Ep. 22 : Music-Theory-Interviews: MEET THE BLACKSMITH

Episode 22 is my very first Interview in a series of upcoming interviews.  This one is all about the HARMONIOUS BLACKSMITH himself! Learn his background, how he came to become a professional musician , and ultimately, how he came to become a Music Theory Podcaster.

This entire series of podcast episodes includes :

Music Theory, Gregorian Chant, Western Music, Notes, Pitch, Melody, Harmony, Triads, Chords, Chord Progressions, Scales, Greek Modes, Keys, Key Changes, The Circle of Fifths, Modulation, Bass Lines, 4-Part-Harmony, Voice-Leading, Musical Improvisation, Song-Writing, and much more! Subscribe Today!

#music #podcast #musictheory #musichistory #musictheorypodcast

Transcript

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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to The Harmonious Blacksmith. I am your host, Kevin Patrick Fleming, and today is really, really a very, very momentous occasion. Today is my very first interview in a series of interviews. But I thought I'd start with giving my listeners really what I should have given them a long time ago. I mean, I'm 22 episodes in. And you really don't know anything about who the blacksmith is. So today's episode is called Meet the Blacksmith. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And this is, of course, episode number 22 of season number two. I do appreciate you joining me, y'all. And I am just too excited not to tell you what is coming up on my podcast very soon. And that is multiple interviews with many musicians who are entrenched in music theory for one reason or another. So in other words, I'll be interviewing people locally and afar. I will be interviewing amateurs and I will also be interviewing professionals. What I'm really trying to get at is how does music theory affect your life? Why is it useful? Why should I learn it? Why should I spend time studying music theory at all when I can just pick up my instrument and learn things by ear? There are a lot of Thank you very much for checking that out. And so, without further ado, Adieu. Interview number one in my series is with The Harmonious Blacksmith. okay so i am going to be the interviewer as kevin patrick fleming or kevin or kpf and i will be interviewing the harmonious blacksmith who will be referred to by that name or by hb let's get started so mr harmonious blacksmith yes welcome to my podcast thank you and how are we doing today my friend oh i'm doing great thank you so so much for having me on of course kpf i am so excited to be here my friend thanks for the interview and i really hope that i can engage your audience with a lot of great information and content today oh that's awesome we're so glad to have you on the program hb thank you look we're gonna start you off with a few easy things great general things and then we'll narrow as we go more into music theory which as you know is what my podcast is all about yes sir let's Let's start with some basics. Nice. People out there, they want to know where you're from and how you grew up. Okay. So however you want to answer that, however specific and general, let's start with that. All right. As you know, my name is Kevin Patrick Fleming. Welcome. I was born in Galesburg, Illinois, USA. Okay. And on my mother's side, I'm first generation... Born right here in the United States. Oh, wow. My mother was born in Vienna, Austria. Oh, wow. And she came over in the mid 20th century as an immigrant. And then fast forward and I was born in Illinois in 1977. Oh, nice. The year of the original Star Wars. Yeah, that is correct. Okay. Yeah. My mom actually bought me a Star Wars 1977 Oh! Nice! Oh yeah, that's pretty epic, man. That's awesome. Yeah, it is cool. I've always sort of held Star Wars pretty personally because of that. So to continue, my father was out of the picture when I was really, really young. And that's really all I'm going to say about that. But my mother eventually moved to Texas where she got remarried to my stepfather and And we eventually moved to the East Coast in places like North Carolina and Georgia in the southeastern United States. Excellent. Excellent places to live. Thank you for that. Of course. Now, I'm really interested in what the harmonious blacksmith was doing as a child. When did you get into music? How did that happen? But really on top of that, what are the other things that you really grew up enjoying? Okay. Yeah. All right. So I'll go ahead and tell you this. Let's start with this. I started playing music when I was about 10 years old. Okay. Maybe 11. It's somewhere in there. And that's when I got my first guitar, which was a Harmony brand electric guitar. My mom knew that I had this huge desire to play because I had a best friend who was taking lessons and playing, and I heard him play stairway to The Great Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin or live the musician lifestyle weren't as into sports as I was and as I am. Now, I'm not pigeonholing musicians here. Okay. Keep in mind. That's all right. I'm just saying in general, that's the way it is. True. But I first learned sports in Houston, Texas, where if you were a boy and you could put the pads on, you learned how to play football. Oh, football. Yes, that's right. I was a football player growing up, and I actually played for seven years. It was all just as a kid. Football, you played soccer. That is a lot of sports for somebody who ended up doing mainly music. That's pretty impressive, actually. Thank you. You sound like a pretty well-rounded guy. I appreciate it. Excellent. I love that. Thank you. All right, so let's fast forward a little bit. Sure. And let's find out how you, you know, once you were mesmerized by Stairway to Heaven, your friend played it and you were mesmerized. Yes, sir. And you had to play music. Let's start from there. How does that elevate into into getting more serious about music and eventually taking it on as your lifelong love and profession in adulthood. Got the guitar. I eventually wanted to upgrade to an acoustic guitar, and here's a life lesson that not a lot of kids get these days. Uh-oh. I know. I'm going to sound like that old guy. Stay off my lawn. That's what I sound like right now. I get that. That's funny. But my parents made me do yard work every weekend for a month just to get about a$100 Alvarez Regent acoustic guitar, which was much, much better than the chintzy little Harmony that I had. I got for 30 bucks originally. Oh, nice. A working man. And despite all the stories of sports, I really was an introvert. We moved a lot. I moved in the middle of my ninth grade year in high school. And if you've never done that and you have no idea what that's like, it's really, really hard. Yeah, that had to be tough. You end up moving to a school where people have been growing up together. They all know each other. And you're just this outsider that came from somewhere. So needless to say, it was hard to make friends. I'd I became very introverted, and guess what? I used to go home, get off the bus, and I used to go up to my bedroom and close the door and play guitar until my mom called me for dinner. I did that for many, many, many, many days in high school before I got a little bit more popular and had some friends and some hangouts by the time I was a junior and senior. But really, my freshman and sophomore year were spent learning to play the guitar. Beautiful. And just to give you an idea of how obsessed I was. I used to play so much that I would wear my fingers raw and my fretting hand and yet I would just put band-aids on them so I could keep playing. That's how obsessed I was when I was a teenager. My God, that is a whole other level of obsessed. I don't know that I know anybody else that hurt themselves, put the band-aids on and then kept going and continuing to hurt themselves simply because they wanted to play so much. Okay, so now we've got young Kevin Fleming, born in the United States in Gettysburg, Illinois, in the year of Star Wars, grew up playing sports, moved around a bit here and there, but eventually got obsessed with music. So I think what the audience wants to know now is how did that progress to something more serious? And how and when did you decide to go into academia or become a professional musician? or how did all that come about? Ah, okay, I see. Well, let me start that part of the story by telling you a quick little anecdote. Ooh, everybody loves stories. After I had studied music for a while and my parents knew I was gonna go into the profession, even though they didn't want me to for economic reasons, if I ever complained anything money-wise, my mother used to say, well, that was the choice you made. And my immediate response What choice? So I just wanted to start with that so that you know where I'm coming from. Yeah. Let's fast forward a little bit. That was great. I had a bass player, and I played guitar. We were really instrumental in the beginning, and the very first epic song we played was called Are You Gonna Go My Way by Lenny Kravitz. Oh, I remember that one. Yes, for all you youngsters out there, you probably don't know what that is. Go ahead and cue it up in your streaming. I promise you won't regret it. It's a really cool track, but I will never forget that that was the first cover I played with my first rock band. Oh, wow, that's great. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that anecdote. My pleasure. Yeah, that's great. Everything that led you from Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin all the way to Are You Gonna Go My Way by Lenny Kravitz. But I thought somewhere in there that you ended up being a classical guitarist. This doesn't necessarily sound like you're ending up in the classical guitar chair with a footstool on the ground. How did that happen? I think the audience wants to know. Okay, I'm good with that. How you arrived as a classical guitarist. Okay, actually, my story with that is not as uncommon as you might think. A lot of my classical guitar friends in music school, as I'm going to tell you how I got there, really did come from a similar background that I did. Learning to play electric guitar, getting obsessed with music, building your chops, playing hard rock and heavy metal and things like that. Oh, wow. And then eventually, a friend of mine took me to a concert in downtown Marietta, Georgia, where for the first time I got to see the great Christopher Parkinney, the prodigal student of the great Andre Segovia, who is, of course, the father of the modern classical guitar. Oh, wow. So you were introduced to classical guitar by hearing one of the greats in modern time, Christopher Parkinney. Yes. Like a direct student from the great Andre Segovia. The student. Who, of course, brought the entire school of guitar over to the United States. Yes, he did. Okay, so now we're getting to the nitty gritty. A friend drags you to a Christopher Parkening concert. You're obviously going to be moved by it. Oh, yeah. And then your trajectory changes at that point. Correct? For your life? Well, not immediately. But, yeah, ultimately it did. I think I was considering music really not as a profession. Oh, really? I should go ahead and tell you this. When I was about to start college, I actually had a rock band that was doing quite well and possibly about to go on tour. Oh, wow. That's cool. But I really wanted to go to college, and I knew I was going to go to college instead of drifting off with a rock band. So I got into Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Oh, my freshman year was like a no brainer. You got to go to Georgia Tech. That's a great school. That's an incredible school. So I was a civil engineering major for a year of all things. Wow. But I would have never guessed that was at Georgia Tech. All I did was spend a lot of time dreaming about playing music and guitar. And I realized that that would become my life. Wow. If I did not make a decision to go back into music after my freshman year, which is what I did then I probably would be sitting in an office staring out a window dreaming of playing music dreaming of teaching music and being entrenched in it and ultimately that's the decision I make and I never looked back and I have never ever regretted it so you took the plunge wow so you were an engineering major at a prestigious school like Georgia Tech yes sir I mean the That is huge. That is such a good school. And you were able to walk away from that and go to music. So, all right. So what's the next chapter then after you attended Georgia Tech? Well, I'm so glad that you asked. Well, first of all, after both of my parents almost losing their minds that I was going to leave a school like Tech to go to a smaller school and become a music major of all things was definitely an event in my life. I can imagine. I met some friends, some future friends, one of which was my first teacher of classical guitar one summer. And he introduced me to one Mary Ackerman, who was really the classical guitar teacher that I had the longest in life. I studied with her for like almost five years. Wow. Nice. And thank goodness I did. She was a fantastic teacher, an incredible player, an amazing human being. I will always have love for Mary Ackerman and I will always have humble and gracious thanks for everything she gave to me. That's beautiful. Honestly, once I was under her wing, that was it. I mean, I knew this is what I was going to do. I knew that classical guitar was going to be the path that I was going to pursue. And ultimately I did. And I earned my bachelor's degree in classical guitar performance at Kennesaw State University. Little old Kennesaw. And I eventually followed the path of my teacher, Mary A. Kerbin. I went on to learn from her former teacher, the late, great Bruce Holzman. Oh, isn't that cool? Anybody in classical guitar circles knows that name. I mean, Bruce Holzman, thankfully, is just a world-renowned pedagogical master when it comes to guitar. I mean, just really, really a Jedi. Night, if you will. It used to blow my mind how much he could problem solve in any situation of any piece, no matter what. And once I came out of there, you really feel like you can play anything after you are under his tutelage for a while. And I really felt like that. And so I earned my master's from the Florida State University under the late, great awesome all right now we're getting somewhere so now you have you're entrenched in academia definitely you've got a bachelor's degree you've got a master's degree this is obviously going somewhere in your profession and of course um apropos to this program uh we're getting to how you became a music theory uh jedi knight so to speak i'll go ahead and give you that title and um i'll be interested to know what's So what is the next part of the story? Okay, well, I should go ahead and tell you that I was really intense in classical guitar for an entire decade and really the rest of my life. But the reason I mentioned a decade is because I did enter the competition circuit. Oh, wow. And I just didn't want to forget to mention that I was a part of that. I ended up winning a lower level college competition in the state of Georgia. Nice. I also ended up winning a first prize in a statewide competition in Mississippi. Excellent. And I also ended up winning a fourth prize in an international guitar competition in North Carolina. Wow. Congratulations. So I just wanted to mention that so you know how serious I was and how entrenched I was in classical guitar. That's pretty serious. But after I got my master's, I ended up at the ripe old age of 20. I became an assistant professor of guitar at a college in the middle of Georgia. And it really was incredible because my second year there at the ripe old age of 25, Elliot Fisk, the great Elliot Fisk, came and played a concert at my school and I got to meet him and talk to him. It was a real pleasure. If you don't know who Elliot Fisk is, go ahead and check him out. He's kind of an old school One of those old school original guitar players. You know, if we're going with all the Star Wars analogies that we've been going with. Why not? He's kind of an Obi-Wan type, you know? Nice. And here we are like 22 minutes into this interview and I haven't even talked about music theory, I realize. Obviously, a lot of background was needed to get here. Of course. Of course. The truth is, I eventually ended up as a doctoral assistant, a graduate Oh, my. Excellent. It was really more about just my level of curiosity. about music theory. And just to circle back and give a little full context, let me remind you, because of the stigma that comes with classical musicians, and there is one, and I've experienced it constantly after becoming a classical musician, I always remind people that I was a self-learned musician in my teenage years. Ah, self-learned. Yes, I was self-learned as a musician before I ever had a really good teacher in Mary Ackerman. And I want to remind people of that because my beginnings weren't in that kind of intense classical environment. They were just a kid just messing around with a guitar. And because of that, I'm telling you that story because once I started studying music theory in college, a lot of times when I was in a class, and by the way, I was like a kid in a candy store. I loved it. I ate it up. But when I was in class, I had a lot of moments where I was being taught something where light bulbs went on and I was like, so that's what you call that? Oh, I know what that is. I just didn't know it had a name like that. I see. Things like that happen so much. And I think that would happen for a lot of you out there if you're, you know, not a formally trained musician. You don't have to be. It's not necessary. That's right. Like I said, I don't come from that originally. We love to hear that. So I can tell you, you don't have to come from that. But the point is, you'll find out that you actually know a lot of the concepts already. You just don't know what we call them and how we organize them. He's right. And then once you give them names, you learn how to organize them. You learn some different angles about how to think about music theory. It really helps you build your knowledge for music and how it's constructed, how to play it and perform it just heightens everything about music for you it makes it more enjoyable it makes you understand it and read it more it makes you perform it better and more confidently there's just so many reasons that music theory is absolutely 100% necessary if you're serious about doing music wow that's a nice sales pitch for music theory in general I just hope that all of our listeners out there really made note of your journey especially the fact that you came from humble beginnings and in the beginning you weren't even You weren't even thinking about being a musician professionally. That's true. You were at Georgia Tech. You were an engineering major. Your sane, rational mind was there. But really, your deep-seated passion took over. Oh, yes. And you ended up in music. And now you're this music theory kind of guru for

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And you have a lot of students. So talk about the rest of your path and how you got to where you are today. Okay, absolutely. So I did continue down the academia I was at this small school in Georgia. And I think, I guess I never told you what all I do. So, instrument-wise, I play several things. Not only guitar, but also bass guitar, banjo, mandolin, ukulele, lap steel, a little bit of pedal steel, a tiny bit of keyboard, and, of course, a whole lot of music theory. Wow, that's a lot of stuff. Just wanted to let everybody know that that's what I do. So, at the university that I teach at, I am the main folk music teacher. teacher I teach lessons on folk music instruments and I teach classes on folk music but excellent I must be pretty satisfied obviously being a part of this podcast is a huge part of my life I make music theory courses thank you and I do have many students that just take music theory and have for years for example I have a good friend who works in Hollywood works on movie trailers and Wow. And he was taking music theory lessons from me all the way across the country. He was in California and I was in Georgia. And we would meet up on Saturday mornings despite the time difference. And we just did music theory for several years. Nice. And he ended up being able to use that kind of thing for his Hollywood projects. There you go. For his trailers for major movies. You affected movies in Hollywood. You affected movies. It's kind of cool when you affect people that way. Yep. One other. little braggart you know one of my current guitar students all I'll say is he is a prominent quarterback on a major college football team and it's funny that I hear his name called on national sports radio all the time and I'm like hey that's my student they're just talking about my student so it's really connected me a lot to a lot of really cool people and how you get to affect them now I did have a lengthy conversation And I didn't talk about that too much because really, honestly, the older I get, the more I love the education, the more I love passing the buck to my students and what it does for them. The idea that you can do so many different things. Yes. Because my students have ended up doing all kinds of things with music theory. They use it to learn to improvise at jam sessions. They use it to learn to compose and write music and make their songs. They use it to do transcription work where you're taking a piece from one medium and transcribing it over to another. what it is that the harmonious blacksmith completely gets out of music theory in his life. Okay, okay, I got you. Absolutely. So look, like I was saying earlier, as somebody who was a self-learned musician, somebody who learned by ear, somebody who just listened to CDs and cassettes, yes, that dates me. Oh, yeah. That's fine. That's okay. And rewound them over and over and over again to try to figure out what that one note was in that one part you know things like that I went all the way from that to just using my ear to connecting what I had experienced with my ear to intellect and that really what is the heart of music theory the heart of music theory is connecting your passion for music to your ear which is your number one asset and ultimately also to your intellect so that Nice. Excellent. I hope you connect everything and organize it and really elevate your game to the next level. But I do want to finish by saying thanks again for having me on your first interview on the Harmonious Blacksmith KPF. I do appreciate it. I just want to let you know I think you're an extremely talented guy. And you know what? Now that we're in person, I think that you're also a really handsome guy. You're just really well-rounded. Thank you. And I just want to thank you again for the interview. It was really wonderful. Wow. Well, look, man, it was so good for you to come on. I really, really do appreciate it. And you know what? You're a really handsome guy, too. Oh, that's so nice of you. I mean, I can't believe how well-rounded and talented and smart and funny and just handsome you are. Thanks, man. You are a really good guy. Look, this has been great. I couldn't have asked for a better first interview in my series of interviews coming up. So thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Let's give it up for the Harmonious Blacksmith. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you, everybody, for listening out there. We love you. We appreciate you. Thank you so much, everybody. All right. Thanks again to the harmonious blacksmith for the interview. Thanks again for all my listeners out there. I appreciate you tuning in and supporting me. We will get back to it next week and I will be looking forward to continuing this music theory exploration with all of you. Have a beautiful music filled week everybody We love you and we can't wait to spend some time again with you in the future. Take care, everybody.