are a perfectly timed and united ensemble; yet their music is not spare and clean in the mold of Metallica. Metallica's music roars in a rather polite, even stylized. way. Nothing about Alice in Chains is stylized. Maybe that's where the term grunge comes from?

If bands were photographs, Alice in Chains would be black and white photos. Not retouched or airbrushed. All of the warts and blemishes and wrinkles plain to see. No vivid colors. Just shadows. There is nothing grand opera about Alice in Chains. No; they are more like Wozzeck or Lulu perhaps. Music that is more like outward manifestations of silent screams from a tortured soul, backed by men who are totally dedicated to giving voice to this inner rawness, this terrible demon that was slowly sapping the life out of Layne Staley. His beautiful voice cuts right through to the core of my being. Strangely enough, Jerry Cantrell, successor to Layne's frontman position, has captured the essence of that inner anguish albeit with a more tenderly vulnerable tone. He is backed by Will DuVall whose pure and shining voice lends an ethereal sense of beauty to their album/requiem.

I know of Kurt Cobain's tragic death and I know other rock stars have died young from drug abuse or other reasons, including murder in at least one case. Yet none of them have captured the personal essence of suffering and slow mental deterioration in quite the same way as Alice in Chains.

As with most people, my own life has had its share of suffering. A lot of that suffering has been repressed or suppressed, whichever term you care to use. I learned at an early age that no one really cares about your sufferings beyond a few sympathetic words or a pat on the shoulder -- very few do at any rate. So I paid two therapists to care. My time with them was money well spent. But at the time, I was focused on one aspect of my life and in retrospect, I stopped working with them too soon. I should have continued until I dug right down to the root causes of my issues.

But it's happening now. I AM digging down. And what's doing it is the rock music. Particularly grunge and heavy metal. Music has been the main avenue through which I've traveled to build my self-image, my self-esteem. Music has always, since early childhood, been the one area of life that has given me more than I gave in return. My life's work has been in music. All my passion, my love, my joy has happened in connection with music in some way or another.

Unlike women who marry and have a family, I never married--to my great sorrow. Nor did I have children. My career has taken the place of a family. I never intended for that to be the case. As a young woman, I dreamed of a husband and children. Like all women. But it was not in the cards. For a woman, and maybe for a man too, this is one of life's goals: to mate and procreate. To be thwarted on both counts, for a woman especially, is to feel like a failure on many fronts. So I am quietly grieving these past few months. Paradoxically, I'm also happier than I have been for a long time partly because I feel ALIVE in a way I haven't felt in many years. Sad feelings are better than numbness.

My personal griefs find release and affirmation in the music of Alice in Chains. I cannot equate my suffering with Layne Staley's. For many reasons. But the music that is borne out of his suffering allows me to take my own griefs out and examine them and hopefully, ultimately, to find closure and resolution in a way that Layne was unable to do. He was unable because his addiction to heroin and cocaine turned his sorrow and suffering into fear and paranoia so intense he would not allow anyone to visit him in his last weeks when he locked himself in his apartment and waited for death to release him from an existence that had become intolerable. I thank God/dess that I am not addicted to substances nor to alcohol. I know such addictions are horrific and very painful. I grieve for people who get caught in such horrific traps.

My fondest dream is to somehow tell Jerry Cantrell all of this. He's a "friend" on Facebook and on MySpace and I follow him on Twitter. I don't want to intrude on his life. But I wish he could know how deeply I love his music and how much I admire him for stepping way outside his own comfort zone into Layne's footsteps as the frontman of his band, for putting out this album that cost the 4 of them great emotional pain even though it was apparently also cathartic. Of course, I have read that Jerry was in high school choir all four years of high school and was president in his senior year, so I'm probably pre-disposed to admire a product of public school music education that has made such an impression on the music world and on the insignificant life of this very devoted music lover and Alice in Chains fan.

Acoustic vs Electric Guitars in Rock Music

I'm listening to a band called Drift Effect today and this is a continuation of listening to them all last evening. I've a personal perspective on them as a result of my Twitter relationship with one of the lead guitarists (i say "one of" because apparently they switch roles from time to time). One of DE's albums to which I've been listening is acoustic. I've listened to a lot of those tracks last night and this morning. In addition, I've noted that Alice in Chains also has acoustic albums such as the MTV Unplugged one.

The fact that rock musicians record acoustic as well as electric music has been a revelation to me. I've always associated the term "rock" with electric guitars, period. Starting with Les Paul in the 1950's, it seems to me that the essence of what makes music "rock" is in the prevalence of electric guitars. Electric guitars provide the bass line; they create the harmonies; and they provide the virtuosic improvisation and countermelodies that enhance and ornament the vocal lines. One might say electric guitars "frame" the music in rock music.

The electric guitar is capable of just about every kind of sound production you could wish, thanks to advanced technologies. It can sound like a violin or a tuba or a flute, a pipe organ turned up to the full on winds or strings stops; or a human scream or a wolf's howl or even a bear's menacing growl. Jack White makes guitar sounds that resemble nothing I can even label. Unearthly sounds that cause the hairs to stand up on the back of your neck.

Nonetheless, especially in rock music of the 80's, 90's and 00's, it seems to have become quite common for rock musicians who consider themselves as indie, alternative, progrock, to produce entire albums of acoustic guitar-supported vocal music. In many ways, it seems like a retro idea -- back to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young or The Eagles or Paul Simon or even some of Led Zeppelin's days -- when acoustic guitars were ubiquitous in rock/popular music.

This is not to say that electric guitars have disappeared. By no means. But it is almost as if musicians feel the need to get in touch with their roots, so to speak. Or perhaps there is an even more mundane rationale. In live performance, especially, acoustic performances in smaller clubs and venues, artists may find that playing acoustic guitars that are simply amplified via a microphone setup yields a more satisfactory sound with less equipment and fuss. Such an arrangement obviates th need for lengthy sound checks with technicians running hither and yon creating elaborate setups such as one sees in stadium performances (like the U2 stadium production I saw last Fall in Chicago).

My personal impression when I watched a YouTube video of Nirvana playing all acoustic music was that the performance seemed more "human" than others I've seen of theirs. I could really HEAR Kurt's voice. I could hear the emotion and inflection in his voice very clearly because the acoustic guitars seem to be more generous and "giving" and sharing than electric ones. Especially since he was accompanying himself much like a folk singer would, his guitar playing supported his singing without seeming to impinge on it. He could have been singing totally unaccompanied at times. One's focus was entirely on him -- the song, the lyrics -- the angst in his voice and his face.

I would have to hear/see Kurt/Nirvana perform the same songs with a standard electric guitar ensemble and then in the acoustic format to be able to really compare the two results but I think I'd find a real difference in the affect of the song based on whether it was done with acoustic or electric guitars. I must hasten to say that I find electric guitars exciting and beautiful. Much more range of sound and emotion possibilities with electrics because they can create so many kinds of sound canvasses. But the simplicity and emotion of the acoustic version of a song makes its own kind of magic.

I guess all this is by way of saying that the reason I love alternative and progrock genres is because they encompass such a vast, wide range of possibilities. The musical styles range from symphonic, highly complex forms, to grunge and heavy metal for excitement and passion, to emotional and sweet and very personal acoustic expression. I'm delighted to see the rise of interest in acoustic music because I think it signals an increasing level of listening sophistication in our culture. People want to get CLOSE up and personal to the music and do not always need a wall of sound to keep them stimulated and interested. Although the wall of sound will remain a much loved musical style for many years to come among segments of the population, I'm sure.

I'm going to start electric guitar instruction this semester. I play acoustic/folk guitar. Not very well. I probably know about 10 chords altogether and I can pick out riffs I know. I can read simple tablature. As a new music teacher when I was young, I accompanied all my classes on guitar. Beatles and CCR songs. Cat Stevens and James Taylor songs. My students loved it and pedagogically, it's far better to play guitar for elementary music classes because the instrument is soft enough not to cover their child voices while yet also providing a harmonic framework. I'm assuming electric guitar is going to require a different set of skills. Our guitar professor, Fareed Haque, who is quite famous for his own playing in his band Garaj Mahal -- will also help me with understanding the different models of guitar, amps, and other fine points.

For purposes of the text, I don't need to go into lengthy detail but I want music teachers to have a basic understanding of the guitar, both acoustic and electric, for the classroom setting. Fareed is going to write that part of the book. I'm SO excited that he will do this. Having his name on the list of contributing authors will make a huge difference in the marketing of the text.

Close

My Conversation (Imaginary of course) with Slash

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS FICTION, READERS!

I received a phone call this past weekend. I was at home working on a power point presentation for my class on Tuesday, earphones on as usual, listening to iTunes. A male voice said rather hesitantly "Hello? Uh....I'm....trying to reach ......Glenda Co...co...senza?" When I heard the man struggle with pronouncing my name, I was certain it was a telemarketing call or the Democratic Party calling me to ask for another contribution. So my voice had more than a touch of irritation in it as I said "This is she; who's calling?" There was a split second of silence and the voice said "Uh...this is Slash Hudson." I immediately thought of my friend Mark who loves to tease me about my obsession with rock music and rock musicians. "Mark! Is this you?" I asked laughingly. "No" said the voice. "This is not Mark. This is Slash Hudson." Total silence for several seconds as I absorbed the possibility that this was real. "Hello?" the voice asked. "Are you there?" "Slash!" I exclaimed. Excitement crept into my voice and I could feel my face stretching into a wide grin, a flush beginning to redden my neck and face. "How the HELL did you know my phone number....?" I spluttered. He laughed a little and said he had looked me up on the Northern Illinois University School of Music website. He'd apparently called them on Friday afternoon and told them he was a rock musician trying to get in touch with me about my research so they gave out my home phone. Everyone knows about my research. I talk about it wherever and whenever.

Slash told me he'd been referred to my blogs by a rock musician friend. He was curious about some of the things I'd said in the blogs and felt talking in person would be better than trying to communicate by e-mail. He was flying to Chicago on a Sunday afternoon, spending the next day meeting with various people and hearing a couple of musicians that were possibly going to be performing with him on his tour, and would fly back to LA Monday night. I excitedly agreed to meet wherever, whenever. I'd stand around on the tarmac at O'Hare if he wanted that.

We agreed to meet at Ruth's Chris Steak House at 6 p.m. I knew him immediately although he wasn't of course "in costume" -- he was wearing a heavy sheepskin coat and hat, jeans, boots. Hair tied back. Sunglasses. We shook hands warmly. I was shaking with nervous excitement but he quickly put me at ease with a casual, friendly, and even slightly diffident or shy manner. The hostess seated us in a booth at the rear of the second floor dining room where it was fairly quiet. I had obtained permission from Slash to record his answers to my questions so I set my BlackBerry out on the table between us and we began to talk.

I won't bother with the details of the small talk we started out with. He asked me about my life as a university professor of music education; I asked him about the new album and plans for the tour and about his family. The waitress took orders. Slash and I discussed our experiences with Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. We segued into the topic of my research since my main reason for getting started at all in social networking was to help with my research. I began to record our conversation.

S: So, what is this book you're writing?

G: We want music teachers to use rock and rap music in their teaching. To use the music that their students love in order to teach them about musical concepts. Familiar to unfamiliar. Right?

But we don't train music teachers in the music of rock or rap. History or guitar or technology or drum set. Most of the students come in knowing rock music by certain bands or groups but they don't have a concept of the broadness, the variety of the music nor do they necessarily understand how to connect rock music and what is there in the music to other musical genres like jazz and classical and world music. So this is going to be the first textbook in music teacher education that will try to fill that need.

S: Cool!

G: I've had to learn about rock and rap from the ground up, you know? I'm a former opera singer and a pianist. a choral conductor. I have not listened to rock and heaven knows, I had not listened to rap at all. I've been listening every day for 9 to 10 hours a day, trying to catch up with 40 years of ignoring all this music. This WONDERFUL music.

S: (his face slowly breaks out in a wide smile) And....you LIKE it!!!

G: Yes....No. Like is too mild a word. I LOVE it. I feel DEPRIVED that I've only discovered it all now.

S: Better late than never they say.

G: Well yes. But I could have been enjoying it all these years and I'd feel much more competent writing this text. Through Twitter and MySpace, I've met rock musicians whom I've asked to contribute their thoughts and ideas and knowledge because THEY are the experts. There are four bands who have offered to write original rock pieces for the text, representing classic blues-based rock, alternative rock, rock fusion with hip hop, and heavy metal. I'm SO excited about meeting these guys! All talented and EXCITED to be sharing their knowledge and experience for this text.

S: (smiling broadly and then chuckling) I like your attitude! I had a good theory teacher when I was in high school. Don't have much formal music training beyond that.

[We talk here about his autobiography and the profound effect reading the book has had on me, personally]

S: What would you want me to write about?

G: Wow! Where to start? I guess.....can I tell you WHY you are perhaps my favorite lead guitar player -- not that I've heard them all, you realize? That might give you an idea of what to say.

S: Of course. Say on! Always glad to hear nice things about my music.

G: OK here goes.

You'll agree with me I'm sure that there are thousands of guitar players who play technically well--even brilliantly. There are guitar VIRTUOSOS on every continent by now, I imagine. (Slash was nodding at this).

But I've learned that to play rock guitar requires a far more complex set of skills and talents than I would EVER have thought before I began this research. There is, for one thing, the question of amps. Until I read your book, I had NO idea that the amp you use had any bearing on the sound result whatsoever. I didn't even know that strings matter that much or the guitar itself, its shape and configuration. I mean, I know those things matter with classical or acoustic guitars. Of course. But I didn't know that they are also crucial elements with electric guitars. Ignorance of course on my part. But I daresay 90% of the population are like me. Certainly I know most of my music education colleagues at other institutions do not for the most part know any of this.

By now I've listened to at least 50 rock guitarists. And while it's true I only began listening with focus and attention to rock music 6 months ago, we're talking hundreds of hours of listening over that time. AND: I've heard so MUCH music in my lifetime. I worked for Carnegie Hall Corporation in the early 80's. One of the perks of working there was that we could go -- free -- to any concerts. I saw & heard some of the best symphony orchestras in the world. Not to mention all the operas my voice teacher gave me free tickets to -- the Metropolitan Opera, front row. And I worked 3 years for Leonard Bernstein and during that time, heard TONS of great theatre, jazz, and classical music the world's great artists. I'm telling you this not because I want to brag but to assure you that my ears are well accustomed to hearing music of all sorts and by perfomers whose skills range from school kids all the way up to the world's finest. I think my opinions are valuable and valid.

S: Yeah! I'd say they are.

G: So here's what I think of YOUR guitar playing. It's technically fine. But there are undoubtedly guitarists in the world who can play technically up to your level; maybe beyond it, I don't know. But I've listened to your music a lot. And your guitar playing is different from any other that I've heard. I'm going to use a metaphor. Compare a painting by Van Gogh with a Japanese painting by a Japanese master artist. You'll see that Van Gogh's artwork is dramatic, forceful. Vivid colors; swirling patterns; brushstrokes so broad they are almost crude. Van Gogh's paintings make you want to look at them and you feel the excitement the turmoil of the artist and of his worldview. Van Gogh's paintings are centered on the artist. On Van Gogh himself.

The Japanese paintings on the other hand are painted with brushstrokes so fine and delicate yet so strong and confident that you are drawn INTO the painting. Into the scene there. You long to be in that place. You lose yourself in a Japanese painting because the delicate power of the images and brushstrokes inspire, excite, stimulate but also whisper "come in; I won't hurt you; you will find joy and peace and inner strength here". And the Japanese painting does not focus on the artist; rather the artist has served the beauty and power of the image created.

Slash, your music is like that Japanese painting. There is a fine-ness about your playing. You have a touch that is truly remarkable. It can be so sweet and expressive yet never weak or passive. Your music invites us, the listeners, caresses our ears and embraces, cradles our hearts. Your performance does not draw attention to YOU the player. Rather, you invite us into a beautiful little world you create with your music. Always, I feel that you serve the music, the musical texture, the music-making of your bandmates. You serve but you lead. I think your music-making reflects a deep sense of compassion and tenderness in your soul, your innermost being.

I wonder if it's hard for you at times because I'm sure other musicians, lacking your sensitivity and finesse, can easily trample on your finer instincts and perhaps even try to bring them down.

[There is a moment of silence. Slash is staring at me, we've both stopped eating and drinking during this last monologue of mine.]

S: You are making these judgments from LISTENING? You've not seen or heard me perform live even?

G: Yes. Well, you know, I've adjudicated many choral groups by listening to them on tape. You start to perceive a kind of "sub-text" if you will. You start to understand a musical performance's 'affect' or aesthetic merely from the aural image -- from listening only.

S: Hmm, yeah. (he is looking bewildered)

[more silence]

G; Well, so, having heard all that. Would you write about playing music, playing guitar to provide some insight into what goes through your mind when you are creating music or performing it?

S: (thinking, silent) Hmm....uh.....yeah....but.....can I think about this? Umm...I can send you something in writing. Maybe by e-mail. Give me your private e-mail address and I promise I'll send something. [I write it down on one of my business cards]

G: I could say more about your performances but I know I talk too much!

S: No, no. Not at ALL, Glenda. Really. I'm fascinated. Flattered too. But I'm not good at quick thinking about anything as important as this.

G: I'm glad you are on Twitter. Messages about your every day life. It gives a nice idea of what the life of a famous rock star is like, behind the scenes. I enjoy reading them.

S: Maybe I'll start following you and we can stay in touch that way. [looking at his watch] Meanwhile: I'm meeting an old friend of mine at 8:30 so I have to get going.

G: Thank you, Slash! You'll never know how appreciative I am of you contacting me and for the lovely dinner.

S: Even though you're not a red meat person, eh?

I drove home in a fog of delight, remembering every word. My 15 minutes (or actually 2 hours) of ....well not fame ... but close. I'm waiting excitedly for his essay. He's sent me an e-mail telling me he'll be sending it soon. He's very busy getting ready for the tour. Making arrangements. They are coming to Chicago! I can't wait.