Studying Music Online

Brian Choi is a Student Advisor at Berkleemusic.com. He finished his studies at USC, where he studied Business. Brian is an avid Reason, Pro Tools and Final Cut user who routinely gets into any production gear he can get his hands on.

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When EdX, the joint partnership between MIT and Harvard launched this month to offer online learning to millions of people around the world, Anant Agarwal, who is in charge, said, “Online classes are the single biggest change in education since the printing press”. Online text is good, but here at Berklee College of Music, we also integrate video/audio performance and live interaction. Our faculty has been experimenting with online education for nearly a decade and we have the largest and most current online music curriculum in the world. The interaction between our excellent faculty including celebrity musicians like Gary Burton and Steve Vai and our students is no longer just for virtual reality geeks—it is as real as it gets—and you can instantly hit the repeat button to rehearse.

Before the end of this decade, online education will eclipse traditional education. College campuses will not be empty, but the majority of students may only see it once in a while. Why? Our hectic lifestyles require education to evolve with the changing expectations and needs of students. As a school at the forefront of this revolution in teaching and learning, Berklee wants to cater to an ever-growing population of musicians who want to be part of our network. We build a community made up of online and physical campus students, alumni, faculty and staff. The best thing is you do not need to travel to Boston to be part of it anymore (although you are most welcome).

Having experienced Berkleemusic first hand as a Student and now as Staff, I’m still surprised by the amount of people I speak with that have a hard time believing they can learn online. Why does online education still have a stigma even after so many years of success?

Educators are in disbelief, of course. Their whole career has been spent in the regular classroom. Until they try online education, I guess it is hard to believe. Skeptics worry about the lack of interaction and personal touch of a traditional classroom. Until I was able to take online courses with Berklee, I thought so, too. It was actually better for me. I never would have been able to take classes otherwise with a full time job. Being able to work around my schedule was great. In many ways, I felt like it was more interaction than I had while I was in college. I was no longer in huge lecture halls where I barely interacted with other students or my professor. I had live chats each week, great feedback on all my assignments, and I felt part of a community. I interacted with other students in my class like I had never had before. This opportunity to network and interact with a very diverse group of people from all over the world made it a great experience. And much of the learning comes from classmates, through assignments, discussions, and forums.

Teachers do need to adapt. They must get used to not being the single focal point of learning. Students are learning just as much from each other. Teachers are helping facilitate the peer learning process, but students these days learn and collect information differently then in the past. They are quicker. Rapid feedback is expected. Those teachers who adjust to that change become successful in online education. Going online first is no longer a technical skill, but a mentality.

As Colleges and Universities are no longer limited by time and space, how do students react? Berklee students love it. They embrace online education like never before. Flexibility, accessibility, and convenience are the major tenets of online education. This is attractive to all students. Someday I can even envision seeing thousands of people studying together from all over the world in one class with a hologram of their professor who is across the world beamed out from their computer standing right in front of them in their living room. All the classroom materials will be easily downloaded and slide shows will be uploaded to a server so everyone can follow along with the lecture. The professor can call on any student. Any student who speaks or plays an instrument can be beamed on to a virtual stage in everyone’s living room. It will look and feel like an actual classroom in the comfort
of your own home. Or, in actual fact, a live, virtual stage. Okay, maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself here, but you get the point.

Education for everyone, anytime will be the norm, so be ready. Send me your thoughts about where you see online education in the future. I would love to hear from you.

Brian

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Berkleemusic’s next term begins on June 25th, 2012.

Find out more at berkleemusic.com or contact a Student Advisor:

1-866-BERKLEE (USA) | +1 617 747 2146 (Intl) | advisors@berkleemusic.com

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Michael Moyes is a Senior Student Advisor at Berkleemusic.com. He finished his studies at Baylor University, where he studied Piano Performance and Business. Michael has performed Piano as a soloist, in combos, and accompanied by full Orchestra. He holds Master Certificate in Arranging and Orchestration from Berkleemusic. You can hear some of Michael’s music on the Berklee Music Network and on Soundcloud.

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The music community recently lost my favorite drummer/lead vocalist of all time (sorry Phil Collins). Levon Helm of “The Band” passed away a few weeks ago but not after teaching the world some classic tunes like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, “Up On Cripple Creek”, and of course “The Weight”. These songs are known and revered by many a music lover, plenty of whom play and sing solely by ear. I play/sing with a choir group in South Boston led by a prodigious gospel/rock pianist by the name of Pastor Burns Stanfield. He has a knack for hearing progressions in his head and laying them down like a thunderous hailstorm of harmony and rhythm. I remember one occasion where the sustain pedal actually broke off due to his driving foot stomping. Many of the other highly talented choir members are a bunch of city folk to whom music is still very much an oral tradition. Lyrics are scribbled on pieces of paper, SATB parts are hashed out on the fly, and a song will (almost) never sound the same twice. The music is very accessible for all who want to perform, and the lack of polished music theory rigidness creates an arguably more emotional experience for both the listeners and performers.

Now, onto the other side of the coin. This choir group doesn’t stick to Hymns. Pastor Burns loves “The Band” and we often play some of their tunes for special events. After several years of listening to the chorus of “The Weight” performed incorrectly, I hit my breaking point and decided to lay some knowledge on the choir. The part that always gets everyone flustered is after the last “Take the load off Fanny” line where the singers rest on the first beat, then have an arpeggiated “And, And, And…..” followed by two singing “You put the load right on me” staggered by a beat. That is a tough enough sentence to write, so you can imagine how difficult it was to try and explain it verbally. The concept of a time signature is the missing link here. You need to understand how 4/4 time and 3/4 time works to hear this accurately, and perform it as The Band intended. The “You put the load right on me” measure switch to 3/4 time is quite significant.

To explain the concept, I notated the chorus for “The Weight” with a program called noteflight we have been using in our Theory courses. It is my first go at using the program so bear with me.

Notice measure 5 is in 3/4, meaning there are only 3 quarter notes in the measure. Try playing the file while counting out loud and see how it goes. The little numbers on the top are beat numbers so you can count, clap, stomp along with the tune. I am not going to get into what time signatures are in this post but we do cover rhythm in our Music Theory courses. If you are interested in learning about notation, rhythmic dictation, and harmony, you should check out the Music Theory 101 course.

RIP Levon Helm

-Michael

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Berkleemusic’s next term begins on June 25th, 2012.

Find out more at berkleemusic.com or contact a Student Advisor:

1-866-BERKLEE (USA) | +1 617 747 2146 (Intl) | advisors@berkleemusic.com

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Mark Hopkins is a Student Advisor at Berkleemusic.com. He finished his studies at Berklee College of Music, as a Guitarist/Songwriting Major, in 2009. Mark is a regular gigging musician who has toured extensively and released 6 albums in the past 10 years. You can hear some of Mark’s music at www.markhopkinsmusic.com.

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After years of studying every instrument I could get my hands on: Guitar, Bass, Drums, Harmonica, Trumpet, Trombone and Sax I realized I have been delaying the inevitable…Slide Guitar!!!

I have been a fan of slide guitar since I was in middle school, but never got the courage to attack it. Now that I have a decent amount of musical education under my belt I figured I would take the plunge. Oh what a plunge it was, or should I say is! It’s like relearning how to play guitar; which to me is exciting more than words can express.

For those of you not privy to slide guitar, it is one of the most expressive ways to play the instrument and no one personifies that nowadays more than, my personal hero, Derek Trucks. You’ll notice that in the video clip below Derek makes his SG take on a vocal like quality- something that can only be achieved with slide guitar. Plus he has a killer touch on the instrument which reinstates the mantra “tone is in the hands of the player”.

Derek plays slide, much like his predecessor Duane Allman, in open E tuning which takes a bit to get used to when you have been playing guitar for over 20 years in standard tuning. How do you get used to open E – well I am not sure there is a right and wrong way to go about it, but I can tell you a few things I am doing that have drastically helped me.

1) Take your guitar to someone who knows what they are doing that can set up your instrument for open E slide. Make sure you do not set the action too high because you will want the option to go back and forth with the slide and fretted style.

2) Draw a map of your fret board (writing in all notes) from 1st to 12th fret so you can familiarize yourself with the differences between standard and open E. If you know your theory this will immediately help you visualize your fret board.

3) Find a slide that feels comfortable. It shouldn’t feel bulky and obtrusive. Also, find one with a timbre that really resonates with you (no pun intended). I prefer glass, but a lot of players dig on metal/brass as well.

4) Buy some CD’s and start listening and copying everything you hear. Don’t just buy Allman Bros. and Trucks albums, get the best of Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin etc… Learn to play lyrically and vocal like. This will in turn spill over into your standard tuning skills as well.

That is a great place to get started. Now let’s learn a few things to get the ball rolling! In this first clip let’s discuss vibrato.

Now that you have that under your belt let’s examine one of the most important aspects of learning slide…Right Hand Technique.

I hope this was interesting to you guitar nerds out there. I am really enjoying the process of slide guitar; and if you, like me, want to play more soulfully inspired music- this is one way to get yourself to that next level.

Best of luck guys!

-Mark Hopkins

www.markhopkinsmusic.com

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Check out our new Acoustic Blues Guitar course which gets into some awesome bottle-neck slide techniques.

Berkleemusic’s next term begins on June 25th, 2012.

Find out more at berkleemusic.com or contact a Student Advisor:

1-866-BERKLEE (USA) | +1 617 747 2146 (Intl) | advisors@berkleemusic.com

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Michael Moyes is a Senior Student Advisor at Berkleemusic.com. He finished his studies at Baylor University, where he studied Piano Performance and Business. Michael has performed Piano as a soloist, in combos, and accompanied by full Orchestra. He holds Master Certificate in Arranging and Orchestration from Berkleemusic. You can hear some of Michael’s music on the Berklee Music Network and on Soundcloud.

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If you are familiar with the site www.soundcloud.com, or have produced any music with a DAW, you are familiar with what a waveform looks like. When looking at a waveform, we can easily see where the relative loud and quiet parts of a song will be. Basically, what you are looking at is a summary of the songs dynamics.

In the below waveform you can see that the music starts quietly, pauses a couple times, then swells with a large crescendo which brings the overall intensity to a peak. Eventually it quiets down again and finishes with one last swell. A large amount of dynamic range is typical in orchestral pieces (which this is).

Kamaishi City by Michael Moyes

On the other end of the spectrum, here is a contrasting piece from the artist “mysticgroove” that you can see has a smaller dynamic range. This is a common sight in much of (but not all of) today’s electronic, pop, and rock music.

Planet X by mysticgroove

This visual ‘wall of sound’ is very much compressed whereas the first example is hardly compressed at all.

What is compression?

Compression reduces the volume of loud sounds while amplifying quiet sounds so that the waveform pushes, pulls and shapes itself into a more uniform looking figure. The end result is a volume level that is more or less steady throughout the piece. Depending on the amount of compression added, you may no longer see (or hear) subtle or even obvious dynamic changes. If I wanted to, I could even attempt to compress that first piece so that the waveform looks the same as the 2nd.

Here is another example. This is 2 audio files of the same piece, one compressed and one not. (The compression is crude and is overdramatized to illustrate my point) The selection is from the dynamically diverse Beethoven’s 9th Symphony – 3rd movement…

Beethoven 9th Symphony – Uncompressed

Beethoven 9th Symphony – Compressed (poorly)

One personal advantage to having a compressed audio file is being able to listen with headphones on the subway without having to constantly adjust the volume. When listening to film or classical music I often times turn up the volume so I can hear a solo piano line only to have my eardrums blasted when a chorus of trumpets enters the mix. Compression has the positive effect of making your mix sound loud which is a real benefit in many types of music.

A big disadvantage (and this is a big one) is losing the dynamic intricacies of each instrument, the room’s natural reverb, and the composer’s intended sonic landscape. In a pure listening environment like a concert hall, a living room with good speakers, or even a quiet car, dynamics in all sorts of music add a great deal of emotion. Berkleemusic professor and author Ben Newhouse writes in his Orchestration 2 course…

“Part of what makes orchestral music exciting is the vast dynamic difference between a flute solo and a full tutti (multiple instruments all playing the same notes in unison). Compression would reduce the difference between those extremes, minimizing a characteristic we love about orchestral music.”

In pure orchestral CD releases, compression is typically not used to keep the experience as close as possible to a live listening experience. In Film music, some limited compression can create some sonic space so that dialogue, sound effects, and music can live together.

Compression may be a necessary evil depending on how you intend to have your music listened to. This is a hotly debated subject and you can find countless articles about it online. Now you are hopefully armed with some information to make the call for yourself!

-Michael

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Berkleemusic’s next term begins on June 25th, 2012.

Find out more at berkleemusic.com or contact a Student Advisor:

1-866-BERKLEE (USA) | +1 617 747 2146 (Intl) | advisors@berkleemusic.com

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Mark Hopkins is a Student Advisor at Berkleemusic.com. He finished his studies at Berklee College of Music, as a Guitarist/Songwriting Major, in 2009. Mark is a regular gigging musician who has toured extensively and released 6 albums in the past 10 years. You can hear some of Mark’s music at www.markhopkinsmusic.com.

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As a student advisor this is a question I get asked often. Students are quite perplexed by how online courses work; I am here (as a guitarist and Guitar Master Certificate holder) to clear up all those gray areas for you!

The main argument is… “why shouldn’t I just invest my money into a private instructor?” Well, you definitely could go that route, but writing this blog as a guitarist of 22 years I can attest to the fact that great teachers are few and far between. I have spent mucho dinero on private instruction that got me in a room with a bunch of great players, who mostly like to talk about themselves. Before you know it your hour, or worse – half hour- is done. For me, as a life long student of music, I need a raging fire under me to motivate and push me to the next level! Private instruction doesn’t really deliver on that 100% of the time, but our online courses do.

I went through the guitar program at the main campus and after finishing up at Berklee I got a job here at Berkleemusic! Taking advantage of the amazing guitar curriculum we offer, I jumped into the Master Guitar Certificate right away. I was simply looking to maintain and juice up my chops- ya know, get in that shed and start chopping wood! I can say, with all honesty, it delivered… and then some. Every week I was challenged with 1-2 assignments where I was responsible for performing with a backing track and submitting it to my teacher. I love this format! It pushed me to up the ante on each assignment during the 12 week courses. Even courses like Chords and Scales 101 were absolutely amazing in helping revisit my fundamentals and technique. After completing all 8 courses involved in the Master Certificate I am an even better player than when I left the main campus. I noticed a huge difference in my playing and musicality. Not only do I feel intensely more comfortable on my neck, but I am hearing things at a deeper level than I was before.

With a bigger set of ears, my musical communication with my Trio has vastly expanded. I have now reached the point where I finally feel comfortable and understand how to craft my guitar tone the way I always heard it. With classes like Getting Your Guitar Sound you get to unleash the inner gear nerd from within and explore amps and effects like never before with the software Amplitube. If you are a tone nut (like me) and want to learn more about how your gear works, while also improving yourself as a player you will dig on that class hard. I got to play through amp mods that I have always dreamed of: Orange, Marshall, Vox and even old Fender Blackface amps. I have a 71 Twin Reverb that I mic’d and A/B’d with the vintage Fender amps in Amplitube… you cannot tell the difference. In fact, I have used a bunch of these amps on my latest tracks because they are so convincing! Not to mention I can come back to a guitar solo 3 days later and the tone is dialed in exactly the same so punches aren’t an issue at all. Y’all gotta check that class out it was one of my faves!

I genuinely believe in the education we offer here at Berkleemusic and I continue to take classes online whenever I can. It’s a great investment that you will never regret, and it’s a gift that you will cherish your whole life and a guitarist. I don’t think I’ll ever stop seeking out education, knowing more about my guitar makes it that much more enjoyable to sit down and play every day.

See ya guys soon, I’m off to the wood shed.

Mark Hopkins
www.markhopkinsmusic.com

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Berkleemusic’s next term begins on April 2nd, 2012.

Find out more at berkleemusic.com or contact a Student Advisor:

1-866-BERKLEE (USA) | +1 617 747 2146 (Intl) | advisors@berkleemusic.com

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Michael Moyes is a Senior Student Advisor at Berkleemusic.com. He finished his studies at Baylor University, where he studied Piano Performance and Business. Michael has performed Piano as a soloist, in combos, and accompanied by full Orchestra. He holds Master Certificate in Arranging and Orchestration from Berkleemusic. You can hear some of Michael’s music on the Berklee Music Network and on Soundcloud.

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“Learning licks and expecting to know how to improvise is akin to memorizing phrases in a French book and expecting to know how to speak French. One can only truly learn language by conversing with other people”

This paraphrased quote showcases the ‘vibe’ (sorry) that Gary Burton gave off throughout our conversation about his new Gary Burton: Jazz Improvisation course. Gary taught his style of improvisation here at The Berklee College of Music for over 20 years while at the same time playing with Chick Correa, George Shearing, Stan Getz, and other world renowned improvisers.

Every song has a story to tell and it is our job as improvisers to provide our own unique accent, inflection, timing, etc. Simply playing mixolydian runs every time we see a dominant 7th chord or dorian arpeggios over ii chords is missing the point of improvisation. True improvisers should be fine tuning ideas and giving them emotional content as they perform much like you would do with words when having a verbal conversation.

Gary stressed the importance of knowing what you are going to say and planning how you will say it before opening your mouth, striking the keys, or lifting your mallets. When a president gives a speech, they have some ideas prepared: an introduction, main points, and a conclusion perhaps. Without having an idea of what you are going to say you might sound like this…

“Hello, my name is President Burton and um, today I’m going to talk about some very important things…like the errr…economy and…global warming…”

Sure, the speaker hit some points: the economy, global warming, etc. but failed to tell us a story. As listeners, we are left craving more information, hopefully from a better speaker. As a former transcriber of Jazz solos, I have fallen into the trap of parroting others styles and licks without really saying much of anything. Lucky for me and many of you, Gary is sharing his extensive wisdom with us so that we can form our ideas and communicate on much higher levels. See you in class.

Michael Moyes

*(this class filled up almost immediately last term so we recommend getting in early)

Check out this video of Gary for more…

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Berkleemusic’s next term begins on April 2nd, 2012.

Find out more at berkleemusic.com or contact a Student Advisor:

1-866-BERKLEE (USA) | +1 617 747 2146 (Intl) | advisors@berkleemusic.com

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Michael Moyes is a Student Advisor at Berkleemusic.com. He finished his studies at Baylor University, where he studied Piano Performance and Business. Michael has performed Piano as a soloist, in a combo, and accompanied by full Orchestra. He is currently working towards his Master Certificate in Arranging and Orchestration from Berkleemusic. You can hear some of Michael’s music on the Berklee Music Network.

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What do the films Crimson Tide, Pirates of the Caribbean II, and Inception have in common?

Besides all being scored by Hans Zimmer, they all include elements of MIDI orchestration. MIDI Orchestration is the art of sequencing a piece with virtual instruments with the goal of making it sound like real musicians are performing it.

Since full Orchestras are hard to find (and expensive to hire), I took Orchestration 1 with Ben Newhouse this past Summer term to try and learn how to do this myself.

It quickly became clear that the days of 8 bit midi music a la Super Mario Brothers (NES) are gone; samples are very sophisticated now! When presented with 3 different orchestral audio examples and asked to pick out the one that was created with midi orchestration, I guessed wrong. A bit deflated, I asked around and a couple of my esteemed Berklee colleagues also couldn’t tell which production didn’t have live performers.

The audio samples and DAW technology available today allow composers without the luxury of a full orchestra at their command to compose and produce professional orchestral music. I purchased the East West Gold Symphonic Play Orchestra (at the discounted student rate) and worked with it extensively throughout the 12 week course. Other great libraries like Kontakt, Vienna Symphonic Library, and Garriton Personal Orchestra are also great libraries that can be used in the course. This brings up Ben’s second golden rule of Orchestration…

Rule 2: Use the best samples available.

In MIDI Orchestration, the samples are your performers, and you want performers who will make your music sound great. Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 is a great composition, but it will not sound like one if performed by your local middle school orchestra. Similarly, your latest masterpiece will not sound like a great piece of music if sequenced with the General MIDI bank on an average keyboard.

Just as you aspire for your piece to be performed by the New York Philharmonic, you should aspire for your MIDI orchestrations to be created with the best available samples.”

Orchestration taught me how to effectively write for each section of the orchestra so that my compositions could be played by a true full orchestra or produced digitally using modern technology.

Here is a project of mine so you can get an idea of what you may be creating:

The Pumpkin Waltz

The course is perfect for students who know how to read/write music and are familiar with using a DAW to sequence their music. Having a love of classical and film music from composers like Bartok, John Williams, Danny Elfman, or anyone else is plus! Check out Orchestration 1 if you want more information…

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Berkleemusic’s online winter term begins January 10, 2011.

Find out more at berkleemusic.com or contact a Student Advisor:

1-866-BERKLEE (USA) | +1 617 747 2146 (Intl) | advisors@berkleemusic.com

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I had a conversation with instructor Dave Franz last week and we spent some time talking about his new online course, Pro Tools: Virtual Instruments and Effects. Those of you who know me are familiar with the fact that I am a production novice (n00b), but I felt compelled to write a quick blog due to the unique layout of his course.

Pro Tools 8 has six powerful virtual instruments: Boom, Vacuum, DB-33, XPand! 2, Structure Free, and Mini Grand. It isn’t surprising that the overall goal of the course is to teach students how to use these powerful instruments while showing how to use several effects plug-ins but the creative assignments in the course are what really caught my attention.

Students will be working on small weekly assignments using each of the 6 irtual instruments but at the same time, they will be working on engineering a lager project in which each channel strip will be a different virtual instrument! Dave is expecting to see lots of different styles of music such as Rock, Pop, Blues, Classical, Reggae, Electronica, etc. in these assignments which gives students a lot of creative freedom to explore their new found tools.

The open musical nature of this course will make it a great place for diverse musicians and producers to learn and work together. It is recommended that students have a good grasp on midi sequencing in Pro Tools 8 before taking this course. Pro Tools 101 and Producing with Pro Tools are good prerequisite courses if you need a refresher.

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Berkleemusic’s online spring term begins April 5, 2010.

Find out more at berkleemusic.com or contact a Student Advisor:
1-866-BERKLEE (USA) | +1 617 747 2146 (Intl) | advisors@berkleemusic.com

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Hey again. Michael Moyes, Student Advisor for Berkleemusic here. I have been furthering my harmonic knowledge this term and have been spending some time thinking about Tritones and their numerous functions in music of all types.

A tritone is a musical interval of three whole steps, or 6 half steps. The interval is also known as an augmented fourth, a dimished fifth, or the ‘devil’s interval’ due to it’s dissonant sound.

This interval has been and continues to be utilized in music of all styles and can be found in tunes like “Maria” (from West Side Story), “Purple Haze, “and even Rachmaninoff’s famous Prelude in C# minor.

Tritone substitutions in chord progressions use the same concepts used to build tritones, but the focus is on the harmonic level, not melodic. These substitutions can be used in 12 Bar Blues, ii V I progressions, and many more complex changes as well.

Let’s take a standard ii V I progression in the key of C major to show a tritone substitution in action.

The typical progression would be as follows…

Dmin7

G7

CMA7

The chord substituted in the progression will be the dominant 7th, the G7 chord. Three whole tones above the note G is the note Db, which will be our new root for our dominant 7th chord.

The new progression would be as follows…

Dmin7

Db7

CMA7

Musicians use tritone substitutions to vary the feel of repeated chord progressions and to facilitate stepwise motion. Re-harmonizing is one of the more interesting advanced topics taught here at berkleemusic and is covered in Getting Inside Harmony 2, which is authored by esteemed Berklee Professor and Assistant Film Scoring Chair Michael Rendish.

Interested students should either complete Getting Inside Harmony 1 or have equivalent experience.

• Listen to a Tritone Example MP3
• Explore Berkleemusic’s online Music Theory courses and certificate programs

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Berkleemusic’s online winter term begins January 11, 2010.
Find out more at berkleemusic.com or contact a Student Advisor:
1-866-BERKLEE (USA) | +1 617 747 2146 (Intl) | advisors@berkleemusic.com

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Student Advisor Amy H answers one of our most commonly asked questions, and explains how students interact with their instructors and classmates online.

Berkleemusic’s online winter term begins January 11, 2010. Find out more at berkleemusic.com.

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Contact a Berkleemusic Student Advisor
1-866-BERKLEE (USA) | +1 617 747 2146 (Intl) | advisors@berkleemusic.com

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