Progrock
14 posts
Dec 22, 2008
9:46 AM
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I've been straying away from teaching covers this last year besides when they ask specifically for something. I've been mostly having them create there own songs or progressions using the subjects we are working on. I also use some books that have songs in them although they arn't cover songs. They are original pieces the author came up with.
Some of my students take to it well while others say it's ok but I get the feeling they just want to work on their favorite artist songs. I got away from this because when I tried to explain why or how this works in the song they just didn't seem to care. They just wanted to learn the next part. I hate the idea of just being a transcriber for them. They are paying me though so maybe this is what I have to do and try to squeeze in whatever fundemantals I can. How do you guys deal with this?
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Eric E
Moderator
20 posts
Dec 23, 2008
6:06 PM
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Hey Don,
I do both. I have some students who just want to play their favorite tunes and I try to sneak in some theory and explanations using the songs they pick as examples. That can be difficult. I would prefer to have students practicing more directed material. but sometimes they get bored with that. It's tough to find a balance.
--Eric E.
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Progrock
15 posts
Dec 23, 2008
8:16 PM
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Thanks Eric and good to hear from you! Hope you and the family have a great Christmas!
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Eric E
Moderator
22 posts
Dec 31, 2008
6:35 PM
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Thanks Don,
It's been a great week. Hope your Christmas was good too. Happy New Year.
--Eric
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Al
25 posts
Jan 07, 2009
1:01 AM
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I guess I'm going to be at the other end of the spectrum. I encourage the use of other people's music, but in specific ways. Let me give you a little background.
One of the best jazz teachers that I have had encouraged us to take a simpler existing jazz standard a re-write our own melody to the changes. Later we would alter some of the changes by the use of diatonic sub or what have you. Essentially the goal was to take the standard and take it apart and reconstruct it.
I realized that on some level, this is occurring in the real process of songwriting anyway, so this method to me seemed ingenious. In addition to that, this also represents much fertile ground for reinforcing many aspects of your harmony curriculum.
I later thought, well if we can do that in jazz, why not rock, blues and other types of music. I cannot stress the success that I have had. One of my basic goals is to get as much ownership in the hands of the students as possible. As I mentioned earlier, there were some specifics. One key signature if possible, transposition if possible and we would translate changes (depend on how far we were) to different genres of music. It has worked well.
Last Edited by on Jan 07, 2009 1:02 AM
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ChrisDowning
33 posts
Jan 17, 2009
9:01 AM
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Ha! Well Al if you listen to some of the top well know bands you can hear them restucturing hit records with new lyrics and melody all the time. I'm not going to name and shame as I'm not rich enough to fight the lawyers! But it's a great way to have students do more than just improvise - but create melody.
If you don't actually apply what you teach and incorporate new material into a song or tune, students get pretty hacked off. It will feel like all work - theory and harmony, learning chords and scales - and have no practical application. Technically you'll be in breach of copyright by giving them any chord charts of existing songs, or TAB melodies to songs you didn't write yourself. But I've never heard of anyone being taken to task for doing this - it's usually the guys who are copying discs and music on a grand scale, or setting up huge websites of TAB where they make a shedload of money from advertising (but you'll have to move to Brazil or Russia to stay out of jail if this is your plan!).
Last Edited by on Feb 26, 2009 11:54 PM
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Al
26 posts
Jan 20, 2009
12:44 PM
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Chris,
I think that I should clarify my original post, thanks for pointing that out.
What I was describing was a one dimensional melodic exercise for creative music writing. Creating an original melody over existing changes. This was just a classroom exercise, we didn't record, sample or distribute any music free or for profit or any public performance whether live, internet, recorded or what have you.
The idea is to use an existing song as a template for the song's changes, but doing so, you enable the student to focus on the melody. I wanted to make sure that other's aren't reading something that I didn't intend into my original post.
Copyright law and publishing is something that I deal with on a daily basis. As a member of a performance rights organization (ASCAP) and a small independent print publisher, I have become aware of the details involved what can and cannot be public domain.
Chord changes cannot be copyrighted, recorded performances of those chord changes (whether live or studio)or any sample thereof that implies the writer and performer can be. It's a bit more complicated than that for print, but that is the very basic gist of sound recordings. This is all very general, but I live by the golden rule when it comes this field.
Last Edited by on Jan 20, 2009 12:46 PM
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ChrisDowning
44 posts
Mar 06, 2009
4:57 AM
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That's really good info. I could use that idea at cshool where youngsters are always looking to shortcut ways to creating new pieces.
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