My Journey Back to Study Music...

(Part 1)

It’s odd to me that this will be the most difficult post to write, but it is my account of a poor college education in music. As one heart-felt friend and Music Teacher put it (paraphrasing), “You required an education in the worse possible way, but you were given the worse possible education!” If it hadn’t have happened to me, I’m not even sure that even I would have believed the tale I am about to share… And, I don’t blame you. While I was ordering a new keyboard from Guitar Center in West Des Moines a few years ago the employee who was taking my order struck up a conversation and I told him some of the following experiences while the order processed and he gave me some serious “side-eye” as if he didn’t believe me; I don’t blame him. My account does sound almost too farcical to be true! Over the past few years I have recounted what I endured to several friends, many of whom have studied music in college with degrees for their effort, and they were flabbergasted that any accredited program would operate in this fashion.

First of all, High School had ill-prepared me for college (a common refrain I hear far too frequently); while it was successful in availing those who required the least assistance, most of us walked away knowing only what to think, and with those expectations firmly rooted in our minds afterward. College was a different animal altogether, but perhaps I should preface this by admitting that I was burned out after High School and desperately wanted to take a year off form schooling, but I was forced to attend in spite of my own anxiety after the fact. From my perspective, in college we were no longer taught WHAT to think; rather, we were expected to know HOW to think! (I will get back to citing specific examples of this in a moment.)

As a new Music Major at a 2-year community college I was shocked by every facet of my education because it didn’t seem to match my expectations of college that society had engrained into me, let alone my expectations of what High School had prepared me for. We were thrown into the shark tank–to sink or swim–on the very first day. When I arrived to meet with my academic advisor (whom I only had one appointment with in my whole three years in attendance!) just after filling out a card featuring the classes I wanted to take, I was told in no uncertain terms that I would be unable to cope with the demands of the Music Program as well as take any outside classes. In fact, as she drilled this fact home she came off as though she were shaming me as a mere “wanna-be” for even wanting to take any other courses! This theme would again crop up over and over again as the years progressed.

Later on in the day, because I had declared myself to be a “Vocal Major,” I was mandated to audition for a slot in one of several vocal jazz ensembles. Looking back on it the auditions were structured abysmally! They simply handed us all the same piece of 4-part sheet music and expected us to learn our own individual parts, despite the fact that many of us first years had never touched a piano before let alone had our first official piano lesson with our private teacher! I was thankful that one of the more advanced students kindly opened one of the rehearsal rooms rooms and played our individual parts for us so that we could have it “in ear” in order to sing the portion that was required of us. Unfortunately, in High School, I had been misclassified as a baritone, when I was actually a tenor!

As I became more acquainted with the program there appeared to be a lot that was lacking. For starters there were no textbooks that we were able to rely upon. Instead, we were required to buy “The Real Little Ultimate Jazz Fake Book” (we were never told why it was so-called nor did we use it during our studies), a Bach chorale, and a packet of staff paper! That. Was. All. This almost certainly compounded the struggle that every student enrolled in this program seemed to endure! After all, if we missed a class we had no way of knowing what lesson had been covered, and because we almost always had an assignment that was to be played at the piano on the alternating day (if our class met on Monday, than our assignment was due the forthcoming Wednesday, first thing in the morning!) if we were unprepared for our assignment we were given an automatic “F” (assignments were always pass-or-fail!) because we were not only prohibited from getting the lessons from our instructor, but assignments could never be made up for any reason (not even a funeral could be used as an excuse). Most students were so terrified of missing even a single music class that they were popping vit. C like PEZ! It was well-known, here, among the more advanced students that the letter grade of a solid “C” in this program would automatically equate to an “A”+ at any other school and University in the state, which I didn’t know until late in my first year! How, then, should we expect any transfer school to mentally–let alone seriously!–audit our GPA if we are applying to another school? Worse, which I did not learn until my second year, is that the program would not offer a degree in music; rather, they could only bestow students with a certificate of completion!

I do recall searching high and low for any text books on Music Theory in order to assist myself, but to no avail; so, it wasn’t for a lack of sincere effort on my behalf. I searched the shelves of the campus library and bookstore, the public library of the college town that the school was located in, Barnes and Noble as well as Borders Books, and even the local Rieman’s Music that catered to the music students who studied at this school. None of them sold any books on Music Theory during the mid-1990s that I could discover. As you can see there was very little support available, especially when the internet was in its infancy in those dial-up days. I have long-since become convinced that none of the faculty–save for the private instrument/ vocal teachers–had a degree in Music Education! For example, the Founder of the program–who had an Ego as big as all outdoors–was in charge of the Choir and we were expected to interpret his vague gestures, which honestly made him look like he was constipated! A friend of mine asked him if he had a degree in Choir Conduction and told her, point blankly, “No, but I have read several books on it!” What the?! Sadly, he had the bald-faced lie on his website that he did, indeed, have a degree in Choir Conduction from a prestigious University in Iowa! (If he did, which is dubious, it must only have been merely honorary!) This man had the audacity to give me grief for failing to live up to his impossible standards; such as publicly shaming me when my eyes briefly wandering off of him–not my head–during rehearsal as I was singing a song that I had memorized. I came from a multi-award winning High School Choir that won first place in every competition we ever entered, which proved to me how unprofessional his choir ultimately was. Yet, his claim to fame was that he had merely “read several books” on choir conduction?! But I digress…

Instead, I fervently believe that most of the faculty were mere Jazz Ingenues that wanted to set up a Music School in order to supplement their income when not gigging. Even as first year college students we were treated as if we ought to have no family, and were required to tour on the weekends with the choir to various shopping malls in the surrounding states; I have, since, never observed any college choirs singing at any shopping malls before nor since. However, we were expected to pay for our own food and lodging, which I could not afford, then. Many students didn’t eat during these weekend tours.

(Part #2…continued)…

Unlike the various Dept. Heads, my own, and everyone else’s Jazz Ensemble was not supported by the college. In fact, unlike my own Jazz Ensemble–which never even decided on a name for itself, before disbanding since the student in charge couldn’t cope with the program and this additional responsibility!–the ensembles of the Dept. Heads were financially given a stipend by the college as a form of publicity for the program and the college, and were therefore able to eat out and stay at hotels while they were traveling for gigs (particularly the former High Schools of the members). Not only did the Dept. Heads have the best rehearsal times after 3 PM (I had to awake at 5 AM to be at school for rehearsal at 6 AM), but I never even got the opportunity to go out on a single non-paying gig due to my ensemble’s lack of finances (we would have had to pay for our own gas, bus rental/ driver, etc.), but also due to our director’s class schedule because he couldn’t sacrifice the time rehearsing with us and assisting us on the road. So, we totally would have been on our own and unprepared!

Our private piano lessons, at least in my experience, were also inadequate. In the years, since, that I have taken to studying Music Theory on my own, and as I have looked over my own hand-outs littering my folder, I observed just how much basic material had been left out of my own education that I was paying for with hard-earned money! The best analogy was that we were “taught the test”; everything centered upon memorizing our recital pieces. However, my teacher invoked none of the Music Theory that I was was learning in an effort to avail the memorization process. So, I was stuck in a mode of thought geared towards memorizing not chord structure and progressions, but individual notes, intervals, and hand-movements/ placements! But, then again, perhaps this was partially my own fault and I was expected to put the pieces of this puzzle together myself, but you must remember that High School had trained me in WHAT to think rather than HOW to think. Still, I really could have used her assistance in analyzing my recital pieces in seeing what it was that I was missing. But, I couldn’t be held responsible for much of it. After all, how was I to know that sight-reading was supposed to be a part of my piano lab (when it wasn’t!), having never taken a piano lesson before? No one offered piano lessons in my area, or I would have taken them for years. The same thing with voice lessons! I had no idea that certain colleges in DesMoines offered the public the ability to study with their Voice Teachers! I was also not told that the scales I was playing were arranged in the Circle of Fifths, but then again, my teacher didn’t really assign me many scales to play and study. I have had to teach myself some of the keys that she never assigned me, which is easy enough when there’s an easily remembered pattern within it, such as the Key of E! I have also discovered that I was paying WAY too much for my lessons within this program! At the present time, the state-wide rate (here in Iowa) for an individual music lessons is $20.00 for one hour-long lesson! Some go up to as much as $25.00. However, back in the mid-90s, when I broke it down, I was paying more than $40.00/ lesson, and each lesson was only 30 minutes long! Thankfully my BRILLIANT voice teacher extended his to 45 minutes for some of his better students, including myself, so we got much more of our money’s worth. But, still!

As the years progressed I struck up a conversation with a colleague after hours and she told me about a High School classmate of her who had been accepted to the Juilliard School of Music. She discovered that we–at this small town community college–were performing the same level of assignments as the students at this prestigious NYC music school! For example, one of the most common assignments for Music Theory 1 at my former college was that we were expected to memorize a song for the piano in less than 48 hours, along with any other lessons we might have to prepare for, and be able to play it back at the piano in whatever new key was commanded by the instructor. And this was given to students with minimal piano chops! According to friends that have graduated from various music schools, this is actually a Music Theory 3-level assignment! However, like almost all assignments, this, too, was a pass-or-fail assignment. In order to underscore precisely how difficult this particular program was, it was not uncommon to see students studying in a rehearsal room as early as 6 AM when the school opened it’s doors for the musicians until midnight or much later merely to catch a few hours of precious sleep before having to repeat it the next day, nonstop! It was a rare sight to observe any student who wasn’t easily burnt out after a short period of studying here. In this program we were also given several assignments that required specialized training, such as Aural Skills (ear training); but, even without those skills we were expected to figure it all out on our own. One of these assignments in my Music Fundamentals class was transposing music that our instructor played at the piano–we were really given minimal guidance at being able to figure out any process or method to accomplish the assignment ourselves! Many of our assignments were like that; or else we were given an assignment that didn’t seem to have any purpose (at least none that he explained!).

As you can plainly see the program in which I was enrolled was structured to encourage a high failure rate (or so it seemed to me). Most first year students were so ill-prepared for this structure that it was rare to see a student return for a second year. Moreover, if you were not one of the Dept. Head’s personal pets, than you were given almost no academic nor emotional support in the least. My experience studying music made me feel like a failure, and it made me hate music for many years afterward. It took me several years of soul-searching to rekindle my former love of music and to realize that in spite of it all, I was and always have been a musician despite an active attempt to make me feel unworthy. In fact, the Head of the program often told students, “You’ll never be any better than just bad!”

Thankfully it was due to my brilliant Voice Teacher who was a brilliant musician who inspired me to want to pursue music education and teaching! He could sight-read anything at the piano, he was great at trouble-shooting and creating vocal exercises just for me, as well as explaining to me the purpose of each exercise and how to alter it to suit someone of a differing voice type. He really passed on much of what he knew to me so that I could teach others, which is the Hallmark of a brilliant instructor!