contemporary music colleges breeding mediocrity? a
Views: 117 Comments: 0
just kidding i dont blindly hate music students
just to define this i dont talk about classically trained musicians i mean modern music colleges, performing arts institutes and other places that teach non-classical music courses (i.e not conservatories or other places of this like)
But i do feel very uneasy recently about music college systems in the UK and i dont know if this is ignorant or misinformed or just stupidity. Having had experience with music college or performing arts college students (for example the ACM in guildford surrey) i have found them to be extremely likely to listen to highly derivative indie music and to be in highly derivative bands that just arent that good and even worse are often based mainly around appearances. I put forward busted and mcfly as candidates as well as a whole bunch of highly derivative screamo bands.
Music theory is not lacking (duh they have all the time in the world to study music and are taught by professionals) however its like its not wanted to challenge themselves and seem to indulge in a sort of groupthink that to be succesful at music they should copy the current fads going on (i.e indie with sloane hair or fringe-metal i.e a return to the principles of hair rock that ruined the 80s). Note the whole glut of amy winehouse and lily allen copiers coming out of music academies (though not exclusively) recently.
Certainly a couple of guitarists and music students i talk too are very clued up on their theory (as an aside i have classical piano training from childhood so i do know my fair share of theory) but this theory often goes into creating lovely three chord "indie" music without understanding what indie is. Singers will often be the very boring pop type without having a personality in their voice or anything over the average range or textures. For example a lot of the singers and solo artists that clog us all up with acoustic love ballads as opposed to truly challenging but still appealing music are music college graduates (amy winehouse, mcfly etcetc). Why? I blame groupthink and the overstudy of how other people did music.
All of this caused me to ask myself a question, name some REALLY big graduates of music academies who have been critically AND popularly accepted largely to a fairly informed audience (not quite the shred crowd). To me I can only name two large truly influential musicians who attended modern music schools
Jeff Buckley (who only attributed his musical theory to music college) Kelly of Bloc Party
this compared to the infinite names of "unschooled" people who have truly made world changing music without being schooled at a contemporary music college (i make this distinction)
hendrix clapton kurt cobain matt bellamy queen (all went to university) Johnny greenwood (classically trained musician)
Why is this? Would these names and others have ended up in mediocrity if they had attended college? or do talented people not go to colleges? or does groupthink push otherwise creative people into mediocrity? Certainly dealing with my friend a truly talented musician he has been writing more and more derivative music for himself recently while i feel i have pushed boundaries slightly in texture and dynamics for my audiences.
so i ask you Do music colleges breed mediocrity? Why? Name some remarkable modern music college educated musicians who people might have heard of?
| My Profile
contemporary music colleges breeding mediocrity? a blog
