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!