David Stuart actually wrote the book on rock ‘n’ roll, or at least co-wrote the textbook on how to teach it. In addition to teaching at Iowa State since 1976, Stuart has been the principal trombonist in the Des Moines Symphony and is also a part of the Symphony’s Brass Quintet and the Des Moines Metro Opera.

How do you teach music to non-music majors?

The focus and the thrust of what I do is based on this book I wrote with one of my colleagues. Most music appreciation courses are focused on listening to good music.

Good music is defined as written by dead European white guys. In fact, there’s lots of good music being written by dead European white guys, but also being written and performed by lots of other people.

In the Western tradition, we teach things based on history and their chronology. If you want to teach something about popular music, about jazz, about music from China or anywhere else, how do you fit that in to the Renaissance, the Baroque, the Classical period, and Medieval – it doesn’t fly.

My colleague, Gary White, is a composer. I have a master’s degree in music theory and both of us decided to take a music theory approach.

We can talk about melody, we can talk about rhythm, quality of sound (tambor), form. That’s part of any kind of music that you find anywhere, whether it was written the day before yesterday or a Gregorian chant, or music from Indonesia. My idea is to get people to listen a little more closely.

How do you teach people to listen more closely?

One of the difficulties now, I suppose, is that there’s so much noise and so much sound. I notice that people come in to class and they can’t get the iPod out of their ears, even if I’m playing some other sort of music.

I think about that philosophically. Because you can’t go anywhere without hearing background music, people are trying to take control themselves and say, ‘Look, you don’t get to choose what music I listen to. I get to choose.’ It’s really hard to get people’s attention. Music is marketed like anything else, especially popular culture. Trying to figure out how to get people to develop some listening tools that are different from what they already have is my procedure.

So, how does your book help?

My colleague and I started team teaching because we had an idea for a book that would not be a chronological, historical approach. We started writing it, found a publisher and worked on a version to class-test. My colleague retired, so I kept working on it alone. The publisher got bought out by a bigger company and was no longer interested, so we had to get the rights to the book and find another publisher, McGraw-Hilll. It took forever – we’ve always joked that no matter how much this book makes it will work out to about $5 an hour.

Symphony to rock ‘n’ roll – that seems to be quite a varied interest.

I pretty much like everything; it just depends on what the day is, and where my head is at, and what I’m feeling like. Some days I’ll be listening to classical and I’ll just think, nah, and then sometimes I’ll be listening to pop music and think no; this is not pushing my buttons today. That’s one of the things I wish I could get through to people in class, there’s so much music that does everything in every kind of way whether you want to be uplifted or you’re feeling so down in the dumps you just want to wallow, there’s something for that, as well.

One of the things I notice about popular music is that it has much to do with your experience as an adolescent. I like oldies, too. People who are my age, 60 years old, who are listening to music that they listened to in junior high exclusively, I just want to say, ‘Grow up, notice what else is around. You don’t need to necessarily dismiss something because it’s not your generation, which is pretty easy to do. You get to be loyal to your own stuff, but there’s so much.’

There’s no one you could meet who doesn’t feel music is an important part of their lives. No matter what’s happening to you, whether you’re up, or down or sideways, music is always there and it doesn’t take a whole lot of work on your part to find something that’s pretty meaningful to you. All you need is batteries.

Finally, what’s your favorite song?

At the risk of being flippant, it’s whatever I’m listening to at the moment.

I’m a big Beatles fan, I’m a big horn fan, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Verdi, Mozart. It’s really hard to say.