[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER: Welcome to the Towson University College of Fine Arts and Communication's What's Your Story Podcast. In today's story, we hear from Kalin Kirilov, professor of music theory and composition in the Department of Music. He speaks about the importance of noticing systems and patterns in the world. 

KALIN KIRILOV: The most important skill that I would like to teach my students is to analyze systems and patterns. I teach mainly music theory and musicianship courses. And a great segment of the teaching of music theory is to look at different pieces of music and understand how music is put together. 

Music is a complex phenomenon. It includes different levels of detail. There is foreground structure, which are melodies, embellishments, ornaments, chromatically altered notes, things that are registered at a first glance. We describe this as a melody. 

There is background structure like an overall prolonged harmonic progression. Or there is also a formal structure, which creates meaningful units when the repetitions and sections and larger formal segments. The existence of background and foreground structures at the same time makes music so complex and so intriguing for the human brain. This is what makes us like the music, the existence of something on the foreground and on the background together. 

Without understanding the structure in the background, a musician would have a hard time executing the foreground properly. The relationship between background and foreground is important, not only for music but also for understanding systems outside of music, understanding how to position yourself in your life and how to build a career that you want to build for yourself. Systems are found everywhere, not only in music but also in any other field or any other cooperative structure or even in the universe and even the way planets rotate. 

And it's very important to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. How is the system put together? How is the system functioning? 

In terms of music, I often ask my students to get into the mind of the composer and think of a complex music piece, such as a Beethoven symphony, as a game. We listen to symphonies in class, and I ask my students, what is the joke here in these few measures? What is the catch? Why is this extra measure here? What is the humor that the composer is trying to convey? 

Often looking at the detail and the complex notes and chordal progressions makes music and structure intimidating for my students. However, if you're just thinking of as a form of jokeful communication between a composer and his audience, everything becomes much simpler. And the systems for keeping music together become evident and begin to emerge. These systems and understanding of [INAUDIBLE] through analysis of how music is put together helps my students not only become better musicians but be positioned in life and be very successful. 

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