Hello. I'd like to introduce you to one of my music-critical pet peeves - the phrase "classically trained." First, it's never defined exactly what that means: are we talking two years of piano lessons, or a masters degree from Juilliard? And there's something dubious about rock critics (who are usually the ones to trot this cliche out for walkies) getting all excited about someone who's "trained." Ain't rock'n'roll supposed to be all about expression, power, and excitement that doesn't need no steenkin' training? Isn't being "trained" antithetical to the whole rock ethos? (Note that I'm not normally a big fan of the supposed rock ethos - but it's amusing how often critics whom one can infer are fans still use that "classically trained" sobriquet. Note also that it's fun to use the word "sobriquet.")
Mainly, though, how the hell is it ever relevant? If someone can play the violin, we can hear that - what do we gain knowing she's "classically trained" - that if we happen to ask her to whip out some Mozart she can do so? (Although I'll note parenthetically that, appallingly, there are courses in music schools on "rock performance" - Professor Jack Black is going for tenure I suppose.) Are we supposed to assume that a "classically trained" piano player is automatically better than one who isn't? Not around these here musical parts, no thank you.
("But how can I type when you tie those long sleeves together behind my back?")
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it's about your initial approach to your instrument. for instance, i am classically trained. that doesn't mean i'm any good, it just means that my first exposure to playing music was through piano lessons. i had a good intro to music theory teacher in summer school when i was eight. that makes my relationship to stuff like scales and chords more diagnostic than it would have been if i'd started out mimicking angus young like all of the other guitar players in my school did. even now, years later, though my ear is still crappy, i write and play music by visualizing scales and remembering techniques i learned in that basic training rather than by chasing a particular sound, tone, and feel. it's usually possible to pick out musicians who are classically trained, because there is always something structured and clinical about their work even when they are going apeshit. it can be exciting, or it can be dry, or sometimes it can be exciting *and* dry. for instance, tracy bonham is classically trained, and you can tell from the fussy precision with which she does everything she does. if i were introducing her music to somebody through a review, i'd want to mention something about her background, because i think it's an important clue. joanna newsom is classically trained; you can tell that she is seeing the notes and that they all have unique and discrete value to her. tori amos and genevieve gagon from the heavenly states both play with absurd fire and passion, but both are obviously classically trained. the oasis camp likes to pretend that its members are cretins who just crawled out of a cave in manchester, but i will bet you that noel gallagher has some classical training in his background. i think that the major psychological difference is that those who first learn about music through classical training thank about what they are playing or writing as a *piece*: something that can be transcribed on sheet music. for instance, whenever i go to a practice with a new rock band, i bring staff paper to write down my ideas. to an outsider, i'm sure this looks like another one of my absurd affectations, but in this case, it really does help me. i tend to fixate on the parts of music that can be written down: notes, chords, sequences. those who aren't classically trained do not visualize that stuff: they're free to reinterpret music as a system of sounds and approximate values. i will give you another example ripped from the pages of my life. the negatones once worked with a pretty well-known producer who tried to get the frontman to "clean up" his guitar playing. this meant, to him, that the frontman was doing a lot of stuff on the neck that couldn't be characterized as distinct notes in a distinct rhythm. this, to the producer, was just mess. but to the rest of us, that fuzz and distortion and tonal indeterminacy was part of the negatones' sound -- it just wasn't a part that could be transcribed. unsurprisingly, this collaboration went nowhere, because the two sides didn't understand each other. this was a clash between a guy who was classically trained and a guy who wasn't. in my opinion, it is better for a young rock musician not to have to face the theoretical and imaginative limitations of classical training, but that may just be a missive from the grass is always greener department. there are definitely virtues. if you're the sort of person who's naturally disorganized, it helps to give you a framework for your thinking. also, i have noticed that many of the women i know who have managed to persevere in the rock game have some classical training. when everything is going wrong for you and it seems like your peers don't want you around and you're having that legitimacy crisis that we all know well, it's nice to be able to say "wait a minute, i've done mozart. obviously i can play these dumbass pentatonic blues-rock songs. i belong up here".
Ah, but the rub against being classicly trained, when then basically slumming in the field of rock music, is that playing / writing anything beneath your capabilities will sound disingenuous. Obviously, this is not a discussion about skill level, but rather, someone who stumbles across how to use a G augmented chord on their own will end up employing that chord with more heart and, well, not propriety, but something equivalent. As, where, someone familiar with the mystique / accepted applications of how to use such a chord tend only to do so in familiar spots. Thus, the idea is one can be a sublime songwriter, or musician, but both? Think Lou Reed / John Cale or Pete Townsend / John Entwistle. People wanting to play rock style music product can overcome classical training - and most effectively do so by exploring aspects of music with which they are unfamiliar (say, lyricism, production, playing a drumset). Thankfully, it's all unexplored territory to me, even to this day.
Tris: I'd be readier to believe critics are referring to an audible artifact of the musician's training if I believed more critics to be musically aware enough to perceive the things you describe. But I'm a cynical bastard, and I think a lot of 'em just read the one-sheet, see the phrase "classically trained," and repeat it. That said (and as I said in an e-mail discussion with a reader who couldn't get the commenting to work), the concept of a person's musical background being relevant is certainly valid, but in order for it to communicate, the writer needs to do more than just say "classically trained." They need to specifically describe the ways that "classical training" works and is heard in the music. I'm classically trained too (if we just mean several years of piano lessons), and so I do tend to think in terms of notes and chords. In my limited songwriting experience, though (and there are more songs than I've "published"), one aspect of that training that I almost completely ignore is the notion that chords do the work they do, in tonal music, within the context of a key center. What I mean is, if I hear that a G#m wants to come after an Em, I don't stop to think, well, the G#m isn't a chord in E-minor, so where am I modulating to, etc. I think I sometimes hear harmonically more in the realm of texture (which is probably why I have the theory that non-musically literate people hear it that way), so I don't worry 'bout key overmuch. Same goes for less-legible chords: if I try to go back and figure out how I ended up with a bit that goes B, G, E in the bass, at the same time the piano's playing two-note clusters in rough sync with those notes D/C, D/B, and D/A, well, I'd never get anywhere. Only the middle of those forms a traditionally legible chord (G major), the rest are just odd, and things I'd probably not come up with if I thought exclusively in analytic terms. Same is true for a lot of guitar chords, which clearly come from finger shapes rather than harmonic theory: Andy Partridge has an interview in which he describes how he came up with the opening figure of "Easter Theatre," and it's almost all finger muscles imitating a concept, rather than harmonically rooted. (Cuz the chords themselves are really bizarre, harmonically.) And Jens: as for Cale, yeah, he's classically trained - but at least to most people, turning the organ up to 11 and leaning on it with both elbows is a more "rock'n'roll" gesture than a classical one (even though "classical" guys were doing the elbow thing first). So, I dunno...I think once we know someone's "classically trained," we attribute their ideas to that training - whereas if it's John Lennon or Elvis Costello (the latter of whom learned to read music only in the last decade or so - and of course Lennon was notoriously unlettered in conventional musical terms) we assume it's some sort of intuitive musicality, or one gleaned from experience.
PS: Damn, I wish I could erase the record of erased posts too. If anyone cares: Jens accidentally posted his comments twice (identically); I deleted the duplication. Well, that and he posted a picture of me in a compromising position with the defensive line of the Kansas City Chiefs - but that's irrelevant.
I always took "classically trained" to be rcok critic shorthand for "can actually read music".
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