Student Rockers Band Together : Music: Orange Coast College’s Rock Ensemble Workshop gives aspiring musicians hands-on training.

Ever been to a rock show where you wished you could get up on stage and tell the band members what’s wrong with them?

“There’s like no dynamics: That second song, really nice, nice changes, so why not just start it with acoustic and build it from there? Why do you just start blasting, so that it goes nowhere ? And ‘Susie Q’ has only three chords, and one of the chords was consistently wrong , which I can’t understand. Didn’t you ever listen to the record?”

That’s what a leather-jacketed John Hunt told a band when he strolled onstage at the conclusion of its performance last Friday, along with making several other astringently critical points. It’s his job.

Hunt is one of the instructors of Orange Coast College’s Rock Ensemble Workshop, a course now in its 12th year on the campus, and the band consisted of students taking their final exam. Twice a week they bring their instruments and voices to class to rehearse and then perform under the scrutiny of their classmates and the instructors: professional Los Angeles musician Hunt, campus voice instructor Charlie Clark and course originator Al Remington.

This week some class members have taken their efforts to more public stages. On Wednesday, present and past students surfaced at the Harp Inn in Costa Mesa and today at 1:30 p.m., Hunt’s own active Los Angeles group, Powerhouse, will give a free concert in OCC’s Music Room 101. The performance will be followed by a clinic and a jam with any class members fearless enough to join them.

The Rock Ensemble Workshop was initially designed by music professor Remington as the result of his having a neighborhood band use his garage as a rehearsal space.

“I was amazed at the amount of time they wasted in their rehearsals,” he said, “Having been a professional musician since I was a teen-ager, I had assumed so much--the same way a writer assumes people understand the English language--that it turns out other persons have absolutely no grasp of. And these kids just didn’t know how to rehearse.”

Sitting in his windowless, equipment-cluttered office while, two heavy doors removed, the sounds of his students went thundering on, Remington explained: “We try to teach them how to use their time effectively. On vocals we try to teach them the same thing voice teachers would, how to sing with feeling, how to use microphone technique, how to enunciate. And we tell the bands, ‘Don’t spend all that time rehearsing group vocals and harmony parts if you’re going to drown them out, because why bother?’ We work on dynamics, arrangements, all kinds of things to take a song from point A to point B, the same way they hope their teachers lecture, to not just ramble and to use some variety.

“And we also stress how to get along with people. Most bands don’t break up because of musical reasons, they break up because they think each other is a jerk. What we try to get them to understand is if you want to make money in music, you have to treat it as a business. If you want to treat it as art, you have to expect to be a starving artist.”

Students audition at the start of the semester and, based on their abilities, are grouped by the instructors into numbered bands: Band 1, Band 2, Band 3 and so on. The bands are then required to attempt proficiency in a number of rock and rock-related styles.

Asked if this regimentation doesn’t seem at odds with the garage-based tradition of rock bands finding their own way, Remington responded: “Garage bands find their own way--most of them find their way into truck driving. We want to get musicians who we can possibly steer into a life in music. Only the hard workers are going to survive. Some might not like having to learn the different styles or playing with different musicians, but we’re not interested in whether they’re happy. I tell them ‘You can get compliments from your mother. I’m not here to compliment you. I’m here to get your mind, your hands and your craft ready for the music industry.’ ”

Guitarist Hunt, 30, has played on hundreds of recording sessions, including several gold records, and has toured with Melissa Manchester, Rocky Burnette (holding the opening spots on Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk” tour) and others. He said the class prepares students to cope with what the music business is really like.

“For me, this class is not about being a great virtuoso player. It’s about being able to assimilate yourself into an environment you’re not used to; working with people you’re not used to working with and sometimes don’t even like , and sometimes playing styles you may not like; being committed and focused so you take a gig at a moment’s notice, because maybe that opportunity won’t come up again. It’s about desire and commitment.”

If Hunt is unsparing in his critiques of the young musical talents he guides, it is only because he has benefited through similar treatment from Remington. An experienced musical contractor, Remington hired Hunt some years ago to perform with him in a band playing for a party.

Said Hunt: “It was one of my turning points. Al is one of those guys who is completely straight ahead. If he likes what you’re doing, he’ll tell you, and if he doesn’t like it he’ll also tell you and suggest how you can fix it. I was a fairly decent rock player then, but I didn’t know jazz. And at that night’s job the first two sets were all jazz, and he just made me solo on every song. It had to be like a nightmare: I was playing Eric Clapton licks and Hendrix licks on ‘All the Things You Are’ and ‘I’ll Remember April.’

“Allen told me afterward, ‘I like your rock playing, I like your singing. You know nothing about jazz. It just sucks.’ But he heard something in there somewhere and told me if I put in the time, he would give me work. So I put in my six hours a day and learned how to do it, and I’ve gotten a lot of work from it.”

While trying to impart the discipline the students will need to even think about surviving in the music business--Remington realistically estimates that fewer than 1% of his students will make a career of it--Remington said the instructors “try to keep rock free. We recognize that rock is not nice music. It’s not polite, and you can’t force it into a little groove that it doesn’t want to fit into. The students choose their own songs and do their own rehearsing. We’ll drift in and out, and the only time we cut in is if we hear something that we think is sort of blatant. Mostly we wait until they ask.”

Still stinging from the critique Hunt had just given them, a couple of the band members taking their final last Friday thought they could have used a little more intrusion from the instructors. According to 19-year-old bassist Todd Steinhilver: “It’s like they left us alone for eight weeks without any help, and then on performance day they chop us to hell. It’s inspired a real bad attitude.”

Band singer-guitarist David Mahi, though, had a different view of the class. “I got about 200% better in here,” he said. “It’s amazing to me. In this situation they thrust you into playing with five other people you don’t know. After that you have more confidence and less inhibitions.”

Mahi didn’t think the classroom structure opposed the nature of the music.

“You’d think it would,” he said, “but rock ‘n’ roll is just automatically rock ‘n’ roll. Here they give you a place to play and they provide you with other people, and you just go at it. They give you some direction. It is structured, but sometimes rock ‘n’ roll musicians need that to get started.”

Powerhouse plays today at 1:30 p.m. in Music Room 101 at Orange Coast College, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa. Admission: free. Information: (714) 432-5725.