User talk:Boguslavmandzyuk/Sandbox/Classical training (music)

Clarification

What about jazz- and commercial-music training programs, such as those taught at the Berklee School of Music? Are these "classical", or something else? User:Jerome Kohl

Although jazz is "western" music and it has much of its origins in European classical music, I think most people don't think of jazz education as "classical training" because it is a lot more geared toward improvisation and spontaneity rather than interpreting the score and building technique. There is also an "authenticity" factor to jazz and folk music, that often has to do with staying simple or quoting other musicians in one's music. I tried to cover that in the (still incomplete) "Other disciplines" section of the article.

What do you mean by "commercial-music training" methods? Based on the article Berklee College of Music, it looks like they teach what many people on the internet call "pop" methods. But, I'm not sure how to interpret it. I would say it's a mix of "pop" methods and classical training.--BoguSlav 08:31, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

I suppose most people would use the term "pop" instead of "commercial", though I think the latter is more accurate, since a fairly large slice of commercial music (advertising jingles, television-show signature tunes, radio-station identity signals, but, above all, film music) do not strictly fall into the category "popular music". I agree that most people don't think of jazz education as "classical" (though in my experience there is a sharp distinction between jazz and folk musicians on the issue of staying simple). I did not express my question very clearly, though: Your draft currently divides music learning into three broad areas: (1) classical training, (2) being "self taught", and (3) training in various non-Western cultures. This seems to divide the world of music along traditional lines, fist into Western and Other, then dividing Western into formal and informal training. But this seems to imply that formal training and "classical" training are identical, whereas not all jazz and popular musicians are "self taught", nor do all formally trained jazz and pop musicians have "classical" training. The Berklee School is perhaps the best-known example of a formal training program for jazz and popular music. I see that you have begun working on this problem in the "other disciplines" section, but it looks to me that this could use some more work to make clear the distinction between non-classical formal training and strictly "classical" ones, especially since many music schools today teach jazz (but not usually popular music) alongside the classical reprtoire.

Since posing that question, it occurs to me that another form of learning music that may be gained outside of "classical" training is the private lesson. Of course, such lessons are an essential part of "classical training" as well, but how do we draw the line between the "classical" music lesson and, for example, jazz saxophone lessons focussing on improvisation?

This should be sufficient to be getting on with, but I think once we have thrashed this out, you might want to reconsider the Other category, which I find a bit Eurocentric/exclusionary. After all, there are "classical" music traditions in non-Western cultures, too (particularly in Asia and the Middle East), and they are learned very differently from folk and popular music in those cultures.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 20:39, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree with you. I guess all I was trying to say, is that classical training is formal. I didn't mean to suggest that other disciplines (such as Jazz) aren't taught formally, as you pointed out with Berklee College of Music. The draft should read, "classical training is a form of formal education" or something, instead of mentioning an alternative of being "self-taught". This would avoid any of that confusion.

Regarding the other traditions that call themselves "classical", but have nothing to do with "western classical music", the reason I think that the name "classical training" is appropriate because our article about Western Classical music is simply called "classical music". However, another user has mentioned to me that the name "classical training (music)" might be too general. The name Education in classical music might save us from having to address the other non-western music traditions that call themselves classical.--BoguSlav 02:05, 4 January 2015 (UTC)