> Very very few world famous exponents of popular music have a formal musical education.
This is just false. If you start to dig into this a little bit, you will easily find connections between almost all famous musicians, and universities. If they didn't have formal education themselves, they often had private lessons from someone with a degree. Or someone in the band had a degree etc. Or in the case of the beatles, the "producer" just happened to be a trained composer who was giving a lot of "suggestions".
Other examples: punk band green day songwriter billie joe had 15 years of lessons with a jazz guitarist with a university degree. Bluegrass guitarist tony rice had private theory lessons with a berklee graduate. etc etc.
It's part of the marketing to downplay the theory and knowledge involved, people want to relate to musicians, and not feel like their being outsmarted, or manipulated by "some formula".
Are you from the industry? I am, with forty years of experience under my belt. Believe me, there is no correlation between success and formal musical education.
I think their point is more that in many cases, you can trace the chain of direct influence to someone with formal training, even if the musicians themselves don't have it.
Obviously, there are also plenty of artists who only have this influence indirectly, through other artists that inspire them. Or in the case of hip hop and electronic, through sampling. So I think their point was overstated.
This is just false. If you start to dig into this a little bit, you will easily find connections between almost all famous musicians, and universities. If they didn't have formal education themselves, they often had private lessons from someone with a degree. Or someone in the band had a degree etc. Or in the case of the beatles, the "producer" just happened to be a trained composer who was giving a lot of "suggestions".
Other examples: punk band green day songwriter billie joe had 15 years of lessons with a jazz guitarist with a university degree. Bluegrass guitarist tony rice had private theory lessons with a berklee graduate. etc etc.
It's part of the marketing to downplay the theory and knowledge involved, people want to relate to musicians, and not feel like their being outsmarted, or manipulated by "some formula".