Jeff Berlin's thoughts on music education

[Christian Miller]

Jeff has been causing some discussion on Facebook of late. I hope he won't mind (I do think he's posted here in the past) but he posted this on Facebook which I thought was worth presenting as a source of discussion.



I thought it was interesting that the bass player quit for that reason.

That said, I don't think that suiting the teaching to the student means teaching a different syllabus. OTOH a set curriculum can be taught with creativity. From what I've seen of Jeff's teaching, I'd say he does this.

[AllanAllen]

I don’t understand. They say core curriculum, but it sounds like private lessons. Maybe the bass dept is so small enrolling is just private lessons…

[kris]

Maybe we need to ask the question: how many brilliant musicians who want to pass on their knowledge to others?

[Christian Miller]

This is not anything new for Jeff. His criticism of other educators is his daily, weekly and lifelong MO for years. He makes public apologies to well know teachers he has scorched, every now and again, and then gets back on the soapbox...and rinse and repeat. Bipolarish. he often looks for, finds and post evidentiary information to support his agenda.

Evidentiary information - is that the same thing as evidence? I think what you are saying as that he looks for evidence to support his pre-arrived conclusions, is that correct? I think there's some truth to that.

But I would think that anybody attending college (any field of study) would have to presume limited personal attention and a teacher / curriculum oriented environment. Outside of the curriculum, the teacher can only lean on their own experiences and ability to translate/transmit information. Private lessons are available.

I'm aware of Jeff's history on the matter. What I thought was of interest is the identification of people coming in with their own patent concepts and teaching those, that the teaching was teacher-centred. I think there's a lot of truth to this.

Music education is awash in concepts and ideas - also guru figures. Particularly in the states, I think. Some of these concepts become bandwagons everyone jumps on sometimes with a cult like intensity. In voice for many years it was something called Estill Voicecraft, for example. Very technical, supposedly science-rooted (though it has been critiqued) and I found it baffling and completely unhelpful when I was training.

'Im sure we can all think of loads of examples. (Which is not to say that these systems aren't without uses.)

Add to that historically many teachers in jazz have been autodidacts* who have derived a system of their own - George Russell, Barry Harris, Chuck Wayne, Lennie Tristano etc etc - or the students of those autodidacts - and it's easy to see how this situation has arisen. People most often pass on what they themselves were taught, of course. There's reverence of and loyalty to great teachers, but I think that may be found most in the classical world, and I'm not sure that's something I think is altogher healthy. My experiences with the classical world is that it is has big problems.

There's also the archetype of the Salesman type with the Big Idea. Also truth-tellers railing against the System (tm) in exchange for internet eyeballs which has become the leitmotif of our era. Is Jeff one of those? Maybe.

I'm not sure if I'd support uniformity in music education, but it's striking how many schools there are. And then these big bandwagons rolling in. In past that might have been the chord scale system. I see Barry Harris as one that's on the move right now, maybe Partimento in the classical world.

*(maybe not in music generally, but in jazz as jazz education wasn't formalised this stage)

[djg]

Jeff has been causing some discussion on Facebook of late. I hope he won't mind (I do think he's posted here in the past) but he posted this on Facebook which I thought was worth presenting as a source of discussion.



I thought it was interesting that the bass player quit for that reason.

That said, I don't think that suiting the teaching to the student means teaching a different syllabus. OTOH a set curriculum can be taught with creativity. From what I've seen of Jeff's teaching, I'd say he does this.

jeff berlin at it again? is this some sort of groundhog day thingy? what is next? metheny dissing kenny g? fuck wayne shorter? the ken burns debacle? i feel so old.

[pamosmusic]

That last paragraph doesn’t make any sense.

Bass program assigns the right teacher to the right student but all other instruments teach the same curriculum to everyone —- but bass education needs to be fixed?

Is he saying that assigning the right teachers to the right students is a bad thing?

[Christian Miller]

jeff berlin at it again? is this some sort of groundhog day thingy? what is next? metheny dissing kenny g? fuck wayne shorter? the ken burns debacle? i feel so old.

What would I say to Jeff?

[Christian Miller]

And I should mention, speaking only for myself...Jeff is a fantastic musician and teacher.

In the 'What are you listening to' thread, I posted a tune last week that Jeff wrote from Master Strokes (the Bruford, Berlin, Holdsworth album)

Yeah, I think this for example is just a beautiful little lesson that everyone interested in learning jazz should watch.

I'm not sure if I am with him on the metronome thing, but I do value that he's presenting the other side of the debate - I think a lot of young players can come up thinking that jazz musicians have always practiced on click and that the click is the tool by which all the masters developed their time and feel. Which is not true - Barry Harris said that he'd never used one, for instance. The idea of their being a debate about whether or not to use the metronome is beyond the ken of players because for them it's always been drummed into them that using a metronome is the ONLY way to develop time/feel.

But that's another, quite fascinating and complex, debate that people usually end up having a very boring and knee jerk response to.

[kris]

The bass player is usually an accompanist.
The art of accompaniment on bass-is probably here.