Berklee Blogs

First-hand accounts of the Berklee experience

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The Trivium in Music – Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric

Part 3: Rhetoric

by John Anthony Martinez ’87

Read Part 1: Grammar and Part 2: Logic.

You can find practically anything you are interested in learning about through a quick search online; this is a good thing. Access to information should be available to anyone who wants it. But who is controlling the quality of the information being posted? Would any sort of quality control over sharing one’s opinions be interpreted as censorship? How can one trust the information being shared?

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The Trivium in Music – Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric

Part 2: Logic

by John Anthony Martinez ’87

Read Part 1: Grammar here!

The ability to think critically is one of the most valuable assets any creative person can possess. As musicians and artists, we have the unique ability to use our talents to point to truths about the world around us that might otherwise go unnoticed, draw attention to injustices that might otherwise go unchallenged, or transport people through storytelling who have never traveled. Composers and musicians have been doing this for centuries; Bach’s sacred music, John Lennon’s “Give Peace A Chance”, and the Black Eyed Peas’ “Where Is The Love?” are good examples. Even if one is not a composer or songwriter, the ability to quickly analyze a piece of music and create (or recreate) an appropriate part for it is a necessary skill for anyone who plans to perform music well

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The Trivium in Music – Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric

Part 1: Grammar

by John Anthony Martinez ’87

Recently, I had the honor of conducting a masterclass, along with keyboard synth pioneer and Johns Hopkins University Professor Thomas Dolby, on the rhythm section at Oxford University. My lecture examined questions such as: What is time? What is rhythm? How do we define a rhythm section and what are the roles or functions that the individual members play in it? What does it mean to groove?

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Peaches & Cream: A Phonobooth Recording

by Zachary Lucia ’14

Kim Logan ’10, a singer-songwriter in Nashville recently recorded an original song, Peaches and Cream, in a 1947 coin-operated phonobooth at Third Man Records.

You may remember Kim from her awesome blog post about fashion trends and the musicians that once heralded them.  With this project Kim again shows a deep appreciation for music’s history and her efforts to show its relevance to our modern day trends.  As if the phonobooth video isn’t cool enough,

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The First Sound We Hear… and the Second

by Eruch Kimball ’03

We all begin life the same way. We all develop in a similar environment.  We all listen to the same things. Our world is sound. Seventy decibels of sound. Constant. All inclusive. It is our only reference to the world we’re just beginning to learn about. Equivalent to driving down the highway with the windows rolled down, the first world we experience as humans is filled with sound.

The Mother’s heartbeat.  Comforting, yet unending. A steady pulsing wave of ocean-like noise as air rushes in and out of her lungs. The gurgle of her internal organs, comforting, like the purring of an engine. All of these sounds are echoed and reverberated through the fluid that cradles us as we slowly awake to the world.

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