The one-armed tuner has had a couple of weeks with a wrist splint and then a cast on to get a preview of retirement. I have grand plans. OK, I spent most of the first two days in my recliner, but that's out of my system, now.
Working at a Conservatory for decades has given me a few strong opinions on the strengths and weaknesses of such a place. [If I’m being serious, I have to say that BW does an excellent job of teaching music skills and pedagogy. Our grads get good positions and have successful and even stellar careers in both in teaching and performing, which is all the proof one needs. But if you know me, you know how much of the time I’m serious.]
Part of this is informed by the fact that I came to music-making mostly by the seat of my pants. Yes, I had years of lessons on piano, cornet, violin, and double bass. But I also had two grandmothers and an aunt who played by ear, and picked up many instruments on my own. One of those grandmothers, technically my step-grandmother Annma, taught me tenor banjo, ukulele, and accordion. My friend Craig Collins and I figured out Western harmony by age 11 and were mutually disappointed when we found out that others had gotten there before us. I studied orchestration and arranging from a Disney orchestrator, but learned even more by listening to countless Hollywood soundtracks and Broadway cast recordings. Never studied solfege, but I learned sight-singing and all things choral by singing in choirs from childhood on, I played piano in bars and restaurants, I played guitar and hammered dulcimer in folk groups. I listened to pop recordings and learned while in high school to “lift” the arrangements and play them and write them out. And I’m not bragging, just stating facts ma’am, when I say that my sight-reading and playing-by-ear and maybe even composing skills are on par with many faculty at the Conservatory and better than most. I learned by doing.
So I get a little wistful when a senior asks me to transpose a song for them, or learn an accompaniment from “the way Audra does it on YouTube”, or when it’s clear to me that they never did master solfege and sight-singing, and that they may be able to sing or play an instrument magnificently, but are a little deficient in understanding the very bones of music. And it’s not like the Conservatory curriculum doesn’t cover those things, although it may not maximize them.
And so, I have threatened over the years to start a Mark Graham School of Practical Music, to prepare people for an entirely different kind of musical life. It was a vague idea until I noticed the vacant building on South Rocky River Drive within sight of the Conservatory, just across the street if you will, that used to be a children’s resale clothing shop, called (rather brilliantly) Smartie Pants. Even I don’t know if I’m serious when I say that I will buy the building and open my academy there, now named The Smartie Pants School of Musical Enrichment, for those things that a conservatory doesn't quite cover
The sign is long gone, but the building lingers on…
I have potential faculty aplenty lined up, from bantering about it in a joking way on Facebook, in the workroom and over quesadillas at the Cornerstone. Soo Han volunteered just this morning (he doesn’t have enough to do). It wouldn’t have to be a four-year commitment, and you wouldn’t get a diploma as such — your grade would be who you are and what you can do when you emerge from our adventurous program.
One specific course, Music Theft 101, would involve listening to a recording and doing with it what 14-year-old Mozart did with Palestrina, that is, transcribe it and orchestrate it accurately using nothing but your ears and staff paper. (OK, and your hands.) Except you could go back to the recording as much as you needed to — even Wolfgang snuck back to the Sistine Chapel to check his work.
Every freshman would spend a semester learning accordion, because you can’t play accordion without keyboard skills (right hand) and knowing chords and how they fit together. I mean, if you know how the bass buttons on an accordion are laid out, YOU KNOW WESTERN HARMONY. And accordionists don’t have to play by ear, but they all end up doing just that because the instrument forces you to understand how. Alternate semester would be spent learning hammered dulcimer, because hammered dulcimer is nothing BUT a geometric representation of the patterns of scales and modes. Also it would be really cool to have a hammered dulcimer orchestra, since they come in all sizes, perhaps supplemented by a bass and/or a harp, and various wind instruments, and let’s say, oh, an accordion if we can find anyone who knows how to play. For a final project, everyone would have to arrange a piece for the ensemble, but we probably wouldn’t have to require that, because it would be so much fun that people would do it as we go, anyway. Then we would adjourn to Mike’s Bar & Grille across the street.
Twice a week, the entire faculty and student body — when I picture it, it’s at least a hundred people — would be required to assemble together and sightread choral music of all genres. I once was present at a convocation in Gamble Auditorium where a new alma mater for the College (and it was a college then) was being presented, and the director passed out copies of both the old and the new with a reasonably capable pianist assisting her (guess who?). In those days, attendance of both faculty and students was much higher in numbers, and so more than two hundred people sat there and SIGHTREAD BOTH SONGS PERFECTLY IN FOUR-PART HARMONY. It was an incredibly uplifting sound, enhanced by voices of all ages, and I had a ringside seat. I remember it as a thrilling 45 minutes. I do not remember the alma mater.
The possibilities go on and on – anything you would like to see added to the menu? I’m thinking of classes, but am open to food suggestions as well.
— Editor’s note: Did you know we once had a Conservatory Annex over in that part of downtown Berea, with practice rooms and rehearsal spaces? It was sold by the time I arrived in 1992.