# Welcome to the EIS forum



## Craig Sharmat (Nov 21, 2004)

I would like to thank Frederick for not only coming up with the idea, but implementing and hosting this EIS forum. It is my hope that as time goes by many of the EIS (Equal Interval System) Masters will start to frequent this forum and share music and experiences with EIS students. Actually all graduates are still considered students of the course so there is a common ground.

For those coming here wondering what EIS is, it is a course of music study created by Lyle "Spud" Murphy. Spud in his earlier years was considered one of the top arrangers in the world and was employed by Benny Goodman at his prime. Many greats have studied with Spud, and his students have had much success in Film, T.V., Jazz etc. The list of accomplishments of EIS students are too large to list here but a site is being developed which hopefully you can check out soon. If you wish to know more about the course, you can post here. All EIS people are encouraged to post and discuss.


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## Frederick Russ (Nov 21, 2004)

Looking forward to seeing this one grow, Craig. Congrats! 8)


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## fv (Nov 22, 2004)

I'd like to echo the thank you to Frederick but also a thank to Craig for agreeing to moderate as well. I plan on beginning lessons for the EIS method in January since I'm quite busy at the mo'. Thanks again guys - I also hope that this part of the forums grows and that the Masters will share their music and experience too.  

FV


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## lux (Nov 23, 2004)

Welcome Mr. Sharmat and good luck for the new adventure.
I'm sure you'll be a good moderator and you will accept opinions. About that I'd like to give my two cents abo [Lux user has been banned from EIS forum] [topic closed]
:shock:


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## Frederick Russ (Jan 26, 2005)

Recent Pic: January 24, 2005





EIS Founder Spud Murphy 
(with EIS Graduate Craig Sharmat)


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## Marsdy (Jan 26, 2005)

Which one is Sharmy?


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## Craig Sharmat (Jan 26, 2005)

Hey Frederick, do i get to ban someone?


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## Frederick Russ (Jan 26, 2005)

Why certainly! Of course Dave's reputation precedes him.... :D


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## Marsdy (Jan 27, 2005)

Oh no... It's starting again.

:cry:


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## Frederick Russ (Jan 27, 2005)

Relax Dave  We wouldn't be the same without you.


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## wes37 (Jan 27, 2005)

Does Spud still compose?


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## SWL (Mar 1, 2005)

I can finally post !!!

Can't wait to start the course !!! Still searching my coat closet for my 'Learning Cap'


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## Craig Sharmat (Mar 1, 2005)

wes37 said:


> Does Spud still compose?



Actually he is decomposing as we all are


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## Craig Sharmat (Mar 1, 2005)

SWL said:


> I can finally post !!!
> 
> Can't wait to start the course !!! Still searching my coat closet for my 'Learning Cap'



the learning cap oddly seems to grow from within the brain outward, like a muscle that needs to be exercised. Looking forward to you starting Scott.


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## ENW (Feb 26, 2008)

Yes. I started EIS. I heard so much about it I couldn't resist. I'm into Book 2 so I still have no clue what's going on  Nevertheless, I'm enjoying it & find it fascinating. I have high hopes that it will be very beneficial. It reminds me somewhat of Bach's polyphonic linear approach.

Now... (at the risk of sounding blasphemous). I completed a Bachelor of Music Degree & started a Masters in Music Theory. I finally had it with PhD.'s & escaped.
I've read a lot of books relating to music. I just find myself reading Spud's instructions multiple times & it still seems unclear what he is trying to communicate. The instructor's help seems mandatory in this course.

Might I suggest that someone, eventually, consider re-writing the EIS texts? I know it would be an immense task but, for the sake of posterity, it seems desirable. Most of the important developments in the history of music survive due to their effective documentation.

I'm not criticizing the course in any way. I just think the writing in the texts could be more clear. I hope I haven't insulted anyone.

EW


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## Craig Sharmat (Feb 26, 2008)

while rewriting Spuds instructions might prove helpful to certain students there is a lack of motivation to do this. It would only be as generous giving of someone, as the course itself is owned by the Murphy's at this time. to do this as you mentioned would be a monumental task with little if any chance for reward outside of self gratification or giving of oneself. I doubt there is anyone with this kind of free time on their hands.


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## midphase (Feb 26, 2008)

I totally agree with EW, the course books are cryptic to say the least, and Spud's methodology for getting an idea across is more akin to Mr. Miagy than your typical college professor.

Nonetheless, I also agree with Craig in his assessment that there's nothing that can really be done by anyone at this stage. It is really a shame since the course is destined to more than likely die out...such a demise is probably not entirely unappealing to the few dozens who have graduated since they will find themselves with a skillset of a very rare nature indeed, however the art-is-universal part of me would hate to see that happen.

It would be very cool if someone could purchase the rights to EIS from Spud's family, and hire a professional writer to create a series of texts which could function as self contained and self-explanatory tutorials for how to correctly implement EIS into one's work.


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## jsaras (Feb 27, 2008)

Yes. A less cryptic rewrite would be a good thing. As is often the case with music teachers, their gifts with communicating with words are not equal to their musical gift. 

I would suggest that the process could be similar to translating the King James Bible into contemporary English. Perhaps a team of 12 or more EIS graduates could collaborate on the project. One person would be responsible for a single book and all the members could review each others' work and make suggestions. It would be cool if somehow the material were available to the team online as it was being created (in a loosely Wikipedia-like fashion). This would also ensure that there was a level of uniformity throughout.

I know that Michael Mitacek was at one point trying to get at least part of the course available online through Pasadena City College. 

I'm actually quite experienced with building SCORM-compliant courses for online learning management systems. The courses can have audio, video, text and various attachments (.pdf, or anything else you can think of) as well as quizzes along the way. Provisions can also be made to interact with a real instructor i.e., send in assignments for grading. email, etc.

Limiting the course material solely to private study with an EIS graduate is the least efficient means of distributing the material. Publish or perish!

BTW, how does one get officially designated as an EIS grad? Just curious.


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## Craig Sharmat (Feb 27, 2008)

The publish or perish quote is probably correct but as the course was always in a state of flux it was not entirely put to paper. There is a general opinion that the course is still not finished. There are parts of the course which need to be better setup to really allow the course to be published, but I still think it could stand on its on with a little sprucing up. By Book 12 many students are going enough already I have too much info.

A graduate of the course is one who has completed all 12 of the books in the course by studying from Spud (no longer an option) or a graduate of the course. These rules were determined by Spud.


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## mojamusic (Jul 30, 2012)

Hi Craig

Is this course still available? I don't see a clear " order" page. 

Myron


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## Craig Sharmat (Aug 1, 2012)

here is the site with info.

http://equalinterval.com/


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## Minsky (Dec 12, 2020)

I am quite interested to find out more. The website is a bit unclear though. I can't really see what's 'in' the course and how much it's likely to cost - I get the $90 x 220 or whatever the number of 'lessons' is but is that it? It all feels rather nebulous. Reading that people who complete the course and spend around $20,000+ doing so are not 'designated' graduates because that was up to Spud (who I've honestly never heard of ... no disrespect intended) feels a little cult-like. I'm interested in anything that 1. can make me a better musician 2. be a challenge .. I dunno. I just need more clarity I think.


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## Craig Sharmat (Dec 12, 2020)

The web situation with this course leaves a lot to be desired, Jonas has graduated but the updating of the web site is so delinquent it could be years before his name actually shows up as a student let alone as a graduate. The course though is a wonderful source of information and the actual execution is all about the course, teachers and students. The web site plays no part in that.

One does not have to take the entire course btw. Generally one buys a 4 lesson block. Anyway a teacher myself or someone else will be happy to talk to you about it if you are so inclined. The main purpose is seeing if the course is a good fit both student and teacher.


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## MatFluor (Dec 12, 2020)

As current student I might chime in @Minsky:

I honestly haven't heard of Spud before the course as well, but that doesn't mean the course or its contents are fringe or not trustworthy  I mean - until you dive into Baroque music you likely never heard of Telemann, yet he was one of the greats there.
From what I gather, Spud simply was very tight on the material, since - you know the music community at times - things could be misunderstood and needlessly put under fire. I can totally understand that he didn't want to put everything out in the open - I respect his desire for this kind of "privacy". But I'm not the right person to really explain nicely the why and how here, and I'm only making assumptions myself so to speak 
I also get that it looks like a cult - but it isn't (yeah, that's what a cultist would say isn't it...). But there is no advertising going on, some people mention it more than others etc. It's a different way of looking at how music works - and as said, some people are not the most welcoming kind towards new or different ideas.

On costs - one of the kickers for me was that it's not like a course at uni, you have total freedom on the time/cost aspect. The books cost and the single 1-on-1 lessons cost. If you want to do the whole course, that's up to you. You can pause at any time for any amount of time. You can decide to "stop taking lessons" anywhere as well, with no further costs, you don't pay some subscription or whatever. I had to take a roughly 5-6 months break last year due to other things going on, no problem. Others paused maybe 2-3 years or more. I can pause, stop and resume whenever I want to. So - the costs are really variable, you don't need the whole course, there are gems in every lesson. Meanwhile, my music work pays for the lessons. I would maybe say - the costs could be compared to a CAS? But then, I only know the CAS I personally teach(ed), so that may vary of course. But it's an awesome flexibility for me - if work takes up steam, I can slow down on the lessons. If I have financially very tight months, no problems. if everything slows down and my invoices are getting paid, I can continue if I wish to.

It's designed for the working composer, giving you more tools for your work. It's not a "how to compose" magic bullet, but there are some things getting explained and looked at in a different way. I wanted to dive deeper into understanding music - and I got that, from a different angle that worked for my brain better than traditional study. That said, I wanted to understand music to *make* music, not to write theoretical papers about it. And at least for me, traditional study didn't really play into my hands there (I did not study music but psychology and Computational Linguistics).

If you have deeper questions, it's best to hit up a teacher and ask them  

I hope that helps!


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## Minsky (Dec 13, 2020)

jsaras said:


> I’ve graduated the course twice and I’m not listed on the website, while others who haven’t graduated at all are listed.


Really? how can that be?! And you did it twice? Did you pay for different teachers? What made you want to do it a second time? (if you're happy to say)


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## Minsky (Dec 13, 2020)

Craig Sharmat said:


> The web situation with this course leaves a lot to be desired, Jonas has graduated but the updating of the web site is so delinquent it could be years before his name actually shows up as a student let alone as a graduate. The course though is a wonderful source of information and the actual execution is all about the course, teachers and students. The web site plays no part in that.
> 
> One does not have to take the entire course btw. Generally one buys a 4 lesson block. Anyway a teacher myself or someone else will be happy to talk to you about it if you are so inclined. The main purpose is seeing if the course is a good fit both student and teacher.


That makes sense ... but can I somehow see what's actually 'in' the course before I speak to someone? Currently there's absolutely nothing on display. That's a bit weird tbh.


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## Minsky (Dec 13, 2020)

MatFluor said:


> As current student I might chime in @Minsky:
> 
> I honestly haven't heard of Spud before the course as well, but that doesn't mean the course or its contents are fringe or not trustworthy  I mean - until you dive into Baroque music you likely never heard of Telemann, yet he was one of the greats there.
> From what I gather, Spud simply was very tight on the material, since - you know the music community at times - things could be misunderstood and needlessly put under fire. I can totally understand that he didn't want to put everything out in the open - I respect his desire for this kind of "privacy". But I'm not the right person to really explain nicely the why and how here, and I'm only making assumptions myself so to speak
> ...


Thank you, hat really does help. very comprehensive and it makes a lot of sense. Te flexibility sounds great. On the website it suggests a lesson a week .. which would be extremely expensive for me. I wonder if you'd mind saying broadly what kind of frequency of lesson (when you were able to study) that you settles upon? (totally ok if you'd rather not!). oh nd (sorry for my ignorance) whats a 'CAS?' 

Presumably you found it / find it enjoyable? What led you to EIS? Thanks in advance


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## MatFluor (Dec 13, 2020)

Minsky said:


> Thank you, hat really does help. very comprehensive and it makes a lot of sense. Te flexibility sounds great. On the website it suggests a lesson a week .. which would be extremely expensive for me. I wonder if you'd mind saying broadly what kind of frequency of lesson (when you were able to study) that you settles upon? (totally ok if you'd rather not!). oh nd (sorry for my ignorance) whats a 'CAS?'
> 
> Presumably you found it / find it enjoyable? What led you to EIS? Thanks in advance



Great to know 

Watch out - wall of text. BTW - to my teacher - I wasn't sure if you're comfortable with me mentioning you, if you are, just tell me xD For now you shall remain anonymous in this thread 

At the start I took 1 lesson every two weeks if I recall correctly, and currently mainly one lesson a week. Occasionally I left one week out due to other workload. My teacher was also very flexible thankfully. It's not as rigidly scheduled (as he's a working composer as well, and sometimes we move the lessons around to accommodate both our schedules).

A CAS is a "Certificate of Advanced Study", a kind of additional academic qualification, usually such a course is taken after the Masters degree in many fields. Those are often one semester (or two) in length and very expensive (somewhere around $3k-$10k). I personally teached some things in the "CAS Translation Technology and AI", which officially costs $6.5k per student. It's not to blow out high numbers, but it's a handy reference 

I find EIS very enjoyable. I am not academically trained (as mentioned I studied something else, but made music before I started for a bit over 15 years) most concepts that I learned were relatively new to me. I dabbled a little bit in Jazz guitar for a bit and had standard "high school music" education (reading notation, playing basic piano and knowing 7th chords so to speak). So I can't compare what it has in it when you compare it with a traditional music composer or jazz curriculum. I actually found my way to EIS over my current teacher - we talked a lot, he did some videos on composition, mentioned some concepts and EIS itself. Meaning I also asked him a lot of general composition questions, and his way of thinking intrigued me, since I immediately understood his advice. And after talking to him a bit more about what EIS is, and if it would be a fit for me, I "officially" became interested and talked to other teachers. On that note shortly - what intrigued about his way of thinking was to a large part all the different viewpoints on something. Is this chord there now a 9th chord? Or is it in this context more thought of a harmonized (e.g. 3-part) melody? And some of those different angles makes sense in different contexts, and that opened my mind towards music more. I am sure that classical/jazz training does the same multi-viewpoint thing, but it was new to me (maybe you can blame my old "high school" music teacher...but don't, he's one of most kind and amazing people I know xD). Not to mentioned that I wrote and made power metal for all those years and never really jumped into the experimental side of it. So 11th chords were already a "completely new sound" so to speak. But also coming from metal - the traditional (classical for the lack of the proper word) tonality system was not hard engrained - metal is more modal. So on that point I was able to map nicely what I know from practice to the new theory I learned so to speak.

What is told in EIS - the question is more what you expect to read. I agree more could be written out - but the website is not really an ad fortunately  But what I can say is - it's a different perspective on how music comes together. From basics like voice leading to creating tasteful dissonance (think John Williams Clusters) and more. It doesn't teach a specific style (e.g. you won't read "that's how you write Bossanova, here's how to do 1950s Film score"). Spud was a Jazz guy, so naturally you get a good intro to all the higher order chords (like 9th, 11th, 13th and all their variants). So, since it doesn't teach a specific style, it's hard to write down what it actually teaches without already going in depth, or writing down banalities (like I did - voice leading, harmonies, counterpoint, different devices and techniques here and there. Plus - there is no company (or cult hehe) behind EIS, so no direct incentive to "make more money by getting more people in here". One of the main things simply is - the 1-on-1 teaching approach is what makes this special (compared to lectures in uni with anything between 10 to 750 people). And the personal "mentoring" was invaluable to me.
As Craig hinted at - EIS is not for everyone. It's a different viewpoint - for me it's the right thing. For other people I know, it definitely isn't - for various reasons (be it that they don't like new ideas, or that e.g. Spud calls something a different name). That's why the general advice is to hit up a teacher and talk to them. They can better assess and answer questions. But as said, it's designed for the working composer - the stuff you learn is something you should be able to implement. And for me personally, I got some nice placements on TV and a couple of shorts done, using what I learned in EIS.
Would I have done (or been able to do) the same if I studied music or composition or jazz at a uni? I can't answer that, chances are "yes" as many who studied music are successful in composing, but as always, I will never know since I walked down on epath and wont go back to uni to study music . But what I can answer is that the teaching style at university (even if it's different subjects)was focused on something different. E.g. Psychology at that uni was *very* focused on forming/sculpting a researcher, not a worker. EIS is the other way around - focused on creating a worker, not a researcher - to clarify, I mean it's focused on giving you tools to be a (better) composer, not to create a musicologist. Similar to my second study, Computational Linguistics (the field where my current dayjob also resides) - a good enough amount of theoretical concepts - but focus in "ok, create a program that does that". The formula for a neural network is all shiny and dandy, but the good stuff (for me) is "assignment: create a neural network yourself, you know the formulas from the lectures. Now go and make something real with a dataset you can get your hands on". For me, *that's* is where my fun time is. I don't like the formula and maths behind it too much - but boy do I love creating a program that implements it.


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## Minsky (Dec 13, 2020)

Craig Sharmat said:


> The web situation with this course leaves a lot to be desired, Jonas has graduated but the updating of the web site is so delinquent it could be years before his name actually shows up as a student let alone as a graduate. The course though is a wonderful source of information and the actual execution is all about the course, teachers and students. The web site plays no part in that.
> 
> One does not have to take the entire course btw. Generally one buys a 4 lesson block. Anyway a teacher myself or someone else will be happy to talk to you about it if you are so inclined. The main purpose is seeing if the course is a good fit both student and teacher.


Thank you Craig, that makes sense and is helpful.


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## Minsky (Dec 13, 2020)

MatFluor said:


> Great to know
> 
> Watch out - wall of text. BTW - to my teacher - I wasn't sure if you're comfortable with me mentioning you, if you are, just tell me xD For now you shall remain anonymous in this thread
> 
> ...



MatFluor, ‘walls of text’ are fine by me!Seriously, thank you for taking even more time to answer questions and give information. Your comments have honestly really helped me to begin (at least) to understand what EIS might be about. 

It’s not a cult! That much is now clear. And right ‘CAS” now makes sense! I’ve done a couple of degrees and been to music college (for guitar) but never made it to Masters (yet) so haven’t come across a CAS. That comparison of fees / cost is indeed a useful one seen in that light etc..Btw your day job actually sounds fascinating!  

It seems like (similar to many aspects of music / learning) one must ‘order at least one dish from the menu’ in order to gauge if you like the chef’s cooking. I must admit I did a couple of courses on my music degree that, looking back, were woeful in their inadequacy. So often it’s not about tools..and I want tools! The idea of a bespoke / personal approach is very appealing. I imagine finding the right fit in terms of teacher is key - and there don’t seem to be many..but perhaps they’re all pretty good. 

Thanks again for writing with such clarity; it’s been extremely helpful and is much appreciated. I think I’ll mull things over and perhaps speak with Craig (Sharmat) who has Kindly offered.


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## Craig Sharmat (Dec 13, 2020)

I thought the interview could circumvent me from typing the way Matt did..... Thanks Matt for taking the time to do that. Just so you know I was a guitar major in college into my junior year and transferred to GIT near the beginning of its origins so we have something similar there. Sometimes it is helpful to take from someone who understands your instrument or from someone who might have a totally different perspective (Spud was a trumpet player first). One can also switch teachers for a different perspective. I did this on occasion.

Btw Jonas is also a very good EISer though a little frustrated for obvious reasons. I would not have any reason not to suggest him as a teacher if you were so inclined.


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