daverees4

I saw www.khanacademy.org in 2010 and thought - "I could totally do this for music". So I spent the next few weeks scripting a load of videos and working out how to do the recording and graphics.

Once these were done I sent them to Sal Khan not really expecting a reply, but he got back to me and was really encouraging!

That was all the inspiration I needed really and so I'm still going two years later!

Good question.

Unlike a university or conservatoire - my goal is to help people on their musical journey no matter what that may be.

If they want to learn three chords on the guitar and sing songs to their friends - great. If they want to learn to analyse the deepest levels of a Beethoven symphony- also great.

Most music schools (certainly in the US and UK) tend to focus on "classical art music" - that, said some now offer courses on jazz, world music and music theatre, for example. While these courses will suit some, there's not so much for people who don't want to study music in a rigorous academic way.

I'm trying to create a way of learning about music that will help you no matter what kind of music you'd like to play, compose or listen to.

By doing this I'm hoping I can show everyone that there aren't these big differences between different types of music, they're all interesting and important and there's lots to be gained from studying them all. (At the moment I feel in higher education that studying "classical" music is seen as more important or worthwhile than other styles - I disagree!)

. . . let's put that on the maybe pile.

Hi Jack,

Good luck, and hope you find the site useful. Please feel free to email dave@daveconservatoire.org if you have any questions.

Dave

I'd hope so, eventually - although I think I have a long way to go until I could offer the same facilities, expertise and experience those institutions have in training musicians.

It is important to say that I'm not trying to replace music teachers, schools or anything really. Just provide some tools that anyone can use in the pursuit of music education.

Formal study in music can be very expensive and that makes it basically inaccessible to many people. So at the moment I'm hoping to get people who might not be fortunate enough to have a teacher or access to formal education started on the right track for free.