Behind the Editor’s Desk

These are the books I use most commonly as references.

Notation

Music Notation: Preparing Scores and Parts, by Matthew Nicholl and Richard Grudzinski. (Berklee Press 2007). For contemporary score layout, this is really the definitive source. I was its editor. And I say that to make myself look more impressive by association with this great text (though in truth, I really didn’t actually help it very much), not out of any delusion that my involvement would make it seem any more appealing.

Music Notation, by Mark McGrain (Berklee Press). This book has been around for decades, and at Berklee, it’s long been considered the definitive source for handwritten jazz charts, particularly lead sheets.

Music Notation, by Gardiner Read. This is the old standby, really more optimized for classical music than for contemporary popular music. It’s a classic. Maybe, it’s THE classic.

The Art of Music Copying, by Clinton Roemer. This is a classic text on old school engraving, and a very fine book.

Finale: An Easy Guide to Music Notation (2nd Edition), by Tom Rudolph and Vince Leonard (Berklee Press 2005). Again, I’m the editor. If you are using 2007 or later, wait a few months until the 2009 edition comes out. But this book is worth its price for the chart on page 245 alone.

Orchestration

The Harvard Dictionary of Music. Classic. Everyone has this. It is often hailed as the ultimate arbiter for disagreements, and it’s hard to argue with “Well, the Harvard Dictionary of Music says….” The only effective rebuttal is “Yeah, but it’s geared towards classical musicians,” and even that doesn’t always work.

The Study of Orchestration, by Samuel Adler. Classic, focused on classical music. Most people have this or Piston. I have and use both, but prefer Adler for most things.

Orchestration, by Walter Piston. Classic, focused on classical music. Most people have this or Adler.

Writing

The Chicago Manual of Style. If you write, you need this book on your shelf. If you are a professional writer, you absolutely must have it. It is ubiquitous in the industry.

The Associated Press Style Guide. This is useful particularly for newspaper and Web authoring, whereas CMS focuses more on books. Someone swiped my copy long ago, and I frequently feel guilty when I have a question and don’t look it up here. Did you take my copy? Curse you, give it back! (shaking fist…)

The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White. Among the most lovable how-to books ever written. It’s been said that you can judge how serious a graduate student is by how many copies of this book they own. It is small and easily misplaced, but fortunately cheap, so people buy it again and again. I think I have three copies, but it’s hard to say.

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Every few weeks, I receive a letter from another prison inmate requesting free Berklee Press books. These letters are always handwritten and polite. I have a folder of them.

I’ve tried several times to fulfill these requests, but there are complications, and I’ve found it inordinately complex (impossible, so far) to make it happen, much as I want to. Maybe, someone out there will have some ideas of organizations that can help me navigate this. I really don’t have the time or resources to make this happen, myself. I feel badly about saying no, though.

Consider, what better way can an inmate spend their time, besides making music? It not only relieves the tedium and the tension, but it develops a skill that can make the world a better place. Studying music in prison creates a diversion that might keep prison guards safer. Learning music is a forum for introspection and an exercise in self-control. A music book in a jail cell could put some light in a dark place. So, when a prisoner begs me for book about how to learn guitar, I want to make it happen. Even if he’s a murderer.

There are some complicating factors, though. For example, there are many rules governing what kinds of materials inmates can receive, and they vary by institution, and by state. Many prisons don’t permit CDs. At some institutions, only the librarian can request books. Other institutions don’t have libraries, and so different administrators are charged with such decisions. The bureaucracies tend to be Byzantine, figuring out the proper procedure for a given institution.

There are hurdles on the Berklee side, as well. Berklee College has a long list of people asking for free stuff from them, and others (rightfully, in my opinion) take precedence. Inner-city kids, for example, or musicians struggling in New Orleans. Wonderful Berklee efforts such as City Music provide incredible outreach and service to communities worldwide.

It’s no surprise or criticism that we take better care of  young musicians still struggling with the Katrina aftermath than in incarcerated murderers, pimps, drug dealers, etc.   There are so many opportunities to help more deserving constituencies that we never get to, it’s really not such a good allocation of limited resources to send prisoners free books.

Still, though, the prisoner requests keep coming to me.
As I see it, two things must happen in order to get inmates books.

1. Someone official at the institution must administer the request, not the inmate. This requires about five rounds of communication, judging from my past experience. Unfortunately, I don’t personally have the administrative capacity to undertake transforming inmate requests into institutional requests. Do you? Or do you know of an organization that does? A couple hours per request should do it. (Maybe less, once you get the hang of it, and develop some form letters.)

2. An entity other than Berklee College must pay for the book and administer the process. You, maybe?

Let me know if you have any thoughts about how to make this happen. I’m out of ideas (and time to think about it), myself.

Hell is looking for new graphics designers.

What I want doesn’t seem to be that unreasonable. I want a freelancer to design covers for our books. So, I placed an ad on Craigslist, very explicitly stating my needs.

Here’s my ad:

“Freelance graphic artists with specific expertise in book cover design are invited to send work samples to Berklee Press, the publishing division of Berklee College of Music. Looking for designer(s) who can give multiple concepts per topic and transform often crushing feedback into brilliant new designs. Must be patient, flexible, professional, and creative, providing a fresh look at contemporary music themes, with art that stands out against the competition and is a positive reflection of our brand. Please send a link to online samples of your work.”

Here’s what I get:

1. Tons of designers with no book cover experience.

2. Lots of illustrators, many of whom seem to want to draw comic books.

3. Lots of designers sending résumés but no work samples.

4. A very small number of graphic artists who have done a book cover or two, but the covers aren’t great. To put it kindly.

5. Several sent me broken links.

6. Several tried applying for full-time jobs with me.

Not one—NOT ONE—designer sent me a single image that had anything to do with music.

I’m not sure why everyone is wasting so much time, trying to respond when they are obviously not a good fit. I’d rather not get any responses than get inappropriate responses.

I once had a painter cold call me and say that he had a lot of portraits of famous musicians and that he wanted us to publish a book of them. I said that we didn’t do projects like that. Then he begged to come in and meet with me, just for an “informational interview” so that he could get practice showing publishers his work.

For some reason, I relented. He seemed like he needed some career guidance, I guess. What a mistake. So, he came over, and showed me his hideous portfolio. I said, “Thanks, but as I said, we’re not interested.” I tried to give him some insight into how a publisher’s decision-making process works—a sense of the financial realities of what he was asking us to do.

He left. But then he kept following up, sending me additional samples, clearly confident that I was on the verge of changing my mind.

I wasn’t! I really wasn’t! I never had any interest, and I was clear about that from the beginning! He just wasn’t listening. Aaaaaahhh!

The way to get me, a publisher, to say yes to something is to try to anticipate my needs and then position yourself as a solution to my problems. Don’t send me pastel drawings of your cat. Read my ad, maybe look at my Web site to investigate our existing covers, and then send me what I’m requesting.

Is that rocket science?

I’m just astonished at how outrageously inappropriate all the designers who responded to my ad are, and I reiterate my question, “Why are you wasting both of our time?”

Now, I have to write fifty or so rejections. I so hate sending rejections. It’s an acknowledgment that we’ve reached a dead end, of shattered hope, and of failed communication.

Dude, even though I’m telling you to get lost, know this: you might have talent and promise. You might have a wondrous soul—beautifully tortured and worthy of expression. I’m truly sorry that you are starving in a garret. But what you’re doing to me, sending me on a wild goose chase to your Web site with broken links and off-base scribblings, is flat out rude. Consider my note a rejection of your ill-conceived business practices, and get a clue! You’re life will get easier when you learn this lesson.

Secrecy and pretense have been a part of music education since at least the Middle Ages. Cliques have had their own notation. Masters have been reluctant to share their techniques for fear that they would lose their competitive edge. Textbooks were written in an overwrought, highfalutin academic style, perhaps to create a sense of awe and mystique around the author. But that doesn’t do the reader/student much good. I hope that we’re growing out of that now, in this age of sharing information.

You’ll see this if you compare several works discussing the same subject matter. At NEC, we had a seminar devoted to this. We looked a counterpoint and harmony books by Schoenberg, Piston, and some others, and compared their styles. Some were clear and helpful. Others were as dense as mortgage documents. But the ideas were the same. A fugue is a fugue. Why then, not compete for the clearest explanation? The reality of what’s published is far from that.

In my editing, I find that some authors put a lot of effort into putting on such airs and trappings of academia. This is especially common in two groups: highly educated musicians born before about 1950 and people who grew up very poor, in rough or highly rural neighborhoods with poor schools. The result is long rambling sentences, awkward and esoteric words, and a condescending affect.

Yuck. Clarity is so much more helpful to the reader.

So, the laborious process goes, of profound, deep editing. When editing gets severe, an unfortunate consequence can be that the writer’s personality can get lost. This is a danger with all writing that is very far from the mark of what’s appropriate or helpful for the reader. The life gets edited out of it. The baby goes out with the bath water, and it can be tough work getting it back in.

Which brings me to the Westminster dog show. Congratulations to Uno the beagle and all those who played a part in awarding him his Best in Show victory on February 11, 2008. As I am part of a two-beagle household, with my beagle in-law making three, this is big news around here, and I will confess to probably spending too much time reading about this grand event. A beagle hasn’t won Best in Show before.

Particularly of note are some of the details regarding Uno’s performance. Not only was he considered the noisiest in show, but he also reportedly nibbled on a brand new sign and nipped a microphone during an interview. This is important news: it means that he is a proper beagle, not some over-groomed robot dog, bred for chasing ribbons rather than rabbits. Uno is a dog’s dog. I will tell you from experience: real beagles destroy furniture and toys, bark and howl, and lick even clean dishes in the dishwasher. They are like Uno.

Uno had a good bath, and likely a pedicure, and was on his best behavior for the show. But he was still Uno the beagle. The result was that the crowd gave him an uncharacteristically enthusiastic standing ovation. Despite being on his best behavior, he was still himself. That’s what won the day. He was the perfect dog. And he was still a beagle.

As writers and editors, let’s take note. There are many ways to present concepts. Truth and clarity are our ideals. But the human element—in Uno’s case, the “beagle factor”—that makes it unique and fosters an emotional tie with the reader.

I am reminded of a project by a highly beloved educator, who was just a terrible writer. In his first draft, he came across as condescending and rambling, and inclined towards useless information, redundancy, and digressions. It was such an obnoxious first proof.

After four years editing his project, which included two different editors who eventually gave up in disgust, the project landed on my desk, and I had the directive to either save it or kill it. I had seen the first draft and knew how it started. Then, I read the latest edited version, and saw that it had become a lifeless lump. It was utterly without any beagle factor left. Mostly inoffensive, but b-o-r-i-n-g. And it was about two hundred pages too long.

I met with the author and found him to be extremely charismatic and engaging, in person. He was also really, really smart, and kind, and seemed to care that I understood the concepts he was explaining to me. And he was sooooo funny! If he was a dog, he’d be a beagle, and his overly edited manuscript was a pale reflection of himself. Who knows why his writing was so off, but the editing mostly moved it sideways, rather than up. The grammar was cleaned up, and the offensive bits were removed. But, well, yuck again.

Here’s how we saved it.

I went through the book, chapter by chapter, and came up with lists of questions about the content. When there was a concept missing, I formed a question to generate the right answer about it. When something was boring, I’d ask for an example. When something was condescending, I’d ask him to explain it again. He was so fed up with the project at that point that he didn’t really remember much about what was in the manuscript and what was not.

Rather than asking him to write again, I interviewed him, doing a one-hour session per chapter, based on my lists of questions.

In these interviews, he was his usual charming self. He told jokes and stories, he used time-tested teaching strategies to explain difficult theoretical concepts. He swore like a sailor, as was his wont. He’d go off on tangents, but then the questions would bring him back. They were delightful sessions because he was such a fun person. To him, it was really a process of chatting about a subject that he loved, rather than writing a book.

I transcribed these interviews, and used what he said there to fill in or replace what was in the original chapters. Some of his stories were really not appropriate for print, but others became useful metaphors/examples, especially after some gentle modifications. Some of them wound up exemplifying points that were besides what originally prompted them, but they were still his stories. In other words, we captured his “schtick.” I gave him the chapters, which he felt were in his own voice in a way that his own actual writing never was, and he made small technical adjustments, but overall was very happy with how it turned out.

The result was a clear, concise book that is now getting glowing reviews. People comment how they like his warm style, and feel like he’s right in the room with them. His past students commented that they were so happy to have his teaching in book form. He went back into his book, and it became alive again. The book is clear and informative, but it’s also got that beagle factor.

There are many ways that writing can be good. If publishing is your goal, remember the importance of the beagle factor. On this eve of Valentine’s Day, let’s remember that it’s the beagle factor that makes the difference between like and love.

Life would be easier if I had a colder heart. Take my drakes, for example. Fine fellows they are: young, handsome, friendly Indian runner ducks. But in spring, when their hormones start to flow, they will be too intense for my poor hen ducks. If I keep the flock intact, well, not everyone will survive the unwholesome mad frolics that would occur in the pond. One drake for three ducks is the recommended ratio, and I’ve got nearly four for six.

So, I’ve got an issue to address. And much as I like duck a l’orange, I wasn’t brought up in a slaughter house.

Another issue is my chickens, though I’m a couple years from having to address that. Chickens lay eggs for two or three years. Then, real farmers relocate them to the closest stew pot. The alternative is to keep them around, and run an old age home for chickens. If you want more eggs after that, you need to get more chicks.

Unless you can do the dark deed, you can wind up with an infinite number of chickens. And unless you can do it with inappropriate book proposals, well, it’s an impossible business model for a publisher.

Summertime is when teachers often have time available to write books, and the end of summer seems to be the most intense time for them to send book proposals to publishers. Last August, I was really getting inundated.

Then a deadline for proofreading something was looming, and so I switched gears to become just a proofreading machine for a few days, and tried not to get distracted by anything else. When I came up for air, it was time to devote a couple hours to the odious task of rejecting manuscripts.

In my job, there is practically nothing I hate more than rejecting manuscripts. Crushing dreams. Well, not only. The ones I actually feel sad about are in the minority. Like, we once received a beautifully prepared manuscript submitted for a book about how to play the didjeridoo. In all honesty, I think it would have been among the best books published on that topic. But we are ill prepared to market something like that. Our house brand is more about contemporary popular music, jazz, production, making a career, and so on. It just wasn’t a good fit, so we had to pass. A different publisher would have been more optimized to sell it to the appropriate channels. I sincerely hope the author found someone and that her book did well.

[Note: it wasn't really about the didjeridoo. The only lying I plan to do on this blog is to change details to protect the innocent. So, a didjeridoo proposal last summer by a little old lady in Kentucky might have actually been a harmonica proposal five years ago by a pimply teen-ager in Canada.]

Anyhow, most of my butchering doesn’t require so much soul searching, and my loathing of the task often has more to do with the self-absorbed rudeness so commonly part of the person submitting it. (I’m talking non-Berklee types here. It’s completely appropriate for any Berklee faculty member to propose any idea to me, including lunch. But our Web site states clearly, “We publish products by faculty members at Berklee…”)

For example, random people around the world send me scores of atonal chamber music. I happen to like atonal chamber music, and have written some of it myself. But if the author had spent two seconds to look at our Web site or catalog, they would have seen that such publications are simply not what we do. I have to take the time to open their Byzantine packaging, figure out what they are suggesting, and then send them a response. And what they are suggesting is effectively that we make a foolish business decision that would waste tens of thousands of dollars in production and marketing, if we had made the wrong choice and published their hideous cacophony.

I’m reminded of one of the funniest portions of any of our books, a passage in George Howard’s book Getting Signed, where he describes himself listening to demos, wrangling with duct-taped packaging, while the phone is ringing off the hook, and he’s desperately trying to eat some sort of lunch. (Check out George’s excellent blog.) I totally relate. Reviewing book proposals is very similar.

Maybe, I can process a wildly inappropriate proposal in ten minutes (minimum), from opening the envelope to sending the polite declination, and fulfilling some additional administration associated with it. Judging the wildly inappropriate project itself might just take two seconds. It’s the rest of it that’s time consuming.

What a waste. I particularly hate it when people I’ve never heard of overnight inappropriate proposals to me. Sometimes, such packages come from overseas. How much does that package cost them? $50 perhaps, including photocopying and CD, but not including their time? And are they shotgunning many publishers with the same inappropriate proposals? A tiny bit of research would save a lot of money.

One good thing, though, about butchering day: it makes me feel better about the mounds of rejection letters that I’ve amassed myself, of my own work. These rejections aren’t personal. They are rejections of the proposed business collaboration, which would have been doomed to failure and a dreadful mistake for all concerned. Sitting on this side of the desk has really changed my own approach to getting my work published, and helped me to get more personal work in print.

Perhaps, we reject nine out of ten proposals we receive. For maybe half of those, it is immediately obvious that they will never work, so I try to drop them like hot potatoes. The criteria are clearly articulated on our Web site. We publish instructional works by our faculty members, and any exceptions to that rule have special stories; maybe they were guest lecturers, etc. We don’t publish chamber music arrangements. Look at our catalog! We just don’t do it! If a non-faculty member proposes that we publish their chamber music, well, it’s an obvious no. (Note that in August, I received internationally overnighted chamber music score proposals from two different people.)

Of course, the destiny of some proposals is more difficult to figure out, because they might be close to being appropriate for us. These can take several months to process, as various decision makers have to weigh in. If a proposal is so good that it actually gets accepted, it is likely that fifteen or twenty people, spread out over five committees, have weighed in on it. If it’s “close, but no cigar,” still, quite a few people might be involved in the decision. Solid proposals we reject often take more of my time than solid proposals we accept because I do my best to advocate to the other decision-makers that we publish it, despite their opinion.

But again, rejections are often due to factors that have nothing to do with the quality of the intended work. We publish about a dozen products per year. If we already have six drum products in the pipeline for this coming year and someone proposes another, chances are that it won’t fly, no matter how good an idea it is.

I think my record butchering day was about nine projects. I regretted to inform them, but you know, more than that, I regretted that some of them tried to snooker me into making bad decisions, too.

To the “close, but no cigar people,” though, I really am sorry that we couldn’t publish your work. There is just finite space and feed in this coop, and I’ve got to make some tough calls.

Are you all set with your New Year’s resolutions? Last year, I’m afraid I broke pretty much all of the ones I made, but I did make some progress on one: to be more organized. I’m definitely a convert to the Getting Things Done (GTD) approach by David Allen, though I’m more zealot than master.

David Allen likes to say that acceptable rules of hygiene evolve, and generally speaking, we tolerate less and less skuzziness in our lives as generations pass. For example, people bathe and brush their teeth more often than they did in former decades and centuries. Our tolerance for being dirty and stinky has decreased. He evangelizes for a similar cleanup of personal and professional work habits.

I’m not sure that computer hard drive hygiene has been similarly evolving, in these days where memory is so cheap and plentiful. Maybe we’re a few generations away from really being digitally tidy. But there are great benefits to being organized. You can find things, for instance. Other people can find them too. You can keep track of what’s the most recent version. You can see at a glance what’s missing or where things go. And you can generally escape the feeling (and perception) that your hard disk (and thus, your workplace) is a skuzzy place (different than SCSI!), and generally feel in control of at least part of your environment.

Here are some tips that might help you organize your hard drive—and thus, your work/art.

1. Only use the Documents folder for storage. Avoid storing your files on the desktop or in application folders. If all your personal work is in the Documents folder, you will have a much easier time backing it up, transferring it to a new computer, finding it, and generally living with yourself.

2. In most cases, try to have no more than twenty files in a folder. If you have more than that, additional layers of subfolders might help you. It becomes annoying to try to find items on lists greater than this. Only have more items in a folder if there is a logical sort of sub-organization that goes on within the folder, such as sequentially numbered file names.

3. If you have many projects of a certain type or logical classification, consider bundling them up together in a Projects folder. For example, in my work, I have a folder for Berklee Press projects (books and DVDs), which is part of a higher level of organization called Berklee. I have another folder for my personal compositions. And I have another for my community service activities. There are others, too, but for the sake of this blog, let’s say that there are just those. A snapshot of my hard drive Goose (always name your hard drive), then, looks something like this. Note that I have no files on my desktop. None. Nada. Yesterday, I had about twenty, but that was skuzzy, and it’s cleaned up now, as it gets cleaned up at least once a week (when I am behaving).

4. If you have projects of similar types, consider recurring folder names within them. For example, for book projects, I generally have the same folder types. I’ve found it easiest to organize these projects by the author’s last name. Recent project authors have included Jon Damian, David Franz, and Andrea Stolpe, so here’s what their folder setup looks like:

I currently have 42 active Berklee Press projects! That’s a big, horrible folder: far more than twenty items. I’m always trying to get stuff out of that folder and into my Completed Projects folder. That folder has over 150 subfolders! But since it is seldom accessed, that’s okay.

Note the “Drafts” folders. That’s one step away from the trash, and in fact, once a book is published and I’ve created a CD archive of all the files, I delete all the Drafts folders. (All drafts are still stored on CD.) But it’s helpful to me to have Drafts folders associated with each project.

5. Name your files carefully. When it’s logical, include a sequential number in your file, and a concise descriptor of what it is. Mix case.

For example:

The Chapter folders have numbered chapter files. (Some books, such as Andrea Stolpe’s Popular Lyric Writing, don’t really require separate files for each chapter. It depends on how many embedded graphics there are.)

For Dave Franz’s new edition of Producing in the Home Studio with Pro Tools, the chapter files look something like this (simplified, for the sake of this post):

Graphics files get numbered sequentially by chapter and by image within the chapter. For example, here, chapter 2’s first graphic is called New Session. The second graphic in chapter 2 is called New Track Dialog. Each chapter gets its own folder.

For notation, I used to think that there should be separate folders for Finale files and for graphical export files, but I ultimately found that too cumbersome, in practice. Now, I just have all those files in a Graphics folder, even among other graphical types such as screen shots and diagrams. So, in Jon Damian’s new book The Chord Factory, a typical graphics folder looks something like this, mixing Finale files (.mus), exported notation (.tif), and charts he made in Clarisworks (.cwk):

Keeping them sequential keeps them organized.

If you live like this, your life gets easier. I can’t imagine how many tens of thousands of files are on my computer. Lack of strict organization schemes such as this would make my work grind to a standstill!

If this is an alien idea to you, I recommend that you mend your evil ways, for your own sanity. Simplify! Organization will set you free. For all new work, try to come up with a simple, usable system for organizing your files. In spare moments, try to make sense of any disorganized areas you might have.

Make it a New Year’s resolution to get ALL data files off your desktop at least once a week. The first time you try this might be a painful procedure, but if you’ve got a logical hierarchical setup, it becomes easy to keep it all neat and organized.

Good luck, and happy new year!

There isn’t much reason to compare the works of Yoron Israel and Pablo Peña. Both are killer drummers, Pablo studied with Yoron, and they each released a Berklee Press DVD this past Fall. As the producer of both projects, which were filmed back to back on two consecutive days, I worked with both artists simultaneously, and so for me, considering them together has been natural and an interesting exploration about the drum set generally.

Yoron’s DVD is “Creative Jazz Improvisation for Drum Set.”

Pablo’s DVD is “New World Drumming.”

Pablo comes from the Dominican Republic, where he founded and still runs a music school. He came to Berklee via some passionate and active advocacy from two artists of international repute. He is the only Berklee student ever to publish with Berklee Press while still enrolled. Pablo’s project concept was initially pitched to Berklee Press by someone high enough up in the Berklee administration that I stand when speaking to him on the phone. So, we gave Pablo the benefit of a doubt, despite his not being a faculty member.

I was invited to a workshop Pablo was presenting, and was just astonished at the things he was doing with a drum set. In addition to incorporating a tambora into his kit, which would ordinarily completely occupy both of a drummer’s hands (and 100% of his concentration), Pablo was playing several different pedals with each foot—essentially playing a groove with about ten instrument sounds simultaneously. This is ridiculous. This is “disgusting,” as Victor Mendoza likes to say about particularly gifted students. This needs to be caught on film, and he needs to explain it in slow motion.

Then, asking around, one of Berklee’s top faculty drummers—who I will add is not the easiest person in the world to impress—stated emphatically, “Pablo is going to become a drum hero. Unless he falls into drugs or has some major crisis, he is going to become a drum hero.” And then, I learned that several teachers were actually taking lessons from him. He’s not the average student, so we made an exception, and signed him up.

Shooting videos is expensive and complex, partly because a lot of lighting and sound equipment must be rented and set up. For this reason, it makes economic sense to film more than one video in the same session. So, when we signed Pablo, I was asked to scout out another viable drum DVD project, which meant finding another drummer to quickly come up with a solid product concept for us to film on a day adjacent to Pablo’s filming date.

The obvious choice to help us do something as vastly complex as this in such a pinch was Yoron Israel, assistant chair of the percussion department. Yoron is, in my opinion, among the most musical and gifted drummers I’ve ever heard. Pablo’s music makes me think, “It is impossible for a human to groove like that.” Yoron’s music makes me think, “What a beautiful story.” Yoron is also known as being rock-solid reliable, and the consummate professional, teacher, and gentleman. So, he was a natural fit, and I was very pleased and honored that he accepted my request (plea?) to do a DVD with us under those circumstances.

The results were terrific. Pablo’s DVD shows how to incorporate elements of world percussion technique and language into your groove, and expands the possibilities of what the drum set can do. He methodically breaks down his impossible grooves, showing the role of the clave, etc., and somehow makes it seem within the realm of human possibility. Yoron’s DVD gives unique insight into the creative process of drum-set soloing, showing how factors such as rhythm and melody can inspire soloing ideas, and how to have a strong narrative concept in the solo. Both DVDs feature inspiring, gorgeous performance footage of some wonderful and unique musicianship. I’ve watched both drummers and non-drummers watch these DVDs, utterly captivated.

Quick story: After we were done filming, Director Bob Monagle gave us a ride to the airport. Bob’s radio was set to a jazz station.

Bob said to Yoron, “So what else are you up to?”

Yoron answered, “Actually, I just finished the recording that we’re listening to right now!”

Talk about a made for Hollywood moment! That’s like sitting next to someone a bus who is reading a book you’ve written. Or edited. That’s my fantasy! I think the recording was one of the ones he did with David Fathead Newman.

Anyhow, as a duo, these two DVDs represent an incredible breath of what drumming is and can be. Both musicians have something unique to say, each in their own individual ways, and both make such wonderful music and share such profound and practical insights into how they do it.

I’ll add that everyone at the Tanner/Monagle studio was first rate, and both fun and informative to work with, particularly director Bob Monagle. If you ever need a recording/video/post-production studio in Milwaukee, I recommend them highly.

Any musician would find these performances fascinating. Particularly drummers will find them inspiring and informative.

The same essential body of knowledge can be taught via books or online courses. At Berklee, the book-publishing arm (Berklee Press) and the online school (Berkleemusic) are organized under the same division, Berklee Media. Until recently, we even shared staff, and even now, there is much overlap between who is writing books and who is developing online courses. My office is right next to that of Debbie Cavalier, the Dean of Continuing Education, and we constantly send potential authors back and forth to each other. Many authors (Dave Kusek, Jimmy Kachulis, Dan Thompson, Eric Beall, and many, many others) have written both books and online courses on the same material, and they use their books as textbooks for their courses. And sometimes, an author will pitch a concept to one of us or the other, and we’ll say, “This would work better as a book,” or “This would be a great online course.”

From the author’s perspective, the processes of writing each are very similar. They both entail looking at the subject, organizing what topics get presented in what order, and crafting how best to articulate concepts.

But there are differences that anyone developing either one (or both) should keep in mind. By playing to the strengths of each medium, the final products can be optimized for the best user experience.

1. Online courses at Berkleemusic are highly interactive. Students post assignments for review by the instructor and other students. Students ask questions. This is perhaps the richest dimension of the online experience, and high quality courses are designed to facilitate meaningful communication. Interactivity and communication are chief benefits of online courses over books, and they exponentially magnify the learning experience.

2. Integration between media types in online courses can be deeper, more prevalent, and more seamless than in books. Many books have accompanying CDs or even DVDs, but it is relatively cumbersome to switch between reading a book and listening to a CD. Online, it is natural to read a paragraph, take a Flash quiz, and watch a video, all on the same page. The multimedia experience is the other chief educational advantage of online courses.

3. Books can vary in depth and breadth more than the standard 12-week online course format can, and different books have different types of purposes and grandiosity of ambition. A course must always be a deep, substantial hunk of education that significantly raises students’ capabilities and understanding. Books, though, can be more focused, such as Gilson Schachnik’s new Beginning Ear Training (the one with the elephant), which is essentially a set of ear training practice exercises with minimal pedagogical rumination. Or, books can be deep and comprehensive, such as Dan Thompson’s Understanding Audio, which shows how an intimate understanding of the physics of sound can transform your disappointing, lackluster plink-plank-plunk of a guitar sound into a banshee-screaming fire engine of a groove machine. As is Dan’s wont.

Courses conform to schedules, and for that reason, they must have tighter parameters regarding the amount of content they present. Books, though, can have chapters or appendixes that might potentially be relatively advanced or esoteric to some readers. A big chart with tons of detail might work nicely in a book but be awkward in a course. It’s not such a big deal for a reader to skip a chapter in a book, compared to skipping a week of a course.

Beyond the schedule, courses have to conform to other standards, particularly if they are associated with academic institutions such as Berklee. The ones here at Berkleemusic are NEASC accredited, college level courses. This means a number of things, in terms of academic rigor, substantial homework assignments, student assessments, credentials of authors and instructors, and so on. And if they are Berkleemusic courses, it goes without saying that the content must be aligned with that of Berklee College’s standards and scope. A course that’s part of a curriculum has different requirements and parameters than do most books, though certainly textbooks need to similarly be reflective and supportive of exterior factors.

4. Books are portable. You don’t need electricity, and you can read them in bed, on the beach, while seated at your piano, etc. Sure, you might do the same with your laptop, but it’s not as easy. You can give a book to someone else.

5. Reading a computer screen is more taxing than reading a book, and so varying media types are ideally interspersed, in writing online courses. Rather than just screens and screens of endless text, like an online book (which is what lesser online courses do than those we have at Berkleemusic), we enliven the readers’ experience by changing teaching/learning approach often. Good classroom teachers do this too. They lecture for a bit, then write something on the board, then ask a question. So online, text is interspersed with graphics, movies, audio clips, discussions, animations, and so on. This is how we keep students awake. It requires more collaboration between the author and courseware developers, graphics designer, and so on, than books.

In a book, it is fine to have just text or just music notation, though of course, graphics and accompanying recordings are often helpful. It’s generally subtler, though, more along the lines of presenting a concept, then exemplifying it, then perhaps practicing it, and so on, as a means of varying the reader’s perception mechanism. It might all happen in text.

6. The experience of reading and holding a book is more organic than the experience of viewing a computer screen. Readers can read a book at their own paces, without worrying about deadlines and project due dates. They can skip a chapter, read chapters out of order, or practice the same exercises every day for twenty years.

From a user perspective, the online experience is both more intense and more directed than the book-reading experience. The element of timing in a course adds structure to learning, which can inspire a greater flurry of effort from the student/reader. Then, the course ends, and the student and teacher say their good-byes.

Books are forever. A book can sit on your shelf and serve as a reference indefinitely. You might have a question long after you read a book, and so look something up in the index, spending two minutes per year with a book every year for the rest of your life.

7. Online courses are relatively easy to update. A teacher can post “Late breaking news” at any time, during an online course, and therefore add content on the fly, that’s not part of the traditional authoring process. If you are teaching a software program and there’s a new release, you can change your content quickly and easily. A book might become obsolete and appropriately go out of print in the same circumstance.

It’s helpful to have taught material before writing a book about it. This could be in an online course, a live course, a seminar, a private studio, or whatever. Students and other sounding boards help us to refine our ideas and align our pet priorities with real needs. Their questions and challenges are gifts that help us to maintain relevance. But there’s nothing like writing a book to deepen how well we really understand our subject. Writing, and dare I say being edited, gives us the space to articulate our ideas clearly, reworking a sentence or an explanation over and over until it’s rendered clearly. And when we uncover a gap in our understanding, we can go research it. We can read three other books about it, and then write the best explanation ever about how it really should be.

To a great extent, courses are defined by the students participating. For example, in my Finale course, some sections might have more music teachers, others more film composers, others more church choir directors. Everyone asks unique questions to address their personal work (which is the basis for their assignments), and this makes each course a unique journey, with a unique persona.

Courses are optimized to be journeys, rather than persistent references. They are little communities that last for a finite period where participants can potentially change each other’s lives. They are about human interaction as the means of transferring knowledge.

In a book, the author is an expert who takes the stage and rhapsodizes, uninterrupted. In an online course, the instructor says his bit, and then opens the floor to discussion. In courses, the transfer of knowledge is more customized to the reader, and less predictable. In books, subjects can be more deeply articulated.

While the author’s effort is similar in producing either one, the reader’s experience is quite different. Both have their places in the learning process. And writing either one with an eye towards optimizing the user’s experience will always yield the most useful and even transformative results.

Writing books tends to drive musicians bonkers, particularly towards the end of the process when we’re fussing with minutia, reviewing proofs, cleaning up the final punchlist of details, and awaiting the final endlessly long march to the printer. Authors get crabby. There are two primary reasons why, in my opinion:

1. Books are persistent artifacts of an author’s best work and best thinking, and so getting books exactly right is intertwined with perceptions of self worth. At the end of the project, we feel stuck with its limitations, and are running out of time to make it the perfect, most holistic statement of who we are.

2. Musicians need to create actual music. Writing books about music is not the same as making music, and towards the end of the process, we get antsy because it’s been such an incredibly laborious distraction from what we need to be our primary life focus: making music.

(I won’t offer a third reason: that they are getting fed up with me torturing them…. That couldn’t be the case, could it?!)

An antidote to the first one, about identity, is to plan to write a series of books in your life that will collectively articulate a part of your persona, but more importantly to realize that no book could ever possibly do a soul justice. Books just don’t have that capability.

An antidote to the third one, if it exists (and I’m sure it does not), is to know that I will leave you alone very soon.

The middle one is what I really want to discuss. This past weekend, I took my boys to visit Sue (Gedutis) Lindsay and her family. Sue is a friend, musician, and fellow editor of Berklee Media projects. Here are Annie Lindsay and Forrest Feist munching on French fries, before we went to Plimoth Plantation.

We were catching up, and I was complaining about being generally crabby, and I mentioned feeling a bit far from music these days, when I seem to spend all my time talking and writing about music, rather than actually creating the real thing.

She offered a bit of wisdom that I feel is important to pass on. Cynical Sue said (and I paraphrase), “Musicians are special people, and we need to be creating music all the time, to feel normal.” She discussed her own journey through various distractions that were almost, but not quite, music, including writing books, research, teaching, and so forth. It’s not that these aren’t worthy, fun, and even necessary undertakings. We must call them “pseudo-musical activities,” though, and doing the real thing is where it’s really at. We must carve out time to create real music, for sanity’s sake, and be ferociously protective of this time.

So, I’m looking at life, and counting directions. I have my family (including two little boys), an old/maintenance-needing house, endless yard work, I serve on three town boards (chairing one), there’s my full-time gig at Berklee Press, part-time teaching Finale online, a variety of neglected hobbies, a few assorted other obligations, plus protecting my flock of chickens/ducks/geese from that hungry fox….. Quite a lot happening here, which all conspire to create distance from that spiritual life engine called music, which is the primary force that can keep me relatively sane and whole, but which is now at arm’s length. And I feel it poignantly this November, as days grow short and the world grows cold.

Prioritization is increasingly a necessary life’s skill for me, and I would venture, for anyone, as life developments bring increasing directions without offering us more hours in the day.

Arthur Cunningham, my first composition teacher and life mentor, once said to me, “I promise you that if you write every day, you will improve.”

So, here’s my thought/recommendation:

Create music every day.

Even if it’s for five minutes, you need to touch that fire, no how busy you are, and no matter how deeply your daily life is embroiled into pseudo-musical or non-musical activities. An hour would be great, but five minutes is better than nothing. Recognize that pseudo-musical activities (writing, teaching, studying, copying parts….) are not the same as making music, even though they might be delightful experiences in their own right. We need to be constantly warmed by that real core energy of musical spirit.

Commercial success and even inter-human communication are secondary to being warmed by the fire of creativity. Consider it a life imperative to touch the real thing. See progress over weeks, months, and years, not over the course of a few minutes.

If this rings true to you, please stop surfing the ’net, and create music for five minutes RIGHT NOW. Close your door, then play your guitar, beat your drum, improvise, scat sing, write a lyric—whatever the real-deal-essence-of-what-music-is-all-about-closest-to-center activity is for you. Then schedule a time when you will do it again tomorrow, and repeat. Just five minutes.

Let me know how it goes.

Citizens of the world should feel fortunate that the offbeat genius of Jon Damian was guided towards music and not, say, nuclear physics or politics. Otherwise, who knows what apocalypses might have resulted!

But music it is, and his second Berklee Press book The Chord Factory: Build Your Own Guitar Chord Dictionary, happily has come into print.

Sometimes, when I feel blue, I surf the Amazon reviews of books that I’ve edited. One set that never fails to cheer me up is for Jon’s first book, The Guitarist’s Guide to Composing and Improvising. I like how there is an early negative review, which is then followed by a raving horde of Jon Damian fanatics that basically say, “You are a twit, and you just don’t get how fricken’ brilliant this is.” Some direct quotes: “possibly the best book I’ve ever purchased regarding music,” and “This book is almost religious to me.”

There is indeed a cult of Jon Damian followers, who appreciate his eccentric approach to exploring music. His students have included legendary guitarists such as Mike Stern, Bill Frisell, and Wayne Kranz, who were kind enough to wax ecstatic in quotes on the Chord Factory back cover, alongside Jim Hall, and Allan Chase.

Do you remember the film, The Dead Poet’s Society, with Robin Williams playing a poetry teacher with an unusual approach to teaching? Much as I liked that flick, it fostered a breed of horrible teachers who leaned towards a fun and fluffy style that unfortunately found it permissible to sidestep the responsibility to teach real material.

This is different. Jon Damian’s novel teaching and theory comes out of a solid foundation in traditional musicianship, not just gratuitous fun. He has a unique ability to present advanced concepts of music theory in an entertaining—yet always practical—way. It is instruction for the thinking guitarist, straddling the precarious fence of traditional practical music-making to that elusive gray zone where Frank Zappa could dance to Arnold Schoenberg. Those two could have met at a Jon Damian Halloween party.

The Chord Factory is part meditation, part exploration, and sure, part light-hearted silliness. You can look at the study of music as learning both breadth and depth of music. In harmony, breadth would be memorizing a chart showing all the chord types and their accepted substitutions. That is the more common approach.

But Jon’s new book presents an unusually deep view into chords. Instead of just saying, “For C7, substitute a 9 for the 1 and practice this fingering until you memorize it,” Jon builds the chord types note by note, brick by brick. Play a note. Listen to it. Where does it lead? How is it useful? What does it express? Where else can you play it on the fingerboard? Next chapter, play each interval and ask the same questions. Then developing towards 3-note chords, 4-note chords, 5-notes chords, and so on. And along the way, indulge in digressions such as a get-rich-quick scheme based on common bird-watching practices, or Jon’s famous “CrossTones Puzzle”—which by somewhat miraculous intellectual Yoga stretches, Jon makes completely relevant to the harmonic concepts being explored.

It is a methodical, slow-motion look at harmony, gaining a uniquely intimate relationship with the components of the chords. You learn their possibilities, put them into context, and explore their relationship to other chords. This is the meditation. In the course of exploring a great variety of chord types, some unusual ones turn up and some old friends become new again. This is the exploration. And the process gives both rare depth and rare breadth, making harmony absolutely real, alive, practical, and expressive.

Jon’s writing is so full of life and his presentation style is so zany, that there is never a dull moment through this heady stuff. He has an imaginary friend, Chester, who asks questions, makes dumb jokes, and brings evidence in support of the discussion. This will endear some readers and baffle others, but it is actually a narrative practice that goes back thousands of years, to the Platonic dialogs, if not before (not to mention Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen). So, this is the most classical of teaching techniques.

Here’s Chester:

Is it for everyone? It is suited to any level and any genre of guitarist, from rock to jazz to avant garde. But a sense of humor and an adventurous musical spirit are absolute prerequisites.

Guitarists are a fairly unconventional lot, with the eccentrics perhaps closer to the center than at the fringe. Most would find that The Chord Factory expands their perception of what music can be. Or at least, gives them some useful new grips.