A Systems View of Music Performance Education (I)

Could a technology model work for a music performance education?

Last summer I worked in a temporary position developing a web site “in-house” for an education center (MATEC) devoted to catalyzing a change in electronics education. The project is called eSyst and its main focus is the systems view of electronics.

According to the project’s founder, many of the university electronics programs across the country are teaching outdated concepts. Students are learning, for example, from textbooks that are 20 years behind the current technology curve. Moreover, the learning model is gearing students for a “bottom-up” approach to problem solving – from the micro to the macro level.

Most electronics technicians do not view the world at the micro level any longer. They do not troubleshoot and replace discrete components. Instead, they must have a total systems view and importantly, a view of how that system communicates both inside itself and with the outside world

However, electronics students are being taught the basic fundamentals at the component level. While useful, these skills do not practically apply in the field.

For more details see the Flash interactive model.

The systems view advocates a “top-down” approach – focusing on the interaction of elements rather than the intricate details of the elements themselves.

Switching gears

In the full-time orchestral field, the employment outlook has changed significantly in the last few decades. While only a handful of full-time jobs are available, the number of music graduates is higher than the market can support.

Not only is the market like a rising tide in a shrinking pool, the entire field itself may be in a state of shift and flux. Many music graduates are unprepared to deal with the real world.

From Justin Locke’s Arts and Commerce blog:

Now that I am occasionally contracting orchestras myself … I often find myself vexed and frustrated by the musicians I hire and their attitudes towards me and how they market themselves. At one point I got so bothered I called some local music schools and offered to come and speak to their performance majors about how to deal with, and relate to, the people who hire them as professional players. I thought they would leap at the chance to have their kids meet someone who actually hires young musicians. Amazingly, I was rebuffed. I was told that “we are already doing this,” but it is clear to me as a contractor that no one is teaching musicians of any age how to deal with contractors.

The full post is here.

> Continue to Part II.