FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK
by Dave Tough

Living in Nashville and teaching at Belmont is an interesting phenomenon. My office is in the same building as our new Songwriting program, and I also teach demo production at this location. I get to hear the new ideas the students bring in all the time. The fascinating aspect is that even though our building sits on the "hallowed ground" of one of the first studios on Music Row, only a minimal percentage of the student’s are writing and producing country music (traditional or contemporary). Most of our students are writing and producing pop, CCM, hip hop and rock projects!

What used to be the soundtrack to lifestyles, traditions, values of a particular community is now the music of several nations and cultures throughout the world.

Then that got me thinking…the same argument could apply to curriculum. With advance in worldwide transportation and communication and with increasingly mobile societies and online interaction between studios, it seems natural not only to develop global perspective of music business curriculum. It is true that legal curriculum may be bound to the nation or state, but what about marketing? Audio classes? Belmont is already delivering real-time online content from our classroom in Nashville to classrooms in Hawaii. Why shouldn’t our students be collaborating with students from other countries on production or marketing projects via the internet?

Technology is one of the principal driving forces of the future; it is transforming our lives and shaping our future at rates unprecedented in history, with profound implications which we can't even begin to see or understand. I believe it so important for us to continually interact with our national and international colleagues both online and at the MEIEA conferences. We always learn a lot from each other. In my opinion, it is an exciting time to be in education!

I want to say "goodbye" and "thanks" to Rey Sanchez for his great work as MEIEA president for the past 2 years!

Thank you for all your contributions to MEIEA and to educating our students!

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