Posts filed under 'Music as a Snapshot of Time and Place'
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.
October 26th, 2009
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
October 26th, 2009
Here’s one for the IB Music teachers and high school general music teachers, for your file of lesson plans for non-musical substitute teachers, or just to keep us all on our toes.
You should know the name of Tod Machover, if only from your undergraduate-level Music History of the 20th Century class (his composition “Bug Mudra” for two amplified guitars, electronic percussion, computer-driven conducting glove, and computer is a commonly used example of electronic art music). You might even know his Hyperscore software for composing music (and teaching higher musical concepts such as form, texture and melody) without the traditional hassle of music notation. Mr. Machover is not only a prolific composer of art music using electronic instruments, but is also an prolific inventor of astonishing new music technologies. He teaches both in his role as Professor of Music and Media at MIT’s Media Lab. In fact, Mr. Machover and his proteges are inventing the future of music–the traditions, language, instruments, even the paradigms–of whatever musical epoch will follow our current contemporary music epoch.
Discussion of Machover’s instruments and compositions is sure to fire up a good debate among your upper-level students (and faculty!) You may find that individuals with greater formal music training may be more prepared to listen with an open mind (reminiscent of older, more accepted 20th Century composers such as serialists) or less prepared to listen with an open mind (”That doesn’t sound like music” or “people make music, computers are just a gimmick” or “Composing without reading notation is just cheating”). Please take a few minutes to explore the following links, starting with the TED conference presentation. Then string a few links into a mini-lesson, and ask your students some provocative questions. Is it music? Is the performer still the performer? Will electronic music replace acoustic music entirely? Will the instrument you play soon be obsolete? Is turn-tablism (DJ-ing) an instrument/form of musicianship? If you were to create a brand-new, never-before-thought-of instrument, what would it be?
Presentation at a TED conference including new music by Dan Ellsey
Todmachover.com
Hyperscore.com
Scientific American interview covering Brain Opera
Current projects at MIT’s Media Lab
Next opera Death and the Powers
August 31st, 2009
Greg Sandow has been asking lately whether formal attire is still valid for classical music concerts in this modern age. The same question has been asked for a while now regarding attire for student concerts. Well-funded suburban schools tend to have spiffy uniforms for their ensembles–even full-on tuxes for their top wind and string orchestras–while in less affluent or organized (or other factor) schools the Concert Band wears their marching uniforms for their spring concert. School bands farther in or out of town may well have trouble achieving that much, for reasons which may include funding, parental support, local culture, or “other”.
We all know that the first impression speaks the loudest. When a group walks on stage with focus and raise their instruments in one motion, the audience (most of whom are musically uneducated anyway) is compelled to quiet down and listen. Many of us have been disappointed to discover that the spring concert was judged more by the choice of Santana’s “Smooth” as a closer (which your kids cleaned in an afternoon) than by the execution of the running passages in, say, Mvt 3 of Norman Dello Joio’s Satriric Dances (which your students slaved over for weeks). I would posit that the same is true for their attire; when the ensemble members look sharp, then parents, siblings and friends are more likely to take them seriously, give them the benefit of the doubt, etc.
On the other hand, coming back to Greg Sandow’s point, is formal attire a good idea for young people? Do your students hate it? It could turn in to a recruiting and retention sticking point. More to my point, however, is that we should be teaching our students a wider repertoire of music and teaching it to them in culturally authentic contexts. That symphonic work was composed at a certain time, for a certain audience. Shouldn’t your students (and audience) experience it as similarly as possible to how it was intended?
The caveat is that the opposite would be true (but for the same reason) for your group playing a concert of rock/pop music. Marching ensembles have been on the leading edge in this regard, with color guards in themed costumes for field shows and entire indoor drumline shows in theme-specific garb. I have a yearning to do an entire evening of 50’s era cool and blue jazz with my jazz ensemble split up into combos, and make it really a cafe, with coffee and dessert being served and the sound of clinking glasses. It’s not a new idea; schools have done this before as a fund raiser for the jazz band trip or for service hours. But I want to actually transform the space by bringing in couches, green shag carpets and cafe tables, everything but the cigarette smoke….and I want to enlist the theater department to costume my jazz students in narrow-cut suits and skinny ties. Better yet, I want to rent out a real jazz club in town on a Tuesday night for the spectacle. Afterwards, for the rest of their lives, I want my students to look at the pictures on their own copies of Kind of Blue and see the dark cafe, smell the coffee, feel the suit. A real multisensory experience. Another idea I am working up the guts to stage is a full-out rock concert with my wind ensemble: leather pants, big hair, mics clipped to the bells of clarinets, wah-wah pedal on the trombone and lots of distortion on the oboe solo. Again, trying to create a personal, emotional connection to musicians from a certain time and place. Until I work up the cojones stage one of these stunts, my concerts will contain a wide variety of music, but leaning towards symphonic. That leaves me dressing my students for the sit-down formality of shirts and ties.
Do you think that (semi-) formal attire improves the student concert experience? I do. I want to build the community expectations at my current school over the next three to five years to include formal attire for my top ensembles. My stated objective in this regard is for students to feel like their performance is just as serious and important as that of the best professional symphony in the world. I want my students to watch professional performances and feel a personal, emotional connection. When my students go on stage, I want them to feel like they are the center of the universe for one hour.
September 18th, 2008
…you gotta check out the American Masters site at PBS.org. The show may be dry, but the site contains tons of great info on American greats, including jazzers such as The Duke, Ella, and Quincy Jones; art-music notables like John Cage, Leonard Bernstein and Isaac Stern; and pop and folk heroes such as James Brown, Pete Seeger, Les Paul and Bob Marley. And the scrollable, interactive timelines are sharp!
And when you need to make a timeline for your students or have them make timelines for themselves, try one of the online utilities from ReadWriteThink (this one’s super easy), David Blais (more complicated, requires downloading and installing), or Teach-nology (for short timelines only).
August 26th, 2008
Timelines are great. They help us to understand relationships across time. Timelines help us grasp how the compositions of Leonin and Perotin or compositions of Mozart and Gluck can sound so similar, and then help us awe at how works by Copland and Stockhausen can sound so different.
But the key to successful timelining in the adolescent music classroom is ownership: how can we get students to identify with a paper strip high above the chalkboard? Bring it down to eye level, then personalize it!
Forget ordering a timeline from a publisher. Published timelines are dry and boring, and despite the inclusion of Miles and The Duke, they reinforce the image of art music as “dead white guy” music. Instead, try stretching butcher paper across the room from wall to wall: five, ten, fifteen meters long! At these sizes, I find that I have to attach my timeline to the wall in pieces to keep it from peeling off its glue. Mark the rightmost hash “2000 C.E.” (but leave plenty of room for 21st Century composers and works) and mark the leftmost hash as anything from “1100 C.E.” (to include polyphonic organum) to “1600 C.E.” (to include only the Common Practice Period). Make a separate timeline in the room for the 20th Century if pop or jazz music play a strong role in your program. Then measure the distance, divide by the number of centuries, and mark your intermediate hashes. You can write in the musical periods or let your students research them. For real brownie points around campus, ask your students’ History and English teachers for specific historic and literary events to be covered this year and include them on your music timeline.
When your timeline is ready, the students get to put their hands on it. Have the students write every piece they play onto the timeline in its correct position by year of composition. If you are playing several works by the same composer in one year, have them draw a bracket for the composer’s lifetime (forward-arrow for the still-living!) If a piece makes reference to an older period or composer, then mark that earlier event as well. For example, if your middle school concert band is working on Roland Barrett’s Of Dark Lords and Ancient Kings, let your students mark the composition’s date (1993) but also add it to the medieval period. Maybe even let a student draw a suit of armor (after school, in his spare time!) If your high school wind symphony is performing, for example, the march from Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber, then label both the composition (1943) and von Weber (1786-1826).
For a young person, nothing beats seeing themself (in the form of their own handwriting) in a position of authority. When students see connections between their own performance and the timeline, they will begin to double and redouble their emotional investment in the music they make. So make that timeline enormous, and refer back to it at appropriate moments during rehearsal!
August 19th, 2008