Guest Reflection: March 20, 2017
Dr. Kevin Watson came into class to demonstrate a method of teaching improvisation. He demonstrated using jazz. The lecture started by listening to three different pieces in the genre, he asked us to listen to a variety of different elements in order to aurally understand the genre. After that, he played call and response melodies asking us to repeat. After that he would play a melody and asked us to improvise on that melody using only the notes or chords we had previously used. In the next segment, he once again did the call and response focusing on one melody, then as a group asked us to quietly experiment with that melody. Finally we were to create an ostinato and improve based on that, a few students were asked to do a solo based on what they were doing.
I greatly enjoyed this approach to learning improvisation. As I have never been asked to improvise formally the slow approach helped build confidence, and came in reasonable chunks so that I had time to think through the melody and what I could do musically with the melody presented to me. I also enjoyed listening to other improvisations, I found that I could listen to the kind of things others were doing and think about how I might use that within my own improvisation alongside the melody. I also appreciated that it was aural based. Learning improvisation by listening and getting a natural feeling offers more chance to think broadly musically. Likewise his explanation of listening to music being a concert experience while reading music as abstract makes sense as leads to the emphasise being on musically and not what is ‘correct’.
Dr. Kevin Watson came into class to demonstrate a method of teaching improvisation. He demonstrated using jazz. The lecture started by listening to three different pieces in the genre, he asked us to listen to a variety of different elements in order to aurally understand the genre. After that, he played call and response melodies asking us to repeat. After that he would play a melody and asked us to improvise on that melody using only the notes or chords we had previously used. In the next segment, he once again did the call and response focusing on one melody, then as a group asked us to quietly experiment with that melody. Finally we were to create an ostinato and improve based on that, a few students were asked to do a solo based on what they were doing.
I greatly enjoyed this approach to learning improvisation. As I have never been asked to improvise formally the slow approach helped build confidence, and came in reasonable chunks so that I had time to think through the melody and what I could do musically with the melody presented to me. I also enjoyed listening to other improvisations, I found that I could listen to the kind of things others were doing and think about how I might use that within my own improvisation alongside the melody. I also appreciated that it was aural based. Learning improvisation by listening and getting a natural feeling offers more chance to think broadly musically. Likewise his explanation of listening to music being a concert experience while reading music as abstract makes sense as leads to the emphasise being on musically and not what is ‘correct’.
Guest Reflection-March 15,2017
Kelly Bylica came into our class and presented a lecture based on how she motivated students that are not interested in music classes. She started by presenting us a few different views of students that where not at all interested in music and taking the course for the sake of the credit. Her activity asking how the students engage with music is particularly interesting and useful for analyse how to go about the first class. Further into the discussion, the inevitable question: how do you engage students with classical music came up. In her experience students didn’t believe was a story behind the music, so she introduced them to illustrated books about a piece of music. I was very excited to learn about these books, I love reinterpretations across media. I remember watching Disney’s Fantasia all the time as a child; it is one of the reasons why I enjoy listening to symphonies. Because the culture of classical music is quiet foreign to many people, it can be difficult to understand that this music does have stories. I thought Kelly presented this to her class in a very clever way, and I would be tempted to talk this a step further and have students reinterpret a piece of art, a story, poem, or game they like and try to compose a short piece.
Kelly Bylica came into our class and presented a lecture based on how she motivated students that are not interested in music classes. She started by presenting us a few different views of students that where not at all interested in music and taking the course for the sake of the credit. Her activity asking how the students engage with music is particularly interesting and useful for analyse how to go about the first class. Further into the discussion, the inevitable question: how do you engage students with classical music came up. In her experience students didn’t believe was a story behind the music, so she introduced them to illustrated books about a piece of music. I was very excited to learn about these books, I love reinterpretations across media. I remember watching Disney’s Fantasia all the time as a child; it is one of the reasons why I enjoy listening to symphonies. Because the culture of classical music is quiet foreign to many people, it can be difficult to understand that this music does have stories. I thought Kelly presented this to her class in a very clever way, and I would be tempted to talk this a step further and have students reinterpret a piece of art, a story, poem, or game they like and try to compose a short piece.
Guest Lecture- March 6, 2017
Dr. Ruth Wright presented a lecture on a type of musical education. The lecture focused mainly on a way of informal education, bringing realty into the classroom. Students are to learn from mainly listening to songs mimicking, and seeing how the skills learned from other artists can facilitate their own composition or improvisation. I was particularly impressed with how well organized the lecture was; which improvised my reception to the style of teaching. All terminology was thoroughly defined, as well as the general pedagogy with appropriate digressions in order to explain a certain concept further. I also enjoyed the practical aspect of the presentation. After discussing how the program would work from a teacher’s perspective, the class was broken into groups and told to go listen to a song and present it aurally, with whatever instruments where available. After explaining it was nice to get a hands on view, and look into where difficulties my lye on a personal level. Personally, I always find these kinds of activities intimidating, especially around other people. However, after view the class consensus and the general excitement, it is clear this method of teaching would be extremely effective within a classroom setting.
Dr. Ruth Wright presented a lecture on a type of musical education. The lecture focused mainly on a way of informal education, bringing realty into the classroom. Students are to learn from mainly listening to songs mimicking, and seeing how the skills learned from other artists can facilitate their own composition or improvisation. I was particularly impressed with how well organized the lecture was; which improvised my reception to the style of teaching. All terminology was thoroughly defined, as well as the general pedagogy with appropriate digressions in order to explain a certain concept further. I also enjoyed the practical aspect of the presentation. After discussing how the program would work from a teacher’s perspective, the class was broken into groups and told to go listen to a song and present it aurally, with whatever instruments where available. After explaining it was nice to get a hands on view, and look into where difficulties my lye on a personal level. Personally, I always find these kinds of activities intimidating, especially around other people. However, after view the class consensus and the general excitement, it is clear this method of teaching would be extremely effective within a classroom setting.
Guest Lecture- Feb.15, 2017
Donna Wood’s presentation on early childhood education was very enlightening. She introduced the methods which she uses to teach. For young infants, ages 6-12 months the focus of education was described as focusing mainly on audition and putting pulse into a child’s body. I thought even the idea of starting music education as young as a very interesting one. I had never before considered starting education in any form during infancy. The only thing I felt that could be considered more was using music that children and adults listen to instead of respective and simple music. Children in infancy are forming neural pathways, and introducing more complex rhythms and harmonies can help potentially make music education easier in the future. This is more difficult for older children who start to sing along to the music as they start to age. Personally I found this presentation very interesting considering my early music education; listening to the radio and folk music that my mom would play.
Donna Wood’s presentation on early childhood education was very enlightening. She introduced the methods which she uses to teach. For young infants, ages 6-12 months the focus of education was described as focusing mainly on audition and putting pulse into a child’s body. I thought even the idea of starting music education as young as a very interesting one. I had never before considered starting education in any form during infancy. The only thing I felt that could be considered more was using music that children and adults listen to instead of respective and simple music. Children in infancy are forming neural pathways, and introducing more complex rhythms and harmonies can help potentially make music education easier in the future. This is more difficult for older children who start to sing along to the music as they start to age. Personally I found this presentation very interesting considering my early music education; listening to the radio and folk music that my mom would play.
Guest Lecture- February 11,2017
Dr. Randell Allsup came and presented a seminar about methods of teaching that is a student based take on teaching elements. He started by presenting a song and used that to introduce how this song can be applied to introduce and address abstract concept such as: texture, and timber. The song was carefully chosen to include different instruments from standard repertory; it also did not include any strong harmonic or melodic ideas. I felt this was a clever way of presenting texture and timber as ideas that are related to harmony but can also be heard throughout music; not just western art music.
He also brought up this piece as a way to introduce rhythm and add a creative element through just rhythmic ostinato. He then put groups of these together and added an improvisational element. I was totally comfortable with the improvisational element, mostly because I have a hard time grasping rhythm and pulse. But I really enjoyed listening to the groups perform, and feeling how different the pulse was between all the groups. It was particularly interesting to see how the “leader” of the groups affected the group pulse. In terms of teaching I feel this exercise is a fun experiment that children would really remember, and it’s an excellent way of demonstrating how rhythm can interact with pulse.
The second exercise was interpreting a folk song. Again we were split into groups and each group had an exercise to complete. In the after discussion the idea of product and process was brought up. So much emphasis is placed on performance and perfection, stemming from western art music. Outside this realm it is easy to forget, folk music was never made for “performance”. Consider the music of the world, the majority was never intended for a stage setting, but to be formed, and reformed over and over. In concordance with his belief system, most musicality happened internally, it’s not something children can really be taught, it’s more of an innate aspect like creativity. So taking away the performance aspect to create then recreate music like how the second exercise demonstrated is very effective for children to be able to think and feel the musically when there is no ‘right way’ .
Dr. Randell Allsup came and presented a seminar about methods of teaching that is a student based take on teaching elements. He started by presenting a song and used that to introduce how this song can be applied to introduce and address abstract concept such as: texture, and timber. The song was carefully chosen to include different instruments from standard repertory; it also did not include any strong harmonic or melodic ideas. I felt this was a clever way of presenting texture and timber as ideas that are related to harmony but can also be heard throughout music; not just western art music.
He also brought up this piece as a way to introduce rhythm and add a creative element through just rhythmic ostinato. He then put groups of these together and added an improvisational element. I was totally comfortable with the improvisational element, mostly because I have a hard time grasping rhythm and pulse. But I really enjoyed listening to the groups perform, and feeling how different the pulse was between all the groups. It was particularly interesting to see how the “leader” of the groups affected the group pulse. In terms of teaching I feel this exercise is a fun experiment that children would really remember, and it’s an excellent way of demonstrating how rhythm can interact with pulse.
The second exercise was interpreting a folk song. Again we were split into groups and each group had an exercise to complete. In the after discussion the idea of product and process was brought up. So much emphasis is placed on performance and perfection, stemming from western art music. Outside this realm it is easy to forget, folk music was never made for “performance”. Consider the music of the world, the majority was never intended for a stage setting, but to be formed, and reformed over and over. In concordance with his belief system, most musicality happened internally, it’s not something children can really be taught, it’s more of an innate aspect like creativity. So taking away the performance aspect to create then recreate music like how the second exercise demonstrated is very effective for children to be able to think and feel the musically when there is no ‘right way’ .
Guest Lecture- January 23,2017
After reading Ms. Dawe’s “Fumbling towards Vulnerability: Moving Out of the Familiar for Music Education’s Sake”; the class had the good fortune to speak with Ms. Dawe about how she implements her ideas within her music class. The classes focus on a student-centred base. Much of the classes consist of experimentation, inquirer based learning, rather than lecture style education. This style does lend itself very nicely to music, and promoting interest into music as well as diversity into non-western music cultures. However, like discussed there are a few difficulties. The first is teaching music that does not hold popular interest. Ms. Dawe admitted it was a difficult topic to teach because of the lack of general enthusiasm. Upon reflection, many students develop a taste for classical music only after studying and performing. I would suggest forming stories from the history instead of dates and facts; focusing more on reception history in a casual and humorous light. This is difficult to achieve especially through 12-14 years of age. The second issue with experimental kind of teaching is assessment within the classroom. As there is minimal schedule learning tests and quizzes are not always realistic an option. This leaves a large portion of assessment to the subjective view of the teacher.
After reading Ms. Dawe’s “Fumbling towards Vulnerability: Moving Out of the Familiar for Music Education’s Sake”; the class had the good fortune to speak with Ms. Dawe about how she implements her ideas within her music class. The classes focus on a student-centred base. Much of the classes consist of experimentation, inquirer based learning, rather than lecture style education. This style does lend itself very nicely to music, and promoting interest into music as well as diversity into non-western music cultures. However, like discussed there are a few difficulties. The first is teaching music that does not hold popular interest. Ms. Dawe admitted it was a difficult topic to teach because of the lack of general enthusiasm. Upon reflection, many students develop a taste for classical music only after studying and performing. I would suggest forming stories from the history instead of dates and facts; focusing more on reception history in a casual and humorous light. This is difficult to achieve especially through 12-14 years of age. The second issue with experimental kind of teaching is assessment within the classroom. As there is minimal schedule learning tests and quizzes are not always realistic an option. This leaves a large portion of assessment to the subjective view of the teacher.
Guest Lecture—January 18, 2017
Dr. Mark Hopkins made a compelling argument in his presentation of the style of musical education he promotes among wind and brass bands in junior high and high schools in Nova Scotia. He began by the explanation of the standard spiral curriculum comparing to Bloom’s Taxonomy model of thinking. I agree with Dr. Hopkins’ views on a method book. The method books have a use; however, they have a leech-like effect on student enthusiasm. Dr. Hopkins suggested, based on the research of Charles Limb and his studies of the musical mind; music and language have similar modules in the mind. This conclusion suggests that music and language are acquired through similar means. Applying the results in a classroom suggests that starting on a purely auditory route bodes the best for children learning music. If a student can hear and has a strong sense of the sound before reading notation could promote musicality and ear training.
Dr. Mark Hopkins made a compelling argument in his presentation of the style of musical education he promotes among wind and brass bands in junior high and high schools in Nova Scotia. He began by the explanation of the standard spiral curriculum comparing to Bloom’s Taxonomy model of thinking. I agree with Dr. Hopkins’ views on a method book. The method books have a use; however, they have a leech-like effect on student enthusiasm. Dr. Hopkins suggested, based on the research of Charles Limb and his studies of the musical mind; music and language have similar modules in the mind. This conclusion suggests that music and language are acquired through similar means. Applying the results in a classroom suggests that starting on a purely auditory route bodes the best for children learning music. If a student can hear and has a strong sense of the sound before reading notation could promote musicality and ear training.