I offer holistic music education for anyone wishing to deepen into the true nature of music. This is achieved through various live online courses tailored for developing musicians, recent graduates, and dedicated amateurs. Most courses operate via donations and are therefore accessible to all (see below). I invite you to reach out to me via the Request Info button above if you are interested or have any questions. Trial lessons are of course available.
-Marco Alejandro Gutierrez
Courses
#1. A New Path to Musicianship:
Musical education taught from the ground up. Thorough ear training with emphasis on tension/resolution, harmony, form, orchestration, polyphony, and more. Complemented by strong harmonic writing and playing skills and the keys necessary to understand what a piece is truly about. This course could also be called “Exploring the True Nature of Music”.
The course is always tailor-made depending on your needs, prior education, and goals.
Donations: These lessons are offered as part of a donation based education project. Open to anyone with the dedication and ambition to learn regardless of financial circumstances. Please see below for more details. Limited spots available.
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#2. Music Appreciation for Amateur Musicians:
Exploring the vast riches of the world of classical music through an organic and holistic course designed for music lovers of all levels. This course covers topics in history, philosophy, music “theory”, and more. It is the only course I offer to small groups rather than 1-on-1, but that can also be a possibility.
Donations: These lessons are offered as part of a donation based education project. Open to anyone with the dedication and ambition to learn regardless of financial circumstances. Please see below for more details.
This specific course, taught in small groups and offered to amateur musicians, is covered exclusively by the donations of the participating students themselves. The other courses are also supported by external donations (in addition to each student’s contribution when applicable). See the “Sponsor a student” section for more information about supporting this project.
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#3. Entrance Exam Preparation and Practice Help:
These courses are more practical in nature and are oriented towards a specific goal. I offer both entrance exam preparation and “How to practice” help. Regarding entrance exam preparation, I am well-versed in the requirements to be admitted to many under-graduate and graduate programs in many countries including most of Western Europe and the USA. Practice Help is a new offering that is available to any instrumentalist that needs assistance in preparing a piece for performance or auditions. Practicing is a skill in itself, a poorly taught one in a surprisingly practice dependent field. You may request a trial lesson of 30 minutes if you are curious of what can be done.
Investment: These specific courses are not supported under the donation based education project, but they remain affordable nonetheless. Please contact me for more information. Trial lessons are of course available.
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#4. Specific Subjects:
If you need help with understanding a specific subject, I can then offer individual courses on Solfege/Ear Training, Harmony, and Analysis.
This is not tutoring. As tutoring is fixing the end result of a bad system (conservatory style group classes) or trying to compensate for inadequate instruction. This course instead aims at understanding and mastery from the ground up on a specific subject. If completed, you will have little trouble passing a class or exam in any institution.
Donations: These lessons are offered as part of a donation based education project. Open to anyone with the dedication and ambition to learn regardless of financial circumstances. Please see below for more details. Limited spots available.
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A Different Approach to Arts Education
I offer online courses that are individual, tailored to the student’s needs, high quality, holistic, relevant, and personal. Arts education must be personal. These courses require a fair amount of work and effort on part of the students, but are nonetheless doable in conjunction with other training. These courses offer a valuable addition to a student’s experience in traditional music schools or in conservatory style institutions. In these, group classes are the norm and with the exception of the main instrument specialization, most classes are disregarded as unimportant or treated with apathy by many students. Conservatory courses in “Music Theory” and History are notorious for wasting the precious time of capable and ambitious students and by the time they graduate very few of them can answer even basic questions regarding Harmony, Form, or History. An academic approach to Ethics is also unheard of, and there is rarely a humanistic angle to the student’s development. Too many conservatory students do not even listen to music, are broadly accepting of any recording or performance, and lack critical thinking. How can someone then be expected to go on stage and perform a masterpiece of genius of which they know nothing about and understand only in a musically and personally superficial level? No wonder anxiety, frustration, and unhealthy habits plague conservatories all over the world.
My approach starts taking into account the goals, ability, and potential of a student. From there we focus on both practical music matters and holistic building of the student’s path. This is mainly done through extra musical work that includes reading, memorizing poetry, and conversations about art, philosophy, ethics, and more.
A well rounded education not only in musical subjects but the arts in general, placing a special focus on literature, philosophy, history, and the visual arts. This is needed for those who wish to build themselves through high level education, which after all, is our duty as performers! To climb up to the level of the great masters and art and always aim for infinite increase in our abilities. The yearning for infinite improvement is the only path against decay.
Much of the musical material that we will cover has been built through tradition. In this case, I mean the Second Vienna School. Arnold Schoenberg’s ideas have been not only transferred orally in an unbroken line through his pupil Anton Webern, but developed further by truly amazing musicians and pedagogues. Amongst them, my teachers Vladislav Soyfer and Semyon Vekshtein with whom I have had the privilege to study with. I am indebted morally and musically specially to my professor Vladislav Soyfer and his teachings.
I offer exclusively 1 on 1, accessible lessons on select topics in music in which my goal is to explore together the amazing language of music. Which after all, is simply put the best thing there is. I invite you to look at my blog for some of my latest findings in my own path of discovery in the world of music. You may do so at: www.learningmusicasalanguage.blogspot.com or via the section below in this page.
Why This Education:
Most conservatory students and graduates are proficient at playing their instrument, yet they often do not understand what the piece they play is truly about. The true nature of music is coded in the score, but most lack the keys to access this information. Namely, proper training in solfege/ear training, harmony, and analysis that is of course linked to performance practice! Training for musicians in conservatories in these topics is generally divorced from musician’s practice and performance and unfortunately it is not uncommon that the standard of aural training even in professional musicians is quite low. It is my goal to reconcile these discrepancies and provide first and foremost essential material to become a more complete musician.
It’s important to remember: music is an art of the ear! Not an art of the fingers nor other body part. This is easy to forget as there is indeed a technical barrier to be climbed in every instrument in order to effectively communicate through music. Nonetheless, music is played with the ear. By this I mean the mind’s ear, and this is what my courses in aim to develop. To add to this, music is the most intangible of the arts. It is then in the educated musician’s grasp and control only when there is a thorough understanding of both Harmony and Form. In harmony we deal with the vertical relationship of a tone in its harmonic context, and in form with the tone’s horizontal relationship developed through time. The fact that a piece must be performed starting at the beginning of a piece and played till its end does not mean that it is the way it was created. Good education in form/analysis has the goal of clarifying this.
As musicians, performers, and teachers, it is our duty to understand what a piece is about in order to communicate it effectively to the audience. This is performance in its essence, like an essay titled “my understanding of what this piece is about”. Precisely because of this, since we are dealing with some of the greatest minds in the history of humanity, it is also our duty to build ourselves through serious education to ask the great masters of music the right questions and further our understanding of the masterpieces we are in charge of performing. We have great responsibility in our hands… The great masters of the past depend on us.
My courses are tailor-made to the student’s needs. Whether for preparation for auditions, concerts, or other projects, or to complement what is otherwise very superficial music theory foundations taught in many conservatory style institutions. Understanding of harmony and form in particular are essential for the serious musician. The performer who has little to no knowledge of these topics risks being just a puppet, an orchestral slave dependent on someone else’s ideas about music to be able to create something worthwhile.
If you are interested, you can write to me via the Request Info button at the top of the page, or at the form below. I look forward to hearing from you and to working together. Trial lessons are available.
Donations:
These lessons are offered on a pay-what-you-can basis. Open to anyone with the dedication and ambition to learn. If you have the means, your donation helps sustain this work and allows me to offer lessons to others who could not afford them otherwise. The usual price of private music lessons in this country ranges between €35-€55 per lesson. These lessons are offered to anyone who needs them, regardless of their financial situation. A limited number of spots is available. This work is not only my calling, it is also how I make my living. Your support allows me to dedicate myself fully to teaching and to share this knowledge with more musicians. The “Sponsor a student” section is filled with details for those interested in contributing to this cause.
I am in the process of setting up a foundation that will help me to better manage the donations received and will help provide transparency and accountability for everyone who has supported this project. At the moment, I must keep track and include VAT tax on all donations as they count as taxable income for my company. Donations to this project are also not tax exempt for supporters yet. There is a clear difference made in the invoices issued as to what is a normal business transaction for a specific course outside of the donation based project and all voluntary contributions from both students and supporters that go exclusively towards the donation based music education project.