Marco Rodi

That guy knows how a loop pedal works…

I just finished a personal project I was working on for a while.

A website that gives musicians some tips, tutorial on how to use the internet to spread their music. So anything related to websites, free stuff over the internet etc.

See it yourself!

I was reading the Montreal newspaper yesterday and I was pretty upset reading the front page. Basically, it said that the Quebec government is changing it’s own french writing. A lot of words are changing the way they were suppose to be written because too many children did some mistakes. For an example, the word “Onion” was spelled “Oignon” in french. Now, it is spelled “Ognon” because people are not pronouncing the “i”. So from now on, all the Quebec students who are writing Ognon have the correct spelling…

Like… Who are the people who decides how can you spell a word correctly? Why do we have to spell it that way? When we were kids and we had an F in a French or English class because we did 20 spelling mistakes… are they just mistakes or just different from what it is ”suppose” to be… So for all the children that learned well the old spelling of these words just wasted their time learning something useful and without any sense?

So it brings me to the same theory in music. We all have scales, modes and ”rules” in music. By modes I mean: Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian and Locrian. Why are these modes there? Why do we HAVE to play these modes? Why do we have to start by learning this stuff to be able to enjoy our instrument? Is it because we ALL do it without knowing why? Are we scared of trying a new approach to learn our instrument?

Like when I was taking my bass courses at University of Montreal, I was playing a bass solo on top of Marcus Miller song: Power. My solo was grooving, it was cool. The teacher stopped me and said: Marco, you just played a C# note. You can’t play that in a Dorian mode. That song is in Dorian so you only have to play Dorian notes.

????????

It sounded good to me. Why do we have to stick in modes?

Same example in one of my class in my Engineering studies. I had to do a diagram of a business model process. The main goal is to express a business process with a graphic. It has to be clear and simple so anybody can understand it. I took 2 hours to do that diagram and showed it to some friends and they all understood the process. I checked out a lot of websites and evaluated my diagram with the main rules of it. It was perfect. The concept was clearly illustrated and it represented well the business process even for some people who did not understood what was going on. That was the main goal right? The teacher gave me 60% because he said it was missing stuff and some parts were unclear. That 60% was given to me by an opinion of ONE person. My teacher. I respect his decision but don’t understand it. I never understood the grades teacher give.

Or in one of my other classes, I received 8/20 in one question. I went to see the teacher and asked him why. He said that he knows that I understand the main concept and can explain it well. He knows that I studied intensely for that exam. But I did not wrote the keywords he wanted….. What’s more important, learning by hearth the keywords or understand the main concept well?

Don’t forget guys. University teachers are teaching because they are passionate ( most of them ) about what they teach but also it’s they JOBS. It’s their main income. They have some principles they have to stick with. The better way to learn is by yourself. Even if my teacher gave me 60% and the other one 8/20, I know I understand everything well. That is the most important thing.

On the complete opposite, on my Physic class, I understand NOTHING. All those weird formulas are just not entering my mind. I just learned all the formulas by hearth for the exams and got a 94%…. Even If I understood nothing, learning all the stuff the teacher want you to learn is giving you the crazy grades.

Same thing with music. I dropped out of musical university because I didn’t like the learning method. i used to have homeworks of learning some boring jazz pieces, walking bass lines, metronome practice, scales, modes, all the normal stuff a normal teacher will give to his students… I got a C+ in bass playing… and right now, I am doing way more with my bass playing than most of the bass students at that university…I can practice bass by myself and improve 40 times faster than reading notes and playing Dorian Mode.

So break the rules, don’t stick with something all the people do, don’t believe the normal concepts, Invent your own world. Be creative. Live. Be happy. Enjoy life. And rock your instrument out.

You don’t have much time to do your stuff?
Your always busy?
You need more time in your day?
You feel like your work is not productive?
You need a cool method?

Just try this cool technique. It’s called The Pomodoro Technique. A brilliant way to accomplish all your work in a cool working method! Developed by Francesco Cirillo. They offer a free PDF book that explains is all!

http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/