Harmony
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Stephen Wark, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Harmony Department"Harmony and Ear Training are two of the most profound and fundamental courses in the school. Most everything branches off from those. I hope that by establishing students in different levels of harmony that we've built a foundation for them that will make them successful in anything they want to do in life."
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Alizon Lissance, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Harmony Department"I want my students to leave my classes with a heightened awareness of the inner workings of music, an embracing of the left-brain stuff, a desire to explore harmony and color. For the writers it's a no-brainer. There are a lot more singers here at Berklee now, and I really encourage them to play the piano. I hope my students come away with an openness to use the tools that we give them in their own writing and arranging."
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Rick McLaughlin, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Harmony Department"There's a really beautiful universal language in the way that Berklee thinks about harmony. Not every kind of music operates in the same way that we teach the language, but the tools of understanding harmony at Berklee make it possible for a student to say, 'This note in this context is either right or wrong, a good or bad choice.' It gives students the ability to make the transformation from whatever kind of music we're talking about today to whatever kind of music they go on to explore as artists."
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William Silvio, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Harmony Department"One of the things I try to do is make a somewhat complicated subject seem easy. I think a lot of students tend to get intimidated in theory-type classes. In some ways, it can be mechanical and abstract, and I try to bring that musical element into the classroom so they can see the relevance of what they're studying. Another thing I try to do in the classroom is get the students to have some fun. There's no reason that music theory has to be a drag. We can learn and have fun at the same time."
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Kris Adams, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Harmony Department"As a singer, I can share a different perspective with students. Singers and drummers usually do things by ear. Drummers are dealing with rhythm, and a lot of times they say, 'Why do I need to know this stuff? I'm just a drummer.' But if you talk to famous drummers who write and lead bands and compose, it's a lot more."
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Charles Cassara, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Harmony Department"In my writing classes my students have to not only write tunes, but also write their own arrangements for them. Even students who have never written a tune before, I'll tell them, 'Well, you've got to start at some point, so were going to start now.' So we start out simple, but by the end they write an arrangement, record it, and perform it in class."
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Thomas Hojnacki, Assistant Chair
DEPARTMENT : Harmony Department"My whole career as a professional musician has been about playing diverse styles of music. I've been fortunate enough to have the kind of training that lets me move pretty easily from one kind of style and performing group to another. So when I teach harmony, I try to show how much of the harmonic structure of music is the same from one style to another. The things that differentiate styles are often superficial."
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Craig Macrae, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Harmony Department"I have long had an interest in Central Asia. In Portland, Maine, where I was working as a musician during the eighties, there were a lot of Iranian and Afghan refugees. I taught myself enough Persian to volunteer in refugee resettlement. Later, as I was finishing my master's in jazz guitar, I was short on gigs one summer, and applied for a government fellowship to study Uzbek language. I got it. One thing leads to another—I went for a doctorate in ethnomusicology. So that's how I ended up putting my interest in music together with an interest in Central Asia."
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Mitch Haupers, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Harmony Department"I'm an improviser at heart. I went through all those early teaching years trying to utilize every minute in class with activities, but now I'm trying to get students to teach themselves. They're going to do that ultimately, anyway. Often they have this preconceived notion that teachers are authorities, but I see myself as just someone on the same path that they're on. Perhaps I've been there a little longer, so I can say, 'Maybe you should try this, because this is what it did for me.' I guess my style is more practicing in front of them in order to get them to practice, rather than imposing a subjective set of expectations on them that may or may not apply to their future. I really believe that people are self-motivated already; you've just got to free that up."
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Steven Kirby, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Harmony Department"I’m primarily a guitarist, so I play a lot of examples on guitar. I think some of the students find it kind of a novelty that I’m using the guitar as opposed to the piano about half the time. It’s a little more visual; they can see my hands. I also talk about my life as a performing musician. I’ll say things like, 'On the gig last night, the piano player played a different reharmonization or inversion than what I’m used to hearing in that particular song. But I really liked the way it sounded, so I’m going to use it from now on.' It gives them a sense of how this knowledge is used in the real world."
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