NewsBlog Editor’s Note: We are pleased to re-introduce to you Jenny Giardina, a new CMIE Guided Intern working as Teaching Artist and Documentation Specialist for her internship at the Josiah Quincy Upper School in Boston, MA. Jenny is a senior classical voice major finishing up her MIE Concentration. Our thanks to JQUS music teacher Laura Bouix for hosting Jenny’s guided internship.

Hello MIE NewsBlog readers!  My name is Jenny Giardina and I’m back for my second MIE Guided Internship as a “Creative Composition Workshop” leader in Boston’s Josiah Quincy Upper School.  Following the methods and practices of music educator R. Murray Schafer, I’ll be leading composition and improvisation classes with three separate bands: the high school band, comprised of 9th-12th graders, and the 8th and 7th grade bands.

R. Murray Schafer’s approach to music education emphasizes listening and creativity, encourages discussion, and builds a solid foundation for personal growth.  I’ll be referencing a few of his publications more often than others; these will include A Sound Education, The Composer in the Classroom, and The Thinking Ear.

Each week, I’ll be designing three lesson plans inspired and guided by Mr. Schafer’s ideas and experiences in these books.  I’ll upload a short-hand version of these plans onto the NewsBlog by Thursday evenings and submit a second entry following Fridays’ classes.  In the second entry I’ll discuss what worked, what didn’t, and what everyone learned, and I’ll include any pictures or scanned images from that week.

My goal during this internship is to encourage the students to create original ideas, improvise on these ideas, perform the resulting “compositions,” and grow in their self-confidence, both musically and otherwise.  Learning about music and musicianship will be a wonderfully unavoidable by-product of the exercises they’ll encounter, and I personally cannot wait to find out what I’ll learn over the course of this semester’s adventures.

Today was my first day in front of the classes and I used the following lesson plan:

HS Band:

Objective:  The students will exercise listening, creativity, and critical thinking in order to most accurately perform a composition.

Last week, the students were put into small groups and asked to compose a piece based on anything—Human, Natural, or Machine.  This week I’ll be asking them to diagram their compositions using symbols and drawings in a way that would allow another group to reproduce their piece.  Once they’ve finished their diagram they’ll hand it off to another group and I’ll call two of them to the front of the class.  Group A will play their piece while Group B looks on at their diagram.  Following the performance, group B will be given some time to figure out how to most closely imitate the performance with help from myself and the class.  Group B will then perform and the class will discuss what worked, what didn’t and how it could have been better.  We’ll do this with a few different pairs of groups.

8th Grade Band:

Objective: The students should become more aware of the sounds associated with certain people and places and transfer these sounds to their instruments in various ways.

The following are exercises extracted from A Sound Education, by R. Murray Schafer.

I’ll ask five students to stand to the side of the room and the rest of the class will close their eyes.  I’ll have one of the five walk across the front of the room and the class will have to guess who it is.  If they can’t, I’ll ask them to describe what it is that they can hear (clothing, jewelry, etc.) and see if we can’t figure it out.

What sounds do we associate with guys and girls?  In groups of three, students will make lists of sounds associated with the two genders, as well as sounds they hear when they think of the forest, the ocean, and a park.

I’ll then group the students by five and ask them to compose Human/Nature/Machine pieces.  With 15 minutes of class time to spare, we’ll regroup and perform the pieces.  Immediately following each performance the class will guess what each groups’ piece was about, and the group will explain and demonstrate.  I’ll ask students with instruments not represented in the piece to suggest what they might be able to add to the texture.

7th Grade Band:

Objective: After exercises in active listening, the students will create original compositions from interesting sounds they bring to class.

We’ll repeat the first exercise from the 8th grade band and follow with a slightly modified version of the sound association exercise.

After designing lists of sounds we associate with the genders and natural locations I’ll have the students write them on the board.  I’ll select two contrasting lists and ask the students to demonstrate what their instruments could represent from one of the lists.  Once we’ve found the sounds for one entire list I’ll facilitate an improvisation structured around creating the sounds of the chosen environment.

The students will have brought an interesting sound to class today; something ordinary that makes an extraordinary sound.  I’ll ask them to talk about why they brought their specific sound and what they think is interesting about it.  I’ll play for them a recording of my friends and I improvising with interesting sounds.  If there’s time, the students will be placed into small groups to compose an improvisatory piece using their sounds and one instrument per group, and perform them for the class.

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