Acoustic Pie Newsletter, January 2009

Hello, lovers of original, contemporary, genre-free songs performed by the songwriter in primarily acoustic arrangements!  Here’s what’s on my mind today :)

1. What’s a Singer/Songwriter?

2. Ellis Paul (continued)

3. What’s New!

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1.  What’s a Singer/Songwriter?

Speaking of that salutation/definition way back at the beginning of this newsletter, it took me a long time before I figured out how to describe the music I love most. I knew there was some commonality that linked Don McLean and Girlyman. Jim Croce with Anais Mitchell. Paul Simon and Teitur. I knew my favorite music crossed the genres that defined radio stations. I knew that the personality of the artist was stamped somehow on the songs themselves, not just the performance, with the clarity of a signature.  It’s kind of wordy but that introductory greeting pretty much sums it up for me:  Original, contemporary, genre-free songs performed by the songwriter in primarily acoustic arrangements

And then I stumbled onto the genre label singer/songwriter. That was a big deal.  A revelation really. A lot of artists now prefer the term “performing songwriter”. But as a lover of language (oh yes, there are blogs that confirm this ~ “What’s in a Rhyme” and Limp Lyrics), I’m enamored of the sing-song alliteration of singer/songwriter. The Wikipedia article on singer/songwriters is pretty good if you want a more in-depth definition and a nice list of the most prominent singer/songwriters.

Woody Guthrie’s picture is used as the graphic for the Wikipedia article. I always forget that  Woody Guthrie is considered one of the first American singer/songwriters.  His songs are so much a part of the American folk culture that I forget that he wrote them.  I added Arlo Guthrie’s new version of Pastures of Plenty to Acoustic Pie Radio recently.  It is the second of only two songs in the rotation that are not sung by the original songwriter.  Do you know the other?

2.  Ellis Paul (continued)

When I last wrote to you, I was on a train going to hear Ellis Paul at Russ & Julie’s House Concert series in Oak Park, CA.  Ellis Paul is the personification of the Boston school of urban, literate, individualistic singer/songwriters. The show was as wonderful as expected.  A great introduction to Ellis Paul is his new live album recorded at Eddie’s Attic in Atlanta A Summer Night in Georgia.  I just added several songs from it to the rotation on Acoustic Pie Radio including my favorite new Ellis Paul song “Hurricane Angel”. I listened to the song so much in my car that I now know all of the lyrics and sing a really, really bad harmony line in the chorus.

3. What’s New!

There’s a new photo gallery up on the website featuring local artists at Carol Branch’s house concert series in University City here in San Diego.  Carol hosts shows almost monthly in her home.  Just another passionate and tireless fan promoting the music and artists she loves.  I love that!

The Top 20 Songs on Acoustic Pie Radio for December have been tallied and posted.  Read all about it in the Jan. 3 blog.  Don’t forget that you can vote for your favorite songs while you’re listening to The Pie by clicking the Thumbs Up button on your player.

Thanks for reading!  As always, I love to hear from you!

~Kelley
AcousticPie.com

Music Lessons: Killing the Joy

I was drinking my afternoon iced mocha on a bench on the San Diego State University campus where I work when I heard the most beautiful harmonies. I looked up and saw two young girls walking toward me, maybe 14-15 years old, singing a vaguely familiar pop song. They were at the head of a pack of young men who were all carrying electric guitar cases and drumsticks. The smaller of the two girls was singing lead and strumming the unamplified electric guitar slung around her neck. The taller was providing the vocal harmonies. They were lovely girls and a teeny bit self-conscious, singing and strumming and striding along the busy path. But what I mainly noticed was that they were having so much fun. They were bursting with the kind of joy that springs from a favorite song and the power of being a part of that song ~ with the joy that is a naturally occurring inclination, arguably a genetic predisposition, in just about every age and every culture of human beings. And I thought, as I often do, that nurturing that joy should be the paramount goal of music lessons.

I found out later that this group of happy kids was on campus attending the Power Chord Academy’s Rock ‘n Roll Music Camp. They were coming from a music lesson. And they had been so inspired that they couldn’t stop singing and playing even as they made their way across campus to return to their dorm rooms. Why is this so surprising? It shouldn’t be. Children are universally drawn to music. There’s some pleasure response that is programmed into our genes. Yet I know that most kids leave their piano and clarinet lessons wanting to get as far away from their instruments as possible. Playing music becomes a chore sandwiched between dusting and taking out the garbage. Kids have to be forced to “practice” something that is a natural, primal source of happiness and satisfaction.

Obviously, I’m targeting conventional, typically classically-based, music lessons ~ the kind most of us adults reading this went through. The kind where the principle goal is to learn to read musical notation and your first “pieces” are limited to the simplest versions of the least interesting of the classical repertoire. I do believe there are valuable mental and cultural gains that are attained with that approach. But unless the pupil is a budding Mozart-style wunderkind who came out of the womb humming Rachmaninoff concertos, I think it’s an excellent way to squash the passion and rob a child of her chance to really experience the wonder of music, the elation of being a participator and the exhilaration of being a creator musically.

The most important goal of any music lesson should be to provide the student with the ability to play the music they love and to create their own music. In a single piano or guitar lesson a child can be taught two or three chords and be singing along to a simple version of a favorite song within 30 minutes. There is no need to insist on “practicing”. She’ll be dying to learn more chords so that she can play more songs. And by the time a child has five or six chords under her fingers, there are few who won’t feel that urge to write something of their own. We have a natural drive to create and to participate musically. Why do we countenance a style of music lesson that kills this natural joy?

If you’re looking for a music teacher for your kids, think about what your goals are. If your goals are strictly to provide mental exercise and the ability to play Hayden sonatas, then you’ll have no trouble finding qualified teachers. But you also have a very high chance of producing a grown-up who gives up her instrument and any form of musical study by the time she leaves home. If you want a child who connects with music, who will exercise her creative muscles, and who will develop a lifelong avocation, perhaps even a passion, then find a teacher who will help her to play music she loves and will give her the tools to create her own music and to discover new music loves. Find someone who will focus on ear training and chord theory and supplement with music notation reading. Someone who will encourage them to play the music they already love while introducing them to the wonders of Beethoven and Jobim. “Discipline” and technique are inevitable with this kind of guidance. And joy, too. Did I mention joy?

~Kelley
Acoustic Pie

Is blogging a threat to the semicolon?

I just finished Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves – a very funny and instructional book about punctuation; I loved this quote about the threat the Internet poses to correct language usage:

“… by tragic historical coincidence a period of abysmal under-educating in literacy has coincided with this unexpected explosion of global self-publishing. Thus people who don’t know their apostrophe from their elbow are positively invited to disseminate their writings to anyone on the planet stupid enough to double-click and scroll.”

So watch your commas, kids! We don’t want to contribute to this descent into literary anarchy any more than we can help it!

Is singer/songwriter a genre?

I’m thinking that this blog will be a place to contemplate different aspects of the singer/songwriter as a genre (is it a genre?), the song as an art form, its place in popular music, and why we’re drawn to this musical form. As to that earlier theoretically rhetorical question “Is it a genre”? … I’d love to collect some definitions of the singer/songwriter as a genre (or the “performing songwriter” as some are saying nowadays).

Please share your thoughts! You may either click below to post a comment or email me directly using the “Contact Acoustic Pie” link on the blog home page.