In my experience, the best instrumental teachers I’ve worked with have taught much more than the instrument – they taught music; the instrument was the vehicle. The development of technique was central to what they did, but it was approached in musical ways. Conveying a musical idea was paramount and their approaches were robust. Pieces were learnt not just with the instrument – students were pushed to feel the music. These teachers pushed rote learning aside and encouraged the internalisation of sound (as drawn from symbol) – meaningful connections were made…
The ways through which they achieved this reminded me of a key message in one of my (classroom) curriculum classes at university. In this class I remember being tasked with generating as many activities from one music extract as possible. Our lecturer termed this ‘organic unity’ – an idea propounded by Plato (yes, Plato again![1]) that something is made up of interdependent parts, for example, a functional society is made up of its constituent social roles.
In relation to generating musical activities, what was proposed was that we derived activities from a select piece of music that covered the parameters of musical experience – composition, literature studies, audiation, skills and performance – as proposed by Swanwick (1979).[2] These interdependent activities were the meaningful parts of a whole; if well considered, these parts could combine to add to more than the sum of all the parts. Experience in a wide range of musical activity sought to strengthen knowledge and musical fluency.
As a classroom teacher, this has been a staple to my practice for some time now – I seek to ‘exhaust’ a piece of music, and extract as much of the musical opportunity from it as possible. This serves to situate teaching and learning in common ground, with the music being viewed through different educative lenses and at different angles. Nothing new to see here, but a piece of tradition I feel worth hanging on to. It offers a range of pedagogical approaches as well as ways for students to access, experience and practice music.
In Year 4 and 5[3] we run an instrumental immersion program at our school. In this, the students learn a band or string instrument as part of their academic studies for 2 years. They receive weekly lessons in small groups, form an ensemble (band or strings) and engage in a combined choral workshop, all of which combine to form their academic music study over these years of schooling. In the early stages of the program, the students learn principally from a tutor book – with endless 8-bar exercises developing technique and introducing knowledge about music notation (I hesitate to say ‘music’ – or knowledge of music). There are over 15 staff that teach in the small-group component of this program, and naturally the effectiveness of what is done does vary…
Taking cues from the practice and people described above, some of the staff involved in the immersion program at school generated a list of ways that instrumental teaching could move beyond simply playing through the short songs of the tutor books, and ultimately foster deeper engagement with and internalisation of music. Based on the principle of organic unity, these activities offer the opportunity for students to come to know music in both sound and symbolic form, and assist them move beyond rote learning patterns that may not fully develop their musical awareness. Further, many of these ways of approaching the songs also assist us in breaking down any problems that occur in learning as well as offer opportunity for us to formatively assess our students. Some of the things that we have tried include:
- model playing the song for the students on the instrument
- sing the song in solfa or letter names with the students to internalise the sound/music (echo sing phrase by phrase if a longer song)
- have students clap the rhythm before playing
- sight-read the rhythm only, playing a static pitch (say, a tuning note or tone centre of the song)
- sight-read the song (both pitch and rhythm)
- sing/say the time names of the song
- sing the song using letter names whilst clapping the beat
- sing/say the rhythm backwards
- ‘pass the song’ by having each student sing or play a beat each (could do with rhythm in isolation or both rhythm and pitch) whilst you keep a steady beat
- conduct the pattern of the meter whilst singing
- create and clap a simple ostinato whilst singing the song
- have the student identify a song to be played from the double-facing page by recognising the song when the teacher plays it
- have the student identify a song to be played from the double-facing page by recognising the song when the teacher claps the rhythm only
- clap the rhythm of the song in cannon
- before they see the music, have the students complete a rhythmic dictation of the rhythm the song uses
- inner hear parts of the melody and sing only the pitches identified by the teacher
- add doh-so harmony whilst students play or sing the song
- have students individually add in doh-so harmony as the teacher plays the song
- play a bar of the song and have the students identify which one was played
- ‘scramble’/mix-up the order of the bars and have the student identify the order in which they were played
- sing and then play the intervals from within the song in isolation
- have the students write out and then play a different last two bars to the piece
- alternate between the teacher and student (different each time) playing bar by bar through the song (a little like passing a call and response)
- have students add different expressive devices to the song (dynamics, articulation) to personalise it
- sing or play the song in cannon or with a partner song (if possible)
- have students compose a rhythmic arrangement to accompany the song
- play the song with an error (or several) to rhythm or pitch and have the students identify what was wrong
- inner-hear the melody of the song and have students only sing an identified pitch out loud
- sing or play the first half of the phrase as a group and then have the students improvise a ‘new’ second phrase using the tone set of the song
- play through the song but have a ‘forbidden pitch’ that the students must leave out.
A big list that might surprise the instrumental teacher, but is likely familiar territory for many classroom teachers. Of course, the learning goes both ways – we all teach music, and professional unity is what we should be all about.
On that note, the idea for generating this list was sparked by a great Facebook group called Queensland Classroom Music Teachers, and I wish to acknowledge this group and the suggestions they put forward. Thank you also to Dr Adrian Thomas, who at university instilled in us lucky few the notion of organic unity. Finally, thank you to the fantastic instrumental staff that I have had the pleasure to work with – they have helped shape this list too.
So, the big question: how else can we teach instruments in these contexts musically and in ways that extend beyond technique and rote-learning alone? This list is one attempt towards clarifying this, but there is much more to be done. The Year 4s are coming up for their lesson… time to put some of this to the test.
[1] See my previous post relating to exercising care in the overuse of Plato to justify and advocate for music education.
[2] Swanwick, K. (1979). A Basis for Music Education.
[3] Year 4 and 5 in Australia is for students 9-11 years of age.
Dr Cade Bonar 