The Alternative Music School

 

The original page I had on Quora was meant to be an annex of this blog, Musing On Music, but it fell fallow. Now that Quora has introduced Spaces (as its attempt to compete with Facebook pages),

I had considered changing it to The Alternative Music School ("AMS"). It is a riff on the London Free School idea, but I had envisioned it being more of a music magazine with feature articles and music lessons within it. It would be about making music interesting and fun, and to foster curiosity-thinking and design-thinking as a by-product. 

I had the AMS idea back in the 1990s. It would be a school that wasn't all about musical rudiments, but could also be about lots of other related topics which would be driven by the interests and enthusiasms of the students: Why not have a class devoted to thinking about the philosophy of music, or classes on how to integrate visual 'looks' into the music, or how to approach music holistically--even if you're not a musician? (E.O. Wilson called it ‘consilience’—as in ‘resilience’ in which disparate domains compliment and make each mutually stronger).

Music is a great way to explore symmetry, which overlaps with mathematics, which might lead to an understanding of Equal Temperament and how very often the world is about compromises. The point of learning is to have some kind of takeaway and access point to some other discipline. (But isn't this just liberal arts?)

Other topics would include new technologies, such as AI used in music, with a free discussion and debate as to its application, as well as music and language, which relates to songwriting (and opera and musicals) as well.

Now 'post-COVID', we can give greater consideration for ‘telematic’ approaches to music education (and performance) through live-streaming and other video-based productions. I think this evolution is certain because all inflection points in history are sea changes.