Transforming Musical Objects

Smaller Cohorts

We are now meeting in smaller sections of 30 minutes per session; about 4-6 students per section rather than 8-10. This improves each class because we are able to give each student more individual attention, and the students receive more teaching time per capita. It also makes our collaborative learning activities more manageable.

Words of the Week

Each week we are now ‘theme-ing’ our classes using a Word of the Week. The idea came because we wanted to encapsulate each week’s lesson with one word, giving students the ability to define those words experientially.

This week’s word is “deliberately,” which Tyler defined as “doing something with purpose,” and how Beatrice defined as “being careful.” In violin class, this means that everything we do is decisive and with purposeful intent. When putting our bows on the string and preparing to play, we do so with exemplary posture (bunny ears holding the ‘carrot’, feet in the right position, etc.) and without making a single sound.

Student Portfolio Work

Our continued emphasis on reflection has resulted in multiple venues and opportunities for students to reflect. In addition to informal verbal reflection throughout the class session, we challenge students to express themselves in written and artistic forms. As described in these two previous blog posts (11/11/09 and 11/3/09), our unit and lesson plans are organized around the ‘Five Learning Processes’ framework (a.k.a. LQCPR—Listen, Question, Create, Perform, and Reflect). Though most of our previous written reflections have fallen into the last category, we are now starting to propagate the other sections too. In fact, we filed this week’s reflection activity under the Questions & Explorations section in student portfolios because of the explorative questions it poses:

• What does it feel like to play your violin with the bow?
• Did anything surprise you the first time you bowed your violin?
• What kind of sound or sounds would you like to make with your bow?

We have also started building time for our written reflection activities into our sessions. Part of this is more possible because our classes are now being taught in the Library. There’s an alcove that we use for the instructional portions of class, and then the students move to a large study table to write their reflections.

Multiple Entry Points for Rhythmic Study through Symmetry and Social Studies

In addition to using animals (zoo, monkey, buffalo, alligator) and Indian rhythms (cha, taki, gamela, takidimi), violin students are finding connections between  Violin students are using their school project heroes (e.g. Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, etc.) to explore the connection between word prosody and rhythms. More on this to come.

I want to see how documentation can affect me as artist (by carefully examining my practice and my lessons for French horn), a teacher (through examination of my work at Josiah Quincy Upper School), and as a scholar (through documentation of the Teaching Seminar and Warren Sender’s Improvisation in Music Education) as I build my portfolio.

The Music-in-Education Teaching Seminar at NEC, taught by Dr. Larry Scripp, met for the first time last Tuesday. The class is a little smaller this year than the first time I took the class in the spring of 09. Last year, the class seemed like a continuation of Intro to Music-in-Education, a class offered in the Fall by Professor Scripp. This time around, however, only two of the members of the Teaching Seminar – myself included – were members of the Intro class. Therefore, I feel like I saw the differences in the curriculum more clearly right from the start.

We spent most of the class talking, in one way or another, about ourselves as artists. Larry posed this simple question to all of us: “What is your persona as an artist?” Responses were surprisingly varied, ranging from being a vessel for a composer or character in performance to breaking down barriers in various cultural settings. One student found that his role as an artist changes from performing to composing to teaching. Later, a student that assists Professor Scripp in teaching his graduate solfége class explained his role and the responsibilities that come with that role as a teaching assistant. The following video presents parts of these discussions.

Exploring Persona

I predict that we’ll be diving into the artist-teacher-scholar framework very soon in this class, discussing our readings, teaching, and plans for teaching. This class brought up some interesting ideas for me. As a documentation specialist, I try to keep a very analytical eye toward what’s going on. As a horn player, I look for simplicity. As an artist, I try to constantly expand my horizons. As a teacher, I look to help others expand their horizons or develop their own personas. I wonder how valuable it is to be able to separate and put together one’s own roles in life. This is a topic I look forward to exploring as the semester continues.

I don’t know if it’s because of the holiday spirit or the emotions that come with the “end of the year,” but I am truly grateful for each person on our Music Plus Music Integration Team at Atrium: Beatrice, Randy, Michael, Linda, Susan, and Larry. When we arrived at Atrium in the morning, I was relieved to find all the student violins lined up in order. This made my job easier to tune and put the shoulder sponges on each of them, which did take about 20 minutes. Randy  worked on the PA system and setting up the two video cameras, one floor and one roaming. Michael made sure the each child has a foot chart and place on the risers.

After everything was all set up, Randy asked Larry and I to say a few words on video, in anticipation of the event. We had a good time, doing different takes and speaking from different angles. We even got to interview a violin parent who was nervous but super excited about the performance.

The whole Atrium Winter Solstice Assembly program opened up with the Explorers class, and I could tell that they were really excited as we stood in line to enter the Hall. But when they got to their violins, they immediately sat down (they still need to work on their listening skills as we told them to stay standing). After a few minutes, they held their violins in rest position and started filing on the platforms. I was a little nervous for them because they had no idea was going to happen in the next few minutes. Larry, Randy, and I had made some changes to our performance because we wanted to show the PROCESS of what we are going to do. So Larry opened with vocal solfege warmup with scales and short call and response segments. The kids responded and sang very well (they have such sweet soft voices!) and to my surprise and delight, Larry took the assessment one step further: instead of having them imitate what he sang, he pointed to syllables on the matrix and they sang the melody back. Amazing. Next, I did my segment with the rhythm cups and explained to the parents the purpose of this. The culmination activity was to sing Re and La in different rhythms shown by the cups along with a recording of Pachelbel’s canon. It was a great 3 minute show and we ended with the parents singing along to a Re scale and ending with a ringing “Cha….” I loved their finishing choreography!

I think some cool ideas to expand on this would be to split the group into teams and have each one sing a different rhythm that ties in with the symmetry unit. Larry also suggested having them pluck Re-La but sing the scale to Pachelbel. I want them to march so their inner rhythm is strong. So many things to work on and so very exciting! Next year we will definitely tackle the bows.

This will be a compilation video made by Randy this week which will summarize and zoom in on the key points of the violin pilot program. I think it was a big hit with the school, teachers, and parents. We look forward to more violin-ing next year!

Following the symmetrical theme, we introduced the idea of a symmetrical melody — a melody that sounds the same when sung both forwards and backwards. For homework we asked each student to create their own symmetrical and asymmetrical composition, which will be sung in class next Friday! Maybe all of them will end up on the hallway walls in school! It’s so exciting….

Without a clear idea of what was going to come of our improvisation, we began by doing an inventory of the sounds we had in the group and brainstormed ideas of what they might represent in a plot-based improvisation.  With some clicking, lots of key rings, and the help of voices, we came up with a composition telling the story of a 20-car pile-up on a busy highway.

The high schoolers had a great time with the shapes game the 8th graders did last week.  Speaking of the 8th graders, they began small group compositions.  I gave each group the following paper:

Your group’s composition should include:

• Clear examples of legato, staccato, accents, crescendo and decrescendo.
• The composition should highlight a recurring shape, just like we did in the game last week.
• Everyone’s piece should begin and end in rhythmic unison, but should break from it in between.
• Similar to the shapes game we played last week, shape, articulation, and rhythm are more important than precise pitches.

They got to work right away (something that usually takes  a significant amount of coercion) and both their teacher and I were thrilled by their enthusiasm with the project.  As usual, the bell rang too soon, so they’ll continue their work next week until they’re ready to perform.