History is instructive. We have so many thousands of years of people doing things to learn from, how could it not be? (Don't answer that. I'm trying to maintain my faith in humanity today) Yes, we have much to learn from the ancients. Mostly, history seems to be an uninterrupted line of things that should have killed us, but didn't. Or it did, but it was ok because they had kids. Or it did, but it was ok because what they did was so stupid it made us stronger by removing idiots from the gene pool. This is why history is important: we learn to avoid the stupid things our ancestors did, like putting mercury in our hats, or think that green rooms made people ill because they were green and not because there was arsenic in the pigment.
Or we can learn from what the ancients did right, which was a surprisingly high number of things considering how frequently people were dying of diseases that could be prevented by taking a bath every now and then. One of those things they did right was (are you ready for this? I'm going to blow your mind), composing music and performing music used to not be separate things.
Say whaaaaaaat?
Yeah, that's right. If you were a performer, you were a composer, too. And vice versa, because there wasn't a distinction. To be sure, it wasn't a distinction because nobody thought to make a distinction. But to be fair in the other direction, nobody really could make a distinction because nobody really had a way to write down words for a really long time, much less write down musical notes and rhythms. It's hard to compose a tune for some spoony bard to play accurately if you can't put it on a stone tablet for them to read from.
What did people do? Well, they learned general rules of how things ought to work, and just sort of made things up as they went along. So every instance of performance was, in some way or another, an act of composition as well. Everything you played or sung followed rules, but those rules were really more... guidelines. It just wasn't anything you ever wrote down because that not only didn't exist, there existed people who thought that writing music down was literally impossible. Really? Yes. How quaint.
Now. Where am I going with this? As a teacher (if you are a teacher of musical instruments), we face two problems. First is teaching the instrument. You would expect that goes without saying, but you would be surprised. Second is the teaching of music. Again, you would be surprised. Part of teaching music nowadays is teaching music notation. Think, as a music teacher, how many times you have had a student mess up because of a basic reading error? How many times has a student flipped the letters of two adjacent lines or spaces? How many times have you had a student forget how to count a dotted-quarter note?
If you can answer those two questions with an actual number, you are either guessing, lying, or only just started teaching. The truly honest answer is, “Pretty much all the time is how much.” We then, as teachers, complain about the state of youth these days, and wax poetic about how good the good ol' days were when people walked to school uphill both ways, in the snow, then didn't bathe because that's how one caught typhus, and look at all the cases of typhus nowadays! It's a wonder anyone survives childhood anymore. Honestly!
But lets think about this problem for a moment. Imagine you have a literature class. Now imagine you ask the class to read a story. Now imagine all of your students only know the alphabet and they're trying to read this story. Now you have a good sense of a beginning music student's mind. Is it any wonder these note misreadings happen if the student doesn't even know how to form basic musical words? Playing Beethoven's 5th one note at a time is comparable to reading a Dickens novel one letter at a time. That is to say, in neither case are you reading, nor are you playing. It is entirely possible the information gets stuffed into your head one way or another, but since the information is without context, without pattern, without semantic meaning, there is no understanding. And without understanding, you find yourself easily falling into the trap of miscounting dotted-quarter notes, or misreading an F as an A, or any falling for any number of simple errors that are easily prevented once one learns to actually read.
That brings us to composition. Learning to compose a melody is not unlike learning to write a sentence. But in order to write a sentence, you have to know words and how to spell them. Here's the trick. We have an alphabet for music much as we have an alphabet for phonemes. A great many errors in musical practice have nothing to do with the instrument and everything to do with misreading the music on the page. But let me ask you this. Once you have learned to spell with any competence, do you ever feel in danger of forgetting the alphabet? No. Of course not. It's inconceivable! The otherwise random information of the alphabet has been organized into the far less random structures of language, and then used to the point that the alphabet is learned by rote. One hardly needs to think of the alphabet while writing, except for figuring out less known or particularly tricky words.
So it is with music. Once one has learned the “words” of music, once one has learned chords, scales, motives, and such and such and such, reading individual notes on the page becomes a trivial task. Reading errors will occur, of course, but much in the same way as a very literate person will correct a misspelling as soon as it is written, a musically literate performer will catch a note or rhythm misreading as soon as the error is played. And because such errors are found and corrected immediately, and because such errors are prevented from happening in the first place, less time is spent on what must be played and more time is spent on how one should play it. That is, one spends more time playing music.
“But Adam!” I hear the audience perhaps protest. “When does one begin teaching music composition? Teaching just the instrument is hard enough as is!” The answer is, “Immediately.” The trick is, don't tell them they're composing. Most students balk at the suggestion of being in any way creative because creativity is a thoughtcrime in schools throughout America, and the students are reminded of that every time they have to answer a multiple choice test question. What I have done with my students is, I put a sheet of staff paper in front of them, then draw four empty measures, give them a starting note, an ending note, and rest here or there. I then ask the student to pick some notes from the ones they know. As they name them, I ask them to write the note down.
Thus far, the student has no idea they are actually composing. They think they are doing a writing exercise. Little do they know, their devious teacher has a scheme! At some point as they write, I simply ask them to write the next measure the same as a measure they have already written. This is important, because recognizing patterns is crucial to reading music, words, or just, like, you know... existing in general. Once they have written four measures, I ask them to play it. They will make a couple of reading errors here and there. Then we draw four new bars, and I have the student pick some more notes, ask them to repeat a measure somewhere in there, and have them play that. After three or four of those exercises, reading errors are almost completely eradicated. All this in the space of a single lesson.
A whole lesson? Yes. And then another once the student learns some new notes. And then another. And then another... But think of the lessons you will rescue from the dregs of that dreaded question, “So what note is that again?”
Showing posts with label music theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music theory. Show all posts
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Teaching Orchestra Classes
Continuing with my educational theme, today I'm going to discuss orchestra as a school class. I make the distinction between a 6th grade orchestra and a college orchestra because at the college level at least the players know how to play their instruments. Although, after having lived through numerous college orchestra rehearsals, I sometimes wonder if that is a fair assumption to make.
Anyways. After hearing a student orchestra rehearse the same piece for five weeks and not really ever get better, I began to think maybe we're doing something wrong. Is it possible that perhaps we don't know as much about teaching music as we think we do? I think it is.
So lets get cracking.
Problems Facing School Orchestras
1. Class size. It is well known by now that class size is an important factor contributing to student success. Large classes tend to hinder learning, smaller classes tend to help it. Or at least, not get in the way. The book "Boys and Girls Learn Differently"(a book which I recommend with reservations... it's a whole article unto itself) says that the optimal classroom size for middle school is around 20.
Twenty.
Excuse me while I vomit out my nose from laughing too hard. I'm not saying this is unattainable, but 'good' orchestra programs, even at the 6th grade level, rarely if ever have fewer than 30-40 kids in a class. It's not surprising, as orchestra is by nature a group activity. But still.
2. Lack of teacher's aides. In absence of low class size, "Boys and Girls etc" recommends the help of one or sometimes even two teacher's aides. These teachers are able to provide individual assistance where the head teacher cannot. When staring down a battalion of 6th graders, allies will at least give some moral support. But in an orchestra, you are far outnumbered, and they can smell your fear. Just say to yourself, "This. Is. SPARTA!" and go down in glory.
No. I mean, get some additional help.
"But what about money?"
Money? Oh right. Money...
3. There are other problems, but I'm going to stop with a big one here. When learning music in an orchestra or a band, there are actually two subjects going on. There's the subject of the instrument, which is obvious. It's the thing you just dropped $500 on for a ten month rental. Then there's the subject of music. Which is less obvious, but mostly because it's so obvious nobody thinks to think about it.
See, music isn't just playing notes. It's also knowing how notes are put together. Learning patterns. Reading notes. As it is, we're teaching those kids the ABC's without teaching them how to string them into words, much less how to string words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into whole compositions. Imagine trying to read Les Mis one letter at a time, and you'll get some grasp of what we're expecting orchestra classes to accomplish.
Ultimately, it is problem number three which poses the most difficulties to a student orchestra and their director. They are really trying to learn and teach two different subjects in the same amount of time as one. Problems 1 and 2 exacerbate this problem greatly, as individual help cannot be provided to struggling students in real time, and the class is usually far too large to facilitate group discussion of music or problem solving.
So it's no wonder orchestras take so long to learn a piece. The students are reading one letter at a time without comprehending words, there are more students making mistakes than a single teacher can reasonably be expected to keep up with, and that teacher somehow has to try and divide 45 minutes worth of time into teaching instruments and teaching basic music theory. Yeesh! Even Sisyphus had it easier than school orchestra directors.
Possible Solutions
1. There's not a lot that can be done here because orchestras are, by nature, usually rather large. There are some things that immediately spring to mind, however. The first is the divide orchestra classes into sections, rather than the full orchestra. This will not only reduce the class size, but also make it easier on the teacher as he or she will not have to deal with all of the little idiosyncrasies which plague each instrument. Other than that, I don't know what to say. This is the most intractable of the problems.
2. Get aides. No, not AIDS. The other aides. This is only problematic insofar as it requires money, but the benefits would be well worth the cost. The size of the classes almost requires additional assistance for effective teaching. And I don't just mean "Let's divide the orchestra into sections and have the assistant teach one and the head director teach the other." I mean the class is going on with two teachers: the head director giving the large scale instruction, and the assistant weaving in and out helping individuals with their own unique problems in real time.
I cannot stress this enough. Mistakes must be addressed quickly as the mistake is being made. Otherwise, it is highly likely the student will not even realize there is something wrong and keep on doing what you don't want them to be doing. Not that they weren't doing what you didn't want them to be doing in the first place, but... you know what I mean.
In addition, assistants can provide much needed moral and psychological support. "Is it me, or does Jimmy's intonation sound worse than a donkey getting eaten by a velociraptor?" "No, it's not just you. But at least his tone is good. Emily's violin sounds like it needs an exorcism. I keep expecting the scroll to twist around while spewing out obscenities about my mother." "Ha ha! I know, right?" (This is totally not an actual conversation I have had with an orchestra director. Totally not at all.)
There. Don't you feel better now? This way, you can relieve all your frustrations without ever taking them out on your students.
3. And now the radioactive elephant in the room. I mean, I don't even know where to start. However! There is some hope. At the 6th grade, beginners level, I highly doubt students need more than 15-30 minutes of practice a day. There's just... not enough to practice, you know? They know all of three notes. Only so much you can do with that.
Keeping this in mind, it is entirely possible orchestras spend far too much of their class time teaching the students how to play. Given a 50 minute class, if you divide up the class into a 25 minute theory class and a 25 minute practice, we can probably cover everything we need to cover so long as we are exceedingly efficient about it. This is still far from ideal. Music theory is a class of its own, but it is progress.
Another possibility is the use of computers. "How People Learn" describes an experiment wherein students learning physics are allowed deliberate practice through a computer-based tutoring program. The students exposed to this program were able to reduce the time it took to reach real-world performance criteria from 4 years to a paltry 25 hours.
I mean. What? Really? Is this real life? Did I seriously just read that? Well.
I can attest to the usefulness of these programs, as well. One of the private schools I teach at has several computer modules where piano students go to learn their music theory. It would not be difficult to adapt those kinds of programs to the specific needs of string, wind, and brass players (and singers who, judging from performance at the college level, seem to need help the most).
So like I said. There is hope. But we have a lot of work to do. Now lets hunker down and prepare for the onslaught. It's a long night, and Gandalf isn't guaranteed to show up.
Anyways. After hearing a student orchestra rehearse the same piece for five weeks and not really ever get better, I began to think maybe we're doing something wrong. Is it possible that perhaps we don't know as much about teaching music as we think we do? I think it is.
So lets get cracking.
Problems Facing School Orchestras
1. Class size. It is well known by now that class size is an important factor contributing to student success. Large classes tend to hinder learning, smaller classes tend to help it. Or at least, not get in the way. The book "Boys and Girls Learn Differently"(a book which I recommend with reservations... it's a whole article unto itself) says that the optimal classroom size for middle school is around 20.
Twenty.
Excuse me while I vomit out my nose from laughing too hard. I'm not saying this is unattainable, but 'good' orchestra programs, even at the 6th grade level, rarely if ever have fewer than 30-40 kids in a class. It's not surprising, as orchestra is by nature a group activity. But still.
2. Lack of teacher's aides. In absence of low class size, "Boys and Girls etc" recommends the help of one or sometimes even two teacher's aides. These teachers are able to provide individual assistance where the head teacher cannot. When staring down a battalion of 6th graders, allies will at least give some moral support. But in an orchestra, you are far outnumbered, and they can smell your fear. Just say to yourself, "This. Is. SPARTA!" and go down in glory.
No. I mean, get some additional help.
"But what about money?"
Money? Oh right. Money...
3. There are other problems, but I'm going to stop with a big one here. When learning music in an orchestra or a band, there are actually two subjects going on. There's the subject of the instrument, which is obvious. It's the thing you just dropped $500 on for a ten month rental. Then there's the subject of music. Which is less obvious, but mostly because it's so obvious nobody thinks to think about it.
See, music isn't just playing notes. It's also knowing how notes are put together. Learning patterns. Reading notes. As it is, we're teaching those kids the ABC's without teaching them how to string them into words, much less how to string words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into whole compositions. Imagine trying to read Les Mis one letter at a time, and you'll get some grasp of what we're expecting orchestra classes to accomplish.
Ultimately, it is problem number three which poses the most difficulties to a student orchestra and their director. They are really trying to learn and teach two different subjects in the same amount of time as one. Problems 1 and 2 exacerbate this problem greatly, as individual help cannot be provided to struggling students in real time, and the class is usually far too large to facilitate group discussion of music or problem solving.
So it's no wonder orchestras take so long to learn a piece. The students are reading one letter at a time without comprehending words, there are more students making mistakes than a single teacher can reasonably be expected to keep up with, and that teacher somehow has to try and divide 45 minutes worth of time into teaching instruments and teaching basic music theory. Yeesh! Even Sisyphus had it easier than school orchestra directors.
Possible Solutions
1. There's not a lot that can be done here because orchestras are, by nature, usually rather large. There are some things that immediately spring to mind, however. The first is the divide orchestra classes into sections, rather than the full orchestra. This will not only reduce the class size, but also make it easier on the teacher as he or she will not have to deal with all of the little idiosyncrasies which plague each instrument. Other than that, I don't know what to say. This is the most intractable of the problems.
2. Get aides. No, not AIDS. The other aides. This is only problematic insofar as it requires money, but the benefits would be well worth the cost. The size of the classes almost requires additional assistance for effective teaching. And I don't just mean "Let's divide the orchestra into sections and have the assistant teach one and the head director teach the other." I mean the class is going on with two teachers: the head director giving the large scale instruction, and the assistant weaving in and out helping individuals with their own unique problems in real time.
I cannot stress this enough. Mistakes must be addressed quickly as the mistake is being made. Otherwise, it is highly likely the student will not even realize there is something wrong and keep on doing what you don't want them to be doing. Not that they weren't doing what you didn't want them to be doing in the first place, but... you know what I mean.
In addition, assistants can provide much needed moral and psychological support. "Is it me, or does Jimmy's intonation sound worse than a donkey getting eaten by a velociraptor?" "No, it's not just you. But at least his tone is good. Emily's violin sounds like it needs an exorcism. I keep expecting the scroll to twist around while spewing out obscenities about my mother." "Ha ha! I know, right?" (This is totally not an actual conversation I have had with an orchestra director. Totally not at all.)
There. Don't you feel better now? This way, you can relieve all your frustrations without ever taking them out on your students.
3. And now the radioactive elephant in the room. I mean, I don't even know where to start. However! There is some hope. At the 6th grade, beginners level, I highly doubt students need more than 15-30 minutes of practice a day. There's just... not enough to practice, you know? They know all of three notes. Only so much you can do with that.
Keeping this in mind, it is entirely possible orchestras spend far too much of their class time teaching the students how to play. Given a 50 minute class, if you divide up the class into a 25 minute theory class and a 25 minute practice, we can probably cover everything we need to cover so long as we are exceedingly efficient about it. This is still far from ideal. Music theory is a class of its own, but it is progress.
Another possibility is the use of computers. "How People Learn" describes an experiment wherein students learning physics are allowed deliberate practice through a computer-based tutoring program. The students exposed to this program were able to reduce the time it took to reach real-world performance criteria from 4 years to a paltry 25 hours.
I mean. What? Really? Is this real life? Did I seriously just read that? Well.
I can attest to the usefulness of these programs, as well. One of the private schools I teach at has several computer modules where piano students go to learn their music theory. It would not be difficult to adapt those kinds of programs to the specific needs of string, wind, and brass players (and singers who, judging from performance at the college level, seem to need help the most).
So like I said. There is hope. But we have a lot of work to do. Now lets hunker down and prepare for the onslaught. It's a long night, and Gandalf isn't guaranteed to show up.
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