Steps To Mt. Music

What’s in a name?

After a concerted effort and an enormous passage of personal time, which saw me transition from being a software engineer/architect to my lifelong desire to be subservient to the cause of MUSIC, in the form of a listener, player, composer and teacher, today the 15th of January 2016 I feel grateful (to the powers that be) to have made it possible for me to start a school for learning western music and composition in the most earnest way possible i.e. via staying true to the cause of music at all times. The school has hence been named 'Steps To Mt. Music', where my sincere and unrelenting endeavour will be to carve out steps to this overwhelming and humbling mountain range called 'Music’, to make the climb a tad easier.

Ok, so why is this school for western music only?

The answer is simply because I was hooked onto it from a young age, and started playing the guitar from the age of 11, way back in 1988. For us folks in India it has never been difficult to get attracted to western music, now more so than ever due to the enhanced exposure via multiple media, but because it isn’t part of our roots it has always been difficult to receive quality education and tutors. From buying imported books that were pretty difficult to come by to making sense of the abstruse music notation in them, from asking fellow friends/players when in doubt to rewinding and playing back audio/TV cassettes ad infinitum, this journey of mine I’m sure is shared by many musicians of my time who did not have a lineage of musicians in the family to look to answers for. Even now, in the age of easy and cheap information, not much has changed really, because there is a difference in information and education. I have always been amazed and sufficiently inspired by guitar players and other musicians who have learnt via painstakingly (and patiently) putting together information contained in numerous rich and diverse treatises on western music, kept practising it relentlessly and finally applied it in their own way to create their unique musical expression. My route has hence been much the same and from that early stage of discovering things for myself I was sure that one day I was going to try to make it easier for folks who wanted to go down the same path. So western music it is!
The desire to share musical knowledge, to help others and oneself grow alongside, and to keep learning forevermore is my prime motive in starting a school. The other, but no less relevant one, is to promote the approach of wanting to learn instruments in order to appreciate music for a lifetime, rather than being satisfied as mere players of the chosen instrument. While the profession of pursuing music, our times and society are such that the word ‘musician’ conjures up all sorts of images but the right one, for me the word encompasses all aspects of a person who can successfully interpret/convey music in the form of a discerning listener, player, composer and teacher. And believe me that is a tall order to accomplish! To be a true 'musician' still remains my personal long-standing and enduring aspiration in life and likewise my personal desire to see that spark materialise in all those who come to this school.

But, who exactly am I?

"Steps To Mt. Music" is a school for learning western music and composition the 'Root Way’ founded by Vikas Rao (that’s me!), a "Grade-8 Guitar (Performance) from Trinity College, London" and a "Level-6 Licentiate Diploma in Music Teaching from Rockschool, London". I have been an ardent admirer/player of the instrument since the age of 11. I did mechanical engineering as my under-grad and have worked as a software guy for 13 years before switching back to what my primal devotion in life is, i.e. music.
My overall goal through this school and the books that I am writing (on composition), can be summed up as a humble endeavour to understand music through the lucidity that reasoning offers, coupled with the medium of science as a tool, to yet be able to express music with all the mystique and amazement that is associated with art or any such venerable undertaking that conveys human emotions.

So what courses do we have here currently?

For starters, there will be 8 guitar-based courses tailor-made to the requirements of a variety of people ranging from hobbyists to people who want to take up the instrument as players to those who want to be musicians to folks who want to pursue performance-related exams to those who simply want to enjoy and understand music for a lifetime. Then there are 2 courses on Music Composition (these are not instrument specific courses but instead require a laptop/software for music transcribing and arrangement) and 2 courses for Theory of Music and Theory of Music + Music Visualisation. These twelve courses are being taken up by me. I will subsequently add more faculty (the trained kind) for other instruments like Piano, Vocals (western), Drums and one woodwind/brass instrument (for that is all the logistical space I have!)

What exactly is the ‘Composition’ course about?

The creativity that music offers as opposed to the faithful re-rendering of passages as directed by the composers, is one aspect that caught my imagination at a very early age. If you are also the sort of person who has been wanting to make your own music since you can remember, or have an irreparable urge to tweak tunes that you cover or are hell-bent to analyse tunes to find out what exactly you like in them, then the composition courses on offer would definitely interest you. For that though we would have to be able to write music and also visualise it. This would mean building our basics in the theory of western music and the approach to eventually visualize music in our mind's ear. Both these areas are covered in the course on Theory of Western Music and Music Visualization, which are a pre-requisite (can run in parallel) for the courses in Music Composition.

What exactly is the ‘Theory of Music’ course about?

Western music developed through the ages with the practice of communicating it on paper just as a language would. From initially vocalists to subsequently all instruments took the route of not only communicating pitches ( frequencies and registers) but even rhythm, tempo, playing dynamics etc. all on paper, with the idea that a composer could transcribe the bright musical idea in their head or played on their instrument and commit it to paper such that later (days, months or even hundreds of years later!) another musician could read it and play it much like the original player or composer intended it to sound. Developing this language of musical communication forms the core of the Theory of Music course, which then slowly educates the student on how western music and its concepts evolved over the course of the past 500-600 years whilst building working knowledge on those concepts such that it has a fair chance of enhancing one's understanding of what they are playing and listening. Think of it as approaching the overall conundrum of music via yet another powerful tool in the repository of musicians!

Are there any exams that I can attempt to appear for?

Yes, both performance and theory courses have various exams that one can choose to opt for. In fact the courses are designed in such a way that the Exam-oriented courses are kept separate so that once the student chooses the course, the focus of both teacher and student is unequivocally on the preparation of the exam. Do visit us to understand more about the exams, the course material and methodology.