About

This music looks pretty smart.

About SmarterMusic

SmarterMusic is a nascent web home for musicianly excellence, edited by Yuri Broze, Jeff Fowler, Andrew DiMartino, Dan Newman, and Catherine C. Jones.

The SmarterMusic Philosophy

In brief: the more you know, the more you grow, because learning brings knowledge and knowledge means power.

Or perhaps try this: See one, do one, teach one. What I first learned as the old doctor’s credo is probably claimed by various disciplines, but regardless of its origin, its truth is undoubtable. Start by watching something be done, so you can get a vague idea of what it is, does, and what the result is. Do it and actually learn how to perform the mental or physical gymnastics. Then, teach one. As educator John Dewey wrote oh-so-aptly:

“One never truly learns something until he has confronted the necessary thinking required to teach that something to another learner.”

—John Dewey, 1916

Technology has brought us quite far since then, and the Internet is the most profound information-sharing medium yet devised, promising in its ability to allow for all three of these to occur–but unfortunately the first is all-too-often overemphasized. SmarterMusic embraces the exploratory spirit of this three-pronged educational philosophy wholeheartedly, and aims to provide for its creators and its readers all three opportunities. Our shared quest for musical enrichment is built not only on watching, but active learning, guided exploration, and deliberate application of the lesson learned.

Learning is interactive and cyclic. SmarterMusic hopes to be the axis of rotation. And puns.

We 'go' on velocipedic tangents such as this.

Oh Yeah? Then Why Do You Ramble On Tangents All The Time?

We spend a lot of time thinking about music. Some of these things come in the form of little truths… lessons learned out of the microcosm of a musical endeavor that can be applied to the rest of one’s life. Some of them are simple mechanical understandings of the workings of different instruments or the techniques applied to them. With something as delightfully interdisciplinary as music, for an open mind the fun need never end. But of course, it is the joy and frustration of learning that every step forward gives you two more ways to turn, and it is so true that knowing anything at all just shows you how much you lack–and the only way to overcome this is to hash it out, and cough up some word-vomit onto a cyber-page. Well, perhaps not the only way, but certainly an effective one.

Ultimately, “smarter” means something along the lines of “more efficient understanding”… what it most definitely does not mean is “better because it’s harder to understand.” Hopefully, if we do our job right, this distinction will come through in the writing.