Lorde: study her music for NCEA. Photo:
When the composer Douglas Lilburn gazed out from a night train at the moonlight on Mt Ruapehu wondering about New Zealanders creating their own unique music it's unlikely he was thinking about guitar riffs, pick slides or vocables.
But an early recipient of a fellowship in Lilburn's name has used the grant to set up a resource enabling the nation's secondary school students to gain NCEA credits studying classic Kiwi pop songs.
Lilburn: Shihad might not have been the first "NZ sound" to come to mind. Photo: supplied
Mat Hoyes was one of the first winners of a Lilburn Research Award, administered by the Alexander Turnbull Library and the Lilburn Trust, for original research into aspects of New Zealand music.
You can find the fruits of Hoyes' labour on the Audio Culture website, the online 'noisy library of New Zealand music'.
Hoyes told RNZ Concert host Bryan Crump he's analysed over 100 songs, ranging from The Muttonbirds' "Dominion Road" to Aaradhana's "Brown Girl". Shihad's in there too.
It made sense to Hoyes that young New Zealanders would want to use the music they'd grown up with as subjects for NCEA assignments.
Problem was, while there's plenty of literature out there to explain sonata form, or what a fugue is, or when you might hear a recitative in an opera, there was nothing around to help secondary students analyse their own popular music.
A gap which not only meant our education system was failing to give Kiwi pop composers their due, but was potentially putting a lot of talented musicians off studying music for NCEA.
Aaradhna: if you can analyse J S Bach, why not her? Photo: Supplied
"For students that have had significant music theory education, analysing a song isn’t a big ask. However, if you haven’t had or aren’t getting private music lessons, this is a mountain to climb. It’s asking learners to be fluent at a level far above beginner, to write, listen and understand the grammar of a language they may have had little or no instruction in."
Hoyes provides students with the tools to do that.
Crump plays the song from which the project takes its name: "Counting the Beat", an early 1980s hit for The Swingers, by Phil Judd.
He askes Hoyes to explain some of the terminology he provides students. Phrases like 'palm muted guitar': placing your non-strumming hand on the strings so instead of notes the instrument produces a percussive sound.
Or 'vocables': when you're singing, but not singing words, like "la da da da".
One thing Hoyes hasn't done (for copyright reasons) is put down chord charts for the songs, although he does hope analysing the songs encourages students to play them.
Has he also analysed the lyrics in the songs he's done for "Counting the Beat"?
Not yet, although that might be a great project to do in conjunction with secondary school English department. If the current direction of the nation's school education policy means more emphasis on literacy, our pop songs have it in spades.
