Comments on: Is Music Grading a Bad Thing?

By: William

William — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:49:30 +0000

It is pretty obnoxious. The only people who really play new music are chamber groups. Instead of picking up the new work, all of the bands are stuck with biased selections published half a decade ago, and if it is new work, it’s only from select publishing companies. It makes it so much harder for people like you and I to make a living, and then all of these kids get hit by surprise once they leave high school, because the majority have never read any literature outside of you standard major and minor keys. It’s something that has always driven me crazy. Fortunately, I think after the older generation of directors dies off, we might get some new work running through (that’s only if music programs aren’t removed from the schools systems completely. What a tragedy we’re faced with.)

By: Casey

Casey — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 04:19:59 +0000

Two things.
1. It looks like there’s an effort to standardize things. There’s an interesting article about that:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17.html
2. Music Grading is what we computer scientists call an NP-Complete problem. In a nutshell, it means that there is an answer to grading music, but the answer can’t be all completely calculated in polynomial time, so we just do the best we can by approximating. That’s why people go to college and then teach music classes in middle schools.

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 02:10:54 +0000

You used Swearingen in the same sentence with Brahms? Ha, Ha! I’ve met Swearingen on a couple of occasions, and he’s a pretty nice guy, but he is definitely a “cookie cutter” composer/arranger; and a little stuck on himself. You hit on some valid points. I, too, would like to see that state list expand without so many limits. The panel who approves music to “the list” looks for the same things in all they choose. It has been my experience to see many bands (and I do include mine on occasion) become mechanical based on pleasing judges. The grading system is useful to give a group some sort of benchmark from which to improve. For example, we played a gr. IV version of Holst’s, First Military Suite last year, and it was definitely a stylistic step up. Grading allows directors to validate improvement with their students, and the football coaches who are paying close attention! I enjoyed the post.