I am constantly being re-educated by my students (with their 60 or so different approaches to learning), by my dyslexic sons and their fabulous SPELD teacher, who knowing my interest in it all often sends resources my way for a bit of light reading/listening, and by my own forays into the pedagogy of music and learning.
A bit of background so you know where I am coming from…. After leaving secondary school I studied for a Bachelor of Performance Music at Auckland University, a Diploma of Teaching at Auckland School of Education then started teaching music and English at secondary level. At this time I was also studying a Diploma of Children’s Literature (distance learning) from Christchurch College of Education and then moved from teaching at Secondary school to teaching general classroom at year 7 and 8 levels, with a handful of private harp students after school. I became interested in working with children with learning issues. I had always loved the kids in my classes who were nothing but trouble, and I took a personal interest in helping them turn themselves around and getting them engaged in what was happening in the classroom.
In the late 1990s I worked in a Literacy and Learning Extension Unit at a Secondary School planning and teaching programmes to help every student at all levels to improve the learning skills they need to reach their potential.
Within this department we had a lot of people specialising in working with teenagers with learning issues…. just as I was getting into this I found myself pregnant and moving on to the best job in the world.
Seven years and two little cherubs later it was brought to my attention that my eldest was dyslexic, and it turned out, has Irlen syndrome (www.irlen.com ) as well – and while this has been a very long journey for us (and the youngest jumped on the Dyslexia and Irlens wagon too) the positive spin offs for my own teaching became very much evident to me. All my teaching – at secondary, primary, in music, in English, in learning support, in study skills, in teaching workshops and in my private practice have all consolidated the approach I now have to teaching music.
What is the ultimate skill we want to teach them?
Automation.
Ease at transferring the visual/aural cues of music onto an instrument.
Into this we are always adding the skills of technique and musicianship.
Particularly when we are working with beginners we need to remember that learning music is learning a new concept and we break that concept into the three aspects of
- ‘the instrument’ (in this case, the harp) *technique, *strings, *articulation, *dynamics
- ‘ the elements’*melody, *rhythm, *tempo, *texture *timbre
The first two of each aspect are the most obvious when working with beginners - *the body,* the operator
Not everyone is made the same – we have different sized and shaped hands and fingers. We can be longer or shorter in the arms and body. Our instruments might sit a bit higher or lower or in a different place on our shoulder. We are most comfortable on our own chair, which might be a specific size. And there are a wide range of sizes and shapes of harps available.
We have several actions and reactions that take place in the playing of a phrase or a few notes:
Then we start the process again.
There can be flaws or hold ups at any point of this process – some can be identified and solved (thanks glasses, lighting, music stand at correct height, warmed up fingers and brain, good understanding of notation, knowing the strings etc) and some aren’t stumbling blocks that take a while to puzzle out, may be solved or may be skipped.
How can they be skipped?
I have no science/neurological experience or background … but haven’t you had a student who when you point to the note and ask them to name it, they immediately play it… and it seems easier for them to put their finger on the string than say the note name…. ??? We expect that it will be easier to name notes over playing them as that is the conventional way we teachers have taught it – but it doesn’t mean it is automatic for the student.
There are students for whom a piece of music looks like sightreading each time they look at it until they have reached a stage of memorisation. This could be from the pressure/nerves/stress they feel when they sit to play it for you, or from not being able to store information in an easily accessible place and then not being able to put sight, sound and touch together to make the music recognisable. Simply playing or singing the first phrase is often enough to bring it back to them. It doesn’t necessarily mean they haven’t practised the tune, they just can’t access it.
So when a student says this I work through the following process:
“it looks like sightreading to me”
I haven’t invented any of these ideas – adapted maybe, but not invented.
They work with any age, any gender, any race, any religion and any genre of music.
Music doesn’t make as much sense to some of us as to others of us (same as with maths… science….writing…)…
We all have preferred learning styles … visual, aural, tactile, dyslexic, like my favourite researcher on dyslexia, Neil Mackay I believe that if you could plug a dyslexic in to an information processor, the information would be easily accessed – in the meantime, they have difficulty accessing some of it in the same ways as other learners. Generally, a dyslexic person can produce the goods, but it can take them a lot longer, and be a much more difficult process to get the information out. Of course the very well known dyslexic symptom is that b,d,p,q,6,9 are often muddled up. I’m sure beginner music readers can sympathise with this confusion when they see rows of dots and stems on their music stand and have no idea of how to decode them.
So we try and remove the barriers to learning, and help them access the information in the easiest way possible.
As a teacher, I am always trying to find ways to remove the barriers to learning.
For beginner students, I would use the normal, new-music-reader type tunes and also remember that we’re trying to teach a balance of ‘harp’ and ‘music’ in a thirty minute lesson once a week.
7- Record the student’s music for them to play along with the
Also, keep the music on the right hand side of the page, with the left side blank. Keep it clear and straight forward.
A bit of background so you know where I am coming from…. After leaving secondary school I studied for a Bachelor of Performance Music at Auckland University, a Diploma of Teaching at Auckland School of Education then started teaching music and English at secondary level. At this time I was also studying a Diploma of Children’s Literature (distance learning) from Christchurch College of Education and then moved from teaching at Secondary school to teaching general classroom at year 7 and 8 levels, with a handful of private harp students after school. I became interested in working with children with learning issues. I had always loved the kids in my classes who were nothing but trouble, and I took a personal interest in helping them turn themselves around and getting them engaged in what was happening in the classroom.
In the late 1990s I worked in a Literacy and Learning Extension Unit at a Secondary School planning and teaching programmes to help every student at all levels to improve the learning skills they need to reach their potential.
Within this department we had a lot of people specialising in working with teenagers with learning issues…. just as I was getting into this I found myself pregnant and moving on to the best job in the world.
Seven years and two little cherubs later it was brought to my attention that my eldest was dyslexic, and it turned out, has Irlen syndrome (www.irlen.com ) as well – and while this has been a very long journey for us (and the youngest jumped on the Dyslexia and Irlens wagon too) the positive spin offs for my own teaching became very much evident to me. All my teaching – at secondary, primary, in music, in English, in learning support, in study skills, in teaching workshops and in my private practice have all consolidated the approach I now have to teaching music.
What is the ultimate skill we want to teach them?
Automation.
Ease at transferring the visual/aural cues of music onto an instrument.
Into this we are always adding the skills of technique and musicianship.
Particularly when we are working with beginners we need to remember that learning music is learning a new concept and we break that concept into the three aspects of
- ‘the instrument’ (in this case, the harp) *technique, *strings, *articulation, *dynamics
- ‘ the elements’*melody, *rhythm, *tempo, *texture *timbre
The first two of each aspect are the most obvious when working with beginners - *the body,* the operator
Not everyone is made the same – we have different sized and shaped hands and fingers. We can be longer or shorter in the arms and body. Our instruments might sit a bit higher or lower or in a different place on our shoulder. We are most comfortable on our own chair, which might be a specific size. And there are a wide range of sizes and shapes of harps available.
We have several actions and reactions that take place in the playing of a phrase or a few notes:
- See it (thanks eyes!)
- Read it (thanks brain!)
- Play it (thanks to all those transmitter nerves that send the message to our hands and then, thanks hands!)
- Respond to it (thanks again to a different section of the brain that observes the resulting sound and reacts to it, sometimes sending a new message back about how to play the next note)
Then we start the process again.
There can be flaws or hold ups at any point of this process – some can be identified and solved (thanks glasses, lighting, music stand at correct height, warmed up fingers and brain, good understanding of notation, knowing the strings etc) and some aren’t stumbling blocks that take a while to puzzle out, may be solved or may be skipped.
How can they be skipped?
I have no science/neurological experience or background … but haven’t you had a student who when you point to the note and ask them to name it, they immediately play it… and it seems easier for them to put their finger on the string than say the note name…. ??? We expect that it will be easier to name notes over playing them as that is the conventional way we teachers have taught it – but it doesn’t mean it is automatic for the student.
There are students for whom a piece of music looks like sightreading each time they look at it until they have reached a stage of memorisation. This could be from the pressure/nerves/stress they feel when they sit to play it for you, or from not being able to store information in an easily accessible place and then not being able to put sight, sound and touch together to make the music recognisable. Simply playing or singing the first phrase is often enough to bring it back to them. It doesn’t necessarily mean they haven’t practised the tune, they just can’t access it.
So when a student says this I work through the following process:
“it looks like sightreading to me”
- It is sightreading
- When did you last look at the music since your lesson?
- Calmly breathe, are you feeling nervous******
- Stop, Look, Take it in. Where did you store this information when you last played it? Fingers (fingering and shapes of phrases) ears (opening interval and shape of the tune) eyes (picture of the notes, fingering and phrases)
I haven’t invented any of these ideas – adapted maybe, but not invented.
They work with any age, any gender, any race, any religion and any genre of music.
Music doesn’t make as much sense to some of us as to others of us (same as with maths… science….writing…)…
We all have preferred learning styles … visual, aural, tactile, dyslexic, like my favourite researcher on dyslexia, Neil Mackay I believe that if you could plug a dyslexic in to an information processor, the information would be easily accessed – in the meantime, they have difficulty accessing some of it in the same ways as other learners. Generally, a dyslexic person can produce the goods, but it can take them a lot longer, and be a much more difficult process to get the information out. Of course the very well known dyslexic symptom is that b,d,p,q,6,9 are often muddled up. I’m sure beginner music readers can sympathise with this confusion when they see rows of dots and stems on their music stand and have no idea of how to decode them.
So we try and remove the barriers to learning, and help them access the information in the easiest way possible.
As a teacher, I am always trying to find ways to remove the barriers to learning.
For beginner students, I would use the normal, new-music-reader type tunes and also remember that we’re trying to teach a balance of ‘harp’ and ‘music’ in a thirty minute lesson once a week.
- 1- Start with tunes they know so the student’s ear can help to correct any mistakes. The first concept you want them to get is how to pluck the string.
- 2- Model it. Any tune (like Frere Jacques), where the phrase is copied between the hands; can easily be taught by the teacher playing phrase one and the student copying, then the student playing a phrase in one hand and repeated in the other hand.
- 3- Stick to the same fingering from lesson one – this helps build up muscular memory and makes the whole tune stay in the memory more easily.
- 4- When introducing tunes that are not known, stepwise movement only to consolidated the positions of notes and strings. Jumps or skips can be confusing…. But if you do have a jump in the music, have a phrase or signpost so they can remember where to go.
- 5- Slow, steady playing – if you want to play if fast, you have to know it slow.
- 6- Signposts - anything that helps us out – little sayings “black, black, red, red, white, white, red” (thanks to Lisa W for that signpost). #*** are signposts, repeated phrases, notes or something that sounds like the melody or rhythm from another familiar piece. Also repeated notes in a part, and notes in unison between the hands.
7- Record the student’s music for them to play along with the
- 8- Enlarge the print (didn’t we all start reading words this way?) and only have one piece of music of around 4 bars on the page, printed in landscape format. Try to keep new music on one system to make it easy to follow the music.
Also, keep the music on the right hand side of the page, with the left side blank. Keep it clear and straight forward.
- 9- Colour the Cs in red, and the Fs in blue. Sometimes making the middle line of the stave darker helps, but often coloured Cs and Fs are enough. If you need another colour … green for G – make sure it’s a very distinct different hue from the blue to avoid confusion.
- 10- Highlighters, coloured pencil marks, post its, stickers – whatever it take to make a student notice things they might miss in the music.