After more than three decades in operation, the Rockschool grades are firmly established in the UK's popular music education pipeline. Often acting as a relevant and timely qualification for entry into further and higher education courses, they also offer familiar ground to parents who remember the grading system from their own orchestral instrumental learning and wish for similar structure for their children.
Over the years RSL has refined the model and crucially switched from an all-original syllabus of tunes in the style of pop genres to actual examples from well-known and much-loved songs. Overcoming the publishing headache of accessing this material is much to their credit. Offering students familiar songs, including many that are recognised as essential repertoire in a number of performance settings requiring cover songs (from jam sessions to function bands) is also an achievement.
Contextualisation
This increased focus on the pop canon has carved out space for far greater contextualisation, with the study materials in the books including background information about the artist and the genre. Frustratingly, the bass books contain little information about the musicians playing the parts. This emphasis on the headline performer over the session musicians and band members producing the tracks feels like a significant oversight in encouraging young musicians to embrace the importance of their contribution to the performing, songwriting and recording process. While there is nothing preventing the individual tutor from bringing this additional knowledge (as I'm sure many do), to have added this vital expansion to the grade books but not introduce the actual musicians is a missed opportunity.
A cross-section of musical styles
The problem that any popular music curriculum faces, particularly when compared to the orchestral repertoire, is the vast pool of music from which examples must be drawn. Any claim to be comprehensive is absurd, but that in no way invalidates the exercise. RSL's choices here present a good cross-section of musical styles popular in Britain from the last 50 or so years. From 60s soul to 90s rock and modern pop tracks by artists such as Dua Lipa and Olivia Rodriguez, the scope is broad but inclusive.
RSL has over the years adapted the assessment criteria to allow for personalisation of the parts presented. These new editions contain a section on interpretation that remains consistent across all the grades, inviting variation but warning against over-simplification. This offers a significant degree of agency to the taste and genre-specific understanding of the student. It increases the relevance of the process and begins to address some of the complexity of assessing popular music performance.
Innovation and sonic development
Success in popular music as an instrumentalist includes two essential elements that are almost impossible to grade in any consistent way: innovation and sonic development. The orthodox understanding of the sound of a violin renders the inclusion of tonal production in the criteria of an examination process a relatively uncontentious process. As a pop bassist or guitarist, having a signature sound can make or break the success of a particular part, and an ability to emulate those sounds is as significant to the professional task as that of playing the notes. Thus the RSL exams by necessity occupy a significantly different role in the practical and professional development of popular musicians, limited as all examination processes in popular art are by the requirement to apply objective and historically mediated criteria to largely subjective and still developing areas of practice. These developments in original material and interpretive latitude in the new editions offer a pathway towards greater cultural relevance for the graded examination process.
Choice of repertoire
The chosen repertoire, with all the previous caveats about the vastness of the pop canon, guide the student through the five levels of development in a consistent and connected manner. Each grade includes music both current and historic in order to offer as wide an experience as possible.
It is greatly to RSL's credit that none of the material or the writing in the books infantilises the early stages of learning an instrument. The assumption that Grade 1 is for younger children has often led to beginner materials featuring asinine choices and infantile text. Rockschool avoids this by choosing a range of tunes ranging from a recent Ed Sheeran single, all the way back to Motown, via reggae, 80s and 90s alternative rock and Boston's ‘More Than A Feeling’.
Sadly, no mention is made of the programmed synth bass on the Ed Sheeran track. This misses an opportunity to address the sonic and technical challenges and opportunities offered by so much contemporary pop music being programmed, sampled, looped and processed, but still played live by a bass guitarist in concert. I imagine that these omissions are a matter of space and scope, but given the substantial work that RSL has made to enhance their offering with original songs and acknowledging interpretation as a core skill in pop music performance, it feels like a significant contextual omission.
General musicianship
Thirty years of teaching bass has shown time and time again the deepened relationship with music-making brought about by contextual knowledge and deeper listening. While these are difficult areas to assess, Grades 1–5 of the RSL exams incorporate a welcome section for ‘general musicianship questions’ which include considerations of tone and an awareness of equipment choices. Expanding this to include more nuanced discussion of the pieces in question would be greatly to the benefit of student and examination process alike.
Even those tunes that are wholly reliant on the sound of a plectrum omit that piece of information in the description and the notation – a confusing omission when the notation otherwise is so thorough. This is a missed opportunity to offer a greater range of technical experience to the beginning instrumentalist, given just how many of the examples were originally played with a plectrum.
Backing-tracks
Each grade comes with a download code for the backing-tracks for each song, featuring truncated re-recordings of the tunes. Some of these are impressively accurate recreations of the tracks in question. Others, especially those with more complex original production, are far less successful. While many of the tracks are shared repertoire between guitar, bass and drums – a significant innovation for students learning in groups – limiting the production of all tracks to the sound of a live band does a disservice to those tunes that rely more heavily on synths, samples and technology, like the previously mentioned Ed Sheeran tune and the G-funk-inspired original that makes no mention of sampling and programming as essential to the aesthetics of hip-hop. This is a missed opportunity to greatly broaden the scope and appeal of the RSL exams beyond a rock-centric audience.
Significance of context
The advent of YouTube and multimedia online courses have revolutionised not only the delivery of music education but also student expectations. While RSL has the added value of accreditation and is well situated between school and further or higher education in terms of the examination process, there is a danger that even with the significant steps forward that have been made, it will still end up being overtaken by those with a more nuanced grasp on the implications of the revolution in what it means to be an instrumentalist in pop music. In the hands of a teacher willing to provide the extra context and build an extended syllabus around the core tunes, these books offer a graduated, well-presented and rigorous path through the performance of songs of increasing complexity, backed by the credibility of the qualification. But the absence of any more complex engagement with the significance of context, of sound and sonic understanding and the role of technology in the production and performance of pop music is a missed opportunity amid the otherwise impressive steps forward that these books represent.
