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Elephant,
unfortunately, you've touched on something which, in my opinion, is killing music education. Competition.

It's not enough to go to a festival and get comments, to help the group/soloist grow musically through performance and critique. Now, it's about WINNING! Teachers are considered for tenure based on WINNING. State Contests were bad enough, now it's weekly marching competitions, national parades, and amusement park contests as well. Not to mention jazz band, color guard, drum line...

This will come off sounding wrong at first, but please bear with me. Drum Corps competition is one of the prime motivators of school WINNING. I'm not blaming DCI, it's set up as a league. It's intended to serve one purpose, which is winning. Yes, other things come out along the way, discipline, musicality, friendship, striving for perfection.

DCI, and other similar things musical, is voluntary. Pay-to-play, in fact, right? That's a far cry from schools where the kids who may not be good enough, but really WANT to be in marching band, are told to not actually play, or not even allowed to be on the field.

Yes, I'm really way off the point of musicality. But it ties in.

Now, it's not enough to play a piece well. It has to be a TOUGH piece. It has to have every musical challenge known to mankind. It has to be loud and fast. HIgher, faster, louder...THAT is good music.

Most of my playing any more is old jazz styles. I listen to live bands as much as I can, and even more recordings/YT vids, etc. I'm really disgusted by those that simply play too fast. Tempo di Kicka$$ is standard, slow is hokey. What???

I heard a cut from a Rolling Stones live recording, I'm not sure what year but it's likely late 80s/early 90s. Satisfaction, a classic tune. The newer track is easily 30 bpm faster. Guitar sound nothing like the original, drums a lot more obnoxious.

I heard a pep band doing a chart of "Crazy Little Thing Called Love". Easily 40 bpm faster. WAAAY to fast. It wasn't musical. It wasn't rockabilly, it was thrash.

When was the last time you heard of a band playing "Irish Tune from County Derry"?

Is this the 24 hour news cycle? Is it technology? Or is it laziness?

eupher61 wrote:
Now, it's not enough to play a piece well. It has to be a TOUGH piece. It has to have every musical challenge known to mankind. It has to be loud and fast. HIgher, faster, louder...THAT is good music.

That is all about individual taste. I would prefer to pay to hear a performance of Bartok's "Miraculous Mandarin" (big POS IMHO) over paying for a performance of Tannhouser (one of my faves) simply due to the "let's see if they can pull this stunt off" factor.

I would also pay $1,000,000 to see bad old Maynard again. Would not walk across the road to see Wynton Marsalis for free.

DCI? Oh yeah, I'm there.

Maynard, DCI, and Rush. If they never existed I would have lost interest in music a long time ago.

The last time I heard "Irish Tune....." was last summer. Our very old city band played it. The range of age in players was 16 to 86. Interestingly enough everyone enjoyed playing it.

eupher61 wrote: Most of my playing any more is old jazz styles.

More about that? Does that have some of what you miss in the other styles? How much of that, if so, is in the solo break performances?

What I'm thinking here is that as you allow more time to invest nuance, maybe sentiment, in a note or phrase, you exponentially increase the range of expressive possibilities, and to be successful at it you have to pick one of those possibilities in a way that is beyond the reach of many ensembles. Someone like Mingus, for example (not old enough jazz?), could impose that kind of direction and create awesome slower tempo music, but that's somewhat more exceptional than the ability to run a band that can play hot music like crazy (and/or play really expressively in solo breaks.)

I wouldn't call it laziness, or a sign of the miserable state of music education or anything, so much as recognizing your limits. Every band I've played in has frankly suffered from this. We tend to equate speed with energy, and I know that's wrong but I'm no Charles Mingus to bring a more interesting idea, so that's often what we have to work with. If people jump up and down, it can't be entirely wrong.

I agree with your point that winning a competition has become more important than learning and playing music. Unfortunately, the winning thing has become prevalent in sports and grades and just about anything else. In the city bands that I play in, we have children (as young a 10 years old) playing with us. The emphasis is on the music and the enjoyment of playing you instrument. These seem to be happy kids. Maybe there is hope ......

Donn,
I'm not completely sure what you asked, but two reasons I play mostly old jazz: I enjoy it, REALLY enjoy it, and that's most of the work I get called for.

bloke,
you may have nailed a big part of it. Which came first? Let's go back to Nehlybel and explore from there. OK, someone else can do that...

Wade,
I realize i didn't make my point as clearly as I thought...Yes, I put any blame on the band directors community, but the influence stems from the corps movement.
As I have understood, from discussions and research, teachers saw the shiny trophies and acclaim which come to the corps, and wanted some of that to brag about how good they are as teachers, to help "themselves" keep jobs.

Sadly, that's the only way most school boards seem to think successful education in the arts can be measured.

If competition is the prime motivation behind music, then music should be totally extra-curricular. Same for flags, dance teams, whatever else. That puts it at a level with football, basketball, track, etc. Even cheerleading has become competitive, but it has (at least as far as I know) been extra-curricular.

Are visual arts teachers expected to win? Are drama teachers expected to win? Not because of what happens in their classrooms.

I dunno.

I feel competition between human beings has almost no place in music education. Striving for excellence and personal bests should be the focus.

I don't often comment on these threads, for a couple of reasons. Primarily it is because each teaching situation is different and different largely because of human perceptions (by administrators and parents) not because of anything remotely factual. I avoided competitive festivals successfully (I was sand bagged in to one, once and hated it). In fact, I usually told administrators that music was an excuse for the skills I wanted to teach, not the reason. I found that forming a cohesive, cooperative group of students, who happened to perform, led to a better education and better served the purpose of public education than having an "Award Winning Band" (or choir or jazz band or whatever).

Such a goal served both the several dozen really excellent musicians I worked with and the participants who were there for the enjoyment music can bring. It also allowed peer mentoring by the better players on the other kids who were not at their level and it made the groups better by the congeniality it seemed to have spawned. I had only one "rule" for music and participation: "You have to show up." We all knew we worked as a unit, not as individuals and we were dependent on one another to do well. Peer pressure is a legitimate resource when used this way.

I had kids who were not great players but who had a talent for moving equipment, organizing recreational activities and supporting, with spirit and encouragement all of our activities, Some were the great players, some were not but they were all great contributors. I am now very old, still active playing, but no longer teaching. But, I have more than two dozen former high school students who are now making a living in music in some form, working band, college professor, etc. My reward was never a trophy (yeah, we won the the competitive festival that sprung on us - so what). The reward has always been the groups we formed and what we did together that led to what the kids want to and can do, now. Compete, if it suits YOU. It never suited me.