Learning is a fantastically non-linear, subjective experience that is like a stream flowing over, around, and through any number of expected and unexpected obstacles. It’s… Read More »Creation, Spark, Learning, & Curriculum
This semester I spend time reflecting particularly on music learning and constructing a curriculum from the point of view of the teacher. BUT the learning challenges and barriers to learning are often the same across disciplines, so if you are not a musician, but a computer scientist, or a writer, or something completely different – I do think this will still hold relevance for you.
This week in specific I asked my students to dissect the topic of technical challenges, and that means I do it too. It struck me that there are two very distinct sides to the challenges in learning and they are perhaps not equal, but definitely intertwined and inseparable.Read More »Technical challenges: Barriers to Learning
This week’s #MUS654 topic is Repertoire, and the music we play whether we call it songs, pieces, repertoire – it is the stuff that serves… Read More »On repertoire: How do you know it?
Musical connections are a lot like any other connections. (4 min read) We need to experience them, process, and attribute meaning to them, and that is something that we all get better at with time and practice. There’s that practice word again… This post is inspired by this week’s #MUS654 topic Session 4: Studies and connecting material, and I wanted to liken it to conversation and listening, but there are differences. Although both are aural – spoken word and musical sound, we tend to engage with one very differently to the other. In speech there is a fluid dynamic. It is knowingly experimental and sometimes messy – wait, I didn’t mean that… no, no, it’s more like this… – In conversation it is entirely acceptable to present ideas and change them, or to present ideas and realise that they lacked clarity and then need to add detail.Read More »Making connections: speaking through the fabric of music
This article caught my attention when it came out and I bookmarked it…. I thought it was perfect for this week’s #MUS654 topic about studies… Read More »Well I never! No scales or studies?!?
Learning sinks in when we do it. That sounds basic, but so many people think it is something that is done to them – the teacher will teach me, that’s how I learn. Well, not really. The teacher presents, facilitates, encourages, fosters, but the learner learns. Only you can do it. Simple and very powerful when you own that. What does that have to do with scales? That is this week’s topic for #MUS654: Scales and the relationships of notes. If it is up to the student to be the active learner, ok, but how can the teacher do her part to guide and present opportunities for comprehension, understanding, context, and application?
Every time I ask a class how they learned scales, someone says the teacher gave them a book and that was it. They just had to read the music in the book and get on with it. Oh, and they learned scales for an exam, no particular other reason.
Sometimes that can lead to leaving a musician with a stunted level of understanding on so many levels – basic theory, more complex harmony, contexts outside their own instrument. So what about that beginning learning? Scales are built on patterns, and they all are made out of the same musical alphabet. I like the idea of experiencing things in different ways – see it, speak about it, read about it, do it, build it, have it be tactile.. and all of those are possible with scales.
A couple of years ago I found an appRead More »Making learning scales tactile and meaningful
The second law of thermodynamics says that the entropy of a closed system can only increase over time. What does this have to do with… Read More »Scales: Order in the chaos?
I love the idea of dressing up and why not do this with a melody? There is so much that can be learned from listening… Read More »Cry me a river
Shortest post ever… Can’t get you out of my head. (does that trigger a song in your head?) How about this? Y M C A… Read More »Earworm.
Thinking about melody, there are a few components that are common to all music – pitch and rhythm. None of the topics in #MUS654 deal distinctly with rhythm, but it is interwoven into everything. Yesterday in my made-up melody example, I used different rhythms to give meaning to the notes. It made me think. There are some pieces of music where the notes are constant, and then what? It is not always the rhythm that points to the melodic line. The components of music can be shuffled so that one comes to the foreground while something else, that maybe more constant, fades more into the background.Read More »Making it melodic