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Wednesday, April 23. 2008
[News] [PR 4] 4/23/08 US SCHOOL OF COMMERCIAL MUSIC ANNOUNCES CERTIFICATE COURSES
Radically different music courses contain 'holy grail' information and
training tools unobtainable outside of entertainment capitals such as
Hollywood or New York.
NEWARK, Delaware - Wednesday, April 23, 2008 - US School of Commercial Music today
announced new Certificate Courses which can save students years of
private study. They may be taken individually or as part of a USSCM
Diploma Program. Each course is complete in itself and covers hard to
find information which functions as a through grounding in its subject,
without unnecessary 'busy work'. Students, in confidence of not wasting
their resources, need only add their creative energy, will,
determination, strong wishes and goals!
Because not everyone has the need or the time for a full college
program, US School of Commercial Music staff has designed several
"Certificate" courses which concentrate deeply on important essential
subjects for all Commercial musicians, without requiring
pre-requisites to study. These courses also function as electives for
Diploma students (who choose at least two). For more information,
please go to www.usschoolofmusic.com.
MUSIC UNIVERSALS Perfect Pitch Conditioning Relative Pitch Eartraining
(for non-Diploma students only) Personality Resonance Practicum for
Performers, Songwriters & Composers
TRAININGS Physical Conditioning for Musicians Emotional Development for
Musicians Vibrational Sensitizing for Musicians Intellectual Training
for Musicians Spiritual Evolution for Musicians
WORKSHOPS SuperChops for Guitarists SuperChops for Soloists Chordology
for Guitarists Chordology for Keyboardists
INTENSIVES Performance Boot Camp ('get up to speed' for USSCM Diploma
Programs; open to entering Diploma students who are good music sight
readers)
Descriptions of the Certificate Courses: ______________________
UNIVERSALS: PERFECT PITCH 10 Weeks While some highly-advertised courses
are 'snake oil', it is possible for most of us to overcome years of
Relative Pitch conditioning and experience increasing levels of
Absolute Pitch sensitivity, but training must be very precise to
succeed. USSCM has assembled and organized all the relevent research,
surveyed all the historical and currently available methods, evaluated
and put it all into a fun but 'no-punches-pulled' perspective. This
information has been judiciously combined with the most efficient
methods and USSCM's proprietary approach for acquiring Absolute Pitch,
organized as a serious regimen. For lasting results, you must be
prepared to work daily for short but concentrated periods (one hour
minumum)! You may not take this course at the same time as Relative
Pitch Universals! Students who complete both Relative Pitch and Perfect
Pitch will receive bonus instructions on how to sustain both skills.
This is an evolving course, with new information and techniques added
periodically. Students who complete both Relative Pitch and Perfect
Pitch will receive bonus instructions on how to sustain both skills and
may retake either for half tuition.
RELATIVE PITCH 10 Weeks Most of us experience Relative Pitch, but our
sensitivity is often not high enough to be truly useful. Starting from
the beginning and progressing rapidly, USSCM has assembled all the
tradtional approaches, organized and modified them, then combined them
with USSCM's proprietary approach into the most efficient professional
RP training system ever devised. This is the most comprehensive
approach to making our Relative Pitch skills more intense and useful
and simultaneously trains many important other tonal harmonic and
melodic skills. You may not take this course at the same time as
Perfect Pitch Universals! This is an evolving course, with new
information and techniques periodically added. Students who complete
both Relative Pitch and Perfect Pitch will receive bonus instructions
on how to sustain both skills and may retake either for half tuition.
PERSONALITY RESONANCE PRACTICUM FOR PERFORMERS, SONGWRITERS AND COMPOSERS 10 Weeks
All musicians can benefit from the skills of reading
people (consider live audiences, owners, demos, auditions, target
audiences and colleagues). Personality reading and an understanding of
personality interaction is another one of those special skills such as
Perfect Pitch which can give a musician a distinctive competitive edge,
increase his or her ability to negotiate the difficulties of
relationship and enhance management skills, while interacting with them
musically or in life settings. Musicians generally already have the
advantage that they understand the principle of resonance, in which
sound energy transfers from one system to another through an
interposing medium such as wood, water, or air, but not a vacuum.
Nevertheless, the principle of resonance extends to massless systems as
well, such as can be seen with tuned radio or tv antennas for
electromagnetic radiation, or the chakras and latifas of the human body
for energies not known to western science. (Resonance also figures into
the principles discussed by GI Gurdjieff, where 'foods' that enter us
from outside our organism are resonant with materials already within us
- enzymes, for example - after which they are digested. This is in
contrast with the internal stages of digestion, which he describes as a
'blending' of non-resonant materials to get a material of an order and
having a state falling between the other two.)
Students will learn to identify the typical personality resonances and
make efforts to objectively sense the nature of their relationships
with people having other personality types as their centers of gravity.
Various exercises will be introduced to assist the student to
experience unfamiliar types in their healthy upside, which is
invaluable. Adventurous students, primarily songwriters and composers,
may also briefly explore the unhealthy downsides of these personalities
for the purpose of depiction in their art. Emphasis will also be placed
on techniques for avoiding the downsides of one's own personality and
that of others, which is of particular usefulness to performing artists
who would be masters of themselves, their instruments and their art.
Students will also learn to objectively and scientifically type
personality using cutting-edge database research coupled with ancient
Eastern systems and to apply it to musical instrument preferences,
musical aptitudes and preferential styles. Students will further learn
to access these aspects of themselves for the purpose of becoming
better musicians and human beings. Interactions between personalities
will be explored, within the context of musical production. This is a
not-to-be-missed study for serious musicians from all ethnic
backgrounds, instruments, musical styles and experiences that has life
changing and career enhancing implications.
TRAININGS: PHYSICAL CONDITIONING FOR MUSICIANS 10 Weeks
"Mens sana in corpore sano." ("A sound mind in a sound body.")
Music making, like other arts, is a highly distilled composite
expression of our three functional brains (physical, emotional,
intellectual*); the result of many successively finer processes within
each of the brains and their associated 'bodies'. For these processes
to all function well, there must be available to us a tremendous amount
of biological energy, which is sourced by the physical body.
Physical conditioning is concerned with having a strong generator of
this energy and a solid platform for support of the higher functions of
each functional brain. After an explanation of the mechanisms whereby
this energy is created, we will look at a number of approaches to
building, conserving and utilizing it, by no means exhaustive but
nevertheless extraordinary, because no one method is sufficient for the
quantity of energy and support required for mastery or artistry.
Students will develop a daily regimen designed to build attention and
will, and to strengthen the functioning of their physical organisms.
EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR MUSICIANS 10 Weeks Expression in music,
whether, of the second brain (through tone, fine motor movement of the
hands, smooth movement and gesture, posture, facial expression), of the
first brain (through rhythmic movement, percussion and percussive
sounds), or of the third brain (in melody, tonality, interesting
harmony, counterpoint, lyrics, arranging & orchestration), requires
careful attention to the elements of musical styles and one's ability
to resonate with them. Such resonance is complicated by struggling with
our general incapacities to feel and empathize, that is, to know what
and how we are feeling at all times, to know how others are feeling or
emoting as often and as best we can, and to realize our relationship
with others at all times. These capacities must be identified and grown
for us to successfully resonate in all situations. Music, which has
been characterized as "the language of emotion" is actually a language
of expression for all three brains. It is first of all, pre-verbal or
imitative of speech, but may also have lyrics. Finally, messages in
music may be mixed, just as they are in real life. A true professional
human musician will be able to sort out these messages and to
understand and employ the effects of their expression.
Students will complete assignments and be given exercises for the
thorough exploration of these matters for the development of emotional
expression. Mixed messages, while possibly fascinating, destroy
emotional coherence; students will also explore their causes and
preventions.
VIBRATIONAL SENSITIZING FOR MUSICIANS 10 Weeks Music is based on
vibration but why do musicians need to study it, what is it and what is
the 'vibrational world'? This is best described by example:
What's the vibe? Are you the least bit superstitious? Have you ever
felt you're being watched? Did you ever feel "I have to get out of
here."? Do you have any experience of luck? Have you ever felt deja vu?
Have you ever met a person or seen a place that immediately seems to
have extraordinary significance to your life? Do you experience the
presence of supernatural entities?
In addition to the examples above, the 'vibrational world' also
concerns the so-called 'higher emotions' or impulses, such as
peace/tranquillity, fairness, orderliness, individuality and good
judgement. Ignoring these aspects is tantamount to ignoring the 25% of
your audience whose personalities call the vibrational world "home,"
which a professional or serious musician cannot afford to do. Attending
to them, can allow you your musical expression of all styles to contain
these higher elements and thus resonate with and appeal to more people
outwardly and help you resonate with them internally for yourself. (It
should be noted that, while important, the impulses of the vibrational
world are subordinate to such functions as faith, hope and love and
conscience.)
Students will strive to identify, in real-time, the emanations of the
'vibrational world', both human and musical. This effort is
particularly useful for students who wish to develop a spiritual side
to their music and/or identify aspects of music which may be beyond the
ordinary manifestations of human life, that is, extraordinary. About
this, see "Spiritual Evolution."
INTELLECTUAL TRAINING FOR MUSICIANS 10 Weeks While in the physical and
emotional aspects of music making, will and attention are very
important, the intellectual aspect cannot be expressed at all without
them. Melody, tonality, interesting harmony, counterpoint, lyrics,
arranging & orchestration are fundamentally dependent on the third
brain's ability to abstract and symbolize through the focusing of
attention, directed by will. In fact, an excess of attention is
necessary, if one is to attend at once to the expressions of each
brain, but nowhere is it so obvious as in fugue, in which multiple
melodies weave through each other.
Students work with various attention-building and focusing exercises,
then apply them to music, in order to begin to identify the taste of
the workings of will and attention in the intellectual aspects of
music. The capacities of attention are explored and exercised with
respect to music making.
SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION FOR MUSICIANS 10 Weeks There is music which belongs to none of the ordinary worlds: physical, vibrational, emotional,
intellectual.
Careful reading of the previous descriptions may lead the serious
student to an inkling of why it is necessary to prepare by studying the
above subjects as a foundation, for exploring the esoteric spiritual
possibilities which certain music may embody and provide. For example,
while some impressions contained in music may be food for ordinary
development, some may be food for extraordinary assimilation. While
some individuals may be sufficiently advanced to realize extraordinary
expression directly, we usually need some help.
Musicians instinctively realize that music can be a door to many
extraordinary experiences, including the normal and abnormal and beyond
them.
There is no overlap between the Workshops. Precocious students who
elect multiple courses really have their hands (and minds) full.
WORKSHOPS: SUPERCHOPS FOR GUITARISTS 10 weeks SuperChops has been greatly expanded from the core foundation originally developed by
Howard Roberts, legendary guitarist and founder of the Guitar Institute
of Technology (now Musician's Institute), as the basic training and
learning philosophy there. Howard was known for having the strongest
hands of any professional. These are the techniques that helped him
maintain his position for many years as the number one studio call in
Los Angeles, often working three sessions a day.
SUPERCHOPS FOR SOLOISTS 10 weeks SuperChops/Solo is for players of all
instruments who want to rapidly develop and maintain superior technical
chops in the four essential areas critical to solo mastery: arpeggios,
embellishment, intonation and thematic development. Many top players
use this system daily to keep their edge.
CHORDOLOGY FOR GUITARISTS 10 weeks Chordology/Gtr is the course we
designed for Howard Roberts' Playback Publishing, now expanded to
include advanced harmonic applications of sparse voicings and linear
voiceleading which was pioneered by George Van Eps and Howard, but
imitated by many pros.
CHORDOLOGY FOR KEYBOARDISTS 10 weeks Chordology/Kbd is for all
instrumentalists who want to have a large harmonic palette at their
disposal.
INTENSIVES PERFORMANCE BOOTCAMP 5 weeks Designed for high-school level musicians who need get up to speed for USSCM Diploma programs.
About the US School of Commercial Music First founded in 1915, US
School of Commercial Music continues a rich tradition as the oldest,
most trusted name in distance music learning. Beginning in 1995, USSCM
was the first institution to offer a college-level commercial music
Diploma Program via online technology. Today, USSCM offers Diploma
Programs in every major category of commercial music, as well as unique
proprietary Certificate Courses with content unobtainable elsewhere.
Recognizing that each music student has unique needs, USSCM's
Matriculate(TM) online technology gives students the unparalleled
flexibility to design the exact program they need by sequencing seven
basic areas called "Modules": Performance & Improvisation, Schillinger
System/LineWriting/Music Business, Advanced Improvisation,
Melody/SongWriting & Linear Counterpoint, Arranging & Orchestration,
Media Composition & Scoring and Music Production & Engineering. Each
Module consists of 4 microsemesters of concentrated studies.
At the start of each microsemester, US School of Commercial Music
students receive a large package of customized materials covering all
their study subjects. Projects are recorded and returned to the college
via the internet for rapid feedback. According to Professor Amaral of
USSCM, "Choice and flexibility are great reasons to choose USSCM for
your commercial music education." He continued, "USSCM has an approach
unlike any other: · It mixes proprietary materials with the best of
published materials, which are evaluated and upgraded twice yearly. ·
There are no distracting non-music 'academic' subjects, such as English
or History. · There is no internal competition for resources between a
'bricks and mortar' operation versus 'online' · USSCM has only one
agenda: a student's rapid progress on a personal "microsemester" pace,
rather than keeping him or her in a too-lengthy "semester" program. ·
Students work in all four rhythm section instrumental areas each
microsemester. · Students record homework in each subject. · Feedback
about homework is greatly facilitated by online communication and often
seems immediate. · USSCM tuition is realistic, with generous
scholarships and discounts. · USSCM programs offer students a level of
choice and customization very difficult to achieve and manage with a
'classroom' model of course delivery."
US School of Commercial Music is the most economical way to acquire the
knowledge and skills a commercial musician needs to compete and
'collect a paycheck' in today's noisy musical environment. USSCM
students save considerable money by studying at home, anywhere in the
world, and they may actually get a better education than at typical
'bricks and mortar' schools. While there is no substitute for working
with fellow students shoulder to shoulder, student peers are seldom
professionals. In comparison with many other schools and other
approaches to commercial music study, USSCM exposes each student to a
higher quality of music information, better accompaniments and
professional presentations, because it upgrades materials on a
semi-annual basis, with the primary requirement that it be the best
information and most effective presentation available. By rising above
the typical noise in music education, USSCM saves its students time,
money and energy.
At www.usschoolofmusic.com, prospective students may read about course
offerings, initiate inquiries, design their program, determine tuition
costs, scholarship elgibility, financing options and aid, fill out and
submit their application, print their learning agreement for faxing,
and much more. Also from the college homepage, students, alumni and
industry professionals may access several useful resources: Music
Industry News, USSCM News, MI Jobs, USSCM Forum and USSCM Internet
Radio.
For more information, please contact US School of Commercial Music
www.usschoolofmusic.com info@usschoolofmusic.com 617-666-4839
Labels: commercial music, diploma, distance music, jazz, online
learning
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"Master Music At Home(TM)"
Professor John Amaral, Director
US School of Commercial Music
617-666-4839
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