What I Learned From The History of Rock Music (Part 1)

My name is Brian Bergeron. I am a Boston-based acoustic  singer-songwriter and I'm competing in Gather.com's First Tracks Competition for a record deal with Decca Label Group. As part of immersing myself in the site and so people can get to know me better (and hopefully grow to support me), I have decided to post an article a day on the site during the length of the contest. Please comment on my song if you like what you hear and you can vote ONCE PER DAY until March 17th. You can listen to my song here and please comment on it...There, I've pimped myself enough. On with the article!

Upon graduating Northeastern in August of 2007 with a degree in Music Industry, I jumped right in. I had quit my job at Starbucks back in April, and through a combination of street performing and touring colleges in the Northeast, I was able to carve out a living playing music right out of school and was able to afford to live in Cambridge with some music friends of mine. I was offered a position at Northeastern in November as a Teacher's Assistant in the Music Department for the class "History of Rock Music". I decided to take it, not because I needed the money (though the consistency has been nice) but because it seemed like a great opportunity to learn more about the history of the music of many of my influences and predecessors—not to mention the fact that it paid well and I could do the majority of the correcting from home.

The first lesson that I learned early on was a serious one that I have been able to apply. There are 2 discussion board online that people have to post to (it's a big class, 580 students in an auditorium) and one of the first questions asked whether people liked music or lyrics better. As a songwriter, I have always considered lyrics to be more essential but was surprised to find that 85% of the students (or more even) favored music over lyrics and more than a handful of people admitted that they ignore lyrics entirely—unless the song really pulls them in. I was definitely distraught from this information but it has provided a sea change in my recent compositions during the last couple months. No, I'm not disregarding lyrics now but I find myself more discriminating about the melodies that are behind the lyrics and rhythmically, I try and make my songs a little more interesting. It's been an interesting development that I've always sort of suspected but haven't really fallen through with.

The ironic thing is that my first entry for First Tracks, "Anna" is not one of my elite songs as far as lyrics are concerned but the sentiment that is produced musically and melodically I think is definitely the strong point of the song…So there you go.

I've also learned a bunch in the class as to how poorly some of my students grasp the English language. Each week during correcting I have been setting aside some of the asinine and curious things as well as humorous entries that people have. I will save that for another entry but for now, chew on this.