Music Monday - Happy New Year

A happy new year to you all.

With almost all of our Australian music teachers currently on holiday, and with many, many families affected directly or indirectly by the unprecedented bushfires raging across our country, we thought that this Monday could be a time to consider how we might help families and school music communities who may have lost musical instruments and valuable resources at this time.

Of course, right now what is needed is immediate monetary and material relief and assistance - and it has been heartening to see so many Australians and indeed, compassionate people across the planet, responding with financial and other assistance.

But when the fires finally subside (and the experts are predicting it might be months) there will be children who no longer have an instrument and music teachers who have lost everything.

Perhaps you have an instrument gathering dust at the back of a cupboard? Could it have a new home with a young player?

Do you have ideas on how this could be achieved? Please respond in comments below. Stage Page is always happy to assist.

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Music Monday - aus Deutschland!

At the recent World Alliance for Arts Education conference in Frankfurt I was chatting over dinner with a friend from Helsinki. Tinti works in music with dementia patients in a care facility. 

Tinti was telling me that many of her clients can no longer use spoken language but when she plays the songs from their youth on her piano accordion, they all respond in some way -and many of them sing the words – words which they can no longer use in speech.

Why is this so?

A quick google search suggests that the key brain areas linked to musical and emotional memory are relatively undamaged by the disease.

A Stanford University study on the effect of music therapy on older adults found that rhythmic music stimulates certain areas of the brain to increase blood flow. Seniors could improve their scores on cognitive tests by taking part in music activities.

This had me musing:

1. For dementia patients to be stimulated by musical memory they must have had songs in their past with which to identify. It is important to sing!

2. With all of the research on the importance of beat and rhythm in early music education – wouldn’t it be interesting to set up a lifetime research project where children were tracked musically and cognitively throughout life?

All arts education is vitally important to maintaining healthy societies; but when it comes to brain health it would appear that music is the most important!

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Music Musing Monday - What is it about the taas and titis?

For many years I have enjoyed asking people about what, if anything, they remember of their primary school music education. Each year I pose this question to the class of 1st year acting students I teach at WAAPA. And when running workshops for primary classroom teachers over the years, I have always posed it to them as well.

For many of my generation in Western Australia, the only school music education was the weekly ABC singing broadcast to schools. On Friday mornings at around 11.30am the crackly classroom wireless set was cranked into action to deliver the song to be taught that week. My classmates would sigh and then drag themselves into reluctant submission to the alien classical songs being offered for their musical education. By contrast I always enjoyed – or pretended to enjoy - the broadcasts, but then I was already learning piano from my grandmother and listening to my mother practise art songs and German Lieder for her next ABC broadcast. I suspect I was a young musical upstart.

In the 1980s the Education Department in Western Australia introduced music specialist teaching into primary schools. It was a political decision to support the teachers’ union demand for DOTT (duties other than teaching) time for classroom teachers. To support the appointment of so many specialist teachers (many of whom had had limited actual specialisation in music themselves), the department developed music syllabus materials to support them. “Music In Schools” was developed, based on the Kodaly approach to music education, and on the work of Deanna Hoermann in NSW. Deanna was one of Australia’s pioneers in bringing the Kodaly approach into an Australian context.

So back to my original question. Many of the students and fellow teachers I have worked with over the past 20 years were educated post-1980s  - and in the Kodaly approach (which emphasizes solfa and time names and a methodical approach to intervals through singing.)

The taas and titis are the very first, basic rhythmic steps of this approach – closely followed by tika -tika, timka, etc. And paralleled by the learning of simple melodic intervals such as the falling minor third. It is a sequential program of learning.

Yet it is those first two rhythmic patterns that are remembered best  - both as sound and symbol – along with anecdotes about marking the rhythms with claves, making rhythmic patterns by making the symbol shapes with pop sticks and so on.

Is this another example of our fundamental human instinct for beat and rhythm? Or is it simply that beat and rhythm are less complex to teach than melody, so therefore more students Australia-wide have been exposed to the taas and titis?

What was your experience?

Music Tip Monday #9 -

One of the reasons music is an appealing art form is that people can engage in it at any age.

It is never too late to start making music.

When planning music learning for a primary (elementary) class, the teacher often faces the challenge of teaching the basic music concepts in an engaging way. For example, what happens if an upper primary class has had limited or no prior exposure to music learning?

The fundamental concepts must be taught for the learning to be meaningful and sequential, but the pre-adolescent child can be impatient with learning the basics of, say, beat and rhythm.

Many teachers successfully apply this rule: Keep the concept simple but the activity age-appropriate.

Here are some examples:

You need to teach the concept of maintaining a steady 4 beat pattern.

In the pre-primary classroom the children stamp to the 4 beats – left right left right – repeat the sequence.

In the middle primary classroom the children form pairs and face each other to mirror a 4 beat sequence – slap own thighs, clap hands, ‘high five’ the partner with both hands, clap hands again – repeat the sequence.

In the upper primary classroom the children try a more complex cross-patterning sequence – extend left arm and tap left shoulder with right hand, tap left wrist with right hand, use left hand to reach across to grab right shoulder, extend right arm – repeat the sequence.

What activities have you found successful in teaching fundamental music concepts?

Music Tip Monday #7 - Neuromusical education

Last Friday I attended a thought provoking day on music learning and brain development given by Dr Anita Collins, an Australian neuromusical educator from the ACT.

Anita is a passionate, practicing music teacher as well as researcher. Her three sessions focused on how learning music affects the brain and a child’s cognitive development. It was a discussion more about using music education as a powerful tool in building bigger better brains, than about the equally important function of music learning in an arts enriched education.

Here are a few points which resonated strongly with me:

1. Left brain / right brain is an outmoded way of thinking.
   

2. Hearing is our biggest information gathering sense.

3. The ages 0-7 are critical in the first wiring of the brain. Rhythm and beat form the basis of all brain development. ( Aside: any early- childhood classroom teacher is capable of simple beat and rhythm activities and is thereby enhancing the cognitive development of every child in the class)

4. In the ‘first wiring’ stage, significant results can be achieved by just 10 min of beat and rhythm activities per day.

5. After age 7 brain development is considered ‘rewiring’. It can be achieved but requires more minutes per day.

6. Singing and moving engages the whole sensory network.

That is just a taste of Dr Anita Collins’ work. To read more, check out ‘Bigger Better Brains’ on Facebook.

Music Tip Monday #6 - Vowel Shaping

Vowel Shaping

The 5 cardinal (Italian) vowels used in singing classical and music theatre legit styles

Whether you are a solo singer, teacher, chorister or choir director, it is useful to practise correct vowel shaping for the style you are singing.

Today we look at the more classical shaping used in classical vocal music as well as legit music theatre styles.

1. i (think the vowel in ‘bee’): tip of the tongue rests gently on the back of the lower front teeth; the sides of the body of the tongue are higher and touching the upper back molars. This vowel has a bright, forward sound quality. The lips remain relaxed – not spread.

2. e (think the vowel in ‘egg’): tip of the tongue rests gently on the back of the lower front teeth; the sides of the body of the tongue are still high and resting on the upper back molars, though very slightly more relaxed away from the teeth than in the i vowel. This vowel has a bright, forward sound quality. The lips remain relaxed.

3. a (think the vowel in ‘bar’): tip of the tongue rests gently on the back of the lower front teeth; the tongue body relaxes gently down into the floor of the mouth (never press or push the tongue down). The soft palate rises, giving this vowel a rounded, spacious sound quality in classical and legit singing. The lips remain relaxed.

4. o (think the vowel in ‘lot’): the tip of the tongue moves very slightly away from the back of the lower front teeth and the lips pout forward, shaping the vowel.

5. u (think the vowel in ‘look’): the tip of the tongue very slightly away from touching the back of the lower front teeth and the lips pout forward into a pucker to shape the vowel.