Music Creativity

● Music Composition
● Music Theory
● Piano, Guitar, Voice, Percussion
● Computer Composition and Sound Design

Imagine a child making a finger-painting. A teacher approaches and asks the child, “what is this?”
The child says, “this is my mommy.”
The teacher responds, “That doesn’t look anything like your mother, or even a human. You really need to spend at least 10 years copying other people’s paintings before you have the skill and background to justify trying to create something original.”

No art teacher would behave like this, but it’s not far off from the typical educational approach of Western Music. We often expect students to be technicians for years before they could be considered ready to compose their own music. But just as visual art can begin with untrained creative expression, and just as an amateur dancer would improvise dancing at a party, people can improvise and compose music if only given some basic guidance in musical structure. One measure of success of a “music culture” might be the percentage of students who learn an instrument as a child and continue to play as adults. How well is our musical culture doing by this measure?

Our musical seminars are just as successful with a room full of experienced instrumentalists as with a class of total music beginners. Each would produce original music by the end of just one class, the primary difference being the sophistication of the performance.

If you know a student who has played an instrument for a few years but cannot easily play by ear a melody just heard on the radio, that student has only learned one side of Music. If you know a student who can “play by ear”, but doesn’t understand harmonic theory or music analysis, that student has also only learned one side of Music.