I Want It That Way

Good Practices for Pop Music Pedagogy

Megan Lavengood

Utah State University, April 5, 2024

Inclusion and pop music

Pop music is often more familiar to students than classical music
Pop music is often not notated, so focusing on pop music can reach out to students who don’t know notation very well

A little bit about my personal background:

began piano lessons early
church music was always a big part of my life: choir, handbells, playing in the contemporary service band
in my free time, learned pop songs by ear to play and sing
played a lot of ragtime, jazz arrangements, video game music arrangements, and things like that in my piano lessons
attempted jazz piano but couldn’t get the hang of it
realized in high school that I needed to get good at classical music to get into college for music
trained a lot in classical music thorughout my education
finally went back to pop music for my dissertation and research and found my niche.
teach pop music theory now to my undergrad students and grad students.

Begin with questions about who’s here: majors? prior experience with pop? know any pop theory? where might you be teaching pop music in your future?

Talk overview

Pop music can be used to promote inclusion, but its effectiveness here depends on how it’s implemented.

Less effective methods
- Token examples of pop music
- Pop music classes as upper-level electives
More effective: teaching pop on its own terms
- example syllabus of pop theory class
- ideas for including pop performance
Example concepts of pop music theory

Tokenized pop music

Tokenization: when something outside the norm is included and represented, but in a way that still ultimately serves and reinforces the norm

Example: in a lesson about valid classical chord progressions, an example by Billy Joel is included.

Traditional theory curriculum

Four semesters:

fundamentals
diatonic harmony (chord progressions, cadences, four-part writing)
chromatic harmony
form or 20th century (set theory and serialism)

Theory textbooks

Representative of mainstream approaches to theory pedagogy
Focus on one (niche) textbook today: Turek, Theory for Today’s Musician

Turek intro to teachers

Pop music should be included for “today’s musician”
Pop will bridge the gap between what students already know and what we are trying to teach them

What are the problems and assumptions with this attitude?

Pop examples in the Turek book

Problems with token examples

Age of examples?
Demographics of artists/composers?
Representative of pop music in general?
Relationship to overall learning goals?

Performance version of token examples

Focus remains primarily on classical music
But one (notated) arrangement of a pop song is included every now and then, as a treat

Pop Electives

When schools do have a pop courses, they are often electives
Students may take it or skip it
Available after completing the core curriculum
If gen ed, may not count as part of music degree requirements

Problems with pop electives

Who gets to take it?
When do they get to take it?
Implied value of subject?
Are prerequisite classes really needed?
Gatekeeping?

Good Practices

To be as inclusive as possible, pop music needs to be treated as equally complex and valid when compared to classical music.

Good Practices

Teach pop music as a robust repertoire with its own compositional techniques and analytical approaches
Be thoughtful when assuming knowledge (what is truly needed beforehand?)
Aim for broad representation across time periods, artist demographics, and genres

Good Practices in music theory

Develop a theory class that:

Focuses entirely (or in large part) on popular music
Counts as the core curriculum
Is accessible to BAs (who don’t need to take as many theory courses usually)
Does not rely on fluency in music notation

Good Practices in music theory

Example list of topics

Melody and phrasing

Verse-chorus form

AABA form and strophic form

Rhythm and Meter in Pop Music

Harmonic schemas (4-chord schemas, puff, classical, blues-based, modal)

Fragile, Absent, and Emergent Tonics

Drumbeats

Texture in pop music

Text Setting in Pop Music

Good Practices in music theory

Prerequisite knowledge

Aural skills (tonic-finding, pitch matching, listening to bass register)
Diatonic keys, scales, and chords
Roman numerals
Music notation (but just basics)
Meter

Good practices in Performance

How could pop music be included in an ensemble curriculum or private lesson curriculum, where classical music is often studied exclusively?

Ensembles dedicated to the performance of pop music exclusively (rock bands, a cappella groups, pep bands, marching bands)
Pop music aural skills
Creating arrangements of pop tunes

Good practices in Performance

Pop music aural skills

Aural skills are paramount for pop music, which is hardly ever notated.

Playing melodies by ear
Playing bass lines by ear (especially challenging for a lot of people!)
Improvising a part appropriate to your instrument
Listening for percussion
Identifying tonic (more complex in pop, where modes are more common and chord progressions more ambiguous)

Good practices in Performance

Arranging pop tunes

Musicians often need to adapt music to the ensemble they have (with pop repertoire or other repertoire!)

Skills to develop:

Learning when notation is needed or not
Dealing with complex syncopation
Adapting a song’s form to different situations
Adapting vocal melodies to instruments and vice-versa

Good practices in Performance

Using notation

When used, notation must be implemented thoughtfully.

Pros

Good at specificity
Visual aid

Cons

Hard to show some syncopations
Does not reflect real-life practice
Excludes people who don’t read well

Good practices in Performance

Syncopation

More accurate and precise transcription, or simplified transcription?
Extrapolating freer performance of rhythm from simplified notation
Representation of polyrhythms (dotted notes vs. ties)

Good practices in Performance

Form

Writing new intros, outros, interludes, breakdowns, solo sections, etc.
Where to loop or cut the song for cases where the music needs to be longer or shorter
Example assignment: wedding arrangement

Good practices in Performance

Instrumentation

Adapting instrumental lines to vocals (a cappella syllables and techniques, writing singable lines)
Adapting vocal lines to instrumentals (compensating for lack of lyrics)

Tell me why-ee

What would we gain by promoting pop music within formal music study?

“Three music school anecdotes”

Loren Kajikawa,
“The Possessive Investment in Classical Music:
Confronting Legacies of White Supremacy in U.S. Schools and Departments of Music"
(2019)

A young rap artist is a student at College. She has been writing songs and recording in her bedroom studio since middle school. Although she is beginning to attract the attention of other artists and fans across the country, she is majoring in journalism and doesn’t see any reason to be involved with the music department.

A recent PhD in ethnomusicology is hired by the School of Music at University as an adjunct instructor. His job is to teach courses in popular and world music that enroll well and bring much-needed tuition dollars to the school. Although his work is essential to the school, he remains on a year-to-year contract while professors teaching about classical music receive tenure and make twice his salary.

The gospel choir is one of the most popular ensembles in the Department of Music at College. The director of the group, an African American, appears alongside her students in brochures touting the vitality of the institution. However, the gospel choir does not actually count toward ensemble requirements for the music degree, and most of the students in the choir are nonmajors. In fact, professors in the music department warn their students not to sing with the choir because they might pick up bad habits.

What would we gain by promoting pop music within formal music study?

Including new kinds of musicians, as both as students and teachers
Increase the relevance of formal music study to 21st-century life
Counter the prominent assumption that classical’s prestige is earned, as it is the smartest and most developed music

By and large, music schools are actually classical music schools.

Loren Kajikawa explains how part of the reason music schools have been so slow to incorporate popular music and other styles into the curriculum is because they've literally invested a lot of resources into the study of classical music. Pianos, scores, and and concert halls have been purchased. Faculty with that expertise have been hired and tenured. Courses are established. This is why it's so much easier to just drop in some token examples of pop music into the existing curriculum than it is to really create pop music courses and ensembles from the ground up.

The dominance of classical music in our music programs is so normalized that a significant chunk of people might not realize the implications and significance of a university program that focuses on the works of a handful of European composers, mostly Austro-German, mostly men, often referred to as “masters” or “geniuses.”

But what other departments at a university are similar? Music is behind the times in this way. One way of representing more kinds of folks is through pop music.

When we focus so exclusively on classical music, we exclude lots of music and musicians from our school communities.

While our modern sensibilities would like to believe that music is colorblind and that everyone is equal in our music schools, historically speaking, classical music was an exclusively white American and white European endeavor.

I think a lot of people internalize harmful ideas about classical versus pop music without realizing the implications of them, or the way that others can weaponize them. Ideas like

pitch complexity is a mark of intelligent music
pop music is not meant to be taken seriously
instrumental music is more complex than vocal music
classical music is a universal language
rap and country are especially simple genres
only classical music theory is extensively developed and systematized

can all be used to marginalize women, poor people, and people of color—intentionally or unintentionally.

None of this is to say that we should not study classical music, or that the study of classical music is racist or sexist or anything like that. Instead, I want to encourage the idea that we can make room for more kinds of music within the formal study of music.

It’s true that this might mean that some people spend less time on classical music. Some people will choose pop classes over classical classes. But I don’t think it’s a zero-sum game. I believe that by promoting more kinds of music in our departments, more people will actually get involved. Maybe some of them will become interested in classical music. Maybe they won’t! Regardless, their presence in our community enriches us all.