Archive for June, 2010|Monthly archive page
Workshop notes for teachers
It’s the end of a very enjoyable day and I am sitting down with my cup of tea to write up the notes from today’s workshop. I presented a session entitled “Musical Creativity in the Classroom” to a group of very delightful, responsive teachers from schools all over Melbourne, and even one from Portland in the far west of the state. My overall aim was to look at some strategies for getting students started with composing and inventing their own musical ideas, and to then work through some ways of organising and structuring the material they create. I promised everyone I’d provide a record of what we did today – hopefully it will be of interest to others out there who weren’t at the session today. Let me know how you go!
Magazine clear-out
I’ve been on a clearing-out mission of late, and went through a pile of old copies of Music In Action. Better give them a last read-through before I chuck ’em, I decided, so I did, and selected a number of articles that were worthy of closer attention. They provided good material in the orchestra pit that I have been in for the last few weeks (playing Reed 3 in a season of Anything Goes), but the time has come to file them or put them in the paper recycling. Here are some of the things that caught my eye in particular:
Music technology – free stuff and lesson ideas
This article describes Finale Notepad 2008, a fairly basic but free piece of notation software. The author suggests a lesson plan that gets students to create and notate a 12-bar blues. Very user-friendly.
Ar Pelican Primary School lately I’ve been working with Myna, which my students are really enjoying. This software has its limitations – its library of music being one of them (there’s a lot to choose from, but you can’t always find exactly what you want), and the fact that it is web-based (and therefore dependent on a fast and consistent internet connection, which isn’t one of Pelican’s strengths) – but as an introduction to loop-based music software, it is great. Very clear interface and lots of sounds that my students love to play with. Myna is definitely worth a look. It is new software, only recently launched, so additional support for educators is in its infancy. But the forums are pretty helpful.
Another article (by Antony Hubmayer in South Australia) describes a group composition process that he uses in Year 8 classrooms, working with ACID Music. I plan to give it a shot with the year 5/6s at Pelican. He calls it Compositional Chairs, and it involves students starting a composition, then after a set period of time, they must shift one place to the next chair (and next computer, with a different composition) and work on that one. This change of seats can happen as many times as you like. At the start of the lesson it is good to give the students some musical parameters for the composition work.
It’s a bit like an Exquisite Corpse game, but with the ability to see/hear all that has been added to the piece before you. I might try it this week, and see how my students like it. I am thinking it could work well if the students were in pairs. I have some quite reticent students in my class, and they would benefit from getting ideas from other people. Thanks Antony for this excellent idea.
Keith Swanwick
I enjoyed reading an article about the legendary Keith Swanwick. Nothing revolutionary for our times now, but plenty of good reminders and principles. (I say “nothing revolutionary” but of course, that doesn’t mean his recommendations are now standard practice. They’re not – especially in environments that are focused on classical music alone).
Classes should be actively engaged in music making wih all the children participating as discriminating listeners, performers, creators, composers or improvisors. Activities must utilise the broadest range of music. Skills and contextual literature studies should not be a means in themselves, but support the central dimensions of composing, performing and active listening.
Christopher Small
Dr Ros McMillan described an era in music education in Australia (the 1970s) when a copy of Small’s Music, Society, Education was “brought in from overseas, only one copy around, it was read and quietly passed on like any X-rated literature”.
Music in Australian schools in the 1960s and early 1970s lay in a coma of conservatism. In those schools where music was taught, the curriculum was largely music appreciation. Often the only practical music making was singing although instrumental lessons were available in affluent schools. With examination systems controlled by university music departments, the style of music in schools was overwhelmingly ‘classical’.
Small questioned the assumption that the music of post-Renaissance Western culture was the supreme achievement of mankind in the realm of sound, and that “the musics of other cultures were no more than stages in an evolution towards that achievement”. He points out that the notion of the composer being separate from both the performer and the audience is unique to post-Renaissance music, the effect being to separate both performer and audience from the very act of creativity. The process of creation has been completed “before any performer even approaches the work”.
When I was a student at the Guildhall in the 1990s in the Performance and Communication Skills postgraduate stream, we felt like the explorations we were making into how musicians can/should/must make and perform and communicate music, were new and radical. It was later that I learned that it had all been said and written about earlier, by people like Small, Swanwick, Paynter, Schafer… I love that there is so much out there to read!
Teaching Artists gathering
Recently ArtPlay convened a meeting for some of their regular artists – performers and makers who lead workshops for children at ArtPlay in a whole range of arts disciplines. The meeting was the first of several to take place this year, and the grand idea is to share ideas and thoughts on practice – how and why we do what we do, to start to identify and unpack the transferable knowledge between different arts disciplines, and that which is common to all disciplines. Different projects and practice will be offered as examples for commentary and critiquing throughout the year.
I think that all of us present were adamant about how valuable this gathering was. ‘Teaching Artistry’ (for want of a better descriptor) is something of an invisible artform – usually it is an adjunct to a more public audience-based practice, and frequently (because the work usually involves children) it holds a much lesser status than the ‘real work’ of the professional on their own. Those of us working in the area as a substantial part of our arts practice often do so somewhat in isolation, rarely getting to see the work that other people do. This series of meetings is a chance to hone, refine, develop and extend our arts practice as it exists in collaboration with young people and communities.
Everyone introduced themselves and it was interesting to hear the words that people used. Again, this is an area of arts practice that can be hard to label. My colleague Rebecca laughed as she admitted that her description of what it is that she does tends to change every day! I liked Simon’s explanation – he said that collaboration was a key characteristic for him, that his work exists in collaborative environments. This is something that is also true for me. Simon also talked about his commitment to “empowering kids… raising the status of their work”, and of his enduring interest in what it is that happens when artists work across communities. “I believe artists are an essential part of the community, we have a role to play, we need to be there.” (I’m paraphrasing here, I hope I got the gist of his words right). Lastly, he admitted that he has realised that “this” (teaching artistry, collaborative projects, as opposed to artmaking on his own, eg. painting) is his artform, and that he needs to keep reminding himself of this. That is has taken him time to learn this.
The gathering finished with a bit of Sir Ken Robinson, who may well say the same things every time he speaks, but they are such damn fine things that he says, and are so valuable to listen to again and again, to be reminded of them. This is the quote that I wrote down:
If you’re not prepared to be wrong, then you’ll never come up with anything original.
Place that alongside the context of the performative (ie. test-driven and report-ridden) conservative culture of our schools today, and it rings alarmingly true.
What to do when you make a mistake
I think one of the hardest – but most important – things to learn when playing in an ensemble is what to do when you make a mistake. The natural response tends to be that you correct the mistake on the spot, which gets you out of time with the others in the group. Teaching people to keep going, to listen to where the others are up to, and drop back into the music is essential, but the confusion that a lot of young people feel about what it is you’re asking for, and how to do it, can bog them down with anxiousness. Trying to establish this concept at the Language School, where verbal explanations aren’t always helpful, is even more challenging.
Today one of my students had just taken on a new xylophone ostinato. It was quite a complicated riff but he was mastering it well. However, once we added it to the other ostinati being played, his focus sometimes wavered and he would miss a beat, or hesitate over a note for a moment, before playing on. I wanted to find a way to demonstrate to him, or explain to him, that he needed to forget about the note that he’d missed, and keep going with the music.
Inner hearing. Continuous pulse. These are concepts that are hard to explain in just a few words, especially when you don’t have notation to act as a visual aid. But I’ve been thinking about what took place in the class and think I have some ideas about what I could have done better.
Firstly, this riff only ever needs to be played four times in a row, but I was getting him to loop it many more times than that (as a way of locking into it). He tended to get the first four (even more) repetitions out fine, without any problems. So keep it to this. Why complicate matters?
Secondly, I tried to explain to him what I wanted him to do. This wasn’t the best solution because he probably couldn’t understand what I wanted him to do anyway, and was feeling stressed, and because my efforts were also making me feel anxious (because I sensed how awkward and clumsy they were). It was the afternoon and no one was at their freshest for dealing with a whole lotta words.
I know that my students at this school learn musical concepts most effectively in context, through an implicit environment. How can I create this implicit learning environment? By keeping the number of repetitions of ostinati down to an amount that the students can manage successfully, they will build confidence and security in their own part first, and after that they will start to absorb what is going on in other parts, and instinctively start to anchor themselves to certain points in these. There are always one or two students in the class who understand and do this already. The others just need more time.
Explanations make me tense, as well as the children, because I become so aware of the limitations of them. We are all much happier, and much more relaxed – and therefore more likely to play to our best – when we let the music be our focus, and put our energy into playing, rather than talking.