In the fall of 2019, I started teaching Fundamentals of Western Music at the New School’s Eugene Lang College. It combines the usual Music Theory I content with a broader, more ethnomusicological perspective that brings in various forms of pop, non-Western musics, and (most excitingly for me) the blues. It’s an existing course, but I have had wide latitude to remake it. The students need to know how notation works, what major and minor keys are, some basic chord progressions, some rhythms, and a few other musical parameters like loudness/dynamics. They need some exposure to the Western canon, to modernist and contemporary composers, and to some other sounds outside their usual listening habits. And, most importantly, they need to retain that information for future music courses and beyond.
If you read this blog, you know that I take a dim view of traditional music theory pedagogy, which tends to present the aesthetic preferences of Western European aristocrats of the 18th and 19th centuries as if they’re a universally valid and applicable rule system. I don’t mind the idea of teaching the classical canon, as long as I can approach it as an ethnic music of a particular time and place, not a transcendent or universal one. So it’s refreshing that the New School has such a broad and expansive view of how to teach theory.
I was been told to expect that about a third of the students will be coming in with extensive classical music training and prior study of music theory; a third will be self-taught pop musicians like me; and a third will have zero music experience of any kind. The challenge is to have assignments with low floors and high ceilings, so that half the class isn’t overwhelmed or bored at any given moment. I’m open to suggestions as I develop this further. Here’s the syllabus, which I have been updating regularly as I go: Continue reading “Developing an intro-level music theory course”
