Jeff Berlin asks - Why Do Some Object to My Educational Views

[DirtDog]

.;..

Select twenty people from music history that play different instruments and who come from any period in music history. You will find that they are either self taught players (or in charge of what they decided to learn with) or they were only taught how to play or compose by practicing academic written music assigned to them by their teachers. If your research verifies my belief, then it is a safe bet that bass education has greatly shifted away from teaching via the only proven academic method of teaching that every trained musician learned by, exceptions aside.

Try out this little examination and let me know who you find in music history who weren't self taught or were't only taught musical content. List your discoveries here and we can chat about this.

I doubt that gathering data on 20 different musicians throughout history who may have been self-taught or formally taught (or not, depending on what formal education standards were at any given time ) will result in any useful conclusions to either prove or refute what I *think* is your hypothesis. Internal validity of this method of analysis is almost nil.

As an alternative, a basic syllogistic thought experiment could distill down to this:

• All good electric bassists are musically educated.
• All musical education is achieved only through formal training.
• Therefore all good electric bassists have received only formal training.

Now, take this last statement and test it for falsifiability - as in: is it possible to conceive of a case where this statement is negated? If there's even one case that can be conceived of or presented as evidence, the hypothesis that "all good electric bassists have received formal training" can be rejected.

Now, of course, this all depends on what we mean by "good", "formal training" and "educated", but I can come up with at least one decent example that refutes the statement in question: Jaco.

 

[Quinn Roberts]

• All musical education is achieved only through formal training.

While this may be part of your experiment you wish to test. I don't believe this is what Mr. Berlin has stated. Maybe that one "paying" for formal training should be receiving a musical education, but not that one can only achieve it solely in that fashion.

Edit: I'll add that what I've taken from this and other threads is that basically (and not to put words in mouths, I may be wrong here) he's trying to say "what" bassists should be learning per se, not "how" they should be doing it. Go find a teacher, or do your own thing, just learn music!

 

[tlc1976]

Let me turn the tables on the guys who want to learn to groove and be "tight" or who are proponents of that stuff before learning music generally:

LEARN TO GROOVE? Ha. Are you kidding me? That's the easy part. Music is generally divided into nice, convenient, concrete beats and subdivisions thereof. Usually no worse than 16th notes- that's only 4 different places within a beat. How hard is that to learn? Even with all of the permutations, it's not that hard once you can see/feel/hear a few combinations of note/rest patterns that you can teach yourself extremely quickly. It is very concrete stuff. Google Cliff Engel Sight read for bass and you can see. On the other hand, any one pitch can go to any one of 11 other pitches at any time. Notes can be added on top of any other note and each of those notes can go to any one of another 11 notes. It is orders of magnitude more complex than learning rhythm or slap or fast plucking. Yeah, people have been inventing, implying, playing crazy harmony forever, self-taught, even. However, it is much easier to "reinvent" the slap/speed/rhythm wheel at home by yourself and with some recordings than it is to reinvent for yourself the wheel of theory and harmony. Therefore, if you want to be great like that, which would you be better off paying a teacher to teach you- mechanics or music?

And to those who say "oh, if grooving is so easy why do so many suck at it?" Maybe the answer is lack of time spent playing, listening and/or serious contemplation of those 4 subdivisions within any beat? "What about 'feel?' You know playing precisely on the beat all of the time is so sterile and boring?" I guarantee that something as nebulous as that comes with time spent playing, or you naturally have it. Keith Richards and Ron Wood laid down slinky lines because they feel it in themselves. And playing on the beat is no more boring to a good ear than is playing the same old harmonically-boring, diatonic/pentatonic-with-added-blue-note crap all of the time. Regardless, it's a false premise to resort to saying groove and feel are more important than learning music (remember monster-ear guys we are talking about people who don't have a god-given great ear- most of us) if one wants to do much more than rock and roll.

The summary, Jeff, is that the average person is average. 49.99999% are below average. Many of the rest are not very much above average. None of them can even fathom the depths of music that are possible. An other many know that there is more but they don't care to even wander outside I ii iii IV V vi and that other one notated with the circle with the slash thru it and a 7 They will never understand and, instead, some of them will prod you. Then there are some of the geniuses (not said sarcastically) who don't need to understand any of what you teach, they just hear it (the number 3 people above). This leaves you with a relatively small audience. Enjoy THEM.

Simply make your case (repeatedly even) and do not engage with naysayers- the naysayers either don't understand or they don't need to understand. Nobody can LOGICALLY argue that you are wrong. Some of them probably readily agree with you to a large degree but their feelings may be hurt that you are somewhat dismissive of their methods, their methods which put food on the table- teaching paying customers what the customer wants to learn- remember who their average customer is. Average and aims for nothing more.

I wish I learned your way. I should be a much better bass player after 20+ years but my foundation has holes in it because I learned too much technique and song-learning rather than music-learning.

You are probably a tortured-genius, or something akin to that. Remember that when you try to change the world the world usually changes you. You have all of the respect of the people who matter to you. Enjoy it. Keep putting your word out but don't engage the naysayers. The right students will continue to find you.

I learned by practicing major and minor scales to learn coordination and dexterity and reach. I previously knew how to read music, so learned bass lines out of piano/vocal/guitar books. Some pretty fancy stuff since a lot of it was keyboard bass. Despite constantly making up little jingles when I was a kid, playing bass I couldn't learn pitches or find the beat. It was trial and error, and while I got good at faking the beat, it took me over a year to actually be able to feel the beat in a song. Shortly after, relative pitch intervals came to me, and then with listening to David Burge's perfect pitch course, my playing took off exponentially. But it took awhile, and I'm sure I missed plenty along the way.

Perhaps practicing with a metronome earlier on would have helped, giving me guidance to find the beat. Or practicing with a band, which isn't always possible when you're a 15 year old who lived in the sticks. Something like Jeff's course would have been nice, but well out of reach for someone like me, not to mention a certain elitist factor (as with most high end courses) that didn't seem to fit what I wanted to play. From a magazine anyway. I've not listened to any of Jeff's courses. But I'll always remember the way my college engineering instructor taught. He was always comparing the high tech data to average Joe knowledge, like restoring Corvettes, ferris wheels, water tanks, etc.

"Why Do Some Object to My Educational Views "

Because you make absolutist, objective, truth claims about things which are subjective opinion.

+1 People teach and learn in different ways and many great players come out of it.

 

[JeffBerlin]

But you are not new here, you've had thousands of posts here years ago and you were eventually banned for over zealously defending yourself.

I am a fan of your stuff and was dissappointed that your previous time here ended in turmoil but I am surprised at your feigned ignorance on how this forum works. Not to mention that you seem to be intent on just re-stirring the old pot instead of moving forward.

Well, few tend to ask questions here. People seem to prefer to offer their opinions. I don't have much to move forward with if people aren't interested in looking to do this with me.

Upon my return to TB, my original posts were meant to be jumping off points. I assumed that people might use them and join me in heading into a chat about learning and bass, but this didn't happen. People here seem to put a lot of effort into splitting hairs and find flaw and faults with my views than to ask me about them. Everyone has an opinion here and they voice it and use me as the fodder of their comments. I have little from anyone to move the conversation into learning. Barely anyone has asked a thing from me and I have been here for a couple of weeks already.

Finally, my views are not only valid (in my opinion) but, bass education got worse in the years sinceI was banned. I don't know how we got back onto the metronome thing either. A little retracing might clear this up, but I don't think that I was the one that raised the point. People are viewing me from the old days and I can't do much more than field their comments and try to make sense of them. Few people are giving me a chance to interact with them and I suspect that the response to this post will verify my view. Don't get me wrong. I am glad to be here, but, as in the past, people are as much a part of the interaction that goes on with me on TB and many haven't given me a chance at engaging in even a decent chat about bass.

 

[JeffBerlin]

This is an "Ask Jeff Berlin" forum and no question he has been asked has been responded to. Why isnt this forum simply called "Listen to Jeff Berlin rant about Bass education for yet another decade"?

Yours is a very unfair statement.

Few tend to ask questions here. People seem to prefer to offer their opinions. And, I reject entirely your premise that I rant here. People do equally by offering thoughts and regretfully, I seem not to be accorded the same permission that others are given. Statements like yours is common place. I don't have much to move forward with if people aren't interested in looking to do this with me.

Upon my return to TB, my original posts were meant to be jumping off points. I assumed that people might use them and join me in heading into a chat about learning and bass, but this didn't happen. People here seem to put a lot of effort into splitting hairs and find flaw and faults with my views than to ask me about them. Everyone has an opinion here and they voice it and use me as the fodder of their comments. I have little from anyone to move the conversation into learning. Barely anyone has asked a thing from me and I have been here for a couple of weeks already.

I don't know how we got back onto the metronome thing either. A little retracing might clear this up, but I don't think that I was the one that raised the point. People are viewing me from the old days and I can't do much more than field their comments and try to make sense of them. Few people are giving me a chance to interact with them and I suspect that the response to this post will verify my view. Don't get me wrong. I am glad to be here, but, as in the past, people are as much a part of the interaction that goes on with me on TB and many haven't given me a chance at engaging in even a decent chat about bass.

 

[Gorn]

Finally, my views are not only valid (in my opinion) but, bass education got worse in the years sinceI was banned

I'm sorry, what? Bass education got worse where? For whom? How did you determine this?

 

[DirtDog]

While this may be part of your experiment you wish to test. I don't believe this is what Mr. Berlin has stated. Maybe that one "paying" for formal training should be receiving a musical education, but not that one can only achieve it solely in that fashion.

Edit: I'll add that what I've taken from this and other threads is that basically (and not to put words in mouths, I may be wrong here) he's trying to say "what" bassists should be learning per se, not "how" they should be doing it. Go find a teacher, or do your own thing, just learn music!

I'm not in disagreement with you. It's unclear what Mr. Berlin's thesis is as he's laid out a bunch of propositions, some of which directly contradict themselves. All I'm trying to do is gain a bit of clarity on what his thesis actually is and trying to frame it in a logical manner. At the same time, a syllogistic approach can take other forms - such as:

• All good electric bassists are musically educated.

• Some musical education is achieved through formal training.

• Therefore some good electric bassists have received formal training.

This last statement is a bit more difficult to falsify but is also less absolute than the statement in my earlier proposition.

 

[JeffBerlin]

I'm sorry, what? Bass education got worse where? For whom? How did you determine this?

I do clinics all over the world and have a first hand insight into how people in dozens of countries learn and practice bass. My clinics are organized to find out what people do to improve. I receive videos or am given links of videos from bass players who ask me their opinions about improving. Most share what was taught to them if they paid for a bass education and many point me to comments from schools or teachers where they discuss their teaching philosophies.

I have an insight into educational benefits because I was taught by some of the finest music educators in the world since age 5. And for me and literally everyone else who were taught any instrument with all teachers, musical content was the core of all instruction. Many teachers teach tab, groove, styles or acquiring time with a click and put an emphasis on teaching performance principles in a classroom, not the learning of factual musical principles to practice.

I read the learning advices and bass columns that people teach by in some of the bass magazines and websites. I've taught bass players for over 35 years with players who have all shared their backgrounds in how they learned with me. Finally, I have discussed points of how bass is taught with teachers of other instruments. Realize that comments from these teachers were not supportive of the methods that bass educators subscribe to.

 

[JeffBerlin]

As someone who asked one of those questions (with as yet no reply forthcoming) I am forming some thoughts on this. Jeff posted that he noticed that few people are asking questions, so I asked one. I feel a little foolish not realizing that the questions he seems to have in mind are those that fall within the parameters of questioning HIS thesis. In this way, he controls the discourse.

Now, there is nothing wrong with this. It's likely he never came to Talkbass with the intention of having his own AMA thread. That he came with an agenda to solicit responses to his theories on bass education. Again, this is fine as long as people realize this and want to participate with this understanding. I find myself less and less interested in doing so.

Well, there are so many posts with dissenting views that I don't read each post anymore. I've become aware that most people aren't here to discuss or ask my thoughts. I sort of glance over things and if something catches my attention, I respond. It seems to be the way that I best wish to use my time since I don't really feel that some people are here to chat.

 

[JeffBerlin]

Found this book stashed away. Kinda puts a lot of what is being said into perspective for me.
View attachment 2870567

This is an example of a how publishers feel that they can appeal to bass players of this generation. They know how people think when they wish to make an educational offering attractive to some people. Thank you for sharing this.

 

[JeffBerlin]

Ant strongly disagrees with this plan of yours. We understood why you post your name in title. Please continue with it, your fans certainly appreciate it.

This is what I thought as well until some saw this as a negative. Is it often like this on TB?

 

[JeffBerlin]

I'm not in disagreement with you. It's unclear what Mr. Berlin's thesis is as he's laid out a bunch of propositions, some of which directly contradict themselves.

This caught my eye and I am interested to know if you would share where I contradict myself. This is important as it might help me to clear up my offerings here. Thank you.

 

[Gorn]

I do clinics all over the world and have a first hand insight into how people generally learn and practice. My clinics are organized to find out what people do to improve. I receive videos or am given links of videos from bass players who ask me their opinions about improving. Many share what is taught in bass education and many point me to comments about learning that schools and educators offer. I have an insight into educational benefits because I was taught by some of the finest music educators in the world. Many teachers teach via tab and emphasize performance principles in a classroom, not learning or factual musical principles to practice. I am aware of the learning advice that people teach in bass magazines and websites. And finally, I've taught bass players for over 35 years who have shared their backgrounds in learning. I have discussed points of how bass is taught with teachers of other instruments. Their comments are not supportive of the methods that bass educators subscribe to.

Do you feel your presence here has that much of an effect on worldwide bass education?

 

[Double E]

I completely agree with

Well, no one tends to ask questions here, People seem to prefer to offer their opinions. I don't have much to move forward with if people aren't interested in looking to do this with me.

Upon my return to TB, my original posts were meant to be jumping off points. I assumed that people might use them and join me in heading into a chat about learning and bass, but this didn't happen. People here seem to put a lot of effort into splitting hairs and find flaw and faults with my views than to ask me about them. Everyone has an opinion here and they voice it and use me as the fodder of their comments. I have little from anyone to move the conversation into learning. Barely anyone has asked a thing from me and I have been here for a couple of weeks already.

Finally, my views are not only valid (in my opinion) but, bass education got worse in the years sinceI was banned. I don't know how we got back onto the metronome thing either. A little retracing might clear this up, but I don't think that I was the one that raised the point. People are viewing me from the old days and I can't do much more than field their comments and try to make sense of them. Few people are giving me a chance to interact with them and I suspect that the response to this post will verify my view. Don't get me wrong. I am glad to be here, but, as in the past, people are as much a part of the interaction that goes on with me on TB and many haven't given me a chance at engaging in even a decent chat about bass.

Jeff, I respect and believe in your position on music education. I do think you could stand to use a considerable amount more of brevity in your responses to your detractors. In most cases no response at all would be most appropriate...let alone offering any kind of extensive explanation that will most often not be accepted or understood.

If you expect to hang around here and actually help anyone, you'd best learn how to use the ignore feature.

 

[JeffBerlin]

I disagree with this statement. I learned from my father who had his master's in music, studied to be a symphony conductor, and was a high school band director. He also played trombone and upright bass professionally. Although I didn't "pay" to learn. I'm sure I got as good an education in music as you can get.

I have no doubt about it. But you didn't pay to be taught from your father which means that he offered his opinions in good faith instead of paying for a service that you might or might not have received. if your father has a music background, then you are fortunate as he probably gave this to you as well. If musical content is the very core of what you are being taught then you are in good hands. I've said this throughout this thread and elsewhere.

 

[JeffBerlin]

When I was in college, I failed Calculus the first time. Why? Because the professor gave me what he thought I needed.

For all the office visits, practice exercises, I could not grasp his traditional methods.

When I took Calc the 2nd semester with a different instructor, he told a story that unlocked the mysteries in 20 minutes that made the lightbulb go off. Calculus through Differential Equations was easy from that point.

What I learned from this was something that I applied to all of my academic learning from that point on.

The end result may be the same, but the method might be different.

For all my mathematics based courses - statistics, physics, etc. I would always head to the library and look through various sources to find one that helped me understand the material.

I am the ultimate source of understanding what I need to progress nice the problem has been identified.

The same applies when learning music. I have had many teachers over the past 3 years that I have played bass.

I have progressed in theory, technique, and now have started reading based upon finding what resonates with me instead of sticking to a method that may be good, but may not resonate with my process.

Eventually, you learned the exact same form of calculus that others learned, right? This is my point and I believe that I have been consistent throughout stating this: The learning of content is the core of education. If you learned calculus differently than another guy, well, some bass players can practice for three hours while others can't. Some can read a page of music a day while others can only read a couple of lines. You and others are not getting this simple point, that being taught the right content is what constitutes a meaningful education. Bass education is not constructed upon the teaching of of the right content. That's it in its entirely!

 

[bolophonic]

I do clinics all over the world and have a first hand insight into how people generally learn and practice. My clinics are organized to find out what people do to improve. I receive videos or am given links of videos from bass players who ask me their opinions about improving. Most share what was taught to them if they paid for a bass education and many point me to comments from schools or teachers where they discuss their teaching philosophies.

I have an insight into educational benefits because I was taught by some of the finest music educators in the world since age 5. And for me and literally everyone else who were taught any instrument with all teachers, musical content was the core of all instruction. Many teachers teach tab, groove, styles or acquiring time with a click and put an emphasis on teaching performance principles in a classroom, not the learning of factual musical principles to practice.

I read the learning advices and bass columns that people teach by in some of the bass magazines and websites. I've taught bass players for over 35 years with players who have all shared their backgrounds in how they learned with me. Finally, I have discussed points of how bass is taught with teachers of other instruments. Realize that comments from these teachers were not supportive of the methods that bass educators subscribe to.

Man... there’s nothing I love to read more than a long lecture!

 

[thedukeofno]

This is what I thought as well until some saw this as a negative. Is it often like this on TB?[/QUO

There was a recent thread about whether or not one should wear a hat while playing.

 

[JeffBerlin]

I doubt that gathering data on 20 different musicians throughout history who may have been self-taught or formally taught (or not, depending on what formal education standards were at any given time ) will result in any useful conclusions to either prove or refute what I *think* is your hypothesis. Internal validity of this method of analysis is almost nil.

As an alternative, a basic syllogistic thought experiment could distill down to this:

• All good electric bassists are musically educated.
• All musical education is achieved only through formal training.
• Therefore all good electric bassists have received only formal training.

Now, take this last statement and test it for falsifiability - as in: is it possible to conceive of a case where this statement is negated? If there's even one case that can be conceived of or presented as evidence, the hypothesis that "all good electric bassists have received formal training" can be rejected.

Now, of course, this all depends on what we mean by "good", "formal training" and "educated", but I can come up with at least one decent example that refutes the statement in question: Jaco.

Well try this, them!

Research 20 top athletes in any sport who achieved their top status and skills who weren't either self taught athletes or trained in their sports. If you can't find any, then this points to an irrefutable fact, that there are only two ways to become capable in a sport. If you associate this with music and notice that there are only two ways to become a capable player, then bass players might start to focus in on only two possibilities to choose from (or participate in both which I recommend) and turn away from teaching methods and suggestions that are experimental instead of concrete. But now you won't know this for sure.

 

[consectaneus]

Well, there are so many posts with dissenting views that I don't read each post anymore. I've become aware that most people aren't here to discuss or ask my thoughts. I sort of glance over things and if something catches my attention, I respond. It seems to be the way that I best wish to use my time since I don't really feel that some people are here to chat.

I can well understand that things move at a rapid pace sometimes and you can't respond to every idea or counter argument or comment thrown out there. (At least without spending all your time here, and I'm assuming you have a life too.)

I was referring in my own case to a new topic I created which now has over 200 views, but as yet no response by you. It would be more understandable that you didn't have time to respond except that you are quite busy on threads that you created.

You have to decide how to best use your time here, and as I said, you may not have originally envisioned being in a position to answer a lot of questions outside your specific interests in education. I took a chance to give you an opportunity to perhaps turn the heat down and talk about something else you may have a passion for (the music of Jack Bruce). Something that I'd hoped could add a different dimension to your presence here and that we could find more agreement on in a lighter vein.