Quote of the Day
Students often don’t know how to practice music. Many band students who underachieve in music do so because they don’t have specific practice strategies in their toolbox.
Continue Reading Add comment October 29th, 2009
Archive for October, 2009
Guitar in the Ensemble Music Program
I was recently asked to contribute to the music education portion of the Jemsite blog. Important excerpts are copied below, but I encourage you to read the full post here. You can even purchase guitars and accessories from the site.
I surprised myself a little bit with the honesty with which I answered the last question. Read it through, and see what you think.
Q: You currently teach Beginning Guitar classes in school. What do you teach exactly, especially considering you say you only have a repertoire of about 6 major chords?
A: My guitar repertoire may be larger than six chords, but I am still not a guitarist. Neither was the band director who started that class at that school. But she felt, as I do, that music is not a spectator sport and that every school should provide an inroads into music for every child.
The guitar curriculum for that class requires that by the end of one semester, every student will demonstrate that they can: hold and care for a guitar; tune a guitar; work correct left-hand technique; work both right-hand classical technique and use a pick; read pitches between the low E and high G; read rhythms including whole, half, quarter and eighth notes and rests; read basic tablature; play a melody alone and with a duet partner; play basic major chords alone and accompany a melody; play power chords; compose an original power chord riff; use simple multitrack recording software; and create an arrangement of a song using all of the tools in their toolbox.
Q: What’s the difference between “training” and “education?” Do you think teaching music education is more important than being an actual performer?
A: “Education” differs from “training” in a small but important aspect: process is more important than product. In a training scenario the student learns how to do one thing one way, whereas in an education scenario the student learns the concepts that operate that thing and therefore can apply the knowledge to new situations. A burger flipper in a fast food joint gets trained to toast the buns the same every time, but a chef in a Michelin-rated restaurant should educated in how flour combines with yeast and therefore can create new kinds of breads or adapt to different ovens. In a guitar lesson, a teacher can take one of two strategies: teach the E minor chord and the A minor chord so that the student knows two chords, or teach how minor chords are built so that the student knows every minor chord. Unfortunately, most guitar teachers in the world pander to the lowest common denominator, and teach the student how to play the song (for example, “Today we’re going to play ‘Foxy Lady’. Play this note, then play this note, then play this note…”) rather than teaching the student how to play guitar (for example, “Check out these crazy notes….they are called tri-tones. Here’s how they work, here’s why they sound strange, here’s how to make them yourself. Let’s practice some tri-tones in this song ‘Foxy Lady’.”)
“Music education” isn’t something a guitar teacher would teach. Rather, it is the philosophy with which the guitar teacher approaches the lesson. Surely every guitar student wants to be a performer. The question is, does the student want to perform a limited selection of songs in their bedroom, or does the student want to perform a wide variety of songs, including their own original tunes, on a stage in front of an audience?
Q: You direct the Wind Ensemble, Jazz Ensemble, Concert Band and Rock Band Workshop for an international school in Asia. How are guitar classes currently being integrated into school band/choir programs?
A: Most schools in the U.S. don’t offer guitar. With easy availability of guitar teachers and private guitar lessons outside of school, most districts feel no pressure to add the faculty or spend money on a class set of instruments. Schools that do offer guitar mostly offer it as a one-semester elective, with no opportunity for student to continue after the final exam. This scenario is better than the old-fashioned Music Appreciation class in which student memorized the birth and death dates of Mozart. Some schools with beginning guitar also have an advanced guitar ensemble class so that students can continue indefinitely, gaining more skill and becoming mentors to younger guitar students. Because most music classes in middle and high schools are Band and Choir classes, student who have studied guitar on their own find opportunities to participate in the school Jazz Band. Often these are students who are also singers or wind instrument players who play or sing classical music in the Band or Choir while taking guitar lessons after school.
Q: Do you believe the guitar is a worthwhile instrument amongst school musical performances? Why?
A: Any instrument, and any style of music, is worthy of school music concerts. The point of teaching music in schools is that music (1) is valuable just because it is music, (2) teaches personal and social skills that are critical to young peoples’ success in real life, (3) builds school spirit and community identity, and (4) is fun. Guitar meets these criteria just as well as clarinet, violin and voice do.
Q: Tell me about your Jazz Ensemble and Rock Band Workshops and how guitar comes into play there.
A: I usually have one or two guitar players plus a bass player every year in the Jazz Ensemble. These are typical numbers for a big band (think Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Gordon Goodwin). In fact, my Beginning Guitar class has been an important recruiting tool for the Jazz Band.
Rock Band Workshop is an open-door program, like open-mic afternoon. We have had between two and twelve guitarists show up to any given session. Anyone can come play, whether alone or with a group. We have had singer-guitarists cover Jack Johnson, and we have had six-piece rock bands play Iron Maiden. We even had a solo bassist perform just the bass part of a Slipknot song because she was new to our school and didn’t know any other musicians. At the Workshop that day, she met a metal band who was performing without a bassist. By the next workshop she was in that band, and by the following school year she was in the Jazz Band and the Wind Orchestra. At Workshop, each person/group plays their song and then gets feedback from the guest experts (our school has a shocking number of faculty with serious gig experience) on everything from how to play in time together to how to get the best sound out of their distortion pedal/amplifier combo.
Q: How important is music education in school in determining how a child does in other areas of learning?
A: Research on this question has been huge but inconclusive. We are sure that students who excel in music also excel in other subjects. However, researchers have not been able to show whether this relationship is a cause-effect situation or merely a coincidence caused by another factor. For every study that shows cause-effect, there is another that shows no cause-effect. However, wouldn’t you rather your own child have it than not?
Q: What is the future of music education?
A: The future of music education is in technology, student compositions, and self-directed learning. Guitar and piano will play an increasing role in school music classes as Web 2.0 tools become more commonplace in the classroom. Within the next 30 years, Band class as I know it will lose precedence in school curricula. Chamber music will be more common. The new music class will be more about students recording their own music (on any instrument—guitar, woodwind, brass or otherwise) and distributing it digitally than about large ensembles. Band, Choir and Orchestra will not be forgotten; their excitement, energy, inclusiveness and community ties (not to mention their relationship to sporting events) will keep them active in schools, but as extra-curricular activities rather than as graded classes. Students’ technical performance skills on their chosen instrument will be increasingly measured by computer, giving music teachers more tools for grading technique objectively and for coaching students to more fully create the emotional effects that make classical music so powerful. And finally, within the next 50 years, music will become mandatory in every year of school for every student as new research in neuroscience and cognitive psychology will convince school administrators and politicians that music makes definite, measurable improvements in students’ ability to solve problems, mature emotionally, relate to others and generally be successful in life.
3 comments October 26th, 2009
Call for Conducting Blogs
All call - I am looking for high-quality blogs focused on (instrumental?) conducting. Do you read or write a can’t miss conducting blog? Tell me about it! I crave hundred-proof VSOP conducting juice!
I am trying to focus on coverage of the art and science of musical score interpretation vis-a-vis ensemble leadership through gesture, so I am leaving out sites that generally cover job announcements and appointments. Here is my current minuscule list, based on nothing more than a quick Google search:
Richard Sparks - http://richardsparks1.blogspot.com/
Kenneth Woods - http://kennethwoods.net/blog1/
Rob Archibald - http://conductingblog.org/
Sarah Hicks & Sam Bergman (”Conductors and Conducting” thread) - http://www.minnesotaorchestra.org/insidetheclassics/blog/labels/conductors%20and%20conducting.html
Add comment October 26th, 2009
Multitrack Recording Demo
Debbie Cavalier has posted a great deconstruction of a multitrack recording at her Music, Education, and Technology blog on the Berklee Music Blogs site. The particular song in the demo is aimed at a younger audience than your middle- or high-school ensemble student, but the concepts are clearly illustrated for any age group (and who knows what your students will hook on…the tune is catchy in its own right). Try it on your students next time you work on your own student recordings.
Add comment October 25th, 2009
Motivation: Mechanical vs. Creative
Regardless of your political views (he used to work on Al Gore’s speechwriting team), I think you will find Dan Pink’s TED presentation about motivation to be quite applicable to planning the assessment (and accountability) side of your music program.
The short version: old-fashioned pay-for-performance systems of reward work well for mechanical tasks, but can actually sabotage success during challenges requiring even a smattering of creativity. Tasks requiring creativity, intuition or out-of-the-box thinking (sorry for the pun, it was unavoidable - watch the video) can only be rewarded by their intrinsic value.
What is the catch for conductors of scholastic ensembles? Half of it is simple: points-based evaluation of music performance can only apply to mechanical executions such as scale fingerings, rhythmic accuracy or metronomic measurements of agility. Grading student performances of holistic musical efforts - that is, a piece or excerpt of a piece - cannot be tied to points, grades, rubrics or percentages if the desired outcome includes emotive, artistic performance. This presents a challenge to music educators whom, as a group, are working hard to elaborate systems of musical measurement that can help quantify the unquantifiable for the purpose of report cards. At best, it gives us all permission to stop banging our heads against the brick wall of measuring what we all know to be immeasurable. At worst, it negates all of the psuedo-objective assessment tools we have written, traded with peers, and defended to parents over the last fifty years.
Perhaps the best solution is to go back to giving unapologetically subjective letter grades, given only at the end of the term; but then, how would you communicate (and document that you had communicated) unacceptable progress to students during the term so that they could adjust their efforts? More likely, it supports the current trend of text-based feedback (i.e. comments taking precedence over letter or number grades). Without a doubt, Dan’s data suggest frequent student self-evaluation - supported, I would add, by widespread use of audio- and video-recording technology in the music classroom.
Here, then, is the question of the day: How might a Third-Stream band, orchestra or choir conductor utilize Google-style “Twenty-Percent Time” within the performance-ensemble class?
Add comment October 24th, 2009
The Rest is History…of Noise
Alex Ross, the indomitable and unignorable music critic for New Yorker Magazine and author of The Rest is Noise, is moving his blogging activity from The Rest is Noise to Unquiet Thoughts on the New Yorker’s online blogs site. His book and his blogs are always interesting. Plus, they are often focused on music we rarely get to hear about in today’s mass media: cutting edge works by living composers, sometimes challenging to listen to but always relevant to here and now. If your students - and your students’ parents - think that ‘classical’ music is dead, then you need to let Alex Ross keep you on your toes so that you can be prepared to keep your audience on its toes.
Add comment October 16th, 2009
Music Technology Blogs
I am occasionally tempted to write about topics in music technology. However, Third-Stream has tried to steer clear of music technology in order to stay focused on topics of pedagogy for instrumental ensembles. I prefer to leave the tech topics to people who are more knowledgeable (and more passionate) about technology than myself. I do care about incorporating appropriate technology, and I do read up on the subject. Today I would like to share my favorite band/orchestra/choir-relevant technology-specific blogs. All of these and more are on the 100 Music Education Blogs List.
Dr. Joseph Pisano http://mustech.net/
Music Technology in Education http://jamesfrankel.musiced.net/
Music Tech for Me www.musictechforme.com/
The Digital Music Educator http://digitalmusiceducator.wordpress.com/
Jonathan Savage http://jsavage.org.uk/
Music Ed Tech http://musicedtech.wordpress.com/
Band Ed Tool Shed http://rogerwhaley.blogspot.com/
Phil Kirkman http://kirki.co.uk/main/
Music Tech Musings http://susanadavis.blogspot.com/
Musictech4ed http://musictech4ed.edublogs.org/
Music, Middle School, and Web 2.0 http://musicmiddleschoolandweb20.blogspot.com/
Music Tech Tips http://musictechtips.wordpress.com/
Elementary Music/ Music Technology http://amymburns.musiced.net/
2 comments October 14th, 2009
What is Third-Stream about It, Anyway?
I’d like to take a little time today to recap the “third-stream” in Third-Stream Music Education. What is “third-stream” about it, anyway?
Two concepts define “third-stream” music education (as a concept, and someday hopefully as a blog, too!) The first is, as the title implies, a balance between classical (in the generic, lower-case sense of the word) and pop music. The idea is to (a) teach outstanding musicianship through classical music but also (b) keep music classes relevant to the students by including serious instruction in the here-and-now folk music of our time and our place [i.e. pop, rock, jazz, hip-hop], and simultaneously (c) transfer the artistry and attention to detail associated with classical genres to pop music performance while (d) reciprocally bringing the passion young people feel about their preferred pop style back to their performance of classical music. The goal is for the students to learn to perform every piece as authentically as possible by manipulating articulations, dynamics, tempi, even timbre to replicate the aesthetics of the target time/place/culture.
The second defining concept of third-stream music education is a balance between conceptual and practical training. Please allow me to indulge in two brief generalizations: general music courses do a great job of teaching theory and history but often neglect to demand technical expertise or deeper interpretation of performed works; and performance ensembles often focus more on winning trophies or placing honor-band members than on educating every student who walks through the door. In one worst-case scenario, students know the birth and death dates of ten classical composers but can’t play a single work in its entirety; in the other, students can solidly execute their assigned part of last year’s show but take on a confused (or terrified) expression when asked to sightread or to discuss a piece of music. They may be generalizations - nay, blatant stereotypes - but these two scenarios play out in both posh and poor school districts every day. Third-stream music education seeks to develop young people who can both make music in the concert hall and talk music at a cocktail party.
Other ideas important to the concept of third-stream music education include expanded use of appropriate technology (which is being well-documented in other blogs), improved assessment, multicultural/world music, intrinsic motivation and critical thinking, as well as preparing young people for real life by instilling uber-important personal and inter-personal skills that math, science, language and history classes simply cannot.
More than anything else, third-stream music education (and, hopefully, the Third-Stream Music Education Blog) is about inspiring in students a personal, emotional, lifelong connection to music….their music.
Add comment October 13th, 2009
Budgeting That’s More Accurate Than a Beginning Clarinetist’s Pitch
For those of use teaching abroad in American/British/International schools and Department of Defense schools, it’s already time to turn in our budget requests for the 2010-2011 school year. Depending on our location, most international teachers get one chance per year to order consumables like reeds and valve oil, as well as sheet music and instruments. International teachers in London or Berlin have good music stores available in their locality for mid-year restocking (and quality instrument repair), but teachers farther afield in Nigeria, Venezuela, Bangladesh, and Qatar (yes, each of these countries has at least one American or International school with a successful and growing music program) are completely dependent on their annual shipment for instruments, sheet music and supplies.
As a percussion specialist, I have to ask a question of all my woodwind-specialist colleagues out there. In the interest of having plenty of stock on hand while not running too much surplus, how many reeds should I estimate per student per year? The beginners break more reeds in their first month, but hopefully the students in the top band are wearing out their reeds with long hours in the woodshed. Assuming that each student has rotation of three working reeds at all times, how often will they need a top-up? Is it even possible to make an estimation formula?
YOUR HELP would be appreciated!
3 comments October 4th, 2009
Power Chords and Powerful Advocacy
Every band, orchestra and choir director needs to be a music advocate. Music educators who are not activists within their community will quickly become ignored, marginalized……and possibly jobless.
Part of the advocacy platform for music in our schools includes “extramusical benefits”. In addition to the inherent, intrinsic and indubitable value of music for the sake of music, the personal and social development of the child is an equally weighty justification for spending those increasingly rare education dollars on oboes, cello cases and choir risers. I am fond of telling school parents (and anyone who will listen, really) that classes in math, science and humanities give young people the resume data to enter a career field after school. On the other hand, I preach, it is music class that gives our young people the real-life skills necessary to excel in their chosen field. In fact, there is significant research that suggests a powerful correlation between social/emotional skills and career success, and only a limited correlation between success and IQ or success and educational credentials. It is precisely these intra-personal and inter-personal skills which music ensembles develop in students that make music so valuable in schools - skills such as self-discipline, work ethic, self-confidence, goal-setting, strategic planning, critical analysis, resilience, teamwork, leadership, etc., etc., etc.
Today I found Travis Norman’s interview with Stacey Marmolejo on the blog of the Institute of Production and Recording. Stacey is the proprietor of the Minnesota locations of the Paul Green School of Rock (the original “school of rock” upon which the Jack Black movie was based). In the interview, Stacey talks about the extramusical ways kids grow during music training. Bravo, Stacey, for delivering the message so eloquently!
A: Of course they’ll learn to become amazing musicians on whichever instrument they select but our program goes well beyond that. We teach kids to play in a band. That means they are learning teamwork, leadership, responsibility and accountability. We teach the kids to entertain people. I tell the kids that if people just want to hear great music they’ll listen to their iPod. People go to live concerts to be entertained. This skill set then translates to their academic life by giving them the confidence to stand in front of their class and give a speech. I frequently hear from parents and students that a teacher at their academic school is amazed at the poise and self confidence of a School of Rock student as compared with their classmates. We teach them how to market themselves. This may sound strange for kids but it’s a great skill set for them to learn. Whether they choose to be a professional musician or pursue any other career, they will have to sell themselves in job interviews, asking for a raise or a promotion or booking their own band’s gig. So we expect the kids to market their own concerts. And it is common for our concerts to draw 500-600 people. The icing on the cake is that great friendships are formed at School of Rock Music. Not only among the students but among the families. We have movie nights and open jams and other fun activities at the school which the kids love because it gives them a chance to just hang out with their friends from the school. And we also hear of families and parents getting together outside of school activities as well. We have a great community of families.
And Stacey’s music education venture is built entirely on powerchords….no Baroque counterpoint required, no graduate degree or professional teaching license needed. If just two fingers on a guitar can do this much for a young person, what can we do with ten fingers on a clarinet? What about four dozen fingers on a quintet of saxophones, or four hundred fingers in a symphonic band?
Every band, orchestra and choir director needs to be a music advocate. Music educators who are not activists within their community will quickly become ignored, marginalized……and possibly jobless. What have you done this week to spread the word about music in your community?
Add comment October 3rd, 2009