NewsBlog Editor’s Note: This post is the fifth of a series written by CMIE Research Fellow Anthony Green, as part of the documentation for Green’s CMIE Research Internship. See other posts in this series here.

To continue with the idea of “teaching” the language to students, Professor Scripp has utilized some methods that almost seem contradictory to the goals. Other than exercise memorization, exercise “rehearsal” or “practice”, and contextual conducting, another questionable pedagogical method is having students speak the syllables of a sight-singing exercise without pitch.

Initially, this sounds like a great idea. One of the biggest problems for most Americans learning solfege (as I have mentioned before) is getting around our non-use of syllables from childhood or switching from the American “moveable do” system to the more ecumenical “fixed do” system, which both have their own problems. Therefore, any way to simply expose Americans to syllable practice should ideally be a good thing. Secondly, this sounds like a good idea because it rids sight-singing of a difficult element - pitch. When sight-singing after not having been exposed to solfege in childhood, associating pitch with syllables can be a confusing, daunting task. Any method which simplifies elements of sight-singing should ideally be a strong pedegogical tool. Lastly, this sounds like a good idea because, without the pitch element, one can work on syllable-recognition velocity, which is difficult to do when simultaneously singing. By isolating the element of syllable-concentration, then the ability to rapidly internalize and enunciate pitches should ideally develop via strict syllable practice. When isolation occurs in any type of practice, the subject of the focus should ideally be elucidated.

Such is not the case with everyone. People, no matter how much public education strives to view students as learning equals, learn at different paces, on different levels, and in different ways. The strengths of one person might not neccessarily be the strengths of another. Therefore, this method may work for those for whom pitch does not pose a problem. On the contrary, if pitch is a problem for a student, then does this method hurt or hinder that student?

As stated before, the two most popular solfege systems - “fixed do” and “moveable do” (other methods exist, for ex. numbers) - present their own problems. In “moveable do”, the tonic syllable “do” can be applied to any note, and each chromatic step has its own syllables that relate to the “fundamental” diatonic syllable. I’m not completely sure of the correct syllables, but an example of this phenomenon can be seen in the syllables “fa” and “fi”. Either “fi” is “fa” sharp or flat, but in any case one can see that it is a variant of the fundamental syllable. In “moveable do”, each syllable has a sharp or flat variant. But what happens when one encounters double-sharps and double-flats? And what happens when one modulates or tonicizes? Should a new “do” be created, or should one solfege using the variant syllables? Furthermore, it is wonderful that “moveable do” solidifies the relationships between chromatic intervals and their fundamentals, but what does one do when solfeging serial or atonal melodies and harmonies? This is the year 2007, and solfege should incorporate the difficult, atonal melodies that can even be found in works from composers such as Wolf, Scriabin, and late Liszt, to the composers of today.

“Fixed do” assigns one syllable to each note of the C major scale. For example, C is “do”, D is “re”, E is “mi”, etc… When sight-singing, any chromatic variant of the note is sung with the syllable of the fundamental note. For example, C, C-sharp, and C-flat are all “do”. The best thing about this system is that each key area is seperated. The key of F major or minor is the key of “fa” major or minor. The tonic, therefore, would be “fa”, and the distinction between the key of “do” and other keys is maintained. But chromaticism is not fully honed. Having a system where one syllable can be 5 different pitches (double flat, flat, natural, sharp, and double sharp) can be quite confusing when dealing with pitch relationships. For example, the interval of a perfect fourth uses the same syllables as the interval of an augmented fourth (tritone) and a diminished fourth (major third). As a student of solfege, singing “do - fa” as a perfect fourth, a tritone, or a diminished fourth can really negatively affect one’s sense of interval relationship. But, this system does allow for sight-singing atonal melodies with facility.

With this being said, consider the following: student A has pitch problems, but his syllable-recognition is strong. Student B has perfect pitch, but has many problems with syllables. If student A sings syllables without pitches, then he is just developing his strength. But in doing so, his pitch problems actually get worse because of “fixed do”’s problem of the lack of chromatic relationship distinctions. Student A will sing the syllables, and get used to the feeling of articulating the syllables with velocity. But adding the pitch relationship afterward will be very difficult. Student B, on the other hand, will get used to singing the syllables without pitch, and acquire a grounded knowledge of how these quick syllables feel. When adding the pitch at the end, the syllables may improve his pitch accuracy because of the association of pitch with sound. In observing Professor Scripp’s class, I have found that this is the case.

In conclusion, pedagogical methods - especially for solfege - have both their faults and their attributes. What is important is not necessarily the methods themselves, but the order in which the methods are introduced to the students. In other words, students should be at certain points melodically before working on the rhythmic or syllabic aspects of solfege. In my observations, pitch problems have been the biggest deterent in a student’s ability to complete a sight-singing exercise. Once a student is unsure of the pitch, that is when the hesitation happens, the rhythmic problems arise, and the syllables begin to be replaced with “lah” or “doo” or “ah” or some incomprehensible onomatopoeia. In the end, any method that develops an aspect of solfege should be exposed to a solfege student. The question is simply “WHEN?”

NewsBlog Editor’s Note: This post is the fourth of a series written by CMIE Research Fellow Anthony Green, as part of the documentation for Green’s CMIE Research Internship. See other posts in this series here.

NEC is constantly blessed to have such people of note come visit our school as Renée Fleming, Fred Firth, and Steve Reich. Recently, Gustavo Dudamel was one of the esteemed guest, and he presented information about El Sistema, the youth orchestra in Venezuela that has been changing lives and gaining worldwide recognition. The presentation was so highly regarded by Professor Scripp that he cancelled class in order to allow his students to attend the seminars and the performances. More teachers at NEC should adopt such a caring attitude towards their students when such guests arrive. 

In a class prior to his arrival, Professor Scripp presented an anecdote to the class about when he and one of his former students met Gustavo Dudamel. According to the professor, his student was so enthusiastic about solfege that he still remembered (and this is the key word to this whole anecdote) some of the exercises that he worked on with Scripp. I do not remember if Scripp also solfeged for Dudamel, but the highlight of the anecdote is when Dudamel himself waxes poetically about solfege and orally presents his own results of diligent study to his adoring fans: he starts to solfege a fast movement from a Tchaikovsky symphony (I believe it is number 4, the scherzo movement). Amazingly, his syllables were perfect, his pitch was also to be admired – it was obvious that he was a successful student of solfege, and that this technique has shaped his development as a musician.

Gustavo Dudamel story - audio

But something about this charming monologue left a sour taste in my mouth. I had never thought about the real difference between sight-singing and solfege until now. In my undergrad at Boston University, I learned solfege in a “stight-singing” course. We were expected, more or less, to sight-sing. With this in mind, it was strange that Professor Scripp’s former student had learned some of these exercises so well that he remembered them after being away from them for quite a while. I felt the same about Dudamel’s breathtaking impromptu performance. Obviously, these pieces were not sight-read. They were memorized.

It brings up two very important questions pertinent to this course:

Before delving into these issues more, in that very same class, the students were going over an exercise that contained a quick passage: mi! mi-re-do-si-la-do-si-la-mi! re! do-mi-do-la-mi - - mi - - la! By the end of the class, I heard the melody so much that I could sing it without ever having seen the notated music. I cannot even mention where the exercise is from and who composed it! This experience is akin to listening to a snippet of a pop-song on someone else’s iPod, and remembering it because the snippet contained one motive repeated many times. I raised the issue in class; if I remembered this and executed the exercise as well as the students in class, yet I did not see the music at all, then what method of teaching is more important? Furthermore, if the only goal desired in the end is to be able to execute the exercise, then what should stop a student from simply applying pure memorization to the exercises, thus inhibiting sight-singing ability?

Additionally, other comments were made about velocity. One of the students expressed concerns about not being able to solfege a certain group of syllables fast enough. Professor Scripp then proceeded to teach the students how to practice learning how to increase solfege velocity. His method, which is based on grouping and specific syllable emphasis, is a method of practice that corroborates directly with the process of memorization. While the technique is successful, the process of how to instantly recognize groups while sight-singing was never once even mentioned, yet alone taught.

When I brought up such concerns, Scripp gave me an answer quickly: this is a way of involving the students in the language of solfege.

Such an answer is great. I strongly feel that learning solfege is similar to learning a new language. The difference between learning a new language and learning solfege, however, is that no one asks you to read in your new language as fast as you can (although, such exercises should be done, as it would greatly improve conversation skills). Furthermore, it is rare to be asked to communicate in solfege, although Professor Scripp did make the students improvise musical questions and answers in solfege. More of these exercises could have been mandatory, however the fault of these exercises lies within the ability (or lack thereof) of the student to improvise a melody.

Other ways of exposing solfege as a language to students is to force the students to sing scales and arpeggios in solfege at the beginning of each class. Such a traditionally boring approach was hinted at, and I am sure that Scripp strongly advocated such exercises to be done daily by the students on their own. Additionally, the students were advised to create “themes” in each key (see the November 20^th blog “Near-perfect pitch” for details). Another process may be to sing a snippet of one’s favorite pop-song and transpose it to each key, and in the opposite mode (major goes to minor, and vice versa). Modal shifts were rare in this class (but they were done!).

So, what role does sight-singing play in this class? A LARGE ONE! Many classes throughout the semester were sight-singing classes. The students were asked to bring in works and “teach” them to the class using solfege. Often, Professor Scripp would hold classes of reading Bach Chorales, Palestrina, Victoria, and more. The students were exposed greatly to sight-singing. Not officially having to take the final examination or to put together a portfolio, I do wonder what the faculty expects from the students in this class outside of what was made clear.

NewsBlog Editor’s Note: This post is the third of a series written by CMIE Research Fellow Anthony Green, as part of the documentation for Green’s CMIE Research Internship. See other posts in this series here.

It is truly extraordinary how conducting encompasses a vast range of approaches, techniques, and styles not only from what certain musics and instrumentations need and do not need, but also from people’s personal preferences, interpretations, and biases. For example, a conductor should not approach orchestral conducting in the same way one approaches choral conducting or big band conducting. Because of the different instrumentations and the needs that these ensembles imply, one will usually find different conducting courses for these ensembles (Intro to Orchestral Conducting, Wind Ensemble Conducting Techniques, Choral Conducting II: emphasizing the ictus, etc…) Furthermore, one person’s style of conducting a Beethoven symphony can completely differ from another’s. This is one good reason why there is not one definitive recording of each symphony. In my opinion (as well as others), the ensemble is the conductor’s instrument.

But can the same be said about contextual conducting as it is used with solfege? As stated in a previous post, contextual conducting is a method in which the conductor chooses hand gestures and specific subdivisions that best represent the music. To further elaborate on this idea, contextual conducting prompts the “energy” of subdivisions (energy is a term of Professor Scripp). For example, if one is conducting a sight-singing exercise in a 3/4 time signature, and encounters a beat one containing a dotted-eighth rest and a sixteenth note, if the conducting before this measure only required a normal pattern of quarter notes, then the pattern will change to include the eighth-note subdivision for the beat one of this particular measure. Additionally, whenever the music implies a need for a foundation from which a new energy should spring, one should change the pattern to reflect this energy. In essence, the conducting pattern changes to reflect the diverse contexts that the music implies. Hence, contextual conducting.

Professor Scripp emphasizes the importance of not only conducting while sight-singing, but also utilizing contextual conducting to further understand the placement of notes that may be slightly irregular (quick notes coming from a tie, syncopated, etc…). Also partly acting as a student, I have had the opportunity to try out the methods that Professor Scripp advocates and uses himself. Of course he has had much more experience than his students as he has been working in this realm for a while. He also teaches solfege, which is a great way of strengthening any knowledge that you already posses. I am amazed at his use of contextual conducting because, after trying it, I realize how difficult it is! It is hard enough to conduct in regular patterns and sight-sing simultaneously, but applying the changing patterns of contextual conducting along with sight-singing is a circus act to me!

For the sake of establishing a better context, most Americans do not grow up with solfege syllables as notes, and when Americans do, they usually learn a moveable-do system with “ti” instead of “si” for the note B. Therefore, when solfege is studied in American institutions, not only are the students required to learn a most-likely unfamiliar system, but also they are expected to become fluid and adept in this system while conducting. To perform an adequate sight-singing session, the student’s mind is required to sing with good pitch (which is rather difficult if you are not a singer, and do not have a good vocal range, and do not have good vocal technique), sing with correct syllables (which becomes tricky with key modulations, accidentals, transpositions, unfamiliar clefs, and of course quick notes), sing with correct rhythm, and conduct at the same time. The mind must be applied to four different processes simultaneously! Without contextual conducting, this process is hard enough. The idea behind conducting is that eventually one is supposed to know the patterns well enough to not think about them. The pattern serves as a metronome. However, when contextual conducting is applied, then the conducting and the rhythmic element of the sight-singing should become one entity.

What happens for me, however, is that I cannot apply all four elements simultaneously – pitch, syllables, and rhythm while singing, along with contextual conducting. It is difficult for me sometimes to concentrate on the syllables alone, let alone concentrating on the additional elements. Before continuing, I must admit that I do not actively practice these techniques. While I participate in the classes, I am officially not a student of this class, and am not required to keep a journal, take a final exam, practice the exercises, sing in class, and do other student tasks. Therefore, from my perspective, it is difficult for me to see how contextual conducting aids in the sight-singing process.

Sight-singing, by definition, is something that should not be “practiced” per se. Sight-singing is like sight-reading; the musician should be able to more or less reproduce certain notated musical ideas instantaneously. Like anything, sight-singing, as well as sight-reading, should be developed via hard work and study. However, the main goal should be to see a piece of music and play or sing it, nothing more, nothing less. Working on this goal leads to forward-motion on the paths towards other goals as well. But working on sight-singing should mean that the student wants to become better at instantaneous music production on his or her main instrument.

The added element of contextual conducting creates uncertainties for me. Firstly, in class, Professor Scripp has mentioned that there are different ways to execute contextual conducting. The method is not standardized, which creates one element of confusion. Secondly, even after practicing the contextual conducting, most of the students in the class still have not fully understood this concept. Thirdly, the students in this class practice their exercises to the point where their “sight-singing” coupled with contextual conducting is at a high-level. However, how much is memory involved in these “sight-singing” performances? Can the student produce an equally great performance of a difficult “sight-singing” passage without practicing it? Most of these concerns will be examined deeper in other blogs.

On the other hand, almost everything in music is possible if practiced long enough and correctly. Contextual conducting solidifies rhythm by placing difficult rhythms in an easier context. Imagine a piece of graphing paper with a complex line running horizontally across. The smaller the boxes are on the graph paper, the less complex the line becomes. Contextual conducting is a musical way of reducing the “size of the boxes.” Furthermore, contextual conducting strengthens normal conducting by adding an extra-musical element to an otherwise repetitious, emotionless pattern-beating routine. When Professor Scripp demonstrates his understanding and application of contextual conducting, he shows the students variations on how the different “energies” can be represented in the pattern. He also shows how they can be represented in other ways which corroborate with the expressive elements of music in general (for example, a breath, the widening of the eye, a sigh, a twist of the hand, etc…) The students consequently improve as singers, sight-singers, and conductors in the end; they improve as all-around musicians.

Another wonderful element to contextual conducting, which has not been examined at length in the classes that I have observed, is it can be used to change one’s rhythmic perception. For example, if difficult rhythms of a sight-singing exercise are mostly found in the second half of the measure, assuming the exercise is in 4/4, then the student may find it easier to imagine the exercise in a combined meter of 2/4 plus 1/4 plus 1/4. This altered rhythmic perception not only makes the contextual conducting easier, but it does not change the result for the listener. In fact, it will strengthen the accuracy of rhythm, and ultimately the execution of the exercise. Such a skill is just another version of reducing the “size of the boxes”, and it can be applied to any piece of music. This skill will prove helpful for vocalists singing Crumb, Berg, Ligeti, for pianists playing Carter, Boulez, Stockhausen, Ives, Nancarrow, and for any other musician performing works with complex rhythmic elements that are not found in most music before the 20^th century.

In the end, what can be done about contextual conducting? Standardize it and teach it one way? This will not prove useful. Conducting itself is not standardized, so contextual conducting cannot be either. Completely eliminate it from the curriculum? That would prove detrimental to the sight-singing program at New England Conservatory, to Professor Scripp’s work (as well as other professors), and the students who have adopted this technique into their practice. Perhaps contextual conducting should be taught in a manner that provides students with an option to use it. Therefore, the student will gain what the student can gain from it without having it affect his or her grade if this technique is not fully internalized.

NewsBlog Editor’s Note: This post is the second of a series written by CMIE Research Fellow Anthony Green, as part of the documentation for Green’s CMIE Research Internship. See other posts in this series here.

Perfect pitch, absolute pitch, relative pitch - all terms thrown around meaning basically one thing: if someone says to someone else, “Sing an ‘A’!” this person can probably do it. Of course, some can do it more accurately than others. More often than not, such a skill is used by those born with this unique ability. For instance, some of my friends have such a sensitive perfect pitch that they can name the notes of the partials of a tire squeaking as it skids. These very same friends of mine have great intonation when performing, and can tune guitars and other string instruments without a piano, a tuning fork, a pitch pipe, an electronic tuner, or other devices which may or may not be readily available when tuning. 

Can solfege be a step in developing such a unique technique? According to a study done by the University of California, San Francisco, absolute or perfect pitch is defined as thus: “Absolute pitch, commonly referred to as perfect pitch, is an intriguing cognitive trait involved in music perception and is defined as the ability to identify the pitch of a musical tone without an external reference pitch. To be considered an absolute pitch possessor, an individual must have the ability to identify pitches accurately and instantaneously.” It is a purely cognitive ability, which implies that it is a trait relating to one’s process of perception and memory. 

In Professor Scripp’s Solfege for Singers class, the students are asked to remember “themes” - the beginning tonic excerpts of popular, tonal works - in different keys. Over the course of this semester, most of the sight-singing exercises used have been in the key of C-major. For this key, the student used a Mozart theme from the Marriage of Figaro - sol-sol mi, sol-sol mi, sol-sol fa re, fa-fa re, fa-fa re, fa-fa mi do. Such an easy melody, whether known before the class or learned in less than 10 seconds during class, has made for an extremely accessible C-major theme for one’s memory. Without having heard a note in the class, Professor Scripp will pull out an exercise, have the students examine it, then ask the students to “sing our theme in C-major.” Without fail, every student will more or less begin on the same note. And during the 3 or 4 seconds of singing the theme, the tonic is eventually established and agreed upon. All of this is done without playing the piano, using a tuning fork, a pitch pipe, an electric tuner - in other words, “without an external pitch reference.” 

These observations have lead me to believe that a goal of solfege, relating to the one the class has already established of reinforcing one’s relative pitch, is to develop or discover an absolute pitch ability within oneself. I have not observed any discoveries in the class as of yet, but I have observed the development of an excellent pitch memory in a couple of students in the class. Knowing that absolute pitch is a cognitive ability, solfege can greatly aid in pitch memory to a point where one can ask someone else, “Do you have a G memorized?”, and this person can respond by singing the Marriage of Figaro theme’s first pitch. After this very basic step, two steps can be taken: 1) the solfege student can develop a excellent relative pitch, which would not only include the ability to sing any interval up or down from the memorized pitch, but also include the ability to reduce intervals to their shortest distances. For example, when I sing an A, I am inclined to sing an A4 in a falsetto. However, if I hear a E-flat2, then I need to either hear that note two octaves up or hear my A two octaves down. Such an ability has been worked on by the students in this class without directly naming this ability. (Professor Scripp encourages the students to jump octaves and sing different parts when sight reading polyphonic works.) And 2) the student can eventually memorize every pitch, and exercise this pitch memory to perfection. In a way, Professor Scripp advocates this method above others, but his method is very subtle, and works on a subconscious level. While the students have not yet sang exercise in every major and minor key yet, Professor Scripp feels it is best to memorize pieces in every key. When this was stated in class, I thought that this would be difficult. But has a music student ever contemplated the amount of repertoire stored in his or her brain? Finding tonal repertoire in each major and minor key might not be as hard as one thinks, if one is a music student. Pianists - if you have played through the beginning of each prelude of the Well-Tempered Clavier, book I or book II, then you can easily develop absolute pitch. 

I must emphasize, however, that this was never directly stated in class, and it is not ever worked on directly in class. If one uses solfege as a method of pitch memory to develop a mild to strong absolute pitch ability, I highly suggest working with an external pitch device extensively in the beginning. I emphasize this because the “sol” in the Marriage of Figaro theme sometimes is a “sol-flat.”

Aside: throughout the semester, I have also briefly participated as a student. The class has helped me memorized an A, a G, an E, and a C. Consequently, when one of my choirs in Providence recently sang a cappella at an elderly person’s home and I did not bring my pitch pipe, we survived.

This Fall marks the beginning of several changes we’re making to the CMIE Guided Internship program at NEC.

One of the most exciting developments is that Guided Internships are now being formally recognized by the Conservatory’s Registrar; this means that students who successfully complete internships will get those internships listed on their academic transcript. To register for a guided internship, students should meet with me prior to their academic advising appointment and present a Guided Internship Proposal. Upon acceptance and review of the Guided Internship Proposal, Larry Scripp and I will sign a Special Enrollment Permission Form that the Registrar uses. Registering an internship with the CMIE Office and the Registrar guarantees some very important things:

1. Your internship meets CMIE program guidelines;
2. You promise to complete your Guided Internship within the semester of registration;
3. Your internship will count towards the CMIE Concentration;
4. You will receive credit for your internship on your academic transcript

IMPORTANT: These guarantees only apply if you register for your internship in advance of doing it. From this point forward, you can no longer tell us about your internship “after the fact” and expect to receive credit for it. Also, all internships MUST be registered for by the completion of ADD/DROP period; we cannot honor requests or proposals past the Conservatory’s ADD/DROP period for the semester that the internship work is planned for.

Other exciting guided internships await in new partnerships we are forming with our community partners. Through a new relationship with the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, we are able to offer MIE students opportunities to work with Boston’s Asian immigrant population. If you are interested in teaching workshops or classes that align music learning with American cultural studies and/or English Language Learning, or you would like to teach vocal music, come by the CMIE Program Office and speak with Randy Wong.

While helping New England Conservatory’s Music-in-Education students to prepare and propose Guided Internships, I have begun to realize the extent of complexity —but also, opportunity— involved in teacher education and the creation of teaching artists programs that serve schools and other learning communities. As MIE Program Coordinator, I am faced with the challenge of ensuring that student-proposed Guided Internships be productive experiences for both the interns involved (usually as teaching artists) and for the host organization (i.e, a community program or school) they are conducting their internship at.

Students who propose internship ideas come with a wide variety of prior teaching experiences, and the goals/expectations they set for their internships vary just as much. Most students, even freshmen, have some cursory teaching experience from high school; for example, being a mentor for younger high school peers. Others have already taught college-level courses, led summer programs, or consider themselves lifelong teachers. The MIE Guided Internship Program is designed, however, as a set of individualized/independent projects, and it is usually the approach to pre-planning and documenting the internship (and not the actual teaching component) that poses the most challenges. It is during these phases (internship pre-planning and documentation) that Guided Interns receive hefty doses of mentorship from MIE faculty and MIE Research Center staff.

To what extent can a research center, like the MIE Research Center, play in the planning of guided internships?

Respected educational policy researcher and teacher education advocate Gail Burnaford, of Florida Atlantic University (and formerly, Northwestern University), suggests that by taking a stance in “teacher action research,” teachers can reach new levels of understanding student learning, as well as reform their own understandings of personal learning processes. [Note: Incidentally, I've found Burnaford's article to be very useful, and refer to it often, throughout my own work.] Burnaford writes,

Professional development [Guided Internships] that assumes an action research stance . . . means taking small slices of music, small slices of classroom episodes or video vignettes, and with teachers and artists, asking, ‘What’s going on here? What is happening? What do we see?’ The process involves interviewing children and young people about the experience . . . Developing research questions that are valuable to both teachers and artists can promote dialogue and enrich the actual teaching that occurs when artists visit classrooms.

One of the initial steps we encourage students to take, when planning their Guided Internships, is the formulation of overarching inquiry or research questions. Even questions that seem simple at first (i.e., “What’s going on here? What do we see?”) may actually require quite a bit of planning to answer thoughtfully. Because the answers to these questions, and the questions themselves, are at the forefront of determining what kinds of artifacts are collected for the intern’s portfolio, it is important for interns to be very thorough as they plan the collection of said documentation.

Burnaford outlines some of the more common approaches to documentation:

The methods of teacher action research provide a number of ways to do this: collecting field notes, looking at video, doing a lot of listening to recordings—not of performances, but of student thinking, of children talking with each other about their art. These reflective methods (Wolf & Pistone, 1991) are intended to improve children’s performance and achievement; they are valuable as tools to contribute to evaluation of arts initiatives; they are also effective approaches to professional development for adults in schools.

Some interns, but not all, are able to see the immediate value of having these various artifact types in their internship portfolios, and are able to structure them into their lessons; for example, through class assignments, private lessons, conversations with mentor teachers or school/community center administrators, personal reflections, and MIE seminar work. For other interns (such as those less familiar with the portfolio process, or with less teaching experience), I direct them to the following passage from Burnaford’s article:

Gardner’s four roles for students who are engaged in the arts (Gardner, 1973) are useful frameworks for professional development of teaching artists, music teachers, and classroom teachers. The four roles, composer, audience member, critic, and performer give artists and teachers a frame or empty outline to use in order to ask the inquiry questions, ‘Why is the child doing this? What is she learning? What is he expressing? What did I as the teacher or artist do to help? What can I be doing next?’ . . . Teacher learning is the way in to student learning; teachers need to experience all four of those roles too.

I find Burnaford’s reminder (that Gardner’s four roles are also applicable to professional artists and educators) to be a refreshing and welcoming statement germane to the emergent workforce of artist-teacher-scholars: that the personae that result from the triangulation of Artistry, Teaching, and Scholarship truly incorporate all four of Gardner’s roles.

-Randy

Quotations used in this post are from “Crossing Boundaries: The Role of Higher Education in Professional Development with Arts Partnerships,” written by Gail Burnaford for the Journal for Learning Through Music (Summer 2003). Guided interns of all experience levels can benefit from readings found in the Journal for Music-in-Education and its previous incarnation, the Journal for Learning Through Music. Both journals are available for free, online at the MIE National Consortium’s website, www.music-in-education.org

Randy Wong is Program Coordinator for the Center for Music-in-Education and Information Architect for the Music-in-Education National Consortium.

One of my internships for the Music-in-Education Concentration has been working for Larry Scripp as a TA. Last spring I was TA for the MIE511: Guided Internship Seminar and this year I’ve been a TA for his two solfege classes: Solfege for Singers in the fall and Advanced Solfege this spring. Under his guidance, one of the evolving roles that I have played has been to facilitate an ongoing discussion and reflection about the class materials outside of class time.

One of the core inquiry questions of MIE is “how does reflection enrich the learning process?” and so my inquiry has been “how can electronic communications media — a blog or an email list — promote and facilitate class engagement and reflection in between class sessions? how can I as TA use these mediums to keep the class engaged in reflective learning?”

It is my experience that for a given amount of “class material” (time spent in class), a given student can extract a wide range of learning from it depending on how much processing and reflection you do. My most compelling example of this comes from my experiences with trumpet lessons: Eric Berlin, my teacher at UMass-Amherst, recorded all of our lessons and gave us a CD of them. Many weeks I would listen back to the tape of the week and write reflectively in a journal I kept for just that purpose and I was always amazed at the clarity, direction, and insight that this practice gave me. I literally got more out of every lesson because I picked up on a lot of stuff that I completely missed the first time through.

So, as a TA, I have been working to try to promote this kind of reflective inquiry in between class sessions. It’s actually much more challenging this year with the solfege classes which meet three times a week (Mon-Wed-Fri) rather than the MIE class last year which met just once a week: Because the class already meets three times, there is a sense of the class discussion carrying forward without need for this reflective thinking.

In thinking about the barriers to this kind of reflection, I feel that creating the artifacts of class material is the biggest barrier for most people: Creating recordings, video tapes, or taking notes of what happened in class. But with today’s technology, many of these things have recently become significantly easier! Using an Edirol R-09 all-digital, flash-based MP3 recorder and Blogger.com’s blogging software, I have been posting recordings and reflective summaries of every class session. For example, When people miss a class session, they now have several options. A visit to the class blog will give them the chance to listen to the entire class, read my class summary, and see any comments or questions that their peers have posted. In general, this means being caught up-to-speed on what has been going on. (Certainly they miss out on visuals, but I believe that someday soon the technology will be in place for flash-based digital cameras to take hour-long movies and transfer them as files across a USB cable in a reasonable amount of time).

You can visit the blog to see this in action:
http://nec-advanced-solfege.blogspot.com

The blog has also be a very effective way to distribute class materials. While we still hand out materials to the class, having a scanned copy or digital original of whatever we’ve handed out available on the blog has been immensely helpful to those folks who have missed class on one day or another.

Unfortunately, it has been very hard to encourage the “lateral discussions” which these technologies provide for: Both email lists and blogs have the capacity to enable rich and wide-ranging reflective discussions between class members about the topics. Each blog post can be followed up by comments and each email can spawn an entire discussion which everyone can participate in, and the participation by the all members of class would contribute to everyone’s learning and understanding. Shy of making it a hard, fast, and graded assignment, however, I’ve been largely unsuccessful in launching this kind of culture of class reflection.

So, these are two uses for digital technologies (recordings, blogs, emails) to enhance the class discussion along the principles of MIE, but I wonder what other ways can our 21st century tools enable a classroom to extend beyond the traditional meeting form and become a more effective and enriched experience? And what kinds of “best practice” strategies exist that encourage and facilitate more peer discussions through these mediums? Lastly, if there is a balance between “class material” and “reflection of class material” wherein the amount of learning is a product of both (material times reflection), what ratio of material to reflection is optimal? At what point does tilting the relationship toward reflection and discussion start to diminish the amount of learning?

In the spirit of lateral discussion, I’m especially interested in what MIE Interns think about these inquires. I know that both Kristen & Brynn (my fellow MIE Documentation Specialists) have been involved in this kind of work — or I’d be really excited to hear student perspectives from someone in one of these classes.

-Fred

Fred Sienkiewicz is a graduate trumpet performance major, MIE Concentration student, and Research Assistant for the Music-in-Education National Consortium.