Behind the Editor’s Desk

Complain, complain, complain. As an editor, that’s what I do all day long. Don’t do this, don’t do that. This chapter is fluff, this paragraph is redundant. Yank this, reword that, add this, rethink that.

It’s not an issue with Berklee Press authors specifically. They are great—smart, experienced teachers, generally with uniquely perspectives on both how to teach and how to make music. It’s just a part of the editing process. If we’re aiming to produce the best books on their topics ever published, we have to get deep down into looking at minutiae, which often, admittedly, the only people who really care (consciously) are other editors. But in making it better than necessary, we hopefully make it really great—useful to musicians trying to improve their craft.

Twelve or so years ago, in another job, I had a manager who once said to me, “You can come to me with any problem, as long as you also bring me its solution.” At the time, it made me so mad I almost quit, but there’s definitely some truth to it, in terms of a productive business model. So, rather than just writing, “This stinks, redo,” editors generally suggest fixes to the problem. “This is redundant, so delete this paragraph and replace it with an example, to liven things up.”

Which brings us to baseball, which I have always loathed. I was thirty before I attended a live professional baseball game. But an ex-friend insisted that it was my duty as an American to at least give it a try, so she dragged me to Fenway Park, where the Red Sox beat some other team. I’m sorry that someone had to lose the game, with so many people watching. Whether or not it was the Red Sox remains irrelevant to me.

It’s been nearly ten years since that boring afternoon (and since I heard from my companion at Fenway Park). But the Red Sox played a significant (to them) game a few days ago, and people keep trying to chat with me about it.

Rather than just complain, I will offer some suggestions for how to make the Great American Waste of Time less loathsome.

My Suggested Improved Rules of Baseball

1. Make it a rule that to be on a professional baseball team, you must have been born and raised in that team’s city—or at least truly associated with the city, in some way. At the game I attended, Mo Vaughn (actually born in Connecticut, but at least it’s New England) hit a home run. The man sitting in front of me was so excited, he said to his little boy, “Wow, now you can say that you saw Mo Vaughn hit a home run in Fenway Park!”

For a moment, I actually thought that maybe there was indeed something positive about baseball—some city pride in a local hero’s achievement. But then shortly afterwards, Mr. Vaughn got a better offer, and dumped Boston for Anaheim, and then later joined the Mets before retiring to sell hot dogs in Somerville. So, there is really practically nothing “Boston” or even “New England,” about the Red Sox, and I can’t imagine why anyone takes civic pride in how this team of carpet baggers fairs.

Also, it’s a bit discriminatory. The Dominican Republic raises the best baseball players in the world, but they don’t get credit for it because their native sons are signed up to represent teams all over the United States. Is Boston better than Detroit? Is a city famous for higher education better than one famous for making cars? Certainly, baseball is no indicator, because the teams purportedly from those cities actually have nothing to do with the cities at all. Making a “must be born and raised” clause would make the games much more relevant as reflections of society.

By the way, I call Mo Vaughn a hero not because he can whack a baseball but because of all the work he’s been doing in rehabilitating low income housing. For that, people should cheer him whether he’s at the plate on the field or the plate at the hot dog stand.

If we don’t make the advertised regional origins more real, then yank the city name from the name of the team, and just call it Red Sox Corporation. We don’t refer to other companies located in Boston with “Boston” in their name. Boston Fidelity? Boston Gillette? Boston Berklee? So, why “Boston Red Sox?” All that’s currently Boston about them are some file cabinets and some grass.

2. Make player salaries not exceed that of the snack vendors. Most of watching baseball involves waiting for something to happen, and the only way to make all the tedious waiting palatable is to drink beer and eat hot dogs. Therefore, I suggest that the vendors are actually more critical to the overall experience than the players are. Let’s give compensation where it is due.

3. Give the loafing players something to do while the batter and pitcher do their thing. Besides the fact that my parking lot’s fee goes from $17 to $35 a day when there is a game at Fenway Park, what I hate most about baseball is that it is such a waste of resources. So many highly paid, competent professionals just stand around, scratching themselves, waiting for a very small percentage of the team to do any work.

Everyone else might try juggling tricks, for instance. The shortstop, the left fielder, everyone in the dugout, and so on, could all juggle, and stop only when the ball comes their way. Sheesh, their salaries are high enough, they could at least toss around some clubs or flaming torches. Anything, to relieve the tedium!

4. Improve the food. Maybe Italian pastries? And how about some decent beer—like, a local microbrew, rather than the standard commercial swill. Boston’s Beer Works is right across the street from Fenway Park, so serving their beer in the bleachers would be a natural fit. Wheeling kegs across the street should be cheaper than trucking in Budweiser from the Midwest. And how about some true Boston fare, such as fried seafood and lobster rolls?

5. Get some diversity on the field. Meaning, mix up that monoculture of grass with a more environmentally conscious assortment of pasture plants that will support a healthier ecosystem. Maybe let some heritage breed animals graze on it when there’s no game on—traditional New England breeds such as Devon cows, Jacob sheep, Dominique chickens, Pilgrim geese, and such. And leave the droppings. It would make those dramatic slides onto base more heroic—particularly if there were some chickens flapping out of the way.

6. Improve the music. They have some pretty great artists doing the national anthem, and such, and I was heartened when Tiger Okoshi performed with his pickup band of taiko drummers and horn players, in honor of Dice-K’s debut. But surely, there are more opportunities for live music? With three conservatories (Berklee, NEC, Boston Conservatory) so close to Fenway Park that there is the constant danger of a stray foul ball damaging any number of Steinways, you’d think that the Sox would have the community spirit to give some of their neighbors some gigs.

Just be local, is what I’m saying. Local beer, local music, local players. Be Boston. Then, if a nasty city like Elizabeth, NJ or Waco, TX hacks up a team, I’d genuinely want the Red Sox to win.

By the way, Tiger Okoshi is a Berklee professor and a wonderfully creative jazz trumpeter. He was co-author (with Charles Lewis) of The Berklee Practice Method for Trumpet, which teaches trumpeters how to play in rock bands/small jazz combos.

See, this is a relevant entry to my blog.

Anyhow, I hope that these suggested modifications of the rules of baseball can be enacted right away, and thus lead to some much-needed improvements in the game.

To see the Red Sox schedule, and thus know when to avoid parking in my lot next year, click here.

It’s “hip-hop.” Lowercase h, use the hyphen. Feel good about it.

This is controversial, as are so many aspects of hip-hop. But I’m happy to lean on the big guns for this preference. It’s how The Associated Press, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal write “hip-hop.” Also Keyboard Magazine. BET doesn’t seem to care much, using both “hip-hop” and “hip hop.” The American Heritage Dictionary, WordNet (Princeton University), The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, and every other dictionary I consulted all render it “hip-hop.”

Lowercase is similarly accepted in other musical style names, such as jazz, blues, rock, classical, bossa nova, and so on. Motown, Latin jazz, and Delta blues get the capital only because the names come from place names, which get capitals, e.g., Roman numerals and French kiss (though these are also frequently set lowercase). “Bebop” is a minor monkey wrench; it lost its hyphen in most contemporary usage, but the b is decidedly lowercase.

All in all, I’m confident that “hip-hop” is a sound house style choice for Berklee Press.

One group that disagrees is Harvard University’s “Hiphop Archive”. This think tank is a treasure trove of rumination about “Hiphop.” Their argument for how they render the term (uppercase, no hyphen) is that it’s the name of a culture, not just a “cool dance,” (the likely etymological derivation of the term). Hiphop style includes language, visual arts, dance, and social practices, as well as musical genre(s).

Eh, maybe, they have a point. If one of our authors truly wishes to focus on these aspects, and feels strongly about the word choice, we might permit the anomalous rendering, though violating house style complicates the publishing process and I’d really prefer not to and would try to guilt the author into reconsidering. And the “Hiphop” preference just doesn’t seem to have much traction in the world outside Harvard University. For example, Beyond Beats and Rhymes, a provocative film by Byron Hurt, similarly discusses the social issues of hip-hop, but he renders the term as “hip-hop.” And not to pick on what is likely a sore point for the Hiphop Archive, even elsewhere on the Harvard University Web site, the term is rendered as “hip-hop.” Harvard, that’s just not good team spirit.

Anyhow, there is good reason to separate the culture from the musical aspects of the term, particularly at Berklee. Contemporary hip-hop culture is often problematic and even despised by its fans, with so much promulgation of aggression, the objectification of women, the romanticization of materialism, and so forth. This hasn’t always been the case; there are deep roots in hip-hop as an activity of peacemaking and a tool of raising social conscience. But that’s not what’s selling the most records, today, and there are good reasons to separate the medium from the current message.

Berklee hip-hop guru Prince Charles Alexander, one of my current guiding lights, suggests looking at hip-hop as essentially a production style, with emblematic sounds and groove characteristics. The music serves as a bed for the rap, the content of which can be anything. This, to me, is a healthy way to see it. You can love the sound of hip-hop, but despise many of its artists’ messages. For the record, PC was initially leaning towards the capital H, but I’m trying to talk him out of it.

I see his technocratic approach as a good teaching strategy, and the lowercase h helps us to divorce the evolving social elements of hip-hop culture from its essential musical/production elements in the classroom, as well as the printed page.

The homoerotic imagery, the desensitization regarding violence, the role of women—for now, I’m happy to let Harvard University sort these out. In a sense, it is more revolutionary to think about hip-hop in terms of shout choruses, Roland TR-808 drum sounds, and beat subdivisions. By presenting it in these terms, the tools of creating hip-hop become within reach of a great diversity of potential artists, who will hopefully rescue this vibrant, creative form from some of its current doldrums of content.

Chord symbols used to indicate “minor” vary. C minor 7 might have three different renderings: Cmin7, Cm7, C–7.

The third of these is best rendered as an “en-dash.”

The possible dashes are:

- [hyphen], used for compound adjectives such as blue-green algae
- [minus sign on numeric keypad] minus symbol, as in -6 (in some fonts, this looks identical to either a hyphen or an N-dash)
– [en-dash], used for symbols (minor chord symbol, sometimes the negative sign), as well as ranges, e.g., A–Z or 315–19
— [em-dash], used to interrupt sentences—like this.

Making a hyphen is easy enough. Just type the hyphen key.

A minus symbol is also easy. Type the dash on the numeric keypad. Whether this looks different than the hyphen and/or en-dash will depend on your font.

To make an en-dash, on Macintosh, type Option-[hyphen]. On a Windows machine, it’s trickier. You need to use ASCII codes. To do this, type Alt, then 0150. You could also cheat and use the Character Map utility, which lets you copy it to the clipboard and then paste it where you will. In Microsoft Word only, you can use CTRL-[minus sign on numeric keypad]. You can also type [space] [hyphen] [space], but then delete the spaces.

To make an em-dash, on Mac, type Option-Shift-[hyphen]. On PC, use Alt-0151. A low tech alternative is to use two hyphens, which is how it’s done on typewriters. Word will convert two hyphens into an em-dash automatically. Or, again, only in Word, type CTRL-Alt-[minus sign on numeric keypad].

Here’s how to set Finale up to accept an en-dash in minor chord symbols.

1. Choose the Chord tool, and select Chords > Manual Input.

2. Click the note you want to add your minor chord, say C–7, and then in the Chord Definition window, type C–7 in the Chord field. You can type the dash as a hyphen or as an en-dash; hyphen is actually easier, as we will set it to automatically replace the hyphen with a proper en-dash.

3. It will ask you if you want to add it to the library. Say “OK.”

4. Click the Edit button next to “Suffix” to open the Suffix Editor.

5. In the field showing the dash, replace the displaying hyphen with an N-dash, by hook or by crook. Even click “Select” to hunt for it.

Now, when you enter C-7 for a chord, it will automatically display as C–7. My Finale course goes into some more depth on this, but at least now you can do it.

I recommend using the en-dash, as the dash of choice, because the hyphen is too easily lost (particularly with A-7) and the em-dash is too big and dorky (C—7).

If you are using the JazzText font for your chord symbols, though, just use the hyphen, as that (problematic) font doesn’t include an en-dash.

By the way, using the dash for minor is purported to have its origins at Berklee. The story goes that people were getting messier and messier with their lowercase m’s until it was just a line. I will confess to hating it at first, feeling that it was a sort of institutionalized laziness, like having class times officially start at ten minutes past the hour. But it’s grown on me over time.

These days, I prefer it to the lowercase m. The reason is that in Finale, if someone uses the JazzText font for chord symbols, the lowercase letters are actually smallcaps—in other words, just little versions of capital letters.

The problem is that another common convention is to use M for major and m for minor. But if lowercase is just a teeny tiny uppercase letter, and particularly if all chords in the chart are minor, it’s impossible for readers to know whether you intend major or minor.

My own personal preference? I like CMaj7 and Cmin7. It’s easy to tell what’s what, and they are of parallel construction. Berklee Press house style, though, is CMaj7 and C–7. They are certainly easy to tell apart. My only concerns with it are that first, the meaning of the dash is not immediately evident to all musicians (i.e., beyond Berklee), and second, so many people don’t know how to make proper en-dashes, and so use hyphens instead, which again, are difficult to read. And it’s like mixing up two different approaches: an abbreviated word and a symbol.

But if you are “in the know,” as you likely are, now that you have finished reading all this, the dash will serve you well.

Consistency, though, is important. For example, don’t have C–7 and Gmin9 in the same piece. Stick with the same symbol throughout the chart.

Berklee Press published The Bass Player’s Handbook, by Greg Mooter, in 2002, which was at about the same time when I was fooling around, a bit, with learning the electric bass. This book was just so damned incredibly helpful, at all stages of the game, that I wanted to give a copy to every bass player I met.

This book must suffer from Ugly Cover Syndrome, because the content is so @!!*& awesome, I don’t understand why every bass player on the planet doesn’t own a copy. Maybe we blew it by making the line length too wide? Or maybe its dimensions aren’t physically appealing? Is it on an inauspicious page of our catalog?

It is not the content. Hell, the Queen of Bass Carol Kaye herself wrote a huge quote for the back cover, oozing with praise about how helpful and informative it is.

The book tells you essential information about technique, how to buy a bass, how to fix a broken bass, how to set the intonation and action, how to get good tone, and a ton of other information. The author’s descriptions are clear and informative. There are good pictures showing exercises to help strengthen your hands and improve your flexibility.

It includes information about electric bass (4, 5, 6-string) and upright bass, including acoustic and electric uprights. Too much information? Skip a few pages, silly.

In short, this is just a tremendous resource. It is ~150 pages long, and crammed with essential information that will help you for your whole bass-playing career. Is it too good for you? Nah, you’re worth it.

If you play bass, The Bass Player’s Handbook should be at the center of your library. Then you can supplement your library with books on more specific topics, such as building bass lines, or slap technique, or whatever. If you teach bass, you should make your students buy this book.

This is my first Berklee Press product review. I’ve had it bottled up inside me for a long time that The Bass Player’s Handbook was an awesome and underappreciated title. In fact, you could say that a major part of why I wanted to have a blog at all is so that I could write something nice about this specific book.

I apologize, if the cover hurts your eyes. Please, get over it, and @!!*& buy a copy.

As an editor, it’s a little cheesy for me review products that I helped to produce. Really, there’s no way for me to escape the perception that if I say anything nice about a book, I’m doing it for marketing reasons, rather than out of sincerity. If I try to sell you something, then my blog becomes just more advertising gobbledy gook. I’m biased, I admit it.

Sorry.

The truth is, my salary is not affected by sales. I get paid the same amount if something is a hit or if it is a stinker. The only exceptions are those products where I’m listed as an author: my Finale course, and the books Essential Songwriter and The Berklee Practice Method Teacher’s Guide. On those, I get an author’s royalty.

(By the way, those are the best products ever, and if you don’t have them, you are NOT COOL…. )

Anyhow, I’m going to risk the criticism of seeming to advertise at you anyway, in this blog, and write about some of the products I’ve worked on. There are a few reasons why. First, new publications are “news.” Second, some of our books are just great, and I want to give a more personal insight into them—particularly those that were particularly difficult to produce, or books that are really great but might have suffered an ugly cover, and thus could use a boost up. Or books that I personally just like, as a reader/student/musician.

This blog is not advertising. It is not politics. It is not even strategic. It is based purely on my own idle whims, and my desire to move rocks and show you salamanders.

I’ll add that the reason that I’m sitting in this chair is that I’m just addicted to learning more about music, and editing these books gives me that opportunity. When I was a student twenty years ago, during a dorm party at NEC, I had an incredible epiphany: I often enjoy talking about the technique of creating music more than I enjoy the act of actually creating it! So, here I am.

The point is, I’m not just a staffer here, I’m also a client. [show lack of bald spot]

Some of these reviews are coming up. Review requests from authors not accepted. This is my place to say what I want, and I only plan to say truthful, positive things. Dig?

Thanks for not bugging me about my reviews. The only way I can keep credibility, here, and give real information is if I have 100% unadulterated control regarding what I write about what. I promise to be nice. Trust me….

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The language used to discuss music often reveals the subtle, profound, and even spiritual underpinnings of this mystic art, which in our daily wrangling can seem a mundane and predictable craft, with finite and predictable parameters. By looking at wording in precise degree, I will try to present some insights into music that might not be readily evident, otherwise, and reveal some wizards behind the curtains of house style.

A quick example: chord symbols. Berklee Press holds the following stylistic practice about how to render altered fifths: C7b5, not C7(b5).

What’s interesting about the decision to omit parentheses, as we would have on C7(9), is that at Berklee, the flat-5 is not considered a tension. It is considered a core note of the chord. Setting it in parentheses would suggest that it is more of an optional flavor, than a fundamental characteristic. No, here, life is all about that crazy dissonance.

Chatting about parentheses is how I torture people, all day long, in my work managing Berklee Press. Similar issues frequently cross my desk that lead to some fascinating explorations of music. As a publisher, we have to be careful, because our books are often perceived as sets of “rules,” and particularly books published by Berklee are often held to be definitive works on their subjects. And that’s how we want it.

Funny story, I was once scouting consensus on some other seemingly mundane issue, and the process brought me to the office of one of the Berklee department chairs. I asked what he thought the proper way to render something was, and to answer my question, he grabbed a book from his shelf, which he considered the “definitive reference” on the topic.

What he didn’t know is that I was actually the editor of the book he grabbed.

That act shook my foundations, regarding books, and I have replayed that scene of him reaching up to the shelf for a Final Word, over and over, in my head. Sheesh, if books that were my responsibility were to be considered “definitive,” I’d better take this mission of establishing best practice and consensus very carefully! And, of course, from that moment forward, I haven’t believed a word I’ve read on any subject. I mean, Hell, it could have been written by someone like me!

But his reaching reiterated for me that our books are permanent articulations of Berklee pedagogy and international ambassadors of what we teach here. As such, we try to be persnickety about language and stylistic choices, as do all responsible publishers. Obviously, clarity is a top priority. But beyond clarity, we try to reflect the campuswide consensus on values and approaches to music, and “best practice” regarding what to teach and how to present ideas. As you might guess, this is often a complex charge, for the local cats have varying opinions regarding pretty much every topic, from articulations to Zydeco….

I do regularly poll them, though, and I am fortunate to have worked closely enough with over a hundred Berklee faculty members, whom I can bug to ask about this or that. I find that they frequently are eager to share strong opinions on the minutest of details—as if they were just itching to be asked, for years and years.

In editing their books, we discuss some of their deepest held beliefs and technical practices about their craft. Many of these educators are performing artists who have achieved worldwide acclaim as musicians. Some are hit-song writers, some are Grammy-award winners, and more are teachers of Grammy award winners. They all have profound insights to share about music.

When helping them write about what they are doing, I can press them hard on details, and get them to articulate their thoughts to an unusually precise degree. From these discussions will come many of the topics that I plan to focus on here.

In this blog, I will articulate some of the personal/professional/musical journeys I’ve embarked on, in my role here. I plan to cover a lot of ground: terminology, concepts, stylistic preferences, and perhaps also technical concepts in manuscript preparation. Feel free to post here any thoughts, feedback, or suggestions for topics I might address.

Please see what I write here, though, as my own personal statements, rather than a voice of the college. So many of the fascinating stories behind some of our books haven’t made it public. I’ll try to give my own personal perspective both to our catalog and also to some of the pedagogical choices we’ve made in how to write about music, and hope that it provides some insight and entertainment.