Tutor information
Rikky Rooksby
Rikky Rooksby is a tutor at OUDCE with a PhD in English Literature. He is a guitar teacher and composer, and author of many articles, reviews and books on English literature and popular music, including an 11-volume songwriting series that started in 2000 with the best-selling How To Write Songs On Guitar.
His Oxford Experience summer school courses include The Beatles, Popular Music and Sixties Britain and British Popular Music 1963-73. He is currently working on a book about the C20th symphony.
Courses
From 1960-2000 an explosion of creativity in music radically extended the artistic range of popular song. Enjoy a survey of the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic features of classic selected tracks from many famous groups and vocalists during this era.
Enjoy the popular music of ten central British acts, such as the Who, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, the Smiths, the Police, Kate Bush, and Radiohead. We will look at what made their music individual, and related changes in music technology and song-writing.
Explore the imaginative character of mid-20th century British Neo-Romanticism, including the writings of Virginia Woolf and Dylan Thomas; the art of Piper, Nash, and Ravilious; and the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Learn how the Beatles made their music, and trace its development from simple first recordings to the multi-track of Abbey Road in the context of examples of Top 30 charts of the era, poetry, journalism, photographs, film and key cultural events.