Notes from the Staff: Recent Episodes
uTheory
Conversations about music pedagogy, music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.
Leah Sheldon shares tips for teaching intonation, even when working with beginning students.
Chapters:00:00 Introduction to Notes From the Staff
In this opening chapter, Leah Sheldon and Greg Ristow introduce the podcast and its focus on music theory, ear training, and music technology. They invite listeners to engage with the show by sending comments and episode suggestions.
01:06 Leah’s Background in Music Education
Leah shares her journey in music education, detailing her experience from teaching elementary general music to her current role in middle school instrumental music. She emphasizes the importance of teaching intonation at various educational levels.
02:01 Introducing Intonation
The discussion turns to the timing of introducing intonation when teaching beginners, with Leah explaining her approach to teaching it as early as possible. She highlights the need for students to produce a clear tone before focusing on intonation.
03:00 Tuner vs. Ear
Leah discusses the pros and cons of using tuners versus relying on the ear for intonation. She explains how both methods can be beneficial but emphasizes the importance of developing students’ listening skills.
04:57 The Importance of Ear Training
Leah outlines her sequence for teaching students to tune themselves in an ensemble, starting with ear training. She discusses the gradual progression from simple pitch recognition to more advanced tuning techniques.
06:47 Exercises for Intonation Practice
Leah shares specific exercises to help students practice intonation, including the classic ‘F around the room’ exercise. She explains how this exercise helps students develop listening skills and blend their sounds.
10:00 The Role of Tone in Tuning
The conversation shifts to the significance of tone quality in achieving good intonation. Leah explains how a clear tone is essential for blending sounds effectively within an ensemble.
12:25 Using Drones for Tuning
Leah introduces the concept of using drones in tuning exercises, emphasizing the importance of singing before playing. She explains how this technique helps students internalize pitch and improve their intonation.
16:56 Waterfall Tuning Technique
Leah describes the waterfall tuning exercise, where students join in one by one to create a blended sound. This method encourages students to listen closely to their neighbors and adjust their pitches accordingly.
18:55 Chaos to Calm Exercise
Leah shares the ‘chaos to calm’ exercise, where students start by playing any note and then transition to a designated pitch. This fun exercise helps students practice tuning while also fostering ensemble cohesion.
22:02 Engaging the Whole Group
Leah introduces the ‘Who’s in Tune’ exercise, which engages the entire group in assessing intonation. This interactive activity encourages students to listen and respond to their peers’ tuning.
25:04 Understanding Tuning Tendencies
Leah discusses the importance of recognizing individual tuning tendencies and how to address them. She suggests using tuning tendency charts to help students become aware of their specific intonation challenges.
30:41 Advanced Tuning Techniques
Leah shares advanced exercises for experienced players, including building chords during the ‘F around the room’ exercise. She emphasizes the importance of practicing intonation within a musical context.
TranscriptTheme Song
These are the notes from the staff where we talk about our point of view, and we share the things we're gonna do. And we hope you're learning something new, because the path to mastering theory begins with you.
Greg Ristow
Welcome to Notes From the Staff, a podcast from the creators of You uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.
Leah Sheldon
Hi. I'm Leah Sheldon, head of teacher engagement for uTheory.
Greg Ristow
And hi. I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and associate professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory.
Leah Sheldon
Thank you, listeners, for your comments and episode suggestions. We love to read them, so send them our way by email at notes atutheory. com. And remember to like us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Greg Ristow
Today, our topic is teaching intonation and leading us through this is our very own Leah Sheldon who is quite an expert herself in teaching intonation. Leah, for our listeners who may mostly know you, from uTheory, tell us about the other part of your life.
Leah Sheldon
Sure. So I also teach middle school instrumental music. I started out over 10 years ago teaching elementary general music, kindergarten through 4th grade. I did that for 6 years before I moved into the world of instrumental music. And now my current position is 4th through 8th grade instrumental music, large and small group lessons and one ensemble.
Greg Ristow
Awesome. Can you teach intonation at such an early age and level?
Leah Sheldon
You can always teach or fix intonation. There can there's always something that can be done, but, yeah, it looks different at different levels. That kinda leads me into the first thing I wanted to talk about, you know, do you teach intonation right from the very beginning or do you wait and introduce it a little bit later? And how do you decide that? There's a case to be made for both sides. In my experience, I try to introduce it as early as I can. With instrumental music, your students do have to be able to produce a clear tone before you can really start working on intonation.
So there are some cases where maybe I wait a little bit longer to get into that. But as soon as the students are playing characteristic sounds, we start talking about it. We start addressing it right away.
Greg Ristow
That's great. You know, I think this will be a this is such a good follow-up to our last episode where we talked about, tuning systems and these subtle differences between, say, equal temperament and just intonation and various other tuning systems, and I'm really excited to hear, how you, lead your students to be able to hear these things and and I may pop in and share some of my thoughts from the choral world as well.
Leah Sheldon
Leah. That sounds great. The other piece that comes up early on in intonation is, do you use a tuner or do you teach your students to rely on their ear? And I think there's great cases to be made either way here. When you start out using tuners right off the bat, your students have a visual. They can see if they are sharp, if they are flat. They can see how sharp or how flat and that in some ways helps them develop their Leah.
But they may start to rely on the tuner and maybe not use their ear as much as they could be. Tuning by ear at first takes more time. The students need to practice it to develop that skill and get good at it. But in the long run, they'll have more independence and they will be more accurate at identifying whether they're sharp or flat and how to adjust their pitch.
Greg Ristow
So way back when I was in band, which, you know, is in the 19 nineties, at the time we had one big tuner in the front of the room and that was kind of how that worked. It doesn't really look like that anymore. No.
Leah Sheldon
It does not and I recommend if you are going to have your students use tuners, get a clip on tuner or like some sort of clip device that plugs into a tuner. I know Korg makes makes these or there's even like a a Peterson clip that can plug into a tuner and, Snark is another popular brand. But having the tuner clip right onto the instrument, will help the accuracy of what the tuner is hearing and showing the students.
Greg Ristow
And and then can they see even when they're playing at the same time how their own intonation is?
Leah Sheldon
Yes. Exactly. That's how that works. And then there's probably a case for, you know, unplugging then at certain times and to be able to hear the intonation of others. But, yeah, that that gives you a lot more flexibility if you're going to use tuners.
Greg Ristow
Mhmm. Oh, that's great.
Leah Sheldon
Yeah. But before we even get to the the tuner piece of that, you have to start with ear training. So this is kind of my my sequence for how I I get to the point of students being able to tune themselves in an ensemble. You have to start with the ear training piece. And when you're teaching beginners, I'm talking 4th graders, sometimes that's just as simple as, is this higher, is it lower, and making it really obvious. Right? Playing on a piano, playing on an instrument, giving the students opportunities to to hear and answer out loud.
This is higher, this is lower. Right? Just same or different. Then you have to teach the students how to adjust their voice or their instrument or what it is they need to be able to do. They're not gonna be able to tune until they can bring the pitch up or bring the pitch down. Once they can do that, I move on to this is where I start really letting them gain their independence. So putting on a drone and letting them tune themselves to a drone.
Then from there, we we work on group tuning, and that's just like tuning with the people right around you, right next to you, tuning with your neighbors, then tuning with your section, and then finally tuning across the ensemble. So that's that's kind of my layout and that does not happen overnight. This is over the course of years.
Greg Ristow
No. I can I can imagine? Right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just the the control of of embouchure or I I or whatever the mechanism is on the instrument to, to make fine adjustments to to pitch that takes some time to learn.
Leah Sheldon
Absolutely. And I I'm not gonna go into the details of what that is for every instrument. There are lots of wonderful podcasts out there that do that just for the band directors who wanna hear that. But that that is essentially Leah students need to be able to adjust the pitch and know how they're doing it, not just, like, pushing more air and hoping on a whim that it's going the way they want it to go. So once they can really do that, then they could really start tuning on their own.
Greg Ristow
Yeah. There's a similar series of exercises in the vocal world that, comes from Robert Shaw, where, who is an American choral conductor of the 20th century. And, he would have his whole choir sing a note that's really comfortable in everyone's range, say, like, an easy f natural, kinda middle of the voice. And over the course of 4 beats, have the entire ensemble gradually slide up a half step. The idea being that, you know, on halfway through on the 3rd beat of those 4th of those 4 beats, you would have reached a quarter tone above. And you really it's a fun it's a challenging exercise. But you start to hear the really fine innards of the half step.
But more than that, you start to learn actually Leah do I have to do what am I doing physically that causes the pitch to go up or down when I sing. Singing is in some ways so, so natural that we don't necessarily think about the mechanics of it, but those kinds of exercises can help help, help us learn how to do that sort of thing.
Leah Sheldon
Right. And the the other thing is that the students need opportunities to do it. They need opportunities to practice. And so we, as the teachers, have to provide that. Intonation is not always something that they can do on their own at home when they're practicing.
Greg Ristow
They can if they have a tuner or an in tune
Leah Sheldon
piano, but the They can if they have a tuner or an in tune piano but but to really get good at it, they need opportunities to do it and we have to provide that in the rehearsal. So I kinda have a little list of my regular go to exercises. If maybe I could take you through some of those that, get at ways to let the students practice hearing intonation.
Greg Ristow
That sounds great.
Leah Sheldon
Alright. So for any band directors who are listening, you're gonna know this one. This is the classic f around the room. For someone who's not a band director, this is just an exercise where the students are passing a note around the ensemble. But the point is for it to sound like one continuous note. So you're gonna select a student to start and you want this to be a student who's going to play with clear tone, nice strong supported sound, really set a good model for the group. That student is gonna hold the note for 4 beats all the way to the downbeat of 1 of the next beat. Right? We're not cutting anything short.
We don't want any gaps in the sound. The next student then picks up that note and carries it. So if, for example, we're playing concert f, that's a great starting place for this exercise. So first student plays concert f, holds it for 4 beats. The next student comes in, plays it, hold it for 4 beats, and so on. And the point is to match to fit into the sound of the person before you. And you can do this one at a time or you can do this by sections.
But I generally start with low sounds. 1st, start with your tuba and work your way up. I find that that this when this it teaches the students to listen down. It also helps the the higher pitched instruments to fit into the sound, into the tone of a a lower pitched instrument versus the other way around.
Greg Ristow
Oh, that's great. And that would also work for singers as well.
I don't know. I've never thought to do that. How wonderful.
Leah Sheldon
And you you can do it like I said, you can do it with individuals. You can do it with sections. You can also do it with or without a tuner Ristow your 1st student off with a tuner and then everybody else by ear. So you can really make this work for wherever your ensemble is or whatever it is you wanna work on with them blending in the section or tuning without a tuner. This is that's a wonderful way to do it. It does take a little bit of time if you have a large ensemble, But every time a student plays, the rest of the students in that group get an opportunity to hear whether it is sharp, flat, or in tune.
So it's great for everyone.
Greg Ristow
That's great. You mentioned when you start this off, you mentioned, starting with a student who has a nice clear tone. Can you talk about the role of tone in tuning?
Leah Sheldon
Yeah. So, a student who plays with an airy sound or a fuzzy sound, even if their pitch is right on, it is going to be really hard to blend that sound even just with 2 students. You're not gonna achieve that that classic one blended sound if one sound is airy and fuzzy or buzzy or standing out in some way.
It's going to happen. We all have students that don't play with that clear tone especially with the beginners at first yet. So sometimes it's sort of a give or take. It's okay, we're we're gonna do this even though maybe these handful of kids aren't quite there yet but that also gives them an opportunity to hear, oh, that's what I should sound like or or oh, I don't sound that way, but if I, you know, firm my corners up, they're like like so and so always tells me to do and then, oh, I it works, you know. So, again, playing one at a time, it gives students opportunities to hear what they should or shouldn't do.
Greg Ristow
That's great. And and the physics behind that, maybe it's just worth mentioning that, you know, when we when we talk about a a fuzzy sound or an airy sound, what we're saying is that there's more there's more noise, there's more out of tune overtones to the sound, rather than than, just primarily the the tuned overtones of the instrument, which is what makes it harder to tune to.
Leah Sheldon
Exactly. Exactly. And if your students are ready for that, tell them that. Explain that to them. And and if they're beginners, maybe don't go there just yet, but
Greg Ristow
Right. Yeah. Excellent. F around the room.
I love it. What's next?
Leah Sheldon
Next, this is just the drone. I don't even say anything. I just put the drone on and the students know what's going to happen.
Greg Ristow
Do you tell them what note it's on?
Leah Sheldon
Oh, yes. Of course.
But, generally, we're always tuning to the almost always tuning to the same pitch in our ensemble, and I would imagine that, you know, in any other ensemble, you you kinda build your routines and your students know. Right?
Greg Ristow
Mhmm.
Leah Sheldon
So you turn the drone on, tell them remind them which pitch they're playing. And then I have them sing it before they play anything. You need to sing or for those instrumentalists who are really resistant to using their vocal chords. Sing it or it first and then play. Again, this can be done individually if you have the time for that. It can be done one section at a time. It can be done with the whole group.
It can be done with just your first chairs first and then the whole group. But, again, the point is giving the students opportunities to hear. If they're going one at a time or if you have a smaller group playing first, then the rest of those sitting in the ensemble can hear whether it's in tune or not and how they're adjusting it and bringing it into tune.
Greg Ristow
And what is what is the role of singing in that process? What does that do that if you skip singing, you miss?
Leah Sheldon
Singing centers the the pitch for the students. Honestly, it's just something that I do because it helps. When I don't do it, the students do not play as Intune at first. It helps them hear it. It helps them internalize it. And then when they play on their instrument, they can hear a lot faster if they are above or below the drone if they've just sung it and internalized it.
Greg Ristow
Mhmm.
Leah Sheldon
Remind the students that when they're playing with the drone, that their sound should disappear when they are playing the same pitch. That's okay. A lot of times, beginners at first, you know, the first time we do this or the first time they're really truly playing in tune with someone, they say, I can't hear myself or my instrument stopped working. And we say, no, it's working fine. That's what you want. We're looking for that. You're fitting into the sound.
Greg Ristow
We have the same thing that happens in singing a lot and, that when, you know, when you're singing with someone else, it's a very different experience from if you're singing by yourself. And there's a psychoacoustic effect that's called the Lombard effect. And this is this is, something that happens anytime you're in an environment where it's noisy or loud. We when it becomes harder for us to hear our own voice, we naturally speak louder and louder. So think about a restaurant, maybe you show up early for dinner, there aren't that many people there and gradually more people show up. You gradually speak more and more loudly. And it's a very natural thing that if we can't hear our own voice, we we work to compensate that.
And so when you're doing this kind of exercise with drones, which is equally great for singing, it's sometimes worth reminding singers exactly as you said that it's okay to to to let your sound disappear into this, to sing at a really comfortable dynamic. And one trick I like sometimes to use is to say, if you can't hear your own voice, just bring a hand up to your ear and sort of cup it forward, and then you'll suddenly just hear your own voice a little bit more in that mix.
Leah Sheldon
Oh, yeah. That's really great, to be able to use your ear. Of course, we can't do that with our hands as instrumentalists, but I never thought of that.
Greg Ristow
You've got you've got your hands busy.
Leah Sheldon
Yeah. Yeah. And a lot and along with that, another great exercise to do with the drone is to to play Remington's, if you have a more intermediate or advanced ensemble, because if you start on the notes, say, were concert f, right, and then you play up or down a half step probably, you know, and then return.
Greg Ristow
Can you can you just demonstrate Remington really quickly so
Leah Sheldon
we can Yeah. So we're let's let's say we're starting on concert f. Right? And we're starting on Oh, then we're down a half step then back up. So so working down.
Greg Ristow
So you're basically going down a diatonic scale.
Leah Sheldon
Exactly. Or or chromatically, however your group is gonna do it. But every time you return to that starting pitch, your sound should should disappear into the sound of the drone. Mhmm.
Greg Ristow
It's sort
Leah Sheldon
of like a magical thing that happens every time you move notes, you hear, you know, the sound you've it feels different and then it disappears again. It's a very once your ensemble does it well, it's a really, cool effect.
Greg Ristow
Mhmm. Nice. Okay. So we've had we've got Efra in the room. We've got the drone. What's next?
Leah Sheldon
Okay. So I call this waterfall tuning.
I don't know why. It just started that way at a previous district where I taught. The students knew what it meant, but so this is what it is. You just have one student start first and you just add on right down the line. So one student plays, generally, that student is looking at a tuner. Once that student is in tune, they glance over at the student next to them and then that student joins in but the first student keeps playing. Once their sound is in tune or blended then the next one.
So all the way down the row. At first, I find I have to cue the students, like, when the next one should come in, when the first two are in tune or when the first three are in 3 and then cue the next one. Eventually, they'll be able to do that on their own. And, again, you can do this with individuals. You can do this with sections. You could do just first chairs first, then the, you know, then down the line for every Sheldon, however it works for your group.
Greg Ristow
Great. Great. Okay. Waterfall tuning. Yeah. Awesome.
Leah Sheldon
Okay. So then I this next one, I just call it in and out. It's just if we're if we've got something that's out of tune, we we're playing a chord, it's out of tune. Right? We fix it, we tune it. I have them play it in tune. I tell them purposely, let's go out of tune.
Let's all let's all go sharp or let's all go flat, right, on a cue. And then on my second cue, bring it back in tune. It gives them an opportunity to feel to, like, to learn to feel, oh, that's what was wrong with it.
That's when it was wrong. This is how we fix it when we get here.
Greg Ristow
That's great. What a wonderful what a wonderful experience too of of making it okay to do it wrong so that you so that you have that so that you know the difference in how they feel.
Leah Sheldon
Absolutely. And and that kinda goes along with when you're teaching the students how to raise and lower pitch on their instrument. You have to let them do it wrong too. Okay. Let's all do let's, you know, bring it up too high, bring it down too low. That's part of it. They have to be able to know what wrong is to identify it and fix it.
Greg Ristow
That's great. That's great.
Leah Sheldon
Yeah. So that's just a simple quick one, right when you're in the middle of rehearsal, something's out of tune. Ristow, fix it, play it out of tune, bring it back in tune. Easy fix. Move on.
Greg Ristow
Excellent.
Leah Sheldon
Going along with that one, chaos to calm. Mhmm. This is this is what I usually generally do, like, at the beginning of a rehearsal after we've warmed up after we've tuned. We get you know, everybody's in tune, warmed up, playing with nice warm tone. I tell them they may pick any note, any note that they can play comfortably on their instrument and play with nice sounds, so no blasting trumpets. And then that's what they're gonna play and hold on the first note, and I just cue them and we hold it for a good little while, at least 4 beats. Then on the second cue, we all go to a given pitch.
Let's say concert b flat. We're all gonna go to a concert b flat. The first couple times you do this, that b flat is not going to be in tune and it's gonna take a little while to settle in. But the more you do it, the more quickly it will settle in. And then once once your students can go from this chaotic sound to Leah nice in tune concert b flat or concert f, then you can start working on balance. Right? Okay. Let's also balance this while we're here.
And then you can start tuning to chords as well instead of just all going to a concert b flat, like, let's go to this chord and tell each group what pitch they're gonna play and what they're gonna land on. But, it's an opportunity for them to listen and make adjustments as quickly as possible. And they think it's fun. They think it is so fun to play have the whole ensemble playing whatever note they choose. And just to be clear, everybody's playing a different note.
Greg Ristow
Right. Right. I love I love the name too, chaos to calm.
Leah Sheldon
Yeah. As soon as you say chaos
Greg Ristow
That's great.
Leah Sheldon
They know it's coming. Right?
Greg Ristow
Yeah. Yep. I I've done this exercise a lot with choirs. Although typically, you know, we'll pick a note, we'll call it do. And I'll say, now pick any soul any other solfege and you you sing your own. And then on the second cue, we all come back to do. Typically, you know, a choir is gonna pick solfege within the major scale, so you wind up with sort of a pan diatonic thing, which is really beautiful.
But also but that's great. I'm gonna try this without even saying that. Just say, okay, let's all sing Lou. And then on a cue, pick any other note so it can be pure chaos because I think that must be great that the crazy chromaticism of what is that? And for singers, especially to do that, to pick any other note and also hold on to the sound of the note we started on in the context of all that chaos is a great exercise.
Leah Sheldon
Yes. I should have said that.
Generally, the chaos to the to calm the calm notes, the concert b flat is gonna be what we use to tune to. So if you tune to concert f, make concert f your resolution note.
Greg Ristow
Mhmm. Nice. Nice. Cool. What's next?
Leah Sheldon
Okay. So I just call this who's in tune, and this is a way to engage your whole group. Again, I have to think about the percussionists who are, you know, not necessarily tuning in the same way that the ensemble is, but they also need to develop that ear. They do have times where they need to be able to tune, such as tuning the timpani. So this is a great way to engage everybody in the group. You have one student or one section just play at a time, generally with a drone so that the group can hear whether the student is in tune or not. And then just simply have the rest of the group show whether they're in tune.
If they're sharp, they're pointing up. If they're flat, they're pointing down. And if they're in tune, they're just holding their hand out straight and flat to show that there are no waves. They are in tune.
Quick side story. When I first did this, I used to have them do thumbs up for sharp, thumbs down for flat, and we realized very quickly that was confusing because sometimes students interpreted the thumbs up as it's good. Move on. Oh, of course. So, of course, now I have them point up for Sheldon Town for Flat. But, yeah, the everybody in the group has to listen and answer.
Greg Ristow
That's great. And I love, you know, you you as you mentioned, do this with the drone. Right? That that these things keep tying back to having something to listen to, and and that relates so much constantly. Right? When we're actually making music with other with other people, we're making compromises to adjust to each other's sound. And so, you know, so with with that constant listening element, whether it's a drone or the person who's just played right before you, you're really building those ear skills throughout.
Leah Sheldon
Yeah. And I think that's something that's harder to do if you are just simply using tuners. Again, your ensemble is gonna sound great, and your students are getting that visual reinforcement. But then they're not gonna be as independent in making those adjustments by ear. Another thing is sometimes students will say, oh, well, I I just tuned to a tuner, and it said I was good there, but now I don't sound good in the group. And, you know, that's where we bring up the conversation of tuning can be relative, like you were just mentioning that we have to adjust to what's going on around us. You also lose that with the tuners sometimes.
So, letting the students truly hear what's happening and may maybe for example, we're, playing something that's got a very prominent xylophone part, and maybe your xylophone is a little bit older and is just a bit flat. And you've gotta if if the xylophone is playing a part that matches the oboe and the flute, then the woodwinds have to tune to the xylophone in that case.
Greg Ristow
Mhmm. Yep. Which is not an easy instrument to tune to.
Leah Sheldon
No. Especially if it's been dropped out of flight of stairs and rebuilt a couple of times and held together by rubber bands. Yeah. Right.
Greg Ristow
Yeah. I mean, to begin with, the overtones on a woodblock instrument are all over the spectrum and then yeah. It's like my nightmare. Change to a xylophone as a singer. Right?
Leah Sheldon
Yeah. But it happens.
Greg Ristow
Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
Leah Sheldon
The last thing that I that I can offer, if if you don't have time to be doing these tuning exercises in your ensemble all the time, which I beg you, please make time. But, something that you can do then to make up for that or you can do in addition to our tuning tendency charts. I do these twice a year. We do them at some point in the fall, pretty near the beginning of the year, and then again in the spring because students grow and change as players and their tuning tendencies may change. So basically, I I give students a chart that has all the acceptable notes in the range based on the level that they play at, and I tell them take this home or go in a practice room and play every note. It like a long tone, not short. Right? Hold it out and see where that note is on your instrument.
Does the tuner say that it's sharp, flat, or in tune? And mark that on the chart. It helps the students know before they even get to a note that what they Greg gonna need to do to help it be in tune immediately.
Greg Ristow
That's great. That's great. I I've never thought of doing this with singers, but, I mean, certainly I know, you know, in my own voice, the parts of my range where I tend to push sharp or sit a little bit flat and I just have to be aware of that. But what what a what a great, way of helping musicians to understand their own individual tuning challenges.
Leah Sheldon
Right. And sometimes it's also understanding the mechanics of the instrument. There are some notes on some instruments that are almost always gonna have a similar tendency. For example, when on the flute, once you start playing above c above the staff, those notes are gonna be really Leah. You know? High e, e flat, e natural, high f, high g. Those are almost always going to be very sharp.
And so just teaching the students that ahead of time knowing that they'll they're going to need to compensate for that. Same thing with the throat tones on the clarinet and, d on the saxophone and just knowing where those are ahead of time is really helpful.
Greg Ristow
Yeah. And it it raises also the I think the the related the related topic that, you know, sometimes a poor intonation is coming more from a technical issue than necessarily from an ear issue. And sometimes we we have to this goes back to where we started. We have to help students to know throughout their range how to adjust and correct intonation.
Leah Sheldon
Yes. And also as the teacher, keeping an eye out for that. I had a student just last week who is typically very in tune, plays in tune. She can adjust really well and almost always very accurately, and she was really out of tune. And then we put a tuner in front of her, and every note was different. It would start flat, sharp, flat all over the place. And she's never played like that before.
But I knew right away, okay, something is wrong with this instrument. Sure enough, the cork in the head joint was loose, and it was just sliding around in her head joint. So that had had come loose and had thrown everything off. So we have to always be looking out for those kinds of things too. And I'm sure that it's the same in the choral world.
Greg Ristow
Yeah. I've definitely had had the cork in my head joint come loose before. That's a great excuse. No. It's it is it is true that yeah. That we're always yes. We are always listening for whether there might be anything something wrong physiologically Leah but more commonly, just something wrong with how how a singer is approaching something technically.
Whether it's with the breathing or whether there's, you know, tongue tension that's just messing things up Ristow strap muscle tension. And there are all sorts of so many so many tuning things are are related to the wrong kind of tension at the wrong time.
Leah Sheldon
Yeah. So these are some very basic level things that you can do even with beginning students. Free more experienced players, I have a couple of quick things here I'd like to mention. If we could revisit the f around the room exercise again. Yeah. Once your students do that well with one pitch, then you can try f around the room in building chords. I usually start with a 5th.
So your first student plays their concert f, holds it for 4 beats. The next student, just as before, pass it to the next student. Once the next student is playing concert f, that first student now drops to concert b flat.
Greg Ristow
Mhmm.
Leah Sheldon
And the second student then, once they're done, passes the f on, then they drop to concert b flat. So you've now got a 5th going around the ensemble. And then once your students do that well, then adding the 3rd in there so you can you can build chords once your group is ready to start tuning at that level.
Greg Ristow
Yeah. That's great. That's great.
And, you know, it's related if we go back a couple of episodes to the interval ear training episode, a similar game that works really well with singers is to, you know, have one person just like that singing, say, a drone, and another person doing a Remington exercise around what that first person is singing, or taking turns, or both of them doing a Remington in the opposite direction from each other, but yeah, there there you're really getting to building not only intonation for a specific note, but intonation for all the different, possible intervallic combinations that could happen. Mhmm.
Leah Sheldon
Yeah. And another great way to address, tuning chords is play chorales. Do them with your group as a warm up as much as possible. It's a much more musical way of of hearing them, but then also they they have moving notes, there are moving parts, there are lots of other things that you can address but but chorales are great for intonation and giving them opportunities to hear it and practice it.
Greg Ristow
Yeah. And and and they have one of the things I love about chorales, right, is you get you get so many so many vertical moments that are major and minor triads that are really in different inversions, which are so good to practice tuning on. But you also get the wonderful dissonant passing tones and suspensions and sometimes appoggiaturas where you also can really learn to to practice and tune a note that's not part of the chord you're hearing.
Leah Sheldon
Mhmm. Yeah. And this is great for advanced groups. But if you wanna do this with with a beginning group or more intermediate group, I'm just gonna do a quick plug here for John McAllister on his website. If you just Google John McAllister, I don't remember the exact, web address at this moment, but
Greg Ristow
We can we can put it in the show notes also.
Leah Sheldon
Okay. That's a great idea.
He has tons of free resources. He's he's an educator and composer, and he writes great warm up and, like, basic building block exercises for ensembles. They are free, and then he composes very exciting backing tracks to them. So students, like, have fun playing long tones, but then they also have a context to play it within too if they're at home practicing. But he has I believe there's a set of 4 and then a set of 8 chorales for ensembles that it some of those are appropriate for a beginning level group, and they're free and they're on his website.
Greg Ristow
Oh, that's great.
Leah Sheldon
Yeah. And then and then finally, specific to band students, teach your students alternate fingerings for notes that are really out of tune and, let them use that to their advantage. So, like, throat tones on the clarinet, putting your right hand fingers down on the flute, high e natural, taking the pinky off, make sure they're not using the thumb b flat, high f, adding your, ring finger, finger 6. Those little changes can make some of the biggest differences.
Greg Ristow
Yeah. I I often wish as a singer that we had an alternate fingering we could, we could turn to or that little pinky slide on the trumpet. Right?
Leah Sheldon
Right. Yes. Oh, yes.
This is a little bit off topic, but Leah, teachers, from the very beginning, teachers of trumpet students, Leah, teacher trumpets, to use their ring finger. The slide goes out on d right from the very beginning. Otherwise, it's always going to be very, very sharp.
Greg Ristow
Leah, these are just these are just great. Any others you wanna share with us?
Leah Sheldon
I I could go on for days. I won't do that to you, but I'm wondering if you have anything that you also wanna tie in, to your world of choral conducting.
Greg Ristow
Yeah. You know, what what I find delightful is how similar these things are, and and it doesn't really surprise me. And I I think, like you, I would say that, I have I've known teachers who actually do teach intonation, and I've known teachers who don't teach intonation, and, generally, you can tell pretty quickly from listening to just a few seconds of of their ensembles playing, whether or not someone is actually teaching intonation. So, yeah. So totally Leah of these exercises that you've mentioned are are great within within the choral world also. We were just talking about chorales. I I love to use chorales, but I even more love to use, Renaissance music, when working on intonation with a choir because it's even more consonant and continuously consonant as a as a thing.
And, one of the things you know, you you talked about tone and and listening to your neighbor in the rest of the section. There's a great book by, Pavel Chechnikoff, the the composer composer of probably his most famous piece is, The Salvation is Created. And, the book is called The Choir and How to Direct It. And in the first chapter, he talks about teaching he talks about a hierarchy of listening. He talks about, listening to yourself and then listening to your neighbors and the people around you, and then listening to your section, and then listening to the entire ensemble. And he also talks specifically about what to listen for. So to listen for the pitch.
Am I singing the same pitch as my neighbors, as my section? Am I singing the same vowel? How is the balance of my voice within the people next to me, within my section, within the ensemble? And so you're gradually listening for all of these things from the level of just your own your own voice, your own instrument, working outwards to gradually taking in the entire ensemble Leah and and and raising your awareness of it. And and with the with the advice that when things start to go wrong, always start from the base of that pyramid, which is listening to your own voice, listening to the voices of those right around you, listening to your section, and working your way, to listening through to the whole ensemble, which I find is just, you know, oftentimes, especially Leah lot of times the singers I work with who have sometimes more solo vocal training than choral vocal training are really experienced at listening to their own voice, but may not be familiar. And and of course, when we practice, that's that's all we can do is listen to ourselves. Right? But they may not be familiar with with building up those stages and listening to, people around them.
So it's I think it's good to have that sort of hierarchy of of listening needs.
Leah Sheldon
Yeah. That's wonderful. And that's a great point about that we're so used to listening to ourselves. When I have an ensemble that gets to a point where they're really listening well to their section but they're not listening across the group, even if we've talked about what to listen for sometimes then I mix them up. I literally have them stand up and move around the room and they are allowed to sit anywhere as long as it is not next to the same instrument as their own. And that forces them now to have new neighbors to listen to. That forces them to hear other things they haven't heard before and after playing like that for a few moments or even a whole rehearsal, when they come back to their sections, they're able to listen so much better across the group because now they've heard it and they know what to listen for.
Greg Ristow
Yeah. Totally. Totally. Well, this is just great. I I feel like I have learned so many things now today from the instrumental world that I can't wait to to try out with my choirs. This is, just wonderful stuff, you know.
Leah Sheldon
And if I could just end with one final plug here, when it comes to intonation, the worst thing that you can do is nothing. Don't do nothing. Do something. As the teacher, make time to address it in your group. Even if you have beginners. I I had a group yesterday of 4 beginners and right off the bat, they just did not have great sound together. It was very out of tune, and I just looked at 2 of them and I said pull your pull your head joint out half of an inch, pinky width, and we played it again.
And that was it. We went on. They there was no why. There was no what what do I have to do this far.
I was just just pull this out. They immediately, they heard it. They said, oh, that sounds better, and we moved on. It took 2 seconds. And then instead of letting them play in that out of tune sound and getting used to it, now they were playing in tune.
So don't do nothing. And tell it to your students too. If they're playing and they hear something is not right but they don't know what to do, just do something. Bring your pitch up. If it got worse
Speaker 1
Yes.
Leah Sheldon
Go the other way. Bring it down, but don't sit there and do nothing. Do not assume that it's someone else's responsibility to fix the sound.
Greg Ristow
Yeah. Oh, I love it.
I love it. It reminds me, actually, an an exercise one of my Dalcro's teachers did with us. We, had us stand in a circle and, gave us a note and said, you know, make a major chord off this. Now close your eyes. And then she would tap one of us on the Sheldon. And it was that person's job to go a little bit out of tune. And everyone else, when they heard someone go a little bit out of tune, was to readjust to tune the chord to that person.
Leah Sheldon
Oh, I love that.
Greg Ristow
Which was
Leah Sheldon
I'm stealing that. I'm using that this week. Yeah. That's great.
Greg Ristow
Yeah. Thank you, Anne Farber. Yeah. So great. Awesome. Well, I think that's definitely plenty for this, and and what a what a joy. Leah, thank you so much for sharing these great ideas with us.
Leah Sheldon
Thank you for giving me the opportunity.
In this episode we explore the difference between just intonation and equal temperament, and take a field trip to learn about an organ with 15 keys per octave (instead of the usual 12), that makes it possible to play purely tuned chords in almost all of the keys.
Links:Tuning systems synthesizer: https://utheory.com/experiments/tuning-systems
Organ demo field trip video: https://youtu.be/A9Enpt8hREg
Chrome Music Lab: https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/
Intonation/Tuning System "Puzzle Pieces": https://casfaculty.case.edu/ross-duffin/just-intonation-in-renaissance-theory-practice/benedettis-puzzles/
Show Notes:0:00:20.9 - Introduction
0:01:03.5 - Topic Introduction: Tuning Systems
Greg Ristow explains the complexity of tuning systems and opens the discussion on various aspects related to them.
0:01:58.4 - Just Intervals and Singing in Choirs
Discussion on how choirs tend to move towards just intervals in their performances.
0:02:43.2 - Historical Context of Tuning Systems
We delve into the historical variations of the A note’s frequency and introduces the concept of just intonation tuning.
0:03:22.2 - The Law of Superposition and Sound Waves
Exploration of how sound waves interact and affect what we hear, using sine waves as an example.
0:07:00.8 - Beating in Sound Waves and Tuning
Demonstration of how close frequencies can create a beating effect in sound, relevant to tuning and intonation.
0:11:25.7 - Constructing Scales with Tuning Systems
Examining how scales can be formed using different intervals, like perfect fifths, and the issues that arise in tuning systems like Pythagorean tuning.
0:21:16.4 - Assigning frequencies to notes
A practical approach to assigning frequencies to piano notes, highlighting the challenges in tuning.
0:24:00.8 - The Pythagorean Tuning System and the Wolf Fifth
Understanding the Pythagorean tuning system, its implications, and the infamous 'wolf fifth.'
0:27:24.5 - Equal Temperament Tuning System
Discussion on equal temperament tuning, its compromises, and comparison with just intonation.
0:28:27.3 - Comparison of Major and Minor Thirds in Different Tuning Systems
Exploring how major and minor thirds differ in various tuning systems, including just intonation and equal temperament.
0:31:04.3 - Just Intonation and Chord Tuning
Demonstration of how chords are tuned in just intonation, contrasting with equal temperament.
0:35:56.5 - Field Trip to Oberlin's Brombaugh Organ
Greg Ristow and David Kazimir discuss the unique features of the Brombaugh Organ at Oberlin, demonstrating quarter-comma meantone tuning.
0:41:12.1 - Split Black Keys and Specialized Tuning on the Brombaugh Organ
Exploration of the organ's split black keys and how they impact tuning and playability.
0:47:08.4 - Musical Composition and Tuning Systems
Discussion on how composers historically wrote music with specific tuning systems in mind, affecting the musical expression.
0:49:00.3 - Wrapping Up
We preview the next episode's topic, focusing on teaching intonation, and Leah Sheldon's experience in this area.
Transcript:[music]
0:00:20.9 Greg Ristow: Welcome to Notes From the Staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.
0:00:35.4 David Newman: Hi, I'm David Newman. I teach voice and music theory at James Madison University, and I write code and create content for uTheory.
0:00:42.4 Leah Sheldon: I'm Leah Sheldon. I'm head of teacher engagement for uTheory.
0:00:45.7 GR: And I'm Greg Ristow. I'm the founder of uTheory, and I direct the choirs at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
0:00:51.9 DN: Thank you listeners for your comments and episode suggestions. We love to read them. Send them our way by email at notes@uTheory.com. And remember to like us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:03.5 GR: So, today our topic is tuning systems, and this one has taken us a while to put together, partly because we wanted to build some tools to show them off. It's a concept that I think a lot of us have heard little bits about, but maybe one that not all of us know mathematically and musically in a really deep way. So, I'm excited to talk about this one. Maybe to kick it off, what kinds of things come to mind when you think of tuning systems, Leah and David?
0:01:32.2 DN: Oh, man. I let the harpsichordists decide what tuning system we're using. [laughter]
0:01:37.7 GR: That's right, 'cause you worked so much in the early music world, yeah.
0:01:40.7 DN: I trust that whatever I'm hearing is the one that we're supposed to be using. But I think definitely when we're singing in choirs, and I think this is probably true no matter what choir you're singing in, that you find yourself moving towards just intervals for reasons that may become apparent soon.
0:01:58.4 GR: Which of course, brings up this concept of just intervals. And that's something we'll have to unpack for sure. Yeah. How about you, Leah?
0:02:05.5 LS: I know that there are different tuning systems, but what are the differences and when do you use which?
0:02:11.4 GR: And so, maybe we should just talk about what we mean when we say tuning systems first off. Actually, we're deciding what frequencies to assign to our 12 notes on the piano. We can call A440, but we don't have to, right. We know that A has moved throughout history and locations. In northern Germany in the Baroque era it was probably somewhere pretty close to 415. A little bit earlier than that, down in Italy, it was probably somewhere closer to 465.
0:02:43.2 GR: So, what we think of as very much being a fixed thing today hasn't always been a fixed thing at all. And I think a lot of us, as David mentioned, right, have heard when singing in ensembles or playing in ensembles that we should strive for using more of a just intonation tuning. And that's a whole thing to unpack as well. So, shall we dive into some of this? I want to apologize in advance, listeners. This is going to be a little bit of a math-heavy episode, but hopefully in a fun, nerdy kind of way, so.
0:03:22.2 DN: But too, I think even us, definitely as singers, because we don't have a fingering system for our voices. A lot of what we do is, is literally by ear and not mathematical or necessarily carefully considered except for singing it until it sounds right. And I mean you have some plans to show us why that is. [laughter]
0:03:46.7 GR: Yeah, yeah. So to start off, I thought for all of this to make sense, there's one central principle of physics that we have to understand. And this is called the law of superposition. Have you guys heard of this?
0:04:03.4 DN: I am not familiar with this.
0:04:05.3 LS: Me either.
0:04:06.2 GR: Okay.
0:04:06.7 DN: I feel like I should be.
0:04:08.1 GR: So the law of superposition has to do with what happens when you add two waveforms to each other. So, for instance, imagine that we were graphing a sine wave, right. And the sine wave starts from zero and goes up, then comes back down to zero, goes under, and then comes back up to zero, right. That's sort of the cyclical nature of a sine wave. Now, imagine if you took that same sine wave and shifted it over half of its cycle, which is to say that now the shifted version starts at zero but goes down and then comes up. So these two graphs are now mirrored.
0:04:47.9 DN: Right.
0:04:48.0 GR: What was up is now down and vice versa.
0:04:50.9 DN: Yes.
0:04:51.3 GR: Can you sort of picture that?
0:04:52.5 DN: We're moving at exactly half a cycle?
0:04:54.6 GR: Yeah. And so, picture a sine wave and its mirror image upside down.
0:05:02.8 DN: And this is how we used to remove lead vocals from recorded audio tracks.
0:05:08.7 GR: Good, David. Hold that thought. [laughter] Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Exactly, exactly right. So now if at any point in that graph we added the two graphs together, where we would have a positive number in the first graph, we'd have the same negative number in the second graph, and they'd add up to be zero.
0:05:25.5 DN: Yeah.
0:05:28.3 GR: Right. And so this is called the law of superposition, that to add waves together, you sum up the waves, and you get a composite wave. Now, how this works in sound is, sound is actually air pressure waves. It's air pressure traveling through the air, hitting our eardrum being translated into cycles. And if we were listening to a sine wave, and we mirrored it, and added exactly that same sine wave, as you said, David. This would cancel out the sine wave and subtract it from the sound. And this is, as you said, how we used to subtract lead vocals from recordings to make karaoke tracks. That's more usually done with machine learning these days.
0:06:19.6 DN: Right.
0:06:20.3 GR: It's also as David points to his earphones, go ahead.
0:06:22.9 DN: It's also how, how noise canceling earphones work.
0:06:26.9 GR: Exactly. By creating the negative image of the sound wave coming to your ear and adding that to... And then playing that negative image to cancel out what's coming to your ear. So yeah, so That's the law of superposition. It's how waves interact with each other. Imagine, for instance, I've got a little simple synthesizer I made up where I can play different frequencies. I'm gonna play just a 440 for us. Here it is. Easy enough. Right?
0:07:00.8 DN: Mm-Hmm.
0:07:00.9 GR: Now imagine if we had a slightly out of tune version of that with it. Instead of 440 cycles per second, we had 441 cycles per second. Here's a 441, just listen to it by itself. And here's a 440. Almost imperceptibly different. Right?
0:07:21.0 DN: Yeah.
0:07:21.8 GR: Now if we play them together, they're gonna sort of line up. They're gonna be, they're gonna start, they're gonna be going up from zero and coming down from zero together. But basically, each second or so, they are going to get more and more out of whack with each other until there will be a point where as the one is all the way at the top, the other is all the way at the bottom. And we'll hear a moment of silence and we'll hear that recurring as the waves line up with each other in opposite positions roughly once a second. You ready to hear this?
0:07:58.0 DN: Mm-Hmm.
0:07:58.9 GR: Okay. So here is a 440 and here is our second slightly out of tune sine wave joining it at a 441. And you can hear how as the waves support each other. Right. As they're both going up or both going down, we hear noise and as they cancel each other, we hear silence and hear that wah wah wah sound, which we call beating.
0:08:29.4 DN: And so if they're off by, this sounds mathy, but it's really a not mathy. If it's off by one, will it be one cycle per second that we get beating?
0:08:41.8 GR: That's exactly right.
0:08:42.6 DN: That is a, if we count the number of beats per second, we'll know how many cycles that is off.
0:08:48.3 GR: Correct yeah. And to prove that, here again is off by 1 Hz and now let's go to off by 2 Hz, which is gonna give us twice as many of those per second.
0:09:05.1 DN: Right.
0:09:07.5 GR: And similarly, you wanna do a couple more to hear them. Here's off by 3 Hz. [laughter] You see where this is going? Here's off by 4 Hz, right?
0:09:24.0 DN: Wow.
0:09:25.4 GR: So, however many Hz those are off from each other, you'll hear that number of beats per second.
0:09:30.1 DN: And this isn't random, because Hz literally means cycles per second.
0:09:35.2 GR: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Yeah.
0:09:36.9 DN: Yeah.
0:09:40.2 GR: Yeah. And so that's the law of superposition at work. That's how waves combine to reach our ears. They add up and subtract from each other. So yeah. Does that make sense.
0:09:52.1 DN: As far as tuning a note with itself? Yes. [laughter]
0:09:56.3 GR: With itself it sure does yeah yeah. Now it's worth pointing out that, we're listening to right now to pure sign waves, but most waves have, most sounds are more complex than that. They have overtones to them. And you won't hear these, these beats as obviously. Just to... Just so that we, hear what that's like, I'm going to turn the, harmonicity of this up a little bit. I'm gonna add a couple of overtones to the sound just so we hear it. Here's now a much fuller overtony sound.
0:10:30.0 GR: Alright? It's a richer sound, more buzziness to it. And then here is one Hz off with it. We still hear the beat, but because there're more overtones in the sound, it's not fully canceling it out. There's other stuff happening.
0:10:51.8 DN: Right.
0:10:54.7 GR: Yeah. And that's just when I've added some rich overtones to the sound, which I will take away for most of these demos because...
[laughter]
0:11:01.5 GR: It's much easier to hear when we're dealing with the pure sine wave.
0:11:05.5 DN: Cool.
0:11:08.4 GR: Okay. Making sense so far?
0:11:09.2 DN: Sure is.
0:11:10.1 GR: Great. Okay. So We discovered when we offset by one Hz when we had 440 and 441, we got those awful beats. Let's do a little math experiment. Let, could we come up with a couple of numbers that would generally sound good with each other?
0:11:25.7 DN: 880 [laughter]
0:11:28.0 GR: 880? So We're gonna double it. And effectively what that means is right, with our one sine wave, the other one's gonna be going twice as fast. Will there ever be a moment when they're exactly in opposite states?
0:11:43.4 DN: Nope.
0:11:45.3 GR: No, there won't. And so we won't hear any beating between 440 and 880. Here's 440, and here's 880. And they're in perfect tune with each other. And by the way, what interval was that? Here's 440, here's 880.
0:12:06.8 LS: An octave.
0:12:07.6 DN: It's an octave.
0:12:09.8 GR: Yeah. It's an octave. Right? [laughter] Yeah yeah Good.
0:12:13.6 DN: We're all waiting for the kids to respond. [laughter]
0:12:18.5 GR: [laughter] Exactly. Always good to leave time in the classroom for, everyone to answer. Good. 880 works with it as well. Really about anything that's, a nice, multiplication or divisor of it will work pretty well also, like 550 sounds great with 440. Here's 440, here's 550.
0:12:41.3 GR: And the interval is.
0:12:45.1 LS: Major 3rd.
0:12:46.9 GR: Major 3rd. Yeah. And a really beautiful one at that, right?
0:12:52.4 GR: Yeah. So, and we can do that with 660 as well. Let's see, what do we get when we do 440 and 660?
[laughter]
0:13:01.1 GR: We get... Yeah. David holds up his hand...
0:13:06.2 LS: Perfect fit.
0:13:06.8 GR: With five fingers...
[vocalization]
0:13:08.5 GR: Because we get a perfect fit. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so it turns out that these natural multipliers make, the really basic intervals that we're familiar with. And that's largely why when we talk about consonance and dissonance, that's largely where that comes from, is the presence or absence of beats in a sound. So, yeah. Now this brings us to overtones and [laughter] that's kind of exciting and always weird and magical. But effectively think of a string, and if you pluck it in the middle it, and let it vibrate like a guitar string, for instance, right? The middle of that string is gonna go back and forth and back and forth, some number of times per second. That's determined by how long the string is and how tense it is.
0:14:04.5 GR: Easy enough. Right? But that's not gonna be the only vibration on that string. It turns out that there's also a vibration that happens from sort of a still point in the middle of the string where either half vibrates twice as fast as the length of the full string. And both of those vibrations are going on within the same string, the full length and the half length, which is twice as fast. And in fact, any ratio that you can divide the string evenly by, that's true. If you divide the string in three you get two still points in the middle and the 3rds around those are vibrating at three times the speed of the full length of the string. And that then that's actually the interval of an octave and a 5th at that point.
0:15:04.4 DN: Yeah.
0:15:05.2 GR: And if we go another one, right? We have the string divided in four. We've got two octaves from the original, the string divided in five. We have two octaves and a major 3rd from the original. So shall we build those up? Shall we imagine that we have a low guitar string at one 10. The low guitar string that happens to sound like a sine wave. It also vibrates in the middle at two 20. And then if we divide it into 3rds, and then if we divide it into fourths, and then finally if we divide it into 5ths, we could keep going. We could divide it into six and so on and so forth. But you hear we're basically building up a giant, major triad, which are the first notes on the overtone series.
0:16:08.5 DN: Yeah. And you were reducing the volume of the upper harmonics as we went. Right?
0:16:12.8 GR: I wasn't actually, those were all, those are all set equally on this synthesizer.
0:16:18.1 DN: Interesting. They started sounding loud and then they seemed to dip afterwards. But of course on a guitar string each, every time you divide the string in half, yes it's... Or into the more sections you divide the string into, also the less amplitude you're gonna get from each of those...
0:16:39.9 GR: That's right.
0:16:40.6 DN: Harmonics. So that they will be less and less loud. But still contributing to the tamber of the sound that we hear.
0:16:48.1 GR: Yeah. Absolutely. And so we stopped, I stopped here, I went all the way up to two octaves in a perfect 5th. If I had gone one more, we get the first note that is not on a major triad. And let me just, actually hold on a second. So here is up to the octave in the 5th, and then I'm gonna go one more, right. And lemme play just that note. So that is the, right, so here's our root, and here's that note.
0:17:34.1 GR: Yeah. So that's, we finally get a minor seventh up there on top of all of that. So, and that's the overtone series. And when we talk about, when we talk about hearing overtones in a sound, that's what we're talking about is hearing the combination of those different ones. And of course, that's significant for brass players on brass instruments. The pitch is determined by the length of the instrument, and then how many times that's divided. Right? How many of those standing nodes you create within it, in the same way that the guitar string is vibrating at multiple waves at the same time, on a brass instrument you buzz your lips and you can create a tone at the frequency, the length of the instrument, or twice the length, or three times or four times, et cetera. And that is the overtone series on there. Now there is a slight difference because some brass instruments are conical. And with those instruments, you actually lose the very lowest overtone because instead of having, low pressure, high pressure, low pressure, a full wave cycle, you only have low pressure, high pressure for the length of it. So yeah.
0:18:48.4 DN: So I've gone to, musiclab.chromeexperiments.com, or you can just Google Chrome Music Lab and it'll take you to this. And this has a whole bunch of different sort of ways of exploring music. And one of them has an explanation, not an explanation, just a experiment. Place a playground for harmonics. And if you go to the playground for harmonics, it shows you some things that look like they could be waving strings. And it shows you that. And if you click on the one string, you get the sound of one string. And if you do that and it's octave, you can hear them as you touch them, and you can sweep through them and get something that sounds a little more like a complex tone. There is also a, spectrogram.
0:19:56.4 GR: A spectrogram shows in, on a graph by the intensity of the different frequencies within a sound. The different overtones within a sound, generally red, representing more intense and blue, or black representing less intense.
0:20:17.3 DN: And so it gives you a number of different presets as well as a microphone, which if you allow it access to your microphone will show you the spectrum of the sounds that you're making.
0:20:29.1 LS: And there are also strings and sound waves and arpeggios and lots of lovely experiments.
0:20:36.2 DN: Yeah. There are lots of games to play, there.
0:20:39.3 GR: Yeah. Excellent. So we'll put that in the show notes. But you can just google, Chrome Music Lab experiments and that will come up for sure. Great. Okay. So with all that, I think we're in a pretty good place to actually turn and talk about, well, how do we get to a scale with all of this? So let's say we wanted to create all of the notes on the piano. Can we think of an interval that's on the overtone series where if we followed it through over and over, we'd eventually get all 12 notes on the piano?
0:21:16.4 DN: I mean, obviously you could just do half steps, right?
0:21:20.2 GR: You could absolutely do half steps.
[chuckle]
0:21:22.4 GR: You have to do half steps. Now, finding, it's gonna be a long time on the overtone series before we find a half step.
[laughter]
0:21:31.7 GR: So it's, that's a good thought. But maybe we can find one a little lower down little earlier on in the Harmonic series.
0:21:37.9 DN: And I think the first one that makes, the first one that's gonna make a difference is that 5th, that's the first one that we hear as a different note. Or if you're gonna use fancy speak, the a different pitch class.
0:21:51.5 GR: Yeah, absolutely. And we know also that if we go around by perfect 5ths, we're gonna get all 12, because circle of 5ths is exactly that, right? It's a collection of all the 5ths.
0:22:04.5 DN: And also because the harmonics get generally softer as you go up, in the series on any instruments, on most instruments. Generally the 5th is gonna be the one that's gonna come out the strongest. Likely to come out the strongest.
0:22:21.5 GR: Yeah.
0:22:21.6 DN: Right?
0:22:21.7 GR: Yeah. Yes, that's right. Yeah. Okay. So now our goal is to assign to the notes on the piano frequencies based on going around the 5ths. And so our 5th, when we found on the harmonic series, when we had, we multiplied by, we divided our string in three, right. And that, and it vibrated three times as fast as the original. That's actually an octave in the 5th. So we're gonna divide that frequency in half, to make it just a 5th. So we're multiplying by three dividing in half, and that gives us our 5th each time. So yeah. So let's sort of work our way through this. Here's A, and I'm actually gonna take us up a 5th and down an octave. So down a 4th to E and down a 4th to B, up a 5th to F sharp, down a 4th to C sharp, up a 5th to G sharp, down a 5th, down a 4th to D sharp which let's call E-flat just to make our life easy. Up a 5th to B flat, down a 4th to F, down a 4th to C, up a 5th to G, down a 4th to D. And finally up a 5th back to A. And now we've gone through our whole series and we have all 12 notes of the piano. But here's the bad news. This is the A that we ended on, and this is the A that we started on. Hear that difference?
0:24:00.8 DN: [laughter]
0:24:01.8 GR: Here's the A we ended on, and here's the A we started on, and if we play them together, we get that right. [laughter] And so this way of tuning is called the Pythagorean Tuning System. We tune by 5ths throughout, and it leaves a problem in there somewhere, right? Because, when we get back to A, it's no longer A, and the end result is that the 5th from, that the second to last 5th is pretty rough with itself. It's not well in tune with itself.
0:24:55.8 GR: You're sort of going wah-wah-wah-wah-wah in there.
0:25:00.7 DN: Right.
0:25:01.8 GR: And just to compare that, the 5th that we should have had instead would've been, and here is what's called the wolf 5th, hear that difference that out of tune ness of it?
0:25:23.4 DN: It also through the headphones. I don't know if it's gonna come through in the recording, but it through the headphones, it also gets a whole nother set of tones that sound along with it.
0:25:36.1 GR: Yeah. From the, yeah. The distortion.
0:25:38.6 DN: Yeah.
0:25:40.8 GR: The sound could by the distortion. Yeah. And that's called the wolf 5th, because it sounds a bit like a wolf howling. And actually it sounds even more like a wolf howling if we turn up the overtones of the sound itself. So remember I had no overtones in each of those. Those are pure sine waves. But so now here is our good 5th with some overtones in it.
0:26:06.1 GR: And here's our wolf 5th.
[laughter]
0:26:13.8 GR: Yeah, right? Good 5th.
0:26:20.4 GR: Wolf 5th.
0:26:23.7 GR: Isn't that awful?
[laughter]
0:26:28.5 GR: And because when we go by perfect 5ths all the way around, we come out significantly higher than where we started. In this case, we start from a 440. We wind up coming out exactly six Hz higher. We have to make a compromise. And this is true of every tuning system that we have to... That there's always a compromise to make some intervals sound better and some intervals sound worse. And so the compromise that we make in equal temperament is we say, let's divide the problems of that wolf 5th, equally around all of the intervals. And that does that... That works out pretty well. Unfortunately, it means that in equal temperament, there's no interval anywhere in equal temperament that is a pure overtone interval.
0:27:24.5 DN: Yeah. And that it's funny because I have a colleague who has done a lot of work on Bach's tuning system and the imagination, I think that is in the public sphere is that they didn't know about equal temperament at that time, but they did know about equal temperament and they didn't want it because they so valued the sound of pure chords.
0:27:55.1 GR: Yes. Yeah. That's absolutely right. And so just we compare these a little bit, right? So here's in equal temperament here is actually, let's start with if we did a just major 3rd, here's a just major 3rd. So that's the overtone major 3rd, and here's what we actually get on the piano.
0:28:27.3 DN: With sine waves. It sounds shockingly bad.
[laughter]
0:28:29.7 GR: It's exactly, it does, it does. It very much does with sine waves because they're so pure, it becomes so obvious when there's basically no overtones to balance that out. The more overtone rich something is, the harder it is to hear these detailed tuning things. And that, I mean, for instance, like on organ, depending on which pipe it is, some of them sound very... Have really simple overtone structures. And so you can really hear these things a lot. Yeah. So, and that's what we call equal temperament, where we compress every 5th a tiny bit so that it comes out with all of them being equal. And there are lots of... So the three intonations as we've talked about, I guess we've only talked about two really.
0:29:22.9 GR: We've talked about, Pythagorean, where we go around by perfect 5ths. And we have one terrible, perfect 5th wolf 5th. And we have equal temperament where we have 12, not quite perfect 5ths. But there are lots of other tuning systems that try and adjust for this. Quarter-comma meantone is a Pythagorean system where we compress, we spread out the wolf 5th across four different 5ths. And that sort balances some of the 3rds, so they sound pretty decent. And then, when we talk about just intonation itself, right? If we don't have an instrument that plays with fixed pitches, we can actually adjust in real time to tune different chords in a just way. So, and I've created, and we'll share this link, I've created a little synthesizer where you can build a chord. So for instance, here is, I don't know, B flat major in just intonation and it automatically adjusts and makes it just. For comparison, here's that same cord in equal temperament. You hear how wobbly it is compared to here's just, yeah. And actually if we... Let's hear that same cord in a Pythagorean temperament. And you'll hear the 5th is really beautiful in the Pythagorean temperament. The 3rd is quite high.
0:31:04.3 GR: Let me take the 3rd out of this. So it's a true perfect 5th. And now here's that Pythagorean 3rd in there.
[laughter]
0:31:16.2 GR: As we all cringe, right?
0:31:18.1 DN: This is the reason why society is so tense today.
0:31:21.5 GR: Yeah. [laughter]
0:31:22.1 GR: And so, okay, here's...
[laughter]
0:31:24.3 DN: It's all the fault of our tuning system.
0:31:27.7 GR: It's all the fault of these tuning systems. So just intonation has that same 5th, exactly the same as Pythagorean, but listen to its 3rd, right? And that's significantly lower than our equal temperament, major 3rd. Now I want to share another one with you, which always feels crazy to me. So here's that 5th again, and let's have a minor 3rd and that's a just tuned minor triad. Compare that with our equal temperament minor triad. And I'm gonna take the 5th out so we can hear it more. Obviously. Here's our equal temperament minor 3rd, and here's our just intonation minor 3rd.
0:32:19.9 GR: Which 3rd is bigger? Here's equal temperament. And here's just intonation.
0:32:28.7 LS: Just intonation?
0:32:32.0 DN: Yeah.
0:32:32.8 GR: The just intonation, that's right, yeah. So it turns out our minor 3rd in just intonation is about 14 cents higher. There are 100 cents in every half step. So it's about like, what's that? Like a seventh of a step higher than, a seventh of a half step higher than on the equal temperament version. And similarly our major 3rd is 14 cents lower...
0:33:02.6 DN: Lower, yeah.
0:33:04.0 GR: In just intonation compared to equal temperament. Yeah. Isn't that cool and wacky and wild?
[laughter]
0:33:11.6 DN: So the thing is, and if you're tuning by ear, you're just going to nudge it to the thing that sounds good.
0:33:20.8 GR: Yeah, yeah.
0:33:22.3 DN: If you're listening carefully, you're going to nudge it to the thing that sounds good. Which is also one reason sometimes why choirs go out of tune, is 'cause pieces have been written so that the adjustments that they keep making keep going in one direction.
[laughter]
0:33:36.6 GR: Yeah, exactly, exactly. That's true. There are these wonderful puzzle pieces from the Renaissance era that cause you to modulate up bit by bit. And I'll share a link. Ross Duffin, who's a retired Musicology Professor from Case Western University, has a wonderful article on that. He also has a wonderful book called How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony and Why You Should Care, which is a delightful read. All of this is great and feels maybe a little bit abstract, so I thought it'd be fun to take a field trip. And so I got together with Oberlin's Curator of Pipe Organs. Oberlin has one of the largest pipe organ collections in the world, David Kazimir to take us to the Brombaugh Organ in Fairchild Chapel, which actually has, instead of five black keys per octave, it has eight black keys per octave, because three of those black notes are split with a sharp version and a flat version, which lets it be in a quarter-comma meantone that works around different places. Quarter-comma meantone, remember, is where we split up the wolf 5th into four of the 5ths in the Pythagorean tuning. So shall we go visit with David?
0:35:07.5 DN: Let's go visit!
[music]
0:35:56.5 GR: That was great. What was that?
0:35:58.1 David Kazimir: That was the opening verse of the Magnificat on the 9th tone by German composer Samuel Scheidt.
0:36:05.6 GR: So, that's excellent.
0:36:06.4 GR: I'm here with David Kazimir, who is the curator of pipe organs at Oberlin. It's amazing that Oberlin has a curator of pipe organs. How many pipe organs do we have and what do you do?
0:36:17.4 DK: There are 34 pipe organs on the campus. My job is like a family practice physician. I have a little bit of instruments who are newborns and some that are a little bit older, and no one's in palliative care, so I'm doing my job. But a lot of it is just tuning, regulation, general maintenance, and working with the facilities to keep everything and everyone moving and playing smoothly.
0:36:43.2 GR: This organ, that you're at, is a pretty special instrument. Now, most of our audience is listening, but we'll also post a video of this online. Can you tell us a little bit about this organ, and why it's so special?
0:36:55.8 DK: This instrument was built in 1983 by John Brombaugh, one of the 20th century's great American organ builders. It utilizes the tuning system called quarter-comma meantone tuning, and is unique amongst organs in that it has split sharps to accommodate those unique interval tuning systems that we find in quarter-comma meantone. Well, on a normal piano keyboard, there are 12 notes in an octave. Not here. There are 15. I'm going to start at C and go up, so middle C, C sharp, D, D sharp, E flat, E, F, F sharp, G, A flat, G sharp, A, A sharp, B flat, B, and C an octave higher.
0:38:12.9 GR: Wow, that's crazy. So if I heard right, that means that what we think of as being the enharmonically equivalent notes in equal temperament, like D sharp and E flat, always the flat version was higher than the sharp version.
0:38:27.0 DK: Correct. And as they are oriented on this keyboard, the more commonly used of those enharmonic notes, E flat, G sharp, and B flat, they are at the front of the key. And behind it, and a little bit higher, is the less commonly used one. So you have D sharp behind E flat, you have A flat behind G sharp, and you have A sharp behind B flat.
0:38:56.9 GR: So I wonder, maybe, could you just play some chords with the right and wrong black notes, so we can hear the difference?
0:39:03.8 DK: Sure. E major is E, G sharp, and B. This is the right version with the G sharp.
0:39:15.9 GR: And that, as we listen to that, that G sharp is significantly lower, that E to G sharp interval is significantly smaller compared to our modern piano.
0:39:24.3 DK: Correct. The 3rds on this organ, and in quarter-comma meantone tuning are left pure. So they don't beat as much. If you listen to that, there's no oscillation. The thing that gets interesting in quarter-comma meantone to make those 3rds pure, you end up with 5ths that are narrower.
0:39:51.3 GR: Yeah. So we hear a little bit of the beats in that 5th. Can you hold that 5th out a bit longer? That's that wah-wah-wah-wah-wah... [vocalization] effect we hear in it. Yeah. Yes
0:40:01.9 DK: You don't hear that in equal temperament, which is twelfth-comma meantone. Pure 3rd. Now I'm going to play it with the wrong note. Hold on to something.
0:40:19.2 GR: Oh, that's painful. So that was E, A flat, and B.
0:40:23.0 DK: Yes.
0:40:23.9 GR: Wow. Could you just play the E and A flat together? And now the E and G sharp. That's so much better. [chuckle] That is amazing. But then that lets you get, I imagine, other places that would use A flat. Can you play an A flat major on this organ?
0:40:46.7 DK: You can play an A flat major, so.
0:40:48.0 GR: And it's really, it's quite nice, actually.
0:40:55.3 DK: Yes, it's very sweet. Now I can use the wrong key, in that case, D sharp.
0:41:06.5 GR: Which is a little bit diminished. What if we use both G sharp and D sharp there? So what if...
0:41:12.1 DK: G sharp and D sharp.
0:41:16.3 GR: Wild.
0:41:18.1 DK: It gets really crazy.
0:41:21.8 GR: So normally in like a quarter-comma meantone, the farther you get away from the normal keys, the weirder it sounds.
0:41:32.6 DK: Right.
0:41:33.4 GR: Is that still true with this organ? Or because of the split keys, are you able to keep things sounding normal-ish?
0:41:41.3 DK: Well, with the split keys, you have more options to keep intervals that use a pure 3rd running. So with the option of F to F sharp to A sharp, that can be pure and comfortable because the difference between F sharp and B flat.
0:42:04.3 GR: Yeah.
0:42:05.9 DK: The wolf tone that we have in this...
0:42:08.1 GR: So the wolf tone is usually where you put all the leftover 5th change from adjusting the 5ths to be smaller. You still have one 5th that has to be way out.
0:42:21.4 DK: Right.
0:42:21.8 GR: And normally that's between, G sharp and E flat.
0:42:27.4 DK: Yes. So if we listen to that G sharp and E flat.
0:42:33.0 GR: Yeah. And it's called the wolf because it kind of howls.
0:42:35.5 DK: It howls. There's no way of getting around that. The theory practice of this time is through the use of these pure 3rds. It strengthens in some keys the function of the dominant going into the tonic. 'Cause you have pure 3rds in the dominant and you also have it really pure in the tonic when you resolve.
0:42:58.0 GR: Could you maybe just play some tonic dominant tonics for us and tell us what keys you're playing in there?
0:43:01.9 DK: Alright, so tonic, dominant tonic, this is C major. The weight of G major in that case really has, strength, but it also sets you up for... You really enjoy your resolution when you have those crunching, dissonances, like. The arrival at the cadence just goes... And that tension you hear in the music of this time period as well.
0:43:43.1 GR: David, could I give it a try?
0:43:44.5 DK: Of course you can.
0:43:45.0 GR: I'm just really curious to like, to explore this and... Okay. You may have to remind me which ones are the sharps and which ones are the flat. So I'm gonna try playing something in E major.
0:43:54.1 DK: Okay.
0:43:54.5 GR: And I think you said the part of the G sharp...
0:43:57.3 DK: Front?
0:43:57.7 GR: A flat closest to me is the G sharp.
0:44:00.5 DK: Correct.
0:44:00.9 GR: Okay. So in other words, I can have a beautiful E major triad...
0:44:04.3 DK: Triad.
0:44:05.2 GR: Like this and then the front of the E flat D sharp, the wait don't [0:44:12.4] ____ the front of it is the E-flat, right?
0:44:14.4 DK: Correct.
0:44:14.8 GR: And the back is the D sharp.
0:44:16.1 DK: Correct.
0:44:16.7 GR: So if I'm playing in E major and I wanna play 151. In my one chord, I have to use the front part...
0:44:22.8 DK: Right.
0:44:24.3 GR: Of the G sharp, A flat.
0:44:26.4 DK: Yes.
0:44:26.7 GR: But in my five chord, I have to use the back part...
0:44:29.6 DK: Correct.
0:44:30.3 GR: Of my... And if I get that wrong, it's going to be really spectacular. Like there.
0:44:41.5 DK: Yeah.
0:44:43.0 GR: And there's a much smaller target area.
0:44:46.1 DK: Yes.
0:44:47.0 GR: For these, is this an E down here on the bottom?
0:44:50.1 DK: Yes. Oh no. Short octave.
0:44:53.4 GR: Thank you.
0:44:53.9 DK: Yes.
0:44:54.5 GR: Got it.
0:44:54.8 DK: We should probably point out the short octave to them.
0:44:56.8 GR: Yeah. So... Oh, that's great. You know the question that we get all the time when we're teaching beginning students, is why do we need a D sharp and an E flat? And this really answers that.
0:45:11.1 DK: Yes.
0:45:11.6 GR: Because we can hear, right? Like, so if I play C minor using C, E flat, by G. But if I play C, D sharp, G that's just, it's just, that's just out.
0:45:27.2 DK: And the body reacts accordingly.
0:45:30.0 GR: Yeah. And that difference between the D sharp and the E flat, I mean that's like what? Quarter? Less than a quarter total.
0:45:40.0 DK: It's less than a quarter.
0:45:41.1 GR: Yeah.
0:45:42.0 DK: It really gets into micro tonal adjustments.
0:45:45.3 GR: Yeah.
0:45:46.6 DK: And we use this specialized tuning machine to make sure that we're getting right to the core of where that pitch needs to be. 'Cause there is a huge difference.
0:45:54.4 GR: David, this is amazing. Do you wanna play something for us to take us out?
0:46:00.4 DK: Okay.
[music]
0:46:57.2 GR: It's just really cool to hear the organ playing in pretty constant just intonation because of, yeah, because of those different black notes, so.
0:47:08.4 DN: And the funny thing is though that people were writing with these intonations in mind and therefore there are pieces that are deliberately flexing on the out-of-tuneness of a thing that then resolves into more pleasant tuning.
0:47:27.9 GR: That's right, that's right. Yeah, and think of like the farther you modulate away from a normal key, a key that's central to the tuning, the more and more out-of-tune it becomes. And if you think of like even classical sonata form, right, where in the exposition we go up to the 5th, which would be a little more out-of-tune, but in the development we go to some really remote places, which would be very out-of-tune. And equal temperament as we think of it today really didn't fully come about until the 20th century, right? The tunings were decidedly more flexible and preferenced more normal keys prior to that. Anyway, having said that, kind of cool to hear it on a real live organ, right?
0:48:15.5 DN: Yeah.
0:48:16.2 GR: And if you wanna try this experience out for yourself, you can try out our Tuning System Synthesizer, where if you plug in a MIDI keyboard and set it to automatic just intonation and play any chord, or click the notes on your screen, it will tune that chord in just intonation for you. And some of them I find really shocking. Like for me especially, first inversion triads are just weird beasts. So here is a first inversion F major triad, which sounds really beautiful, compare it to equal temperament.
0:49:00.3 DN: Whoa!
0:49:01.6 GR: Right? Shocking, isn't it? Yeah. And if we spread that out a little bit more on the keyboard, so I'm gonna give us a really beautifully spaced now, first inversion major triad. Here we go. That's just intonation, here's equal temperament. Right? Isn't it something that these things we don't think of as out of tune in equal temperament, when we compare them to just intonation, we can really hear, especially with a simple tone like this, how many beats there are in it, which is kind of cool and amazing. Now this has been a really almost esoteric episode for us, we haven't really talked at all about what do we do with any of this, but fear not, because our next episode is actually gonna be on teaching intonation. And Leah, I'm so excited that you're gonna help with that, because that's something you do quite constantly in your day-to-day life, yeah?
0:50:10.9 LS: I live and breathe it, yes.
0:50:16.5 DN: Wow. Excellent. Excellent.
0:50:17.8 GR: Well, thank you all for joining, and a special thanks again to David Kazimir for showing off the Brombaugh organ at Oberlin's Fairchild Chapel, and we'll see you all next time.
[music]
0:50:34.6 LS: Notes From the Staff is produced by uTheory.com.
0:50:34.7 GR: UTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
0:50:39.1 LS: With video lessons, individualized practice, and proficiency testing, uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world master the fundamentals of music theory, rhythm, and ear training.
0:50:49.9 GR: Create your own free teacher account at uTheory.com/teach.
In this episode, Greg Ristow and David Newman talk about the value and role of intervallic ear training, why it's time to move beyond Here comes the bride, and ways of teaching intervallic hearing that build fundamental skills for sight singing and dictation.
Links:Karpinski, Gary. "A Cognitive Basis for Choosing a Solmization System," Music Theory Online, Vol. 27, No. 2. June 2021. https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.21.27.2/mto.21.27.2.karpinski.html
Transcript[music]
0:00:21.2 Gregory Ristow: Welcome to Notes from the Staff, a podcast from the Creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.
0:00:35.5 David Newman: Hi, I'm David Newman, and I teach voice and music theory at James Madison University. And I write code and create content for uTheory.
0:00:43.4 GR: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow. I conduct the choirs at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and I'm the founder of uTheory.
0:00:49.9 DN: Thank you listeners for your comments and episode suggestions. We love to read them, send them our way by email at notes@uTheory.com, and remember to like us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:01.7 GR: So today we'll be talking about interval ear training. And interval ear training is central to many teachers' and textbooks' approaches to sight singing and dictation. But the title of this episode is maybe a little bit misleading because research in music cognition suggests that for most common aural skills, ear training tasks we process notes by their relationship to a tonic or by their position in a scale rather than by actually hearing adjacent note to note intervallic relationships. So in our conversation today, we'll look at this research on how we hear and the role that intervals play in that hearing. We'll talk about why classic techniques we're teaching intervals can actually undermine students' reading skills. And we'll look at ways of teaching intervals that instead compliment and strengthen students' aural skills. It's a lot to get through in the course of an hour. [chuckle]
0:02:03.2 DN: It is.
0:02:04.5 GR: But David and I have agreed to play particular roles on this. So I'm going to, I'm gonna be sort of the the playback, keep us on track role and David's gonna be the the color commentary, [chuckle] role.
0:02:14.0 DN: Playing to our strengths.
0:02:15.4 GR: Playing to our strengths for sure, for sure. It is hard to talk about or even to think about how we hear, so much of how we hear music is really innate, that we don't, especially for someone with a well-developed ear, "how do I know how I know what I'm hearing?" is a hard question to answer.
0:02:40.1 DN: Yeah.
0:02:40.8 GR: And fortunately we have scientists and researchers who've been looking at exactly this question for a little, I don't know little over 40 years now. And what they have pretty consistently found is that when someone who is experienced in a particular musical culture, and so let's say broadly Western music, music that exists within the notes on a Western piano.
0:03:17.7 DN: An equal tempered scale.
0:03:19.2 GR: Yeah. A tempered major-y minor-y or rotation of its scale as opposed to for instance, some of the Turkish collections that have more notes in the scale than we have and notes that don't exist on our piano. So when someone is encultured in a musical system, when first they start hearing notes, the primary thing that their brain does is seek to determine a central pitch, what we would call a tonic and that's known in music cognition as the primacy hypothesis. The idea being that David, if I throw a few notes at you, before you're going to do anything with those notes, your mind is going to say, "what could potentially be tonic given these notes?" And we're gonna hold onto them.
0:04:20.8 DN: We contextualize it.
0:04:22.5 GR: Exactly. We seek to find the context in which that's occurring and will tend to hold onto our belief of that central note as long as we reasonably can even through the first few notes that contradict it.
0:04:39.1 DN: Yeah. I even think this is central to so much of why we enjoy music. And so if you enjoy music, you probably do this.
0:04:47.8 GR: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And it should be said we're saying this and let's just imagine that if I'm someone with really strong absolute pitch. And even in those cases although yes, someone with absolute pitch will know immediately, yes I'm hearing these particular letter names. They are also still working to contextualize them within some sort of tonal framework. If that's something that you're interested in reading about, one of my favorite articles on this is by Gary Karpinski and it's his, it just came out a couple of years ago in Music Theory Online. We'll put the link in the show notes, but this is freely accessible online and it's "A Cognitive Basis for Choosing a Solmization System." And in the first, I don't know, 15 or so paragraphs of it Karpinski goes through and just summarizes all of the research that has occurred over the past 40 years to this.
0:05:53.0 GR: And the big conclusion that he lists there is, and I'm gonna quote here, "These studies and observations lead to the conclusion that while attending to the pitches of tonal music, the first and most fundamental process listeners carry out is tonic inference. And from that, we can conclude that the single most immediately knowable tonal characteristic is the tonic." Now, what does all this have to do with intervallic ear training? What it really comes down to is this question of how do we actually hear music? And we really hear music based on how the notes relate to a sense of tonic. And we don't actually hear music based on the pitch relationship of immediately adjacent notes or even of vertical notes sounding together.
0:06:45.6 DN: And in fact, I know even for myself that if I'm singing a tonal melody I probably could very easily tell you what generic intervals I'm singing at any given time, but I would have to stop and think about what specific intervals. And when I say generic intervals, I just mean, I could tell you that I'm singing a 5th. I could tell you that I'm singing a 6th, but 6th especially, I would've to stop and think for a second to tell you what quality of 6th that was that I was singing, because I'm just going between notes in the scale.
0:07:24.5 GR: That's right.
0:07:24.9 DN: That's the simple thing. And to add intervals to that would be an additional step for me.
0:07:31.3 GR: A really great example of this is to even, to ask someone who believes they're sight singing by intervals, to take a song they know and to sing that song on the specific intervals of the song. Sing the Star Spangled Banner on specific intervals. And you get. First note, obviously, Unison. 'Cause you have nothing before. So unison, minor 3rd, major 3rd, major 3rd, minor 3rd, perfect 4th.
0:08:02.7 DN: Major 3rd, major 2nd, major 2nd. Oh gosh. Yeah, that would be a minor 6th. [chuckle] Oh, whole step, half step.
0:08:21.4 GR: Yeah. It is not how we hear. On the other hand, as you said, I think totally, yeah, very often we're we're of, oh yeah, I'm singing a 3rd, I'm singing another 3rd. Those two thirds were different, right? But, to us...
0:08:40.2 DN: They were thirds in the key.
0:08:42.3 GR: They were thirds in the key. Yeah. And as we've talked about on a number of previous episodes, our musical notation system reflects this. Our staff system with its use of key signatures is designed to show us very quickly, generic intervals, interval distance within a key and not specific interval distance or chord quality. It's really... It makes primary, this idea of our seven note key collections.
0:09:11.8 DN: Yeah. It was designed for tonal music.
0:09:15.6 GR: Because that's what it reflects.
0:09:16.6 DN: That's what music was. [laughter]
0:09:18.8 GR: Yeah. And largely still is.
0:09:21.5 DN: Yeah.
0:09:22.5 GR: And what we're getting to here is two approaches to learning and thinking about intervals. Intervals in the context of a key, which throughout this episode we'll refer to as contextual interval hearing and intervals as pure relationships between any two notes or what we'll call acontextual interval training. And if we look at the classic way intervals are taught, which I've started to call the naive approach to teaching intervals. It blends these two, it blends contextual and acontextual interval hearing without being explicit about which is which, which can lead to some real problems.
0:10:08.2 DN: Yeah.
0:10:09.9 GR: So what I mean by the classic or naive approach is the approach of saying, okay, a perfect 4th is "Here Comes The Bride." And of course, "Here Comes the Bride" comes along with context. Because it's 5, 1, 1, 1. And there are six perfect 4ths within our diatonic collection, and they don't all feel like 5, 1 and they can feel very different than that.
0:10:33.5 DN: I have a song about that. [laughter]
0:10:34.9 GR: Yeah. [laughter]
0:10:35.4 DN: We should... Yeah. That should go in the show notes too. There's an interval song as specifically about 4ths actually.
0:10:44.7 GR: That's...
0:10:45.0 DN: Some say that ascending 4th sound like, "Here Comes the Bride," but change the context and that perfect 4th may not sound the same and your song won't help as planned [laughter]
0:10:56.9 GR: Shall we just take a moment and pause and listen to it?
0:11:00.0 DN: Oh sure.
[music]
[laughter]
0:12:18.0 GR: Yeah. And that's exactly it. That they... That these 4ths are very different. And so let's now carry that out to its dangers with dictation. So if I'm trying to do dictation and I come across a leap and I'm like, "Okay, does that sound like here comes the bride?" If it was from five to one it sure does, but if it was one of those other 4ths, it does not. And frankly, the more sensitive musical listener you are, the less another 4th will sound like the 4th of five to one. And so if we are using this approach it will disadvantage our most sensitive listeners. Okay. And so now let's flip and let's say what if we're using this for sight singing. And this is... I call this the how do you measure a mile problem? So, David, we can see each other on video, our listeners can't. But, if you wanted to measure the size of the room that you're in there, what tool would you want?
0:13:25.4 DN: I would want a really long tape measure.
0:13:28.4 GR: Yeah, absolutely.
0:13:31.1 GR: I'm sorry, David, you only have a ruler. What's going to go... A foot long ruler, what could go wrong?
0:13:37.2 DN: Well, it sounds like when I try and measure a room by pacing it or by measuring my foot lengths, assuming that they're about a foot, but since my feet are probably not exactly a foot, even if I had an exact ruler, I'm gonna make a little mistake every time.
0:13:57.2 GR: Mm-hmm.
0:13:58.4 DN: And if I'm lucky, the mistakes will kind of cancel each other out by the time I get to the end. But if I'm not lucky, I'm gonna end up with an incorrect number.
0:14:11.0 GR: Yep. And you will have... And if you're lucky you'll buy more carpet than you need. And if you're unlucky, you'll wind up with a couple feet of un-carpeted room. Right? Yeah. So there's this element, if we're sight singing by interval, that if I ever-so-slightly misjudge an interval, the inaccuracies can add up. But it's more than that because in fact, as we know, and especially as you know, singing early music, there are many different ways that are correct of tuning intervals.
0:14:47.7 DN: Yeah. Every single one.
0:14:49.8 GR: Every single one, absolutely.
0:14:51.4 DN: But although in early music, yeah, I know every single one. Yep.
0:14:55.7 GR: Yeah.
0:14:56.1 DN: And some more than others. Some notes are more equal than others. Like Animal Farm. Some intervals are... Yeah.
0:15:04.2 GR: And we're gonna do an episode on tuning systems coming up soon. But to give a really strong example of that, if we tune a major 3rd like it appears on the overtone series.
0:15:19.6 DN: Right.
0:15:21.4 GR: First off, we should say, the distance between a half step on a piano or any half step on a piano can be called 100 cents. And the difference between a major third as it appears on the overtone series, and the major third as it appears on the piano is 14 cents.
0:15:40.0 DN: Mm-hmm.
0:15:42.0 GR: So if, for instance, you ask someone to arpeggiate an augmented triad until they come back to the starting point with overtone major 3rds. Right? So each of those, each of those intervals is a major third.
0:15:58.4 DN: Right.
0:16:00.3 GR: You're going to add 14 cents of difference from the piano each time, which comes up to 1, 2, 3... 42 cents difference, in other words, all just pretty darn close to a quarter tone away by the time you get to the top.
0:16:16.5 DN: Right. And it's gonna be 42 cents flat. Right?
0:16:18.9 GR: That's right. Yep.
0:16:20.1 DN: Yeah.
0:16:20.7 GR: So yeah. So we have that issue, right? With sight singing by intervals it... And then we have the issue that's more related to what we were talking about before, which is to say that, if I come across a 4th when I'm sight singing, if that's five to one, "Here Comes the Bride" is a really useful tool. But if it's not five to one, and I summon to mind, "Here Comes the Bride," I have brought with it the context of whatever note I'm starting from being five, even though it's not actually five in the key I'm in, and whatever note I'm going to being one, even though it's not actually one in the key I'm in and I've caused myself, I've had to briefly erase my tonal context to sing that perfect 4th, which is problematic.
0:17:00.6 DN: That's the most important thing about this whole conversation. If there was a clip to take out, that's the one to share and say, "Here's the main point."
0:17:12.5 GR: For me... Absolutely. Right? And this... I was joking last episode. I was like, this is the hill I will die on. Is that we cannot primarily do dictation of sight singing by intervals. It works too strongly against tonal context, which is where so much of the meaning of our music comes from.
0:17:31.5 DN: So tell me if I'm distracting from the stream of thought here. But the issue then, the problem is that when we're teaching early skills in music theory, even in aural skills, we'd still need to refer to intervals. So we kind of need the people to know what intervals are. And I guess the trick then is, how do we introduce intervals without creating these problems?
0:18:05.3 GR: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. For sure. And a related, but different thing is, I think that it seems, it is such a simple idea that if I know all of my intervals, I should be able to sight sing anything or do any dictation.
0:18:21.4 DN: Right. That's a lovely thing in imagination.
0:18:25.1 GR: In... But that ends up failing in practice. That's right. That's right.
0:18:29.1 DN: Yeah.
0:18:29.2 GR: Yeah. Yeah.
0:18:32.6 DN: So instead we teach frameworks.
0:18:35.5 GR: Right.
0:18:35.6 DN: For tonal music, we teach for frameworks.
0:18:38.5 GR: Yeah. And you might be rightly at this point saying, should we even bother to teach intervals in an ear training context?
0:18:48.6 DN: And I think we have to, but the question is how do we do it?
0:18:53.2 GR: Yeah. No, I will tell you, in all of my undergraduate ear training, we had zero intervallic training.
0:19:01.1 DN: Uh-huh.
0:19:02.9 GR: That's not true. In the last semester when we got to atonal stuff.
0:19:07.6 DN: But did you do that?
0:19:07.8 GR: There was some intervallic training.
0:19:09.9 DN: But did you have it in written theory at least?
0:19:12.5 GR: Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah.
0:19:14.7 DN: Yeah. And then I think, again, like it's not so hard in that exercise that we did earlier to name the generic intervals.
0:19:25.3 GR: Right.
0:19:25.3 DN: And I think that's something that's pretty straightforward. And of course, if I know the generic intervals and I see a third going up and I see that the second note is raised from what it was going to be in the key, then I know, "Oh, that's gonna be different."
0:19:42.5 GR: Yeah.
0:19:42.5 GR: Yeah, yeah.
0:19:44.3 DN: It's probably gonna be a major third.
0:19:47.3 GR: Right, but you know for me, even when I sing a song I know on specific interval names, if I'm being honest, I'm not really hearing the specific intervals, I am hearing...
0:20:00.4 DN: No.
0:20:01.1 GR: The generic intervals, intervals within a key and using my knowledge of music theory to label those specific intervals.
0:20:07.0 DN: Yeah, yeah, that's a thing that I don't even think about.
0:20:10.3 GR: Yeah, yeah, so let's... So again coming back to this idea of the classical or naive approach to interval training, the learn a name of a tune for each interval approach.
0:20:20.8 DN: Oh, I just try and get people not to do that.
0:20:25.0 GR: I do too, I do too, because I think it conflates contextual intervallic hearing, intervals within a key with acontextual intervallic hearing, pure relationships between two notes. But I do think there's value, and as you were just saying, in learning intervals within the context of the framework of a key or scale. And also, I think there is value in learning intervals out of that context as pure sonorities of relationships between notes, especially if we're concerned about tuning in context. For instance our... If we're playing in an orchestra, if we're, basically anything other than a pianist.
0:21:12.2 DN: Right, barbershop.
0:21:14.6 GR: Then we have to make decisions about how we tune our intervals. So I thought it would be just, it would be great to be really practical and go through a bunch of exercises of contextual intervallic practice and of acontextual intervallic practice. Sound good?
0:21:36.5 DN: Sure. Yeah.
0:21:37.8 GR: Okay, great. So these exercises, although we're gonna demonstrate these pretty much throughout in major keys, in practice, I also like to do these in harmonic minor as well, because that'll introduce fun intervals like the augmented second and diminished seventh that don't exist in the major scale. And although we'll generally demonstrate these using scale degrees, movable solfège works the same way, pick your system of choice. And although this is a little bit evil, when I do these exercises with my students, I like to switch between a functional system like scale degrees or movable solfège, and a fixed system like letter names or fixed Do, because I want my students at all times to be thinking...
0:22:32.2 DN: To suffer...
0:22:33.9 GR: To suffer, yes, yes.
[laughter]
0:22:35.8 GR: Although I want them at all times to be thinking about both the, sort of, the abstraction that function gives us, and the specificity that note names or playing it on an instrument give us.
0:22:55.8 DN: And I have just started atonal music, aural skills with my class in the last week, and I told them if their brains are hurting, it just means they're growing neurons, that their brain should hurt a little bit, it's probably good.
0:23:10.8 GR: Yeah. Yeah.
0:23:12.4 DN: Growing neural pathways, they already have neurons.
0:23:15.6 GR: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So let's just dive in and let's... Shall we do some exercises together, David?
0:23:23.3 DN: I am always game for exercises.
0:23:25.5 GR: Okay, great, I'm gonna give you a pattern, and would you just take it and continue it as you know it, yeah?
0:23:30.6 DN: Okay.
0:23:31.3 GR: Great. [Singing] 1 to 2 is a Major 2nd, 2 to 3 is a Major 2nd
0:23:42.6 DN: [Singing] 3 to 4 is a half step. Or I should say... minor 2nd. 4 to 5 is a Major 2nd. 5 to 6 is getting high... Major 2nd.
[vocalization]
0:23:55.5 GR: Why did I pick this key is...
0:23:57.5 DN: [Singing, drops octave] 6 to 7 is a Major 2nd, 7 to 1 is a minor 2nd.
0:24:02.3 GR: Great, excellent. We're in the key of D, would you do the same game on letter names, please?
0:24:06.2 DN: Okay. Is that D?
0:24:08.8 GR: Yes.
0:24:09.4 DN: Okay. D... Oh gosh.
0:24:14.3 DN: It's morning.
0:24:14.4 GR: It is morning.
0:24:15.1 DN: D to E is a Major 2nd, E to F# is a Major 2nd, F# to G is a minor 2nd.
0:24:25.1 GR: Et cetera, yeah, yeah. Good. And of course, and for me, by doing that first with numbers or solfège, right? Do-to-RE, is a major second, RE-to-MI is a major second, the words are always the same no matter what major key you're in if you're using a movable system, but they change when you're using letter names or fixed Do. And to me, there's huge value in thinking about that. I also love to do this game with instrumentalists and have them play on their instrument D, E and then sing major second, E, F sharp and then sing major second.
0:25:05.9 DN: Great.
0:25:06.2 GR: So the analytical part they sing and the note naming part they play.
0:25:10.3 DN: Well, I noticed two things about doing that is, having just gone through it with just saying the interval names, which of course, I know very well. When I did it again with letter names, I've noticed two things happen is one, I already knew what that pattern was 'cause I had just done it. And in thinking about what the next note was, I already knew what that pattern was and therefore I had another contextual clue, just in recognizing my own brain process, I had another contextual clue about what that next note would be. And secondly, because I play the piano, I also didn't have to think about what I just, I know what that next interval is going to feel like. And I think I was envisioning a piano keyboard, and I know that we have the keyboard advantage...
0:26:15.6 GR: Sure.
0:26:16.2 DN: In music theory, but also a keyboard bias sometimes but I just was recognizing that both of those skills were...
0:26:26.1 GR: Coming into play.
0:26:27.0 DN: Contributing to my ability to do the exercise.
0:26:30.1 GR: Yeah.
0:26:30.3 DN: Just in terms of thinking of how, how we think and that's likely to be the skills that are also being developed in the students that are working with it.
0:26:38.1 GR: That's right. And the other thing is in giving it the specific letter names, whether we realize it or not, we are practicing interval building in a written theory context, aurally.
0:26:51.3 DN: Right.
0:26:51.9 GR: And we're also practicing interval recognition in a written theory context aurally.
0:26:57.2 DN: Yeah.
0:26:58.4 GR: That we are... Not only are we acknowledging that we have all these different seconds in a scale, we're looking at them in various different scales and naming them within the context of those keys.
0:27:11.7 DN: Can I also just explicitly add what this is doing is that you were talking about measuring a room. And so we're sitting here, we're naming a bunch of intervals in a row, and each of them is a small interval, but we're always, and it's not like measuring with a ruler, it's like taking the tape measure and extending it another foot.
0:27:32.8 GR: Yeah. Yeah. And sort of looking at each number on the tape measure as you go through the room.
0:27:38.2 DN: But we're still measuring from the same starting point.
0:27:41.8 GR: Absolutely. Yeah.
0:27:43.3 DN: Yeah.
0:27:44.2 GR: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, and with this, and with all these exercises, if you find you have a student or a class that loses tonic, that tonic shifts after a while or that has intonation problems, these are all great exercises to just, to have a drone going. Right.
0:28:01.5 DN: Right.
0:28:02.9 GR: And to just have, have a, like in this case it was D Major, have a D drone going in the background to play it against that and to just, and which can also make really beautifully explicit the feeling of each note against tonic. Of course, we just did this with seconds and we could do this with any other interval. We could do it with thirds 1 to 3 is a major third. 2 to 4 is a minor third, 3 to 5 is a... And so on and so forth.
0:28:33.6 DN: And as we said in the last episode those... That builds patterns that they need to know for other things. They? We.
0:28:43.0 GR: Absolutely.
0:28:44.1 DN: We all need to know those patterns for other things.
0:28:47.9 GR: Right. Especially the thirds. Right. Which get us towards triads, which are such a fundamental building block...
0:28:53.8 DN: Right.
0:28:54.2 GR: ...of our harmonic system. So those are... I think of those as being I call them Intervallic walks. We're gonna walk in interval up or down the scale. Right. You know, the sequencing of that seems pretty darned straightforward. Start with the second, go to the third, et cetera, gradually extend by the time you get to the seventh, things are really fun and there are only certain keys that work well. Right. Like, you gotta start on a pretty low key, it works pretty well with like a key of G A-flat, A, beyond that things get a bit ridiculous.
0:29:27.9 DN: Right.
0:29:28.7 GR: But it's still pretty darn fun. A complement to that is taking a note of the scale and finding all the intervals from that note of the scale. So let's be in this key since it's morning.
0:29:40.3 DN: Yeah.
0:29:41.7 GR: And David, here's the start of this pattern. Do to Re is a Major 2nd. Do to Mi is a Major 3rd. Would you continue?
0:29:51.3 DN: Do to Fa is a Perfect 4th. Do to Sol is a P5. Do to La is a M6. Do to Ti is a M7. Do to Do is a P8.
0:30:07.0 GR: Great. And then shoot the upside down version starting... "Do to Ti..."
0:30:08.3 DN: Do to Ti is a m2, Do to La is a m3, Do to Sol is a P4.
0:30:18.8 GR: Great. And so on and so forth. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We're in the key of B flat. Would you do the version coming down on letter names?
0:30:23.2 DN: Oh, okay. Bb to A is a m2. Bb to G is a m3. Bb to...
0:30:33.7 DN: Wait, what I'm I doing?
0:30:35.7 GR: Yep. You're right. You're right.
0:30:38.0 DN: Bb to F is a P4. Bb to Eb is a P5. Bb to D is a m6. Bb to C is a m7. Bb to Bb is a P8.
0:30:57.0 GR: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It engages your brain in a very different way, doesn't it?
0:31:00.7 DN: It does.
0:31:02.0 GR: And I love that. That's why I will pretty much always do this both ways.
0:31:08.6 DN: And again, that pattern is really obvious. But then having established that pattern there's, you have another tool to do the... Note naming pattern that you've just done if you do it in that order.
0:31:25.9 GR: Right. And you know, the other thing about this, going to note names like that is a preparatory exercise for sight singing. Where we are looking at notes on the staff that have names. And yes, we could do it just by spotting the intervallic distance. This is some sort of 4th, right. But or saying, oh, yeah, I recognize I'm going to, I've spotted which line Sol is on, or which space in this case so is on if we're thinking in treble clef... But here, by doing specific names, we're reinforcing the note names of the staff we're hopefully causing all of these things to come together to be thought about in all those different ways at once. And did you stop thinking about your solfege as you were singing letter names?
0:32:22.3 DN: I wasn't explicitly thinking about solfege.
0:32:25.3 GR: Were you aware of your solfege?
0:32:28.0 DN: If you had asked me at any moment where I was then I would... Yes, I would know.
0:32:32.0 GR: Yeah. This to me, is, I think the big truth about this right? Is that exercises like this, we have to know where we are in the scale to do them.
0:32:40.0 DN: Oh, right. Yeah.
0:32:40.5 GR: Even if we're not explicitly naming out loud where we are in this game.
0:32:46.0 DN: Yeah. Yeah, that's good. And then that solves the dilemma that we were talking about earlier, of how do I teach intervals without confusing people about... Yeah. Without introducing a problem into the situation.
0:33:06.0 GR: Yeah, yeah. Now, that exercise, it's a little less obvious of how you continue from there. Like what's the next step with that exercise? I love to do, to continue this one in two different ways. To take Do and we still do intervals to Do or to tonic. But let's start the pattern. Let's work in the octave of five to five instead of in the octave of one to one.
0:33:35.8 DN: All right. That's a very Dalcroze thing.
0:33:38.0 GR: It is a very Dalcroze thing. So let's imagine that we were in this key. [Piano] So there's a one. We're gonna work in the octave of one to five. So we're gonna go 1 to 5 is a perfect 4th, 1 to 6 is a minor third, would you continue?
0:33:54.5 DN: Oh. 1 to 7 is a minor second. 1 to 1 is a unison. Ooh, that rhymes. That should be a song. 1 to 2 is a major second. 1 to 3 is a major third. Then the rest feels like just what we were doing the...
0:34:13.8 GR: The same. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And so, and as you're discovering the farther up we move 1, the harder that becomes, right? So that if we say, now, let's say, this is 1.
0:34:27.8 DN: 1.
0:34:31.8 GR: And okay. And we're going to work in the octave of 3 to 3. So starting from 1 down to 3. Go ahead, David.
0:34:38.2 DN: 1 to 3 is a minor sixth. 1 to 4 is a perfect fifth. 1 to 5 is a perfect 4th. 1 to 6...
0:34:48.1 GR: Etcetera, etcetera. Now, do that in the key of A flat. Can you do that in letter names?
0:34:52.3 DN: Oh gosh. A to C is a minor sixth. Oh sorry, A flat to C, A flat to D is a...
0:35:02.9 GR: D? What kind of D?
0:35:03.4 DN: D flat. Thank you. A flat to... Yeah. Woof. You know, gotta visualize my keyboard.
[laughter]
0:35:08.8 GR: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, and this is also a good one because, it works pretty well to do this game, as you introduce the various keys, right? So like you can... Like, you know, once you get two sharps and two flats, this game is really easy to do from like B flat as a low one just going up, or D, right? And yeah. Okay. So there's this version of it, and then the related version of it is, instead of moving 1 up or down, take any note of the scale as the note we're bouncing to and from. So for instance, let's come to this key. [Piano]
[laughter]
0:35:52.9 GR: And now we're going to go to 5 always. Like this. 1 to 5 is a perfect fifth, 2 to 5 is a perfect 4th, would you continue?
0:36:03.8 DN: 3 to 5 is a minor third. 4 to 5 is a major second. 5 to 5 is a unison, which doesn't rhyme. 5 to 6 is a major second. 5 to 7 is a major third. 5 to 1 is a perfect 4th.
0:36:25.4 GR: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
0:36:26.2 DN: Did I do that right?
0:36:27.1 GR: You did that. Yes. You absolutely did. Yeah. Yeah. And then the reverse is just 1 to 5 is a perfect 4th. 7 to 5 is a major third. 6 to 5 is a major second, etcetera, right? And similarly, we can switch to note names here. I'm in C major, so that...
0:36:41.4 DN: I should practice these.
0:36:43.3 GR: Pretty easy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And there're...
0:36:46.1 DN: I could use some refresher course.
[laughter]
0:36:50.6 GR: And so right of course you have all the various varieties of those and yeah, and I quite love those. And if you wanna get really crazy, you can combine the two of them. And were we working in the compass of 1 to 1, right? The range of 1 to 1. But we could work instead in the compass of like say, 5 to 5, going to 2 every time.
0:37:13.1 DN: Right.
0:37:13.4 GR: Right. So in other words, let's say we're in this key, [piano] 1 and we're gonna do, 5 to 2 is a perfect fifth. 6 to 2 is a...
0:37:25.7 DN: Oh my gosh. I don't even think of that. All right. Wait. 5 to 2, 5 to 2 is a perfect fifth. This requires so many levels of thinking.
0:37:40.4 GR: Yes, it does. Yes, it does.
[laughter]
0:37:42.1 DN: So 6 to 2 is a perfect 4th. 7 to 2 is a minor third. 1 to 2 is a major second, 2 to 2 is a unison. 2 to 3 is a major second, 2 to 4 is a minor third, 2 to 5 is a perfect 4th.
0:38:06.7 GR: And sing 1.
0:38:08.3 DN: 1.
0:38:09.3 GR: Yes. Yes. Always sing 1 at the end of that exercise to give a sense of closing it off. Yeah.
0:38:18.2 DN: And, yeah, yeah. And then just to make sure that you've kept your tonic in mind, that would be a good diagnostic...
0:38:25.3 GR: Yes. Yes.
0:38:25.8 DN: Tool to see if you've lost track of your tonic.
0:38:29.2 GR: Yeah. Yeah. And if we were in F sharp major, right? So...
0:38:38.6 DN: Oh God!
0:38:39.2 GR: But you see, right. And you just see how you can layer this up and up and up and effectively.
0:38:45.6 DN: Yeah.
0:38:46.8 GR: I think about these as just being exercises to prepare us for whatever might come at us in the context of a key.
0:38:55.2 DN: It's great. And listen, this is absolutely tangential, except that I'm totally obsessed with Duolingo. And I'm also going to Poland soon. And so I've been doing Polish and Polish is hard. And, unfortunately I started learning Polish on Duolingo a couple years ago, and then I kind of stopped doing it for a while and now I started again. And now it thinks I know more than I know.
0:39:18.6 GR: Than you actually know. Yeah.
0:39:20.6 DN: And throws really hard things at me. But I was just thinking this feels like that, you sit and you do something and you go, well, I don't remember. And you... But the process of doing it, the process of suffering through it a little bit, is the process that makes us better. It's just great. I'm... That's probably just stating the obvious but, when I think of something like this that where when it feels challenging, is the part where a part of us tends to want to go, ooh that's scary. I'm gonna avoid it. Those are the times when we should dive in and try it, and by doing it, we're gonna get better and it will get easier.
0:40:07.0 GR: Yeah. Just lean in a little bit to that. Yeah totally. There is, the mind is very good at self-protection, right? It wants to, it will happily divert from things that make us recognize our limitations. And it does take a little bit of self managing, to lean into those. Or a teacher. Right? I mean, I think this is the real value of a teacher who picks something for us to do, rather than letting us just keep playing the music that we already play. Well, because it's so fun to do.
0:40:46.3 DN: Right.
0:40:50.0 GR: Okay. So, these can be extended. The other thing of course, you can go from these to then doing this with triads, right? Like, let's say we're in this key and doing, [piano] "one, three, five, major I, two, four, six minor ii, three, five, seven, minor iii,' and so on and so forth.
0:41:12.2 DN: Yeah.
0:41:15.7 GR: Which of course is preparing students to, both... Is helping remind students of the qualities of each triad within the scale. But also of their spellings in scale degrees or, solfege. Do Mi Sol, Major I; Re Fa La, minor ii; Mi Sol Si, minor iii. Fa La Re...
0:41:39.2 GR: Right? And especially if you're a theory teacher who is, who loves scale degrees, but whose aural skills classes are taught in solfege, this is a great way to help your solfege fluent students with their roman numeral spelling and identifications.
0:41:55.4 DN: So it just occurred to me that I can make another version of my court spelling song, which I wrote to teach court spelling, but I could, change it from.
Do Mi Sol, Fa La Do, So Ti Re Ti Sol, Do Do Do.
0:42:15.6 DN: You could then do major I, major IV, major V,' and then 1,1,1.
0:42:20.3 GR: Yeah, totally yeah.
0:42:25.0 DN: Interesting.
0:42:25.9 GR: And so, that gets pretty easy, pretty quickly. Though. Same rule applies, right? [piano chord] 'B, D sharp, F sharp, major I; C sharp, E sharp, G sharp, minor ii; D sharp, F sharp, A sharp Right? 'Cause we're, because I put us in B major.
0:42:44.6 DN: But I can hear that you're already, but you're already recruiting other things that you know.
0:42:49.4 GR: Right?
0:42:50.4 DN: To do that.
0:42:51.2 GR: Yeah. And then, having done that, I love to then do that in inversion. So let's move first inversion triads up the scale, right? I called these triadic walks, in the same way that we had interval walks, right? So, one, three, six, minor vi; two, four, seven, diminished vii; three, five, one major I, four, six, two, minor ii. And then B D sharp, G sharp, minor vi, C sharp, E, A sharp diminish vii, D sharp F sharp, B major I, E, G sharp, C sharp, minor ii, right? Or second version, one, four, six, major IV, two, five, seven major V, et cetera, right?
0:43:58.2 DN: Yeah.
0:44:00.6 GR: And then, spelling them as well. And then of course, dealing with the seventh chords, and the seventh chords in inversions are just delightful, right? Especially like your 4/2 position chords.
0:44:12.4 DN: Right?
0:44:13.1 GR: Right. Yeah. So anyway.
0:44:16.7 DN: There's certainly unlimited potential for making your students suffer in a good learning fashion.
0:44:25.5 GR: Yeah. And I always like to say to my students, well, you've always gotta walk places. You've always gotta drive places. Or, you're making dinner or you're doing dishes, or you're vacuuming or whatever, folding laundry. Here's something you can just do like, just pick one of these and go and gradually build up your fluency.
0:44:49.6 DN: Now there's another pattern. I don't know if it fits with these, but it's an alternative. I did... John Peterson showed me a pattern where you, look at all the half steps and you sing the half steps first. So you sing, you take toe and you sing Mi to Fa is a half step and Ti to Do is a half step. And then you do, Do to Re is a major second Re to Me is a major second. You do Fa to So is a major second. So to La is a major. You do all the half steps, you do all the minor seconds, then the major seconds, then the minor thirds.
0:45:26.2 GR: Yeah.
0:45:26.8 DN: Then the major thirds. But you're doing them out of order.
0:45:30.7 GR: This is beautiful within this. I love that. I love that. Oh. That is great.
0:45:38.6 DN: But then you really have to think about, it's particularly useful just right at the beginning that you're cementing where those half steps are.
0:45:47.4 GR: Yeah. Well, but then also to, with each of the intervals. I'm gonna add this to my... David, thank you for that. I'm gonna add this to my list. And it is worth just being really explicit here about the fact that these are exercises, these are not especially musical things and I trained as a pianist and so to me these are like the Hanon exercises in piano [plays piano] they're just these different little finger wiggling patterns, that effectively force us to get familiar with all the possible ways of wiggling our fingers. And this is that for ear training.
0:46:43.9 DN: And on top of that, sorry, that just connected to a thing that I was just talking to. I have a former student who's a wonderful, middle school choir director and college choir director in Virginia, Tim Drummond. And we were talking about intervals 'cause I told him we were doing this podcast and we were talking about intervals and solfege and we were talking about the fact that you really, the goal, if you compare it to reading, just doing one interval at a time is reading one phoneme at a time or one letter at a time. And, ideally we want to broaden to seeing words. And those Hanon exercises allows you to see this finger wiggling pattern as a word. And similarly we want to develop some of that with singing, maybe that's out of the context of intervals.
0:47:40.2 GR: Okay. So David, one other fun thing I like to do with this, is what I call coded melodies. And so, I've written here, do you see on our shared Google doc, do you see my outline for a coded melody?
0:47:53.5 DN: I do. Yeah.
0:47:53.6 GR: So a coded melody, you're given the starting solfege or scale degree. And then you're given a series of generic intervals from that and part of the challenge is like you'll see plus one and your instinct is to go up a second, but plus one means just a unison. So just beware.
0:48:12.6 DN: Okay.
0:48:13.8 GR: Right. Which is our weird system. So I'll just read off this one to our listeners.
0:48:19.9 DN: This could get confusing then.
0:48:21.8 GR: It does, but so are intervals. Right? So, here's the coded melody for you. Do plus one plus two minus three plus two plus two plus two plus one plus two minus two minus two minus two plus two minus two minus two plus two. And so now...
0:48:40.3 DN: Okay, well as soon as I got to the third interval, I recognized it.
0:48:42.8 GR: Of course. Of course. But would you sing it for us on those interval? And actually would you turn it into specific interval names and let's put it in this key.
0:48:52.9 DN: So Do unison, major second, minor third, minor second, major second, major second. Or no, sorry. Major second, unison, minor second, minor second. Major second, major second. I have to put my finger on them. So I keep track of myself. Major second, major second, minor second, minor second.
0:49:26.0 GR: Yes. And part of the challenge of that is David's looking at like plus two, minus two minus two, minus two plus two. And each of those twos are different. There are different kinds of twos. And so you really have to keep track as you're doing that of, and there was that moment where you sang major second unison, Maj--minor second. Right?
[laughter]
0:49:53.8 GR: As you went from three to four, from me to fa there.
0:49:57.4 DN: And what happened in my brain? I didn't think, ooh, this sounds like a minor second. I thought, I'm going from mi to fa, I have to sing a minor second.
[laughter]
0:50:07.1 GR: Yeah. But it does then start to draw on both of those things of, "Oh right, that's mi to fa. That does sound a minor second."
0:50:14.3 DN: Which, and the moment we start to sing more complicated music, we need to have sort of both of those strategies at hand because the music that we sing is going to modulate. [laughter]
0:50:26.6 GR: Yeah. And here, I want to come back to why do I torture my poor students and have them sing these things both on letter names and on scale degrees. It's because by going through this kind of series, when a student is doing something like, [piano chord] D to F sharp is a major third, E to G is a minor third, they're also thinking two to four is a minor third. But there's also this awareness that that could be three to five is a minor third, at which point we could have modulated down a whole step, granted it's a weird modulation. But there becomes this explicitness of, "Oh yeah, I recognize that. I've seen D two F sharp as one to three. I've seen it as four to six. I've seen it as five to seven. I've seen it as six to one in F sharp minor. I've seen it as all these different things." And what that opens up then as we talk about more complex music, is this potential to take any combination of two notes and to recontextualize them in a different collection, a different scale, a different key which opens up then that world of modulation and the world of mixing between major and minor and all of that wonderful stuff.
0:51:51.7 DN: Yeah. And re-contextualization is the source of all goodness in music.
0:51:56.8 GR: It is. That is heaven for me. Honestly.
0:52:00.1 DN: Hyperbolic, but... [laughter]
0:52:01.6 GR: I don't know. Hyperbolic, yeah. But like... it's when you stand still and the world changes around you, that is an experience that we don't get mostly in life, but we can have in music, and it's magical.
0:52:19.1 DN: And Taylor Swift exploits it all the time. [laughter] Although she's just exploiting... Here's what this little melodic fragment sounds like in this harmony. And now I'm gonna change the harmony and now I'm gonna repeat this melodic fragment one more time with a completely different harmony. And we obviously love that, she sells a lot of albums.
0:52:43.1 GR: Yeah. No, I love that and let's be honest, that trick is, we find that in Beethoven as well like, it's... That's great.
0:52:53.4 DN: Yeah.
0:52:56.1 GR: So, okay, all of these have been contextual intervallic training exercises of intervallic training within keys. We can also do acontextual intervallic training. And I think there's real value to this, especially for learning intonation. And so I thought maybe just to share a couple of quick exercises for this, brass players are especially familiar with this game. There's a series of exercises called the Remington exercises. And the way the Remington exercises work is you start on a note and you work chromatically down going between that note and a half step below back to the note, whole step below. Why am I describing this when I could just be singing it, David? But as far as the Remington exercises usually on instruments you go, doo-doo-doo, which is a minor second, doo-doo-doo major second, minor third, major third, etcetera. And I love to do... So I learned these from brass players, by the way, Emory Remington was a professor of trombone at the Eastman School of Music for ages and ages and ages, and has a room named after him, the Remington room on the ninth floor of Eastman's Annex, which is totally random, which was at one point the basketball court. And prior to that was the dance studio when Martha Graham, when Eastman had a dance program, and when Martha Graham was on the dance faculty of Eastman.
0:54:33.3 DN: I met her.
0:54:35.1 GR: You met Martha Graham?
0:54:36.2 DN: I did.
0:54:36.8 GR: Oh my gosh.
0:54:37.5 DN: In Spoleto in 1989, in Charleston.
0:54:41.4 GR: Yeah. Near the end of her life.
0:54:43.3 DN: Spoleto Festival in 1989, I think.
0:54:47.3 GR: Amazing. Amazing. Anyway, so these Remington exercises, I do these all the time with my choirs. And the way I do them is we start from a mid-range note, usually F or F sharp, let's take F sharp. And I have them sing half steps working their way out. So we go. Half step, half step, whole step, whole step, minor third, minor third, major third, major third etcetera, up to the seventh. And as they go get good at that, I have them do it in canon. So in other words, canon at one note. So I'm gonna do that with a piano and myself. Minor, let me put my... Here. Minor second, minor second, major second, major second. Or go in opposite direction. So some go up, while some go down, etcetera, etcetera. And, always as I'm doing this, when I'm doing with a choir, I conduct it. And anything that's ever so slightly out of tune, I just freeze on that until we find the exact tuning of it and then we come back. Yeah.
0:56:24.7 DN: Of course, the danger is so within, what is the exact tuning? [laughter]
0:56:29.2 GR: That's right. That's right. And I'm so glad you asked this. And so when I'm doing this exercise, I will take the just intervals for each, so the minor third higher than the piano, the major third lower than the piano, etcetera. And yeah, we're gonna do an episode on tuning systems and so we can dive into that more there, but, Yeah. For me, that is really about helping a choir to hear... and this is why brass players do it so much because they are really trained to hear those overtone intervals.
0:57:09.3 DN: And they have to.
0:57:10.8 GR: And they have to, because of how their instruments work, the fundamental is so present that we hear any lack of tuning much more strongly. And because of the shape of the bell, the dampening of every other partial, we hear intonation so much more clearly with those. So yeah, anyway, Remington exercises, and you can see how those can play out in a variety of ways. So I learned this from a student of a student of Nadia Boulanger which as I said before is like everyone in the world is a student of a student of Nadia Boulanger. So, she had this exercise I am told, where she would play an interval at the piano and you had to name it, using the distance in half steps of that interval. So a minor second would be called a one, a major second, a two, because they're two half steps in and a minor third a three, a major third a four, a perfect 4th a five, an augmented 4th a six, and so on and so forth. And she started with just half and whole steps. So one versus two. And the way this works is I'm going to play and you are to listen, not for the separate notes, this is very important in this exercise. Do not concern yourself, but intentionally try to pay no attention to hearing the two notes, the two distinct notes you hear. Instead, would you listen to how they rub with each other?
0:58:46.4 DN: Right.
0:58:47.4 GR: Would you listen to the sound of their relationship rather than to the sound of each note?
0:58:53.0 DN: So should I be explicitly listening for the beating between them?
0:58:58.5 GR: Effectively, yes. Imagine you were kind of a tuner and you're listening to... Yeah. So shall we try this?
0:59:04.5 DN: Sure.
0:59:05.2 GR: Just ones and twos. So just the half and whole steps. Here we go.
0:59:07.8 DN: Should I answer?
0:59:12.9 GR: Yes. You should say it loud. Either one or two, yes.
0:59:14.9 DN: Right. One. Oh yeah, two. One. Oh, sorry, Two. One. Two. Two. Two. Two. One.
0:59:45.8 GR: And so on and so forth.
0:59:46.7 DN: Suddenly that becomes more... That's interesting. That is not an exercise I've done before, especially on the last two, the beating became very apparent.
1:00:01.9 GR: Yeah. Yeah. And the more you do this, to me, each interval has its own color. And in this kind of exercise, you really can't... You can't be thinking about key so much. 'Cause the key is constantly changing around you.
1:00:20.5 DN: Right.
1:00:21.9 GR: And you actually start to focus in on what the interval itself sounds like.
1:00:29.0 DN: It is, it's a focusing exercise. That's great.
1:00:34.0 GR: Yeah. I love this exercise. I adore it. And so she would do ones, twos, then she'd do threes, fours. So major minor thirds. Then she'd do one, two, three, four.
1:00:44.8 DN: Right.
1:00:45.4 GR: Then she would do fives and sevens. So perfect 4th versus perfect fifth.
1:00:53.6 DN: Right. Ooh, that's... Those are astoundingly tricky.
1:00:58.7 GR: Those are astoundingly tricky. Absolutely so. Absolutely so. And to be clear, I believe those are astoundingly tricky for one primary reason, if I play a perfect 4th, this note in it has the overtone, an octave higher. So you're hearing this perfect 4th and this perfect fifth. They're both present, but the perfect 4th is under. If I play now a perfect fifth, this note has this octave in it. So you're hearing a perfect fifth and a perfect 4th. So it's impossible to play on an overtone rich instrument. It's impossible to play a perfect 4th and not hear a perfect fifth. It's impossible to play a perfect fifth and not hear a perfect 4th.
1:01:44.8 DN: Right.
1:01:45.4 GR: So you really have to focus down to the fundamentals of each note. Okay. So then... Yeah. So five and seven, perfect 4th, perfect fifth, then after that, six, eight, and nine altogether, the tritone, the minor six and the major six and then 10 and 11 together. So at which point... And then finally... Yeah, you've got everything. Right? And then having done that, you go back, and you do the whole cycle again with three notes and you're to name the bottom interval. For instance, if I play [piano cluster], that's two, two, but if I play; that's two, one, or if I play, that's one, two. And you gradually build it up that way so that you're...
1:02:45.7 DN: And you're still hearing the beating of those twos separate?
1:02:48.1 GR: That's right. You listen for the beating. Yeah.
1:02:51.7 DN: Alright.
1:02:55.5 GR: And this training as painful as it is, that training has made me more effective than I care to admit at hearing wrong notes and out of tune notes, in choirs and orchestras. I owe a huge amount of the work I do on the podium to that kind of training of saying, oh, I should have been hearing four, three, four. Right? Or four, three, three. And I'm hearing it, right? Or I'm expecting to hear two, three, two, and instead, I'm hearing something different. And especially in non tonal contexts, this is... Yeah, in my mind I hear a chord and those Boulanger numbers popped out at me. There is a two in that chord. There is a five in that chord. There is a seven in that chord.
1:04:05.6 GR: And yeah. Anyway, it's a different way of hearing and thinking about intervals, but the combination of that with tonal contextual stuff, I find very powerful.
1:04:17.7 DN: Well, I think, as long as a strategy is useful, then having multiple strategies is just gonna make you a better musician. [laughter]
1:04:28.5 GR: For sure. For sure.
1:04:31.9 DN: Yeah.
1:04:32.8 GR: Well, we got through everything in about an hour. I feel like this was a lot. My mind actually feels a little bit tired of... I need to stop thinking about intervals for a while now. I don't know about yours. [laughter]
1:04:43.0 DN: Mine is... Yeah, mine is also running at a million miles a minute, but I'm also thinking like, [chuckle] I think I know what I'm doing in class tomorrow morning.
[laughter]
1:04:55.2 GR: Right. So, yeah. We'll soon be talking about tuning systems, and temperament, and as we found, you can't really talk about intervals without talking about that. So I think that'll be a lot of fun. But... Yeah. David, it's been fun to do some interval stuff with you.
1:05:16.4 DN: I feel once again, enlightened.
[laughter]
1:05:19.6 GR: Excellent. And yeah, I am going to take that exercise from John Peterson, and I am going to go and do it through the full interval cycle, 'cause that, what a delight that is.
1:05:33.3 DN: Yeah.
1:05:34.1 GR: Yeah. Excellent. Awesome. Well, see you next time.
1:05:37.1 DN: All Right. See you soon.
1:05:42.4 Leah Sheldon: Notes from this staff is produced by utheory.com.
1:05:44.9 GR: uTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
1:05:49.2 LS: With video lessons, individualized practice, and proficiency testing, uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world master the fundamentals of music theory, rhythm, and ear training.
1:06:00.0 GR: Create your own free teacher account at utheory.com/teach.
David Newman and Greg Ristow chat about four ways to teach intervals in music theory, as well as how to overcome some of the challenges of teaching intervals.
Transcript[music]
0:00:20.8 Greg Ristow: Welcome to Notes from the Staff, a podcast from the Creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.
0:00:33.4 David Newman: Hi, I'm David Newman, and I teach voice and music theory at James Madison University and I create content and code for uTheory.
0:00:42.0 Greg Ristow: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and Associate Professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory.
0:00:47.8 DN: Thank you listeners for your comments and episode suggestions. We love to read them, send them our way by email at notes@utheory.com and remember to like us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:00.1 GR: Today we'll be talking about teaching intervals, teaching reading and writing intervals more so than teaching the oral side of intervals, which we'll save for another episode and this David, I find to be one of the most challenging things to teach in fundamentals of theory.
0:01:17.0 DN: There's certainly a lot of approaches to use and picking one is hard.
0:01:22.5 GR: Yeah.
0:01:23.1 DN: And doing them all is also hard.
[chuckle]
0:01:24.8 GR: Yeah, for sure. For sure. And there's just a lot involved too, right? I mean, it's like you've got the generic interval size. You've got the specific size or quality, you've got the inversions, you have the compound intervals, consonance and dissonance. It just adds up and it's one of those concepts that it seems like, I often forget to budget enough time for because there's almost always a next step.
0:01:56.0 DN: And it's one of those foundational concepts that if you are struggling with it, you're gonna struggle with everything else.
0:02:02.7 GR: Yeah, for sure. For sure. And I find it's also one that can be hard to motivate students to learn, because if you're not careful, it feels really like a terrible set of math problems.
0:02:13.2 DN: Yeah. Also, it's really easy to do if you have plenty of time but it's, you need to know it better than that. You need to know it so well that it doesn't take you time.
0:02:26.2 GR: Yeah and I think for a lot of us who are teaching it there's also that challenge that both Leigh VanHandel and Melissa Hoag talked about of we already know it so well, it's really hard to conceive of what it's like not to know it.
0:02:40.2 DN: Yeah. And there's all these extra concepts involved, the letter names and...
0:02:46.2 GR: So I guess one of the things that I think about a lot is this challenge of how do we keep the teaching of intervals musical, right?
[laughter]
0:02:55.6 GR: I think I'm gonna be really honest here and say, I think the first 15 times I taught intervals it was the dullest thing. I remember saying to classes, I'm sorry, this is gonna seem really boring, but it's really critical. As like a motivator, and I guess it's an okay motivator but there may be better ways the more I've taught it recently I've focused a lot on ways to keep it musical and make it musically relevant.
0:03:25.3 DN: Yeah. Yeah. And of course we've also had... We've talked to people this just recently about other ways of making it fun, but making it fun is not necessarily the same thing as making it musical. And making it musical is certainly more compelling.
0:03:40.4 GR: Yeah. Yeah. And if you can do both, all the better, right? Yeah.
0:03:44.5 DN: Right.
0:03:45.2 GR: Yeah. So I guess I don't know. I'd be curious your take on this. For me, I spend a lot more time teaching when I teach intervals now than I used to talking about consonance and dissonance really early on and talking about intervals as a way to get into how notes work together or work against each other.
0:04:06.3 DN: Ooh. I think that's fabulous. Yeah. And I think we we're... We said, we're just gonna talk about the written theory of things today, but the intervals that are most fundamental to our physical world are those early low notes in the Harmonic series. So the octave and the fifth and the fourth. Well arguably not well. Yeah. But the fourth.
[laughter]
0:04:36.4 GR: Yeah, certainly before the third on the Overton series.
0:04:38.9 DN: Right. And those intervals are those Pythagorean, those things that are closest to the Pythagorean ideal.
0:04:49.6 GR: I feel like we should unpack some of these things, right? Like, so...
0:04:53.1 DN: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
0:04:54.0 GR: So when we say the Pythagorean ideal, we're talking about the, that these intervals come from ratios of frequencies or ratios of length of strings.
0:05:02.3 DN: And so when you have the, especially those notes that are close, those simplest ratios, so one to two.
0:05:08.9 GR: Which is the octave.
0:05:09.7 DN: And two to three.
0:05:11.2 GR: Which is the fifth.
0:05:12.3 DN: And three to four.
0:05:13.8 GR: Which is the fourth.
0:05:14.8 DN: Those are the ones that we're going to perceive most readily when they're perfectly in tune. And those are sounds that the, that we gravitate to. And if we can build everything else from that. And of course, when you tune a harps accord, you tune it by fifths because that's the interval that you can hear.
[chuckle]
0:05:39.7 GR: I mean, to be fair, you have to adjust some of those fifths along the way.
0:05:44.3 DN: Yes you have to adjust.
0:05:45.4 GR: Exactly.
0:05:45.7 DN: Whether you put all of that mess in one of the fifths or spread it out among four or more. Yeah. Yeah. We should do an episode on tuning systems. That would definitely be worth doing. We should add that to our list. In any case you were saying, although we said we're gonna talk about this from a written concept, we can't fully separate it out from the oral concept. And I'm getting this right in that those early intervals, which are effectively the perfect intervals on the Harmonic series have a particular sound and when we connect to that, it starts to make a lot more sense.
0:06:25.8 DN: And to some level, not in all cases. But to some level, when we're talking about consonance and dissonance, we're talking about resolution back to one of those simpler ratios.
0:06:40.1 GR: Yeah. It's interesting, right? Because of course, the third is... And especially when we talk about if we're resolving, say to a major chord versus a minor chord, and of course that minor chord, we don't get on the overtone series.
0:06:57.0 DN: Right...
0:06:57.3 GR: And it's still...
0:07:00.0 DN: Not very low down. [laughter]
0:07:00.8 GR: Yeah, 'cause it's not early on, yeah. Not as a collection of the first in notes on the series. Yeah.
0:07:07.1 DN: Although I'm discovering through some other methods that Riemann was on to something when he was making up SAP harmonics.
0:07:19.0 GR: The undertones?
0:07:21.1 DN: The undertones. [laughter]
0:07:21.7 GR: Yeah. And that, we should also save for another episode.
[laughter]
0:07:28.1 DN: This feels like a teaser for a whole other season.
0:07:30.9 GR: Right. Doesn't it? Yeah, it's always good to have ideas for our coming episodes. Maybe we just dive into the ways that we teach this because, I know for myself, when I was first starting to teach fundamentals of theory, I taught this like I had learned it, and like I'd always taught it, and I remember observing another teacher teaching intervals completely differently, and thinking, oh, that's totally wrong, the right way to do it is this, right? And I think...
[laughter]
0:08:03.9 GR: Like everything else, the more I've done it, I'm like, oh, there are, maybe right elements to all the different ways that we can teach this, so...
0:08:12.5 DN: Right, and there are some philosophical things to consider, 'cause you need to know about intervals early...
0:08:21.4 GR: For sure.
0:08:21.5 DN: But you also don't want to learn to build your entire schema around intervals.
0:08:28.7 GR: Yeah, this is a great question. At what point do we start teaching intervals?
0:08:35.1 DN: And of course, in most curriculum, we start teaching them very early.
0:08:40.1 GR: Usually immediately after scales, typically...
0:08:42.4 DN: Yeah.
0:08:43.3 GR: Or key signatures. The typical arrangement is, you learn your letter names, you learn things on the piano, you learn half steps and whole steps, scales, maybe major key signatures or perhaps interval since it's a classic fundamental structure.
0:09:01.7 DN: And there's a lot of chicken and the egg here. How do you start, because you need some knowledge to talk about the other things?
0:09:09.7 GR: Right. And we don't get to introduce scales without first talking about half and whole steps. Right? So we've already touched intervals.
0:09:19.3 DN: So I don't... If I still have not solved the problem for myself, except that I think the idea of spiraling your curriculum so that you keep revisiting subjects in more depth is the only solution I've come up with.
[laughter]
0:09:33.6 GR: Yeah. Which is hard to do, especially if you're in a one semester kind of fundamental sequence.
0:09:41.7 DN: Right, and yeah, when you only get control over one little tiny part of the education.
[laughter]
0:09:51.2 GR: Yeah. I've experimented. I've moved it around actually. I have experimented with teaching intervals after triads. The good thing about doing it that way is triads are pretty inherently musical things, and there are so many ways you can connect the teaching of triads to real music and to music that students are listening to, from your very first day teaching triads, and if you teach intervals after triads, then you can talk about the intervals as growing out of triads. Oh look, we already know our perfect fifths. We already know our major and minor thirds. I'm not sure I'd do it that way again, but I will say I found it very musical to do that way.
0:10:35.2 DN: Yeah. And the tricky part is teaching all the things without intervals up to that point. [laughter]
0:10:43.0 GR: Yeah, exactly right, exactly right. Yeah.
0:10:45.4 DN: But again, we can spiral, we can talk about them, and then we can talk about them in more depth.
0:10:49.9 GR: Yeah.
0:10:50.0 DN: And we can talk about them in more depth.
0:10:52.9 GR: Yeah.
0:10:52.9 DN: If we've learned scales, then we have that first step of being able to just identify a generic interval, and we can learn that we can count one, two, that's a second, one, two, three, that's a third. Even that is one of those tricky things that is probably hard for a beginner student, is to remember to include the note that you started on when coming up with the number for the interval.
0:11:24.7 GR: Yeah, for sure.
0:11:26.7 DN: Yeah, that's definitely a common fundamentals mistake. [laughter]
0:11:31.3 GR: It absolutely is. And even with someone experienced in fundamentals, if I say, "What's a third plus a third?"
0:11:39.3 DN: Oh, that is... The math then gets ridiculous because you're saying... Yeah, it's like saying two plus two equals five and...
0:11:45.1 GR: All right, yeah.
0:11:46.8 DN: Except in this case two plus two equals three, yeah. [laughter]
0:11:51.5 GR: Yeah.
0:11:52.2 DN: Here, everything you've learned at elementary school is wrong.
0:11:56.6 GR: Yeah, so let's talk about the pedagogy of generic intervals, so when we say generic intervals, we're talking about intervals just including the letter name, so we're not concerned about whether something's major, or a minor, or perfect, etcetera, just the distance on the staff.
0:12:13.3 DN: Right.
0:12:13.9 GR: And as you said, the first challenge there is the tendency to say, okay, yeah, E minus C should be two 'cause it's two below E.
[laughter]
0:12:26.0 GR: But of course, we use one-based counting for our interval system instead of zero based counting, and so it's three.
0:12:35.0 DN: And we just take it for granted.
0:12:36.5 GR: And we just take it for granted, yeah.
[laughter]
0:12:40.8 GR: Once you get past that basic challenge of, Oh yeah, we have to count the outer notes, both of them, then doing generic intervals is pretty easy, but it's not necessarily fast.
0:12:57.2 DN: Right. Especially if you're doing letter names, because then you have that... It's almost... It's easier to look at it on a keyboard or a staff, and see, because you have a very clear visual, but letter names means you have to have a schema for that. You have to have that pattern in your head.
0:13:16.9 GR: Yeah.
0:13:17.7 DN: Which I guess is one of the reasons why we hear a lot of advocating for use of keyboard.
0:13:26.1 GR: Although I actually think figuring out the generic interval, looking at a keyboard, is harder, because...
0:13:31.9 DN: Truth. Because on a staff...
0:13:33.2 GR: Because the keyboard, of course, by itself doesn't...
0:13:34.8 DN: And the reason why it's so easy on a staff, is because the staff is, and I love to remind my students of this, a tonal notation system.
0:13:42.7 GR: Oh, yeah. Very true.
0:13:43.2 DN: The tonality is built into that notation system.
0:13:46.5 GR: Yeah.
0:13:47.2 DN: And so, yeah, if you see it... If you see it on a staff, you know exactly what it is... There's no question and if you see a tritone on the staff. I tend to use in my classes, and I don't know if this is legit, but I tend to use tritone generically for that sound... Because out of context, you don't know whether it's an augmented fourth or a diminished fifth. But on a staff, you see right away, whether it's an augmented fourth or a diminished fifth.
0:14:19.2 GR: Yeah, yeah. On a staff, we're in the context of a key. Yeah, for sure.
0:14:22.8 DN: Yeah.
0:14:22.9 GR: So, ways we can get students to fluency with generic intervals... I think you've hit up upon something really important, which is that looking at it on the staff, versus working in letter names, can be two different things. And we need students to attain fluency in both of those. So, I certainly have ways that I like to try and help students get there. We're speeding up interval writing, generic interval writing, and identification on the staff. One of the classic tricks, of course, is to help students to notice that if both notes are on a line, or both notes are on a space, it's going to be an odd-numbered interval, no matter how big or small the interval is. And if they're not, then it's an even-numbered interval.
0:15:13.9 DN: And we've talked before about pattern matching... And I definitely know that I look for patterns on the staff.
0:15:25.2 GR: Yeah.
0:15:26.3 DN: It's more advanced concept to think about what a triad looks like in various inversions.
0:15:34.9 GR: Yeah.
0:15:35.0 DN: But I guess if we learn quickly to identify thirds and fourths... Or fifths and sixths as intervals, then we're more likely to be able to also see how those fit into patterns that we're likely to see in triadic... In intuition harmony.
0:15:50.1 GR: For sure. Yeah. Yeah. I like to do a silly game of... I put up my hand sideways with my fingers spread, so it makes a staff, and then I just take two other fingers and I flop in an interval, and after a beat I nod my head and the class calls out, "Fifth" or "Third" or "Second".
[laughter]
0:16:18.8 GR: But you know, it just... And then to have students drill each other that way on their little hand staff, just to pair up and, yeah.
0:16:27.8 DN: And not only is that very handy, because you always have it with you. Yeah, that's great. And I have also used... I've done similar things with the cinder blocks on the walls of my school.
[laughter]
0:16:45.8 GR: Where the blocks themselves are the spaces and the gravel is the other lines?
0:16:50.4 DN: Yeah, yeah. You can find staff analogies all over the place. [laughter]
0:16:56.0 GR: Yeah, yeah. And just being able to see that, right? It's so much easier to see those intervals on the staff than it is to think about them in abstract letter names... An exercise that I use, that I learned from a student of a student of Nadia Boulanger...
[laughter]
0:17:19.8 GR: It's theoretically attributed back to Nadia Boulanger, is that she would talk about the idea of an infinite piano... It just spread infinitely to the left, low, infinitely to the right, high. And she would say, just take a finger and put a finger out, and now let the piano slide left or right under you and you can come to any note. And so, at first just imagine that... Just see your finger over C, and then see the keyboard sliding under it until your finger is at A, for instance. And so now we're going to set the keyboard sliding at kind of a slow rate, and we're going to say the name of every note that passes under our finger. So, we'll slide it and we'll say, C, D, E, F, as we're seeing the keyboard pass under. Great, easy enough. We get back to C, we come back down. So now, let's slide it a little faster. And let's say the name every of every note, we'll wind up skipping one of the notes that passes under our finger each time.
0:18:36.0 DN: Oh.
0:18:36.6 GR: And so now we're saying, C, E, G, E, D, F, A, C. And we do that coming down, C, A, F, D, B, G, E, C. And now we're saying our thirds right. And then... But the important thing in this is that you are actually, you're seeing the keyboard sliding under your fingers, that you're not just memorizing some abstract set of letters. And so her idea was to make late. So when you're thinking about your thirds or your fourths or your fifths, you're not just thinking about some abstract, oh, I know G is a fifth above C, but in knowing that you are also seeing everything that came in between it.
0:19:24.6 DN: Right. And you're connecting those two worlds that we were talking about, the alphabet world and the visual world.
0:19:32.2 GR: Yeah. Yeah.
0:19:33.0 DN: So that they're not separate concepts.
0:19:36.2 GR: Yes. Yes. And the great thing about all of the intervals, which maybe not everyone realizes, but there are many great things about all the intervals, [laughter] But one handy thing for this particular exercise is that for any interval, if you repeat that interval up or down enough times, you will get back to where you started.
0:19:56.8 DN: Right. Yeah. And we're still talking generic intervals.
0:20:00.7 GR: And we're still talking generic intervals. That's right. Because that is actually also the case with specific intervals. You will eventually get back where you started. It may have a different name. You'll get back where you started.
0:20:12.8 DN: Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes faster than you expected.
[laughter]
0:20:17.1 GR: That's right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Tritone C, F-sharp, C done [laughter]
0:20:25.6 DN: A hypothetically harder concept, which is actually, in fact, easier.
0:20:29.6 GR: Right. Yeah.
0:20:30.6 DN: Major thirds or, yeah. Yeah. Well, not major thirds 'cause then they would get wildly complicated. You, wouldn't get back to where you're starting 'cause you...
0:20:38.9 GR: Oh no, you do very quickly. You do, yeah. C, E, G-sharp, C.
0:20:46.3 DN: But, no, because you're C, E, G-sharp, B-sharp.
0:20:46.7 GR: Oh right. To do this version, you have to allow yourself to re-spell, [laughter] something. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. The thing about that exercise is you can't do it for more than 45 seconds or you lose your class [laughter] Right.
[laughter]
0:21:02.6 DN: It's true. And I studied with several people, as I'm sure you did, you studied with Nadia Boulanger and, some of them, the ones who more distinctly tried to emulate her definitely posed challenges that left the class in the dust [laughter] at times.
0:21:26.8 GR: Yeah. Yeah. That might be a fun episode too. The, yeah.
0:21:32.2 DN: The Nadia Boulanger teaching Legacy. Gosh, she was so influential.
0:21:37.4 GR: Right. So many composers in particular studied with her. Yeah. So, okay. So I mean, generic intervals. I think maybe the other thing worth saying as you were talking about spiraling, with any of these concepts, students will not attain fluency and speed within the first day, 2, 3, 4, that they experience. It takes repeatedly coming back to something to build those connections, to build that fluency.
0:22:11.5 DN: And so how are they gonna build that fluency? And I think like the same way we learn language, you just have to use it constantly and probably engage them in ways where they need to come up with it quickly. I mean, the way that they hate is timed quizzes although that's valuable. Of course we love the fact that computers are a way of giving that kind of feedback at a rate that a student can handle and progress with the student. 'Cause computers are much more patient than we are.
0:22:56.0 GR: For sure.
0:22:57.0 DN: But also through games, and that competitive spirit.
0:23:00.8 GR: Along with that, another thing I love to do is take something that's fairly easy to sing and to have students sing it on generic interval names. Like happy birthday, for instance. You go, haha, unison, second, second, fourth, second, third, unison. Second, second, fifth, second. Fourth unison, octave, third, third, second, second. Sixth unison, second, third, second, second. And it's wonderfully hard. It's even hard for me. But it's certainly easier when you're looking at it on the page, but it can be, and I always will pick a song that most everyone knows like to do this, this is not how we want students to sight sing by thinking about the interval from the note they're on to the note they're not on. That can build up, that can cripple fluency in sight singing for life. If you're thinking about sight singing that way.
0:24:10.1 DN: And it's super common.
0:24:11.7 GR: And it is super common.
0:24:13.1 DN: I so often am doing sight singing with class and they're already in their third or fourth semester of, and they will get a big leap and they'll all choke.
0:24:30.2 GR: And they're trying to summon the interval to mind.
0:24:32.0 DN: Yeah. Because they're trying to think of the interval when I'm like, it's T, you know where T is just sing T.
[laughter]
0:24:38.6 DN: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I feel like this is going to be the hill I die on [laughter] is don't sight sing by intervals. I mean, there are times when the intervals are helpful, but they are rare and or where, we wind up needing to really think primarily in an interval context. But those situations are really rare in actual music. Yeah. Yeah. Anyone who wants to hear us opine more about this should go back to our very early episode on Sailfish systems.
0:25:16.9 GR: As if we're opinionated or something.
0:25:19.0 DN: No, I know, right imagine, imagine. Okay. So we've talked about generic intervals and that's the, "easy part" of teaching intervals where people, and I think most people kind of teach generic intervals the same way. It's a simple concept. They're not that many different ways of doing it. But where pedagogy really differs is in how we teach specific intervals. So I've seen four ways of doing this. And I'm... Just to enumerate them, teaching intervals by half steps, which is to say learning that a perfect fifth has seven half steps and four letter names, or five letter names, depending on whether you're coming outside. Teaching intervals by scales, which is to say that from scale, in a major scale from one up to any node in the scale is a major or perfect interval, and from one down to any node in the scale, is a minor or perfect interval. Teaching intervals by natural intervals, in other words, intervals from, if both of the notes were natural as in C natural, E natural, what would that interval be? And then, teaching intervals by scale degrees. So knowing that anytime I'm going from scale 3, 4 to scale 3, 6, that's a major third, and that can transfer across various keys. So those were the four I came up with. David, do you have any others that I missed in that list?
0:26:48.0 GR: Not that I'm aware of, but those... And the thing is, except for the first one, I think you just need to know all of them.
[laughter]
0:26:56.7 DN: Right. So, okay. Yeah. And the first one being intervals by half steps, knowing that your major thirds have four half steps.
0:27:03.8 GR: Right. Oh God. I don't even know what that is. I would have to look and go. Right. Okay. I would've to count. I don't have that information in my brain.
[laughter]
0:27:14.5 DN: Yeah. It's funny. I don't either except from set theory. From teaching oral skills 4 so many times and, you know, just, yeah. Yeah. But, okay. So this first approach, teaching intervals by half steps, effectively the idea here is that you learn that any given interval has a certain number of half steps in it, right? And a certain number of letter names. So we learn our perfect fourth has five half steps and four letter names. Four letter names total. That's including the outer notes. And you learn this, most people who teach this way teach all the major and perfect intervals, and then teach how to alter from the major and perfect intervals to get any of the other intervals. And...
0:28:10.0 GR: That makes sense.
0:28:10.9 DN: Yeah. Yeah. I have to say, one of the things that I love about this approach, is you can teach intervals in a way that someone who has failed every previous quiz in your fundamentals class will still understand.
0:28:28.3 GR: Gotcha.
0:28:29.6 DN: Right? Because it's just, it's you find the note on the piano and you count your half steps.
0:28:36.4 GR: Right.
0:28:36.5 DN: And then you find the version of that note that matches the letter name, that's however many letter names apart.
0:28:43.5 GR: You know, I think the thing that's so tricky about this though, is that it requires so many transformations. It won't work if... It won't work just looking at a staff, unless you have an already inherent knowledge of how that staff translates to whole steps and half steps. In which case you're already advanced enough that maybe you didn't need this process. And if you're looking at the keyboard, it doesn't... Yeah. You're gonna have to do a lot of translation. You're gonna have to count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then go, okay. But that's the third. [laughter] And it's... That's a lot of...
0:29:31.3 DN: Yeah, it is a slow...
0:29:33.3 GR: That's a of steps.
0:29:34.0 DN: It is a slow process because of all those transformations, right?
0:29:38.1 GR: Yeah.
0:29:39.0 DN: I will say, and this was the method that when I saw that teacher, this was back in 2005, I saw a teacher teaching it this way, and I thought, this is the worst. I will never do it this way. But I also think if we skip teaching this concept, sometimes students, what this concept makes really clear is that when we're using intervals, what we're really doing is counting musical distance two ways. We're counting it by letter names and we're counting it by distance in half steps. And those are different. Even though we kind of merge them into one naming system. So I guess for me, this approach is one that I introduce in about 15 minutes, just to be sure students have this idea that like, and I introduce it usually by saying, okay, find me a white note fifth on the piano. And how many half steps are in there? And can you find me a white note fifth on the piano that has a different number of half steps. And of course there's only one white note fifth on the piano that has six half steps in it instead of seven half steps.
0:30:57.3 GR: Well, that is a good experiential learning process for them to find that one natural, as we call it interval.
0:31:06.1 DN: Yeah. Diminished fifth interval. Yeah.
0:31:07.7 GR: Yeah. That is different, rather than just saying, Hey, there is this one natural interval that's different.
[laughter]
0:31:15.2 DN: Right. Right. But for me, the important thing is that they understand that not all fifths are created equal, not all whatevers are created equal, right? This concept is a way for me of getting to why we need these specific interval names.
0:31:34.2 GR: So I love that. I love that as a tool to get yourself going. And then you've, and then they're aware of the concept. I'm not sure I would wanna personally dive too deeply in there, at least in a fundamental class.
0:31:50.5 DN: Yeah. And you know there are people who this is the way they teach intervals. And so if they really do that, then students memorize that major second, two half steps, major third, four half steps. Perfect fourth, five half steps. Perfect fifth, seven half steps, major six, nine half steps, major seventh, 11 half steps, right? Just...
0:32:12.1 DN: But I am with you that, to be fluent, that approach involves way too many transformations that just slow us down. So I think these other three approaches that we're talking about are effectively abstractions above that basic concept. That get you more quickly to a place of being able to identify your name intervals. So second one, intervals by scales, which is this wonderful trick that if you start from one in a major scale and you go up to any node in the scale, you're going to have a perfect or major interval. And if you do the same thing coming down, you're going to have a minor or perfect interval. And then everything is just a transformation by half step away from that.
0:32:58.9 GR: Which is also one of the ways that's closest to the way we may hear things. Wonderful.
0:33:04.2 DN: For sure. Yeah. And it's also, it's a wonderfully easy one to connect to oral training as well. 'Cause you can do the classic 1, 2, 2 is a major second. 1, 2, 3 is a major third and so on and so forth. Which of course is in building up students for, functional hearing. Or do do re, whatever language you wanna use of recognizing. Okay. Oh, where is my fa? Oh yeah. Do do fa there's my fa 'Cause I can just call do do mind and have, I've sung my Do do fa enough times that. Yeah.
0:33:42.8 GR: So yes, if we have a schema of what a major scale sounds like if we have a schema of, we keep the, I love this word now.
0:33:49.8 DN: Yeah. Thank you Lee.
0:33:50.9 GR: Yeah, exactly. If we have a schema of what a major scale looks like, we also have our answers.
0:33:57.6 DN: Yeah. And I think there you're getting to another of the reasons that I think all of these approaches, other than the first one we talked about of counting by half steps are maybe frankly stronger is because as we learned in our episode with Leigh VanHandel, a lot of learning is about making connections to things that are already known. And the greater number of connections, the easier a concept is to call to mind. And so yeah. As you're saying schema right. The technical term for that and this connects so directly to that schema of scales orally and in written theory.
0:34:39.8 GR: Yeah. And then we learn other fundamental concepts and fundamentals that will make this easier of when we learn key signatures, we quickly learn what notes are going to be in a major scale we can, and that is, that becomes an easy way to calculate things.
0:35:00.6 DN: Yeah. Now, one of the downsides of this approach is that there are notes for which there is no major scale or minor scale. For instance, David, what's a minor third above G-sharp?
[laughter]
0:35:16.3 GR: Well, I can look at it on the piano.
[laughter]
0:35:18.0 DN: Yeah. But also you probably know right away, right? A minor third above G-sharp is B that's a pretty common interval. But if you've learned this approach, then suddenly you're like, oh gosh, do I know G-sharp major? Nope I don't.
0:35:30.5 GR: Yeah. I don't have a G-sharp major scale in my head.
0:35:34.2 DN: Or for instance, minor third above F-double sharp. Something that exists in the key of G-sharp minor.
0:35:39.6 GR: There are many situations in which this is gonna be cumbersome.
0:35:42.9 DN: Yeah. And in those cases, the classic approach is either you say, okay, I've gotta do a minor third above F-double sharp. So to do that, I'm going to cancel, hold off my double accidental, I'm gonna pretend it's F-natural. Oh yeah. Minor third above F-natural, A-flat easy. Okay. Bring back my double sharp. So I have to go up to accidental. So my, A flat becomes natural then sharp. And so my minor third above F-double sharp is A-sharp. One other challenge of intervals by scales, which is that if I'm working in a key, say I'm working in E-flat major, and I'm looking at, D to F in that key.
0:36:26.8 DN: And someone asks me what interval it is, if I only know my intervals by scales, I have to erase the E-flat major key and scale from my mind. And call to mind a different key and scale and...
0:36:41.1 GR: Yeah. That would become... That's a one too many things to do.
0:36:45.2 DN: Yeah.
[laughter]
0:36:48.7 DN: And problematic because it causes us, because we want to be thinking functionally always with whatever key we're in. And this causes us to have to let go of that to calculate an interval.
0:37:03.0 GR: Right. So that's why we have these other two methods that work much better in other situations.
[laughter]
0:37:08.5 DN: That's right. That's right. Yeah. Absolutely. So David, can you tell us about natural intervals?
0:37:14.9 GR: I don't think that I prefer, I either of these last... Any of these last three methods, I think that you need to have all of them at your disposal.
0:37:25.8 DN: And it really... It comes back to what you were saying earlier about spiraling. That depending on our context as fluent musicians, we're going to use a variety of different techniques to recognize and create intervals. So natural intervals, usually what we're talking about there is learning, for instance, where all the major thirds are on the white notes or in letter names without accidentals, and then altering from there.
0:37:58.4 GR: Which teaches you some valuable tools anyway, that you should know what all those intervals are because they'll help you understand.
0:38:08.5 DN: And there's some great, really beautifully obvious visual things when you do it this way. So if we take our thirds, and if you see C, D, E on the piano, you'll notice right away there are two black notes between that. And our major thirds are white note, our natural interval major thirds all have two black notes between them. But if you take... But find a third on the piano that only has one black note between it, and that's going to be a minor third. And so if you're teaching interval qualities, if your primary way of teaching interval qualities is this natural intervals approach, then or when you're dealing with notes, other than the white notes, the classic way of doing it is to imagine the white note interval and to determine how it's altered based on that. So let's say I'm asked to write a minor third above F-sharp. I'm going to say, okay, I know my white note third F to A is major.
0:39:08.1 DN: And the given note is F-sharp that shrinks the interval by a half step, oh, good F sharp to A is minor. So you learn your intervals as alterations from the white notes.
0:39:19.0 GR: Yeah, and then that also ends up working well for core qualities and...
0:39:25.3 DN: Yeah, absolutely, and it's pretty darn quick, and it doesn't require a knowledge of scales or keys, which in this case can be a positive, because when we're working in the context of a key to figure out an interval, we don't have to erase that key context.
0:39:45.5 GR: Right.
0:39:46.2 DN: But we may have to erase an accidental which...
0:39:50.2 GR: Yeah and I think if you're working in a key with a lot of... If you're trying to do it visually on a piece of paper and you're working in a key with a lot of accidentals, you also then have to do a lot of cross-checking to make sure that you've accounted for all the accidentals...
0:40:08.0 DN: All the accidentals that you cancelled to figure it out. Yeah. This is... Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And David I think one of the things that you said earlier gives us a clue on how we can get past this challenge of canceling and adding accidentals, which as you were saying that you want students to know that, for instance, in a major scale, the third on one is major, the third on two is minor, the third on three is minor, et cetera, et cetera.
0:40:36.7 GR: Right.
0:40:37.4 DN: And which takes us to the fourth approach of intervals by scale degrees, which is to say knowing with all of the intervals whether a fifth on two, what kind of fifth is that? Well, in major it's perfect and in minor, it's diminished. And actually, in each of these, the complexity of how many things you know has gone up. There's a lot of information to remember, if we're doing intervals by scale degrees. You have to remember seven qualities or seven intervals, and so in one sense, it's harder, but the reality is that, I think most musicians who are fluent at these things are using this approach.
0:41:38.0 GR: And if I'm playing piano and I'm in a major key, I just know that a two chord is minor. I just know that. I don't...
0:41:48.2 DN: And with that knowledge comes the knowledge of the third and the fifth.
0:41:56.5 GR: And yeah... And I just know what those quality... And I don't have to think about them. They're just embedded in my schema, and I guess I do want to embed that schema in my students as well.
0:42:07.5 GR: Yeah. Yeah and I do things like I think many of us do right of... Especially with the smaller intervals of saying one to two is a major second, two to three is a major second, three to four is a half step, or one to three is a major third, two to four is a minor third of like actively singing various warm up patterns to make those things explicit and start to build up those schema. So this method of knowing intervals by where they are within... By scale degrees within a key, it's really wonderful and it's really fast, but it does require real fluency with scale degrees in keys. Knowing if I'm in any key and I have this note, what's the scale degree for that note or vice versa? What's scale degree two in the key of A major.
0:43:09.0 DN: Yeah And there are... I think there are challenges and how do you... How you develop that fluency. I think there are not challenges if everybody has a keyboard, because if everybody has a keyboard, you can have them play through it, and then they can see, "Oh, that's what I have to play."
0:43:31.4 GR: I'd also argue that for me, that particular skill, the ability to go between a scale degree and the name of a specific note in a key, or the name of a specific note in a key and a scale degree, that skill to me is the most important skill that I want students to learn in anything I'm teaching, in any written theory, in any oral skills, I want them to have that fluency of moving between functional identification of scale degree and letter name because it opens up sight reading and dictation, because as long as you can hear the scale degree, call to mind what the scale degree sounds like, or solfege, these are different names for the same concept or location within a scale, then you gain fluency in the oral side of things, and if you know your theory concepts by relation to solfege or scale degree. Then those become fluent and connected to hearing as well.
0:44:45.8 DN: So it's a broader schema that we're building, and the thing is that... So a lot of these are patterns and my goodness, we've had a great season of episodes, but so much of what we do is pattern recognition. So if you have this pattern of in your... If you have that pattern and you know that pattern and you can connect those patterns to notes, is what you're saying. Then you have the world at your fingertips.
0:45:32.6 GR: And, you do, literally at your fingertips. That's it. Whatever you can hear. If you can hear all the scale degrees you can write down or play.
0:45:41.3 DN: And I do. I remember having a teacher speaking of Nadia Boulanger, one of my teachers who studied with Nadia Boulanger. He could do things that seemed absolutely magical. And I just thought, I'll never be able to do that. But then some of this skill, some of my students look at it as if it's some magical skill. And I say, literally, I wasn't good at this before and I'm just trying to get you to be... There's no magic in this. This is just something that you can learn to do.
[laughter]
0:46:16.5 GR: Yeah. Yeah. I keep coming back to what you said at the beginning about spiraling because I think if on day one of teaching intervals we try and teach them by scale degrees, you lose the class. It's too advanced at that point.
0:46:34.4 DN: We can't teach them everything at once.
0:46:37.4 GR: At once. That's right. Yeah. And we have to, especially with intervals, gradually build it up, so that each step is a manageable step and not overwhelming. But I think, in that process as we've talked about, gradually connecting to schema that they've already mastered or begun to master. They connect to scales, to connect to their knowledge of the keyboard, to connect eventually to scale degrees and functional hearing. And when I think about teaching intervals this way, I hate it a lot less than when I think I'm going to teach them one way of doing it. But it's a... Pacing is a challenge too. You don't want to give them a new way until the prior way has become pretty automatic.
0:47:45.2 DN: I think it's a... Yeah, that's a good argument for really careful curricular design. And if you're in control of the whole curriculum, woo. Great. And if you're not in control of the whole curriculum, whoof. You've just gotta figure out how to fit it in.
0:48:04.5 GR: Especially if you're lucky enough to have your students over a more extended period of time, let's say you're working with them for two years or even, like middle school and high school teachers, three, sometimes four years there's a real opportunity to just sequentially layer these things up.
0:48:22.6 DN: And a little bit, there's some forgiveness in this too, that if you inherit students from another person who used a different method, this is not necessarily bad. This just means that they have that additional perspective [laughter] and now you can give them more additional perspective.
[laughter]
0:48:42.9 GR: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, when a student quickly knows what I hope they know, I don't particularly care [laughter] which process they used to get there.
0:49:00.5 DN: And it's just... It's more important when they're not quite getting there or not getting there quickly enough. And if they... To use a voice analogy, it's interesting because in order to build a consistent instrument vocally, sometimes you have to break down the strategies that they've already developed that aren't good long-term strategies. [laughter], there's a... Maybe this is not the place to talk about it, but young singers tend to raise their larynx as they get higher. And that's an intuitive strategy. It works kind of a little bit, but it is not a good long-term strategy. And convincing a body to stop doing that can be tricky. And it can be frustrating for a student who has learned to rely on that not so good strategy or on that less, that strategy that will take them less far.
0:50:11.4 GR: Yeah. Yeah.
0:50:15.3 DN: Maybe that was not a useful analogy.
0:50:18.3 GR: No I think it's a... But I think we all know cases of this in our own practice of where we may have had to rework something. I think in the case of these strategies for identifying and writing intervals, one of the good things is we don't have to convince students to give something up. We're just sharing an additional approach that can be faster and progressively more musical.
0:50:54.1 DN: And these things expand into other things. And as soon as I started talking about harmony, they're going to have to know that pattern with the exception, that of course the chords are gonna be major, minor, minor, major, major minor diminished.
0:51:15.8 GR: You're right. Yeah. Yeah.
0:51:16.9 DN: Plus theirs. [laughter] Yeah.
0:51:18.4 GR: And it's funny that you think I've never actually taught that as a linear pattern except in various warm up songs. Like one three, major third, two four, minor third. Whereas I've just always taught it as the major thirds are on one, four and five. Everything else is minor. And similarly. And then the expansion to the triads, major triads are one, four and five. Everything else is minor except seven.
0:51:46.3 DN: Right. Right. And although with intervals and perfect fifths or and fifths, it's fifths and fourths. If the two notes are not B and F...
0:52:06.2 GR: Yeah, this is the brilliant...
0:52:07.2 DN: That is perfect.
0:52:07.7 GR: We should just... We should just take a second and explain that shortcut because it's a wonderful shortcut, that for any perfect interval, both notes will have the same accidental.
0:52:16.9 DN: Right.
0:52:17.6 GR: Unless the two notes involved are F and B, in which case F will always have one accidental higher than B.
0:52:24.4 GR: Right. Or depending on... Yes.
0:52:28.6 DN: No. That's always true.
0:52:29.7 GR: Not depending on. [laughter]
0:52:30.9 DN: Yeah, yeah. For instance, if you have B flat to make a perfect interval, one accidental higher than F is natural. Yes, B flat to F perfect fifth, or F to B flat perfect fourth, yeah.
0:52:41.7 GR: Right.
0:52:42.4 DN: So yeah. A good shortcut. And just to wrap up David, what's your favorite interval?
0:52:49.7 GR: Oh, what is my favorite interval? I can I...
[laughter]
0:52:55.8 GR: I really love a well-tuned fifth. Yeah, you know I love... This is so cheesy in the best way. A well-tuned major seventh.
0:53:10.2 DN: Oh, oh, all right.
0:53:12.6 GR: Yeah.
0:53:13.4 DN: Cool. That was not what I was expecting you. I was expecting a sacred...
0:53:17.0 GR: I wasn't expecting the perfect fifth...
0:53:17.7 DN: Major fifth, major sixth, or something.
0:53:18.7 GR: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
0:53:22.0 DN: Sixths are great though. Oh my gosh.
0:53:24.1 GR: Sixths are really great. Yeah, they are. They are. But there's nothing for me like the rub of singing a major seventh.
[laughter]
0:53:32.2 GR: It's just... It's just delicious. Whichever note I'm singing. I'm just... I'm just, yeah.
0:53:41.9 DN: Yeah. Well...
0:53:42.2 GR: A well-tuned perfect fifth I also love. Well, this has been fun. And we came out with a lot of ideas for future episodes.
0:53:55.7 DN: I know. Well, we know that. We already know in our own relationships that you are very good at staying on track and I am very good at taking us off.
[laughter]
0:54:05.7 DN: David, your creativity adds so much that...
[laughter]
0:54:13.6 GR: So if we rambled it's my fault.
0:54:15.9 DN: Otherwise I'll blindly follow my checklists.
[laughter]
0:54:20.9 DN: Well, this is why we're good together. All right.
0:54:23.1 GR: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. And so listeners if you have a favorite way of teaching intervals that we didn't talk about, please let us know. And we'll be circling back to this concept when we talk about teaching intervals in ear training as well. So thanks so much for tuning in.
[music]
0:54:45.0 Speaker 4: Notes from the Staff is produced by uTheory.com.
0:54:47.5 S1: uTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
0:54:51.7 S4: With video lessons, individualized practice, and proficiency testing, uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world master the fundamentals of music theory, rhythm, and ear training.
0:55:03.6 S1: Create your own free teacher account at uTheory.com/teach.
Dr. Paula Telesco walks us through some of the "gotchas" that come up when teaching accidentals, and shares some great musical examples for explaining concepts like enharmonic spelling, double accidentals, and cautionary accidentals.
Transcript [music]
0:00:21.0 Gregory Ristow: Welcome to Notes from the Staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.
0:00:35.4 Leah Sheldon: Hi, I'm Leah Sheldon, head of teacher engagement for uTheory.
0:00:39.7 GR: And I'm Gregory Ristow, founder of uTheory and Associate Professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory.
0:00:46.5 LS: Thank you listeners for your comments and your episode suggestions, we'd love to read them, so please send them our way by email at notes@uTheory.com. And remember to like us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:00.5 GR: We'll be taking a deep dive into the topic of teaching accidentals today, and we're delighted to have Dr. Paula Telesco with us for this. Dr. Telesco is a professor of music theory at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Her research interests include music theory and oral skills, pedagogy, analysis of classical and romantic era music, the omnibus progression and her monism and musical cognition. Her writing has appeared in The Journal of music theory pedagogy, the Journal of musicology and music theory spectrum, among others. Most recently, her chapter on the pedagogy of accidental was released in the Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, edited by Leigh VanHandel, who we just spoke with in December. Paula, thanks for joining us.
0:01:44.4 Paula Telesco: Well, thank you, it's great to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
0:01:48.8 GR: Yeah, we're delighted to have you. Tell us a little bit about yourself. You've been teaching at UMass Lowell for some time now. What all do you teach there?
0:01:58.8 PT: Well, I've taught many things. Currently, I'm teaching a basic music theory. I also teach the non-major music history course. The basic theory I'm teaching right now is for non-majors. Well, they're non-majors, they're also music miners or people who want to get into the Music program, but they're not quite ready.
0:02:29.1 GR: Yeah. So, what we often call Fundamentals of Music, sorts of things?
0:02:32.8 PT: Exactly. Yes.
0:02:33.9 GR: Yeah. Excellent, excellent. And I've to say, I really enjoyed your chapter in Leigh VanHandel Routledge Companion on teaching accidental. It reminded me of some things about accidents that frankly, I myself had forgotten.
0:02:47.8 PT: Well, thank you. Yeah, there's a lot more to know, certainly than students are aware of. The students who come into my class have mostly some background, and so they already think they kinda know accidental, but they don't. They know the basic things about them, but there are all these other things, the niceties of them that they're not aware of, so I wanted to make sure that they... I tell them, "This is the best theory deal in town." And I'm trying to give them as much information as I can.
[laughter]
0:03:27.2 GR: That's great. I think, one of the things I have experienced, I'm sure you've experienced as well, and Leah certainly in your teaching with the elementary, middle and high school students, I know we've talked about this, is that accidentals can be a really hard topic for students to first grasp. What are some of the things that students struggle with when learning accidental?
0:03:50.7 PT: Well, for my students, the basic concept is not that difficult, it immediately starts getting difficult when you add an E sharp or E flat, something like that. And I tell them throughout the semester, we're gonna see why those kinds of notes are necessary. We're not just doing it just for the sake of putting a sharp next to the note E. So the black notes are always the easiest to understand, it could be this, it could be that, and we'll see why. And I tell them, I have lots of silly little analogies that I use. And so I always pick someone sitting in the front row and I say, "Do you have sisters? Do you have brothers? Do you have parents? Do you have cousins? And so on. And I say okay, so to their parents, this is their son. To their brother, this is a brother. To their cousin. So this person has different names depending on their relationship to other people. And in the same way, this black note has different names, depending on the context, it's relationship to the other notes and what key it's in and so on.
0:05:09.1 PT: So I start off with that kind of an explanation. One of the other problems is in the notation, and that's just to constantly reinforce that the accidental have to go on the same line or space as the notes, they can't be flying off into outer space because they often are being notated way, somewhere not close to the note, so that's always an issue that comes up and you have to make them aware that an... Another thing I tell them too, throughout the semester, is that the purpose of notation, or at least one of the important purposes, is to make music as easy as possible for the performer. If you have to learn a different system every time you play a piece of music, you're never gonna get very good at it, so it has to be very consistent. When someone is reading music, they have to know this is how it looks, and when I see this, this is what I play. I need to know if there's an accidental in front of the snow or I probably am not gonna play the right notes.
0:06:25.0 GR: Yeah. Leah, you and I were talking, was that just yesterday, we were chatting about [chuckle] true beginner students when they first see accidental, and can you just say a little bit what you were saying to me yesterday? 'cause I thought he was so wonderful.
0:06:40.5 LS: Yes, so I have the opportunity to teach beginning instrumentalists, and sometimes their very first, their mix-up just comes even between, identifying between is this a sharp or is this a flat, and accidentally calling an F-sharp and F flat. Just some of the very basic terminology or for example, the sharp F, since they see the sharp sign first or flat B, just getting that down can be a challenge, especially for beginners or younger musicians. I also have some students who are older instrumentalists and have played for a couple of years, but started on a non-piano instrument, and they don't have the keyboard to reference. So sharps and flat, they don't have that visualization of the black keys, and it doesn't really mean anything to them, unless we are intentionally explaining to them that G-sharp is a half step higher than the note G, so some of those very basic things that maybe sometimes we take for granted as musicians is really abstract to them.
0:07:56.0 PT: Yeah, I know that not all my students have access to a piano, there's pianos in the building, and some of them do go and use them, but I always keep pulled up in my bazillion tabs in my browser, 'cause I'm always projecting a MIDI keyboard and I post links for them, and I say, "You really wanna be using this keyboard," and so throughout the semester, I'm always flipping to the keyboard so they can see whatever it is we're talking about, the sharps and the flats and the half steps and whole steps and everything, and that is really very helpful. And what you were saying, Leah, about what comes first? I know that if a student comes in with... If they've... Some of my students are playing in the marching band, so they're used to looking at music, but not everyone is, and so again, I just stress that if the accidental comes after the note, you're gonna play the white note before you realize you were supposed to play an accidental, so we read from left to right. We have to see the accidental first if we wanna have a fighting chance of playing the right note.
0:09:15.4 LS: Absolutely.
0:09:16.9 GR: That's great. That's great.
0:09:18.7 LS: And I find in most cases, the students know what to do, it's just, it's more about that they've memorized what to do rather than actually understanding the theory behind it or the relationships between the notes. So I'm always a proponent for using the keyboard and referencing the keyboard. Some of my students I inherited without having heard that, so it's been fun to go back and re-introduce that.
0:09:41.3 PT: Yeah, yeah.
0:09:42.1 LS: Yeah, definitely. I think we probably all come across students for whom F-sharp means a particular fingering and not necessarily relationship to notes around it.
0:09:51.8 PT: Right, right. And now the keyboard is really invaluable for learning all kinds of things.
0:10:00.0 LS: So, along the same lines, even those of us with experience, we can find that accidental have delight Fledge cases. So what are some of the things that even knowledgeable or more advanced musicians get wrong when writing accidentals?
0:10:19.1 PT: Well, one of the fossil things is certainly an older practice. If you are going from a double sharp to a single sharp, you would put the natural sign first and then the sharp. I realize in a lot of contemporary music that that's no longer the case. So if a person plays lots of contemporary music, they might not be aware that an older music, it had been done that way. Flats, you just go from a double flat to a single flat, you don't put the natural before it. I will say, even though they're not advanced musicians, probably without knowing which accidental goes where. If you have a cord and you're having to write accidentals, a very common problem at least with my students, is I have to keep reminding them, "You can't put accidentals on top of each other because you're not gonna be able to clearly see which one is which." So the lowest note that accidental is gonna go furthest to the left. If you've just got two notes, and obviously the other one is closest to the note on top, as you start adding notes in, you have to alternate closest farthest, closest, farthest away, if you had four notes, for example.
0:11:43.4 GR: Yeah. Those rules are great. They're actually a little more complex in what you described. I happen to have implemented this for a software program, and so that's one of the algorithms I love. I don't know, is it worth talking about it, they're very nerdy, but our listeners might enjoy the nerdiness.
0:12:02.5 PT: Sure, sure.
0:12:03.7 GR: Eritrean.
0:12:04.5 PT: Yeah. 'Cause I know sharps and flats of different...
0:12:08.2 LS: Yeah. Exactly. So I just can't see...
0:12:09.7 PT: Hanging down pieces.
[laughter]
0:12:12.3 GR: Hanging down pieces versus pointing up pieces. Exactly, and so this is... Yeah, this is at the heart of it. So when you're talkin about typography and the shape of characters, some characters have descender which are things that go below the line, and some characters have a ascender for things that go higher than the lower case letter standard height. And so when we think about all of our accidentals, we have two accidentals that have both ascender and descender that's the sharp sign and the natural sign, those are the tallest accidentals. We have two accidentals that have only ascender and that's the flat and the double flat. And we have one accidentals that has neither in A center nor a D center, and that's the double sharp. And so the rule is that if you have... If you have a conflict between... How do you do this? At the interval of a seventh, you can have any two accidentals written directly above each other from a seventh or larger. So you could have... What's one that might actually happen in music at a seventh? For instance, you've got a A-flat up to G-flat with no problem, but you'd also have a sharp up to G-sharp, obviously much less common in music, even though both have an ascender and both have a descender.
0:13:38.7 GR: At the interval of a sixth, you can have the upper accidental with no descender and the bottom accidental with an ascender, so for instance, you could have a flat up top and a sharp down bottom. At the interval of a fifth, you can only have a... Let me just be sure I'm getting this totally right. Yeah, at the end...
0:14:04.6 PT: I'm certainly learning something here.
0:14:07.9 GR: [laughter] Yeah, yeah. At the intervals of a fifth, if the top accidental doesn't have a descender, so if it's a flat, a double flat or a double sharp, and the bottom note has no ascender, that's only the double sharp, then the two can be written together. So effectively, at the interval of a fifth with double sharps, you can write them together or double sharp on bottom and a flat on top. But I can't think of any time, you'd ever see a double sharp on bottom and a flat on top in the same chord. Heaven help us. So that gives us writing them for two notes, but then chords often have more than two notes, and so in that case, the rule is to start with the highest accidental, closest to the note, and then to alternate from highest accidental to lowest accidental going out to the left, away from the chord. So imagine that we had an F-sharp major chords balding close position, like F-sharp, A-sharp, C-sharp, then the accidental closest to the chord would be that top C-sharp. You go down to the next available lowest accidental, the F-sharp, and then to the A-sharp. And now if you have a seventh, let's say we had a C-sharp.
[music]
0:15:23.0 GR: No, lets pick a better one. Let's pick... Because I want an accidental on bottom and an accidental on top. Oh, my apologies for this but it'll work, a C-flat dominant seventh chord. So C-flat, E-flat, G-flat B-double flat. At this point, you can write the C-flat and the B-double flat, those accidentals directly on top of each other, that C-flat is your highest. So next we're going to go to the next available lowest, which would be that E-flat, and then the next one out, would be the G-flat, and so... That's the full rough routine. And if anyone is as nerdy about this as I am, the book to read is Elaine Gold, who is the chief typesetter for... She had booze or she had Oxford. She's at one of the major British music houses, and her book is called Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide To Music Notation. And I geek out on this stuff like crazy, so...
0:16:22.4 PT: Oh, I'm gonna have to check that out.
0:16:24.5 GR: It's delightful. It's every possible edge case you could ever think of, and she's... Yeah. So anyway. Yeah, that was a fun little diversion, but...
[laughter]
0:16:37.4 GR: I think Paula for me as well, It's just a matter of... Especially in music fundamentals, from students who are first writing triads and intervals of just reminding students that if they just know like... If it's anything smaller than a seventh, space those accidental out to the left.
0:16:53.2 PT: Yeah, yeah. Yeah and for our purposes, for intervals, I just always tell them the lowest note that accidentals furthest to the left, the upper note, it's closest to the note. When we get to triads, I didn't know exactly all of that so, but I still just tell them... I don't really specify where the middle one should go, I tell them the top and the bottom, and so you just have to make sure they're not overlapping, same as notes. If you're writing a second, they have to touch but they cannot overlap or nobody knows what note it is.
0:17:34.4 GR: Yeah, yeah. And there are all sorts of rules for which way the second should go in a chord cluster, but let's not dive into that crazy mess.
[laughter]
0:17:46.8 GR: These are the kinds of things as I'm talking with... Who was I talking with it about this recently? It doesn't mater. I was talking with someone about this. Maybe, was it you, Leah? I was talking about these rules and how maybe any more of these rules don't matter as much because largely, we're all working with music notation programs and they will help us arrange the accidentals and do all those kinds of things. And unless you're going to become a professional music typesetter or someone who programs notation programs like me, then you probably don't need to actually know these kinds of rules.
0:18:25.0 PT: Yeah. Well, I have Sibelius, my copy is very old, but it still works and in the manual it comes with it, they even say something about, "Don't worry about that, Sibelius knows how to do it, and you're better off not even thinking about it, we'll just do it for you."
0:18:49.3 LS: Yes. Notation programs have become our calculator. [chuckle]
0:18:52.9 PT: Right, right.
0:18:53.6 GR: Yeah, yeah. And I am so glad for it because I remember having to look up the rules for which way the second should go when I was writing seventh chords as an undergrad and yeah.
0:19:06.3 PT: Yeah.
0:19:06.9 GR: We spoke, I guess about a month and a half ago now with Melissa Hoag, who wrote a chapter on putting the music in music fundamentals in the Routledge Companion. And one of the things I loved about your chapter on Accidentals in the Companion was that you give us two really great examples of pieces that show almost all of the edge cases and likely places for confusion in accidentals, Beethoven's, Waldstein Sonata and Chopin's Nocturne in D-flat major Op 27, number two. I thought it would be great if you could take us through these rules that you outline, along with some examples from the Waldstein, And I'm here at my piano so I can plunk out some of these as we chat about them. Does that sound like a good plan?
0:19:55.5 PT: It does, it does. And as I'm sure you are very familiar with, one of the biggest issues is time. And so the more you have to flip around to find different examples, you just waste a lot of time. So I honestly don't remember what came first. If I just happen to notice doing, 'cause I've used Waldstein for lots of stuff, if I just sort of noticed all the different accidental usages, and so I thought, bingo, this is what I should do.
0:20:35.2 GR: And it's a great piece for... If listeners don't know, I'm just gonna play a little bit of the beginning to kind get it into their ears.
0:20:40.0 GR: Please do.
0:20:41.1 PT: Sound good? Okay. Here, it is.
[music]
0:21:04.9 GR: And so on and so forth. I often call this the climb every mountain Sonata because the opening progression is the same. Right.
[music]
0:21:18.0 PT: Oh how funny.
0:21:22.5 GR: [laughter] Right.
0:21:24.0 PT: I never realized that. Oh, that's great.
0:21:28.0 GR: You know, for music theater lovers out there.
0:21:30.5 PT: That's great.
0:21:31.1 GR: Yeah. So, and it's...
0:21:33.2 PT: And it's also got what I really like is the descending tetrachord progression too.
0:21:37.8 GR: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And there's so many wonderful things about the second theme of the Sonata, right? Normally, of course, a Sonata... This is in C major, normally a Sonata in C major would have a second theme in G major, but this Sonata has its second theme instead in E major.
0:21:55.3 PT: E major.
0:21:57.4 GR: Which means Beethoven's writing, normally you'd be writing just an F-sharp in your second theme, but now Beethoven has to write a ton of accidentals. So it makes sense that this is a perfect choice for this.
0:22:06.1 PT: Yeah. And because it's in C major, you're not dealing with a key signature where you have to think about is that just canceling out something in the key signature or is that adding something in? So, yeah. So even just in the first page or two, you can find so many things. I always start in measure two with the F-sharp and I say, it's on the fourth beat, the first eighth note, and it's repeated. And I say, here's an example. Once you write an accidental, it's in force for the whole measure in that register on that line or space in that clef, bar line cancels it out if you want. So that's why you don't need to write it twice. If you wanted F-sharp in the next measure, you'd have to write it again. Then in measure four, there's the little grace note and we talk about what a grace note is and it's a C sharp, and then immediately it has to be canceled out.
0:23:09.9 GR: So we have that C-sharp, we have...
[music]
0:23:12.8 GR: And then we have C natural.
[music]
0:23:17.3 PT: And again, here we are only in measure four, but I can already tell them or ask them 'cause what I do too is I play in measure two, I play those as F naturals. And maybe you wanna do this. And then F-sharps to say, "Listen to the difference. What if Beethoven wrote F natural?"
0:23:35.7 GR: So here it is with F natural, not what Beethoven wrote.
[music]
0:23:44.8 GR: Oh, that feels so weird.
0:23:46.5 PT: Yuck. [laughter]
0:23:49.1 GR: And here it is with the F-sharps.
[music]
0:23:57.0 PT: Yeah. So already, I introduce the concept. We can't get into secondary dominance in a one semester course, but the concept of a leading tone is gonna keep coming up. So, as with accidentals, and what's the difference, the F-sharp is pushing more strongly to the G. G is on a downbeat. It makes a nice strong arrival right on the downbeat. Similarly in measure four, it's a little grace note, but it's a half step below D, it's leading to D, it's a leading tone, and then it gets canceled out if you play the C natural for the grace note. Not as good.
[music]
0:24:46.7 PT: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Then in the next measure, well there's our flats. Oh. And guess what? We have a B flat in two registers, so we must include a flat in both registers. However...
0:25:01.5 GR: Yeah. And so this is... So if we just outline the chord, so we have this C major chord at the beginning, then we have a G major chord with B on bottom. And then the kind of third big chord of this piece is this B-flat chord you're talking about in measure four. Where we have B-flat, F, B-flat. And indeed Beethoven notates the B-flat in both octaves is not enough to notate it just once.
0:25:23.5 GR: Yeah. But I also just point out, like, can you hear the music? It seems to be just being pulled down, because the B-flats don't fit in C. But anyhow, so yeah, you've got two B-flats, one in each register, and then you don't have to write 'em again for the rest of the measure because they're enforced till the bar line, when you cross the bar line, oh, he has to write 'em again, 'cause now we're in a new measure, looks just like the previous one. So, we talk about that. By the time I get to measure what is this gonna be, 10, we see that in the right hand, there's a B natural and it's the first note of the measure, and there's no flats or sharps in the key signature. So why in the world did Beethoven actually really the typesetter, the copyist, whatever, why did they put a B natural there? And we look back and say, "Oh, well, two measures ago there was a B-flat in the right hand," and this flies by." And when you're playing that fast, you might not remember that B's are naturals. You just played a B-flat one second ago. So this is saying, "Hey wait, caution, courtesy. I'm doing you a favor. I'm telling you, no, no, no, no. Play the B natural, don't play the B-flat again." So, we've now introduced... We're still only in measure 10, and now we've introduced cautionary accidentals.
0:27:08.6 GR: And interesting to note as well that a misconception I see a lot is the belief that cautionary accidentals have to be notated in parentheses.
0:27:17.8 PT: Parentheses, yeah.
0:27:19.2 GR: And they don't, they can be notated just as normal accidentals. Yeah. And then you mentioned...
0:27:24.0 PT: I read some... Oh.
0:27:25.5 GR: No, please go ahead.
0:27:26.0 PT: I read something very interesting about, and I've read a lot about notation and something I hadn't thought about. And it's really the same in language. It's really the editors, the publishers type setters who really have determined what notation should look like or what... How punctuation and language should be used. Because it does have to be consistent. And if Beethoven is in one place and someone else is somewhere else and they have no interaction whatsoever, one person could notate things one way and one person could do it another way. So it really has to be up to the publisher to make sure that when they publish music, it's always gonna be consistent. So yes. It is true that sometimes there are parentheses around cautionary accidentals and sometimes there are not. So that's not completely, consistent.
0:28:30.9 GR: You mentioned...
0:28:31.4 PT: But no, there doesn't have to be.
0:28:32.4 GR: As we were just starting to chat about the Waldstein, you said it has a descending tetrachord progression, and we've just heard that first beginning part, which is that moment. Can you just talk about what the descending tetrachord is? And some people might know this as a lament bass as well.
0:28:49.6 PT: Yeah. And that's what I always call it that, 'cause that's one of my favorite things. My whole thing about the omnibus progression is it's coming out of this lament bass. So we start with C for two measures, then we go down to B for two measures, then B-flat for two measures, then A, then A-flat, and we go A-flat G, A-flat, G with an ending on the dominant.
[music]
0:29:17.4 PT: So that is that chromatic descent in the bass.
0:29:23.0 GR: Going through a fourth, otherwise known as a tetrachord. Yeah.
0:29:28.4 PT: Right. Right.
0:29:29.6 GR: I think often called the lament bass because well, we see it in, especially in the Baroque era.
0:29:34.6 PT: Every lament.
0:29:35.0 GR: Yeah, in lament songs. Dido's lament probably being the most famous example of That.
0:29:40.9 PT: Yeah. And in fact, I'll just also add as an aside, we have an early music ensemble, and I'm the founding director. And so, on our concert just a couple weeks ago we did Monteverdi's Lament of the Nymph. Which is a beautiful piece if you know that. I played the little harps accord part. And the shepherds are the bookends of the piece. But the main lament sung by the Nymph, the left hand, it's just that descending bass the entire time, A, G, F, E, over and over and over again. And I've looked at lots of laments and Baroque operas and you know, they all... They might go like A, G-sharp G F-sharp F or just A, G. I mean, what am I saying? They might go chromatically or diatonically, or a little of both, but pretty much they all do that.
0:30:46.0 GR: Yeah. My other favorite one is Hit the Road Jack.
0:30:49.8 PT: Exactly. Exactly. And I don't know if you know Ellen Rosand, she called it the emblem, The emblem of lament. Oh no, I'm... Anyhow, she wrote about it too.
0:31:05.4 PT: Yeah. You mentioned another word, which I'm betting many people will not have heard, which is the omnibus progression, which is this wonderful...
[music]
0:31:14.7 GR: Sorry.
0:31:15.8 PT: You got it.
0:31:16.8 GR: Don't try and play an omnibus while talking, which is this wonderful, reversible...
[music]
0:31:27.0 GR: Crazy chromatic progression. Can you maybe just say a little bit what that is?
0:31:33.0 PT: Well, they are dominant seventh chords. Well, you have to voice them so that when you are playing them, you have, if you're going outwards, the right hand is going up, the left hand is going down, that two voices are moving chromatically, like in a wedge by half step. And then, they change voices. And then two of the other notes are moving outwards chromatically. And that keeps going. And you will eventually come back to your original chords. And then there's always a minor six four chord stuck in the middle of every two dominant chords. And it's a great, great progression. And I found that because... Or I wrote about it because I had been doing some research long ago, and I think it was something in Hayden and somebody was writing about this crazy progression. And I actually already knew a little about it, but it had not been written about much at all. And so I thought, "Oh, well, that's the omnibus progression." And then as I looked further, I thought, "Wow, there's not many people who seem to be aware of this." And they talk about it like it's just, "Oh, this is this very chromatic progression here."
0:33:08.2 PT: And so it's in tons of, I mean, lots of people have now written about it. But that's how I started getting into it. And you can also substitute diminished seventh chords for some of the dominant sevenths. And Don Giovanni, the opera has a passage like that, or a couple passages like that. So it's great. It's great. It's the bus to anywhere, you can go to any key from there. [laughter]
0:33:38.0 GR: Yeah. 'cause it repeats at minor thirds effectively, right?
0:33:41.6 PT: Yeah.
0:33:41.7 GR: And so... Yeah. And you pass through... Anyway it's... Yeah. That's a delightful progression. And I think, you start... Once you sort of know it as a thing, you start hearing it all over the place, right.
0:33:50.5 PT: Everywhere. Yeah.
0:33:53.0 GR: Beethoven especially, I think like, the second movement of the fifth Symphony, which is the beautiful cello, a cello variation movement.
[music]
0:34:02.0 GR: Yeah.
0:34:04.2 PT: And then he gets us over to C major.
[vocalization]
0:34:16.6 GR: So he goes to an A-flat dominant seventh.
0:34:19.5 PT: Right. And then to C Major.
0:34:20.8 GR: But then he turns that into the C Major. Exactly.
0:34:25.7 PT: Yeah. I'm very impressed that you can play all these things off the top of your head.
0:34:30.8 GR: I grew up listening to a lot of Beethoven. But what I'm saying about is when he gets back from C Major, 'cause he does that same thing.
[music]
0:34:58.3 GR: And then we're back to A-flat. Right. But it's that classic.
0:35:03.2 PT: Yeah.
0:35:10.0 GR: And oh my gosh, in the context, I can do it but then I forget. Right. Oh, to E major to the passing six four to the diminished seventh to the dominant seventh, like wedges us back to A-flat major.
[music]
0:35:21.7 PT: Yeah.
0:35:22.0 GR: Yeah. They are. They are all over the place and they're just, they're delightful. So, okay. This is a lovely diversion from our...
[laughter]
0:35:32.4 GR: From our various...
0:35:32.8 PT: Lots of accidentals in there.
0:35:34.1 GR: Tons of accidentals. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's another one. These third relationships in Beethoven. Right. A-flat major to C major, up a major third. And similarly in the Waldstein, C major up to E major up and they are just all over the place in this wonderful ways.
0:35:54.0 PT: And that's what allows so early on, it's like measure 42 or something. I have these measures more or less memorized. Well, I'm off, 45, no, I'm right, 42, 43, where we get the double sharps, the F-double sharps, 'cause we're going to E major at that point. There's many other things that have already happened that I would be pointing out, but yes, if you were going to G major, there would be no F-double sharps.
0:36:26.1 GR: So in that moment on that, we hear... So it's basically the second theme is this motive. And in the second time Beethoven does it, it's decorated with these lovely triplets.
[music]
0:36:42.4 GR: And in that moment of decoration, we have this beautiful E major chord, but we have this little lower neighbor, so it's G-sharp on top, but Beethoven doesn't spell this middle note as G natural. He spells it as F-double sharp instead. And the reason for that is.
0:37:02.9 PT: He's decorating the G-sharp because it is an E-major chord and it's acting again, is that little leading tone. Another thing I point out, which I really think for many of them connects more. So I'd say, let's re-notate this. We're gonna have G-sharp, G-natural. G-sharp A, G-natural G-sharp G... How many accidentals are we gonna need for those six notes as opposed to one F-double sharp? That really connects with them 'cause that's when they're all right away going, "Oh, oh." You know? So yeah, it just makes it a lot cleaner.
0:37:48.8 GR: Yeah, which I have always found introducing double accidentals in a fundamentals class. And inevitably students say, "Wait, do we actually need these? Are these real things? You're making this up, right? Surely you're making this up." But you know, what a beautiful example of, "Oh, no, no, we're not making it up." And yeah, it is so much easier to read than had we used single accidentals for that passage.
0:38:12.6 PT: Yeah, and one of my big things in teaching theory is to always explain the why. Not just, "Well, here's an example, and then we can look over here and we can see how he does something else over here." I always want to make sure I explain to them why, because this is a pet peeve of mine and you might not wanna include this. [laughter] But when people say things like, "Well, he could do it because he was Bach." It drives me crazy because I said, "No, there's a reason for it. There's a musical reason. You just don't understand the principle behind it." It's not because Bach said up, I don't need these rules. I'm gonna do what I want." I mean, that's just such a total misunderstanding. So I try to make very clear, or people very often say, "Well, Deb, you see used parallel fifths and octaves.
0:39:13.3 PT: Well, but that means you don't understand why we say you shouldn't use parallel fifths and octaves. It has to do with individual voice parts. Deb, you see is writing just sort of sound color chords. He's not writing individual voices when he's got parallel chords. So it's a different effect altogether. It's a different musical reason. It's not just because a composer is allowed to do it because they're good. So yeah. I always, as much as possible with the limited understanding they may have at any given moment, try to make them understand there's a reason for all of this.
0:40:00.8 GR: Yeah.
0:40:00.9 PT: It all makes perfect sentence as you learn more about it. I tell them it's kinda like math. Many people see math as being a beautiful thing. And I said, "I see theory as being beautiful. The more you know, the more you can appreciate."
0:40:16.0 GR: So one example that I love that you pull out is when in one measure we have an accidental, say, spelled as an F-sharp, and in the next measure we have it spelled as a G-flat, which seems like a waste of ink, right?
[laughter]
0:40:34.5 GR: But can make a lot of musical sense. I think it was around measure 125, which is over in the development.
0:40:39.8 PT: It is. It's 125, 126.
0:40:42.0 GR: Yeah. And so in this moment, this is where... I played through the exposition last night, just to remind myself of it. I'm going to play very slowly this moment in the development. So we've got this E-flat minor chord...
[music]
0:41:00.5 GR: And then this F-sharps dominant seven...
[music]
0:41:08.9 GR: Which goes to be minor. But that wonderful moment of...
[music]
0:41:13.9 GR: And then this almost sounds like movie music to me every time. Just that shift.
[laughter]
0:41:22.3 GR: Yeah, I think especially in... Yeah, in context, we are really hearing that as E-flat minor. Once we've heard the F-sharp major, at least for me retrospectively, I hear that E- Flat minor is D-sharp minor instead. Right. And it... But, yeah.
0:41:43.9 PT: Yeah, there's a true and harmonic change there. That's again, beyond my students. So all I say is, "Well, this is this chord here, it's spelled this way here." And then the next measure, he wants an F-sharp chord. So he has to spell it according to what notes fit in each one of those chords. Because our basic triad spelling rule, it's gotta be every other line or space note, every other letter name, because again, it's gotta be consistent. That's what a triad is. So that's how he has to spell it.
0:42:23.7 GR: Yeah. That's...
0:42:25.7 PT: So I can't get into anything about in harmonics with them, but yeah, that's always fascinating.
0:42:34.0 GR: But you previewed it in a nice way by looking at those passages and... Yeah.
0:42:40.9 PT: Yeah. And in fact, I was gonna mention when you started talking about the second theme, so measure 35, there's a good example in measure 36 actually of a B-sharp. And again, the idea of like, do we really need a B-sharp? Why can't we call it a C? Well, if you look at the other notes, it's a G-sharp triad, and the triad rule is every other letter name. So if you add G-sharp, C, D-sharp, people wouldn't know what that is.
0:43:15.8 GR: Yeah, and this is...
0:43:16.1 PT: So you have to spell it.
0:43:18.4 GR: Yeah. This is that... So at the beginning of the second theme...
[music]
0:43:23.3 GR: This chord where we have the G-sharp, B-sharp, D-sharp, yeah. And if it appeared as G-sharp C natural D-sharp, it would look very strange to our eyes.
0:43:33.8 PT: Yeah, and again, you want notation to be as easy as possible for everyone to read and play without having to learn something new every time they play a new piece.
0:43:46.5 GR: Yeah, yeah.
0:43:47.9 PT: Yeah.
0:43:48.0 GR: I also love... This is a piece that obviously you can come back to many times throughout theory studies, right? And of course, we get the classic descending thirds progression here, slightly altered. Otherwise is was a Pachelbel canon chord progression or descending five, six, right?
[laughter]
0:44:05.3 GR: But on the fourth chord of it, instead of a boring minor three chord, we get this...
[music]
0:44:17.4 GR: Actually in the case of Beethoven, a dominant seventh there. That's really wonderful.
0:44:18.6 PT: Yeah.
0:44:19.6 GR: Yeah.
0:44:20.2 PT: Yeah.
0:44:21.6 GR: Yeah, excellent. So Paula, this is great. I think one of the things that I came away with from reading your chapter was... Oh, here's... I can make these concepts so much more concrete now if I... Especially if I introduce them with say Waldstein right alongside. And then you give us that second example of the Chopin D-flat major Nocturne Op seven number two that has almost all of the same sorts of things. And I was just thinking like, "What a beautiful, in a way, lesson plan you've written for the next time I'm introducing accidentals that I can do the Beethoven Waldstein.
0:45:04.0 PT: Thank you.
0:45:05.2 GR: And then say, "Here's the Chopin and find an example of all of these things and why are these notated that way?" So it's just a beautiful lesson plan.
0:45:16.3 PT: Thank you. Well, and the Chopin has a few things the Beethoven doesn't, like the double flats, but also it's much thicker and it has things that the students have simply never seen. Let me see, where do I have a Chopin? I thought I had it all pulled up in front of me, you can tell me the measures maybe. But where...
0:45:45.3 GR: I don't have nice Chopin in front of me, I'm getting it now. [chuckle]
0:45:48.5 GR: Oh, okay. Were you have, for example, in the right hand, the pinky is playing the same note, we'll say it's a B-flat, and the inner voice is coming up chromatically. And that would be a B-natural against it. So again, the accidental only applies in the register, and here is a case where you actually would have a B-flat against a B natural, and then in several measures later, you have an A-sharp against an A natural in the same register. So of course, you've got to have both of those accidental. So those are things you wouldn't find in the Beethoven.
0:46:32.4 GR: Yeah, yeah. And the other thing of course about this piece is it has a key signature which the first move of the Beethoven doesn't have. And so that brings up some other challenges of canceling out accidentals in the key signature, using A natural to cancel out accidentals in a key signature. Whereas in the Beethoven, the natural is always returning it to the key signature.
0:46:52.7 PT: Right.
0:46:53.6 GR: Yeah. Well, it's been fun chatting about accidentals. We also... In email we're chatting a little bit about a way that you teach rhythm using rhythm clocks. Can you tell us a bit about that?
0:47:05.5 PT: Yes, I love my rhythm clocks. [laughter] It's a perfect device because with 12 hours on a clock, you can divide them in half and thirds and quarters. And so I use chopsticks. I have a little video posted and I teach them tapping patterns. I use takadimi and counting syllables. And I tell them, "You gotta do both. Takadimi is great for learning individual patterns, but if you're playing with someone, you have to count. You have to be able to stay together." And so I start out just by saying, "A beat isn't just an articulation point. A beat has a duration, just like a minute has a full duration of 60 seconds. And we can have a half a minute and a third of a minute and a quarter of a minute and so on. And beets are exactly the same way." So instead of numbers on my clock, well I have numbers, but then I put like on the outside the takadimi syllables and on the inside the counting syllables, and I have different clocks.
0:48:18.6 GR: So each clock represents one beat, basically. Is that right?
0:48:22.3 PT: Yes, yes. And so one clock is just at the top and D at the six. And I say... So and I talk about it in seconds. So it's 30 seconds for the half a beat and 30 seconds for the second. Ta is 30 seconds, D is the other. So you wouldn't say ta D 'cause you have to hold it for the whole 30 seconds. If you're playing a note and you let it go, the conductor is gonna say, "What happened?" So you're holding it for that full duration. And then I can divide and then we say one end two end then I can divide in three parts, kind of like a peace sign 20 seconds each. And that's gonna be ta-ki-da ta-ki-da. One triplet, two triplet. We divide in four parts. We get our ta-ka-di-mi or one anda.
0:49:14.8 PT: And then especially for showing unequal divisions like ta-di-mi, ta-di-mi. Ta is the first 30 seconds, the second 30 seconds is divided in half into di-mi. So I like to do as much visual stuff as possible. I teach a lot in approaching things visually because it really helps. In fact, I'll even give you a different example that just happened yesterday. I teach intervals differently than probably the majority of people. I don't teach them as numbers in the scale from one to three and all that. I do everything starting by looking at the keyboard and looking at the white notes. And I say, for example, all of your white note seconds are major except E-F, and B-C. Those are the minor. I mean, once we actually talk about intervals, those are the minor seconds.
0:50:17.3 PT: So if you know your white notes and there's only seven of them, you can figure out any second. If I put C and D, I know that's a major second. If I raise 'them both to a sharp, well then I immediately know that's a major second. I don't have to think like, "Oh wait a minute. That would be in the key of C-sharp and what's got a sharp on it and what doesn't. That's a lot of steps to go through. So anyhow, yesterday was our last day of class and some of my students, again, they have some background and I said, "I just want you to know that the way I've taught you intervals, I do the same thing with triads and scales." And I said, "There's another way that you would read if you looked at most theory books and this is how they do it. And it just seems to me you're taking way too many steps and you're not really seeing it. And this one kid spoke up, he said, "That's the way I originally learned it." He said, "This way is so much easier." So, and I know when I was listening to, I don't remember if it was Leigh or Melissa talking about... I think it was Leigh, the connection with math.
0:51:33.2 PT: And actually Nancy Rogers wrote an article and I cited and something that I wrote, that really the best predictor is pattern recognition ability. Which is very important in math, but that's...
0:51:47.8 GR: So just in case listeners haven't heard that episode when we spoke with Leigh VanHandel.
0:51:52.7 PT: Oh.
0:51:53.4 GR: She spoke about how the SAT or ACT math scores turned out to be a really strong predictor, even stronger than like a typical music fundamentals placement test of how students will do in a theory curriculum.
0:52:08.0 PT: Right, right. So to recognize... I mean, music is all about patterns. I tell my students, every major scale is a transposition of C-major, so if you see C-major on the keyboard, you know where the half steps are, you know your white notes can all be transposed up and down, and you just keep the half steps and so on. So it's that ability to recognize patterns that whether you look on the keyboard or then on a staff, that's really very helpful for students, so I try to do everything with a visual component first. And now I've forgotten the question you actually asked to me.
[laughter]
0:52:53.3 GR: We were talking talking about rhythm clocks. But yeah, what a beautiful insight and...
0:52:57.5 PT: Yeah, 'cause it's a visual.
0:53:00.1 GR: Yeah, into teaching intervals and triads. Yeah, yeah. And so, now you started to say you use chopsticks, and I was very curious, how do the chopsticks relate to the rhythm clocks?
0:53:08.9 PT: Okay, so I teach my students to conduct, and of course, I teach them to conduct with the right hand. With chopsticks, we're using two so we have to use both hands. The beginning of the beat is always on the left hand. And I say, "If you're in marching band, what foot do you start on?" And they always say, "The left foot." And I say, "Okay, so we're gonna start our beat always on the left hand." And so I tap on the board, but I also have a video. And so for example, ta-di would be I tap down ta-di-ta-di.
0:53:42.2 GR: Okay. And so for...
0:53:42.6 PT: So that's our...
0:53:43.6 GR: Yeah, so for our listeners, with your left hand you're tapping ta on the desk and you're tapping di, with your left hand you're tapping your right hand holding a chopstick. So it's your alternative in the desk and then the right hand chopstick. But the right hand is just standing there. It's just sort of waiting to be tapped by the left hand.
0:54:04.6 PT: Right, right. And then if I'm doing ta-ki-da, same thing, I'm just holding the right one there and I hit down with the left ta-ki-da and I tap on the right chopstick twice, ta-ki-da ta-ki-da. They're fine. With takadimi is really hard. So I do it very slowly because I say, "Okay, you gotta tap down with the left, now tapped down, the right has to do something. Now you tap down with the right." So we've got ta-ka, you come back up with the right, you're hitting underneath the left and then you go back down. So you're going ta-ka-di-mi ta-ka-di-mi. That one is really tough for them to do, but when they get it, 'cause I say when you do it fast it's fun, ta-ka-di-mi ta-ka-di-mi. And so they do do like to do that. They have to get it, but then when they get it, they really like it.
0:55:00.7 PT: So we do... Again, it's a one semester course. There's no time. I mean, I wish we could do oral skills, but there's simply no time. So the only oral skills I do is with rhythm. And I tell them, "You gotta feel rhythm. You don't read about rhythm, you feel rhythm." And I make them march and things like that. I don't make them do proto notation. I've tried that and it's way too difficult 'cause it really needs practice. And some of them are just very uncomfortable because they're not music majors. They don't wanna have to notate something. So I do that, but I show them like if we're doing Yankee Doodle, I'll have them march and I say, "Okay, I'm gonna recite it. You just march where you feel the beat. We'll all start on our left foot." And everyone of course marches exactly together.
0:55:55.1 PT: And I say, "Look, it's like magic. You all hear the same beat." And then I say, "Okay, now as we recite it, how many syllables do you hear per beat Yankee doodle when they realize that each beat had two parts to it. And then we can ta-di our way through it, ta-di ta-di ta-di ta-di ta-di ta-di ta ta with my frog in my throat, so. And then, I can show them in proto notation what it would actually look like. So I give them enough that for those people who actually want to learn how to do it, they can see it and they can always add. And sometimes I post things for them. I say, "You can try and do this on your own." But I don't require it 'cause when I did, it was really kind of a disaster.
0:56:47.1 PT: So I thought, "Okay, okay. I'll do it. But I'll show them how." But I do go through lots of nursery rhymes 'cause they all have very similar repeating patterns, whether it's Humpty Dumpty or Yankee Doodle or Baa Baa Black Sheep or Want A Penny To A Penny, so that they can at least feel with a tapping pattern what that rhythm feels like. And then they can look at it too and know, "Okay, when I see if I'm in... I mean this obviously later after we've now talked about time signatures, if I'm in 4/4... 'cause I actually start this like right on day two just to start feeling patterns without any big explanation. So if I'm in 4/4 and I see four 16th notes, oh that's ta-ka-di-mi ta-ka-di-mi. So they know what that rhythm feels like. They know what it sounds like. I wish I had some training like that when I was first in college because... When I encountered... I played piano, but if I came across a difficult rhythm, I mean, I could sit and sort of mathematically figure it out, but I didn't know what it sounded like. So this is great that they can hear the sound of these patterns, feel them actually produce it just with chopsticks or some kids have drumsticks but... So yeah, I like my rhythm clocks.
[laughter]
0:58:19.3 GR: Great. And if you're okay with it, we may post a little video of your demonstration of the chopsticks for people to see. Would that be okay?
0:58:25.8 PT: That's fine.
0:58:26.0 GR: Awesome. Great. We'll do that.
0:58:28.5 PT: Yeah.
0:58:29.3 GR: Yeah. Good. Well, Paula, this has just been really delightful chatting with you. I feel like we could pick any topic from Music Fundamentals and you would have wonderful tips for us on how to teach that. Just clearly you're coming from a wealth of experience doing that. And I so appreciate you taking the time to speak with us.
0:58:46.9 PT: Well, thank you so much. I would... Anytime if you wanna talk more about any of those topics, I'd be happy to do it 'cause I've been doing this for a long time. [laughter] And again, to piggyback just on something that, again, I think it might have been Melissa, when she talked about putting herself in the student's position in terms of what they know and don't know. Having taught for as long as I have, I've encountered probably most of the common errors that anyone is gonna make. And so, you figure out not only how to correct it, but why are they making that mistake? So that I try to get always to that underlying reason and how, what can I do to preempt that mistake before it even happens with anybody. So I've thought about those kinds of things a lot.
0:59:43.7 GR: That's great, yeah. And thank you for sharing them really so.
0:59:50.0 PT: Well thank you.
0:59:51.6 GR: Excellent.
0:59:52.1 PT: It's been fun. I love to talk about theory.
[laughter]
0:59:56.8 GR: Me too. Me too.
0:59:56.9 PT: So do we.
[music]
1:00:02.1 LS: Notes from the Staff is produced by uTheory.com.
1:00:04.7 GR: UTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
1:00:08.2 LS: With video lessons, individualized practice and proficiency testing, uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world master the fundamentals of music theory, rhythm and ear training.
1:00:19.5 GR: Create your own free teacher account at uTheory.com/teach.
Dr. Leigh VanHandel joins us to talk about the science of memory and learning, and how it can help us better structure our teaching. We also chat about her new book, the Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, which recently received an Outstanding Multi-Authored Collection award from the Society for Music Theory, and about the Workshops in Music Theory Pedagogy series she coordinates.
Links:
Leigh VanHandel's faculty page at the University of British Columbia
The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy:
Workshops in Music Theory Pedagogy
Ask Dr. Van
uTheory
Chapters:
00:00:20 Introductions
00:01:45 Editing the Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy
00:07:56 How math pedagogy research can inform our teaching of music theory
00:12:34 Long term, short term and working memory.
00:15:24 The relationship of working memory and visuo-spatial skills
00:19:00 How learning happens, neurologically. (Schema forming)
00:21:21 The implications of schemas for how we teach
00:24:13 The curse of expertise, and working memory
00:32:30 The value of memorization vs. deriving concepts
00:34:30 Using schema to teach for fluency
00:44:58 Strategies for identifying and helping students with working memory limitations
00:50:20 Reducing cognitive load to help students focus on what they're learning
00:55:31 Workshops in Music Theory Pedagogy series
00:59:50 What else are you up to, now that the book is out?
1:00:00 Where can we follow you?
1:03:18 Wrap-up
Transcript:
[music]
0:00:21.2 David Newman: Welcome to Notes from the Staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.
0:00:34.5 Gregory Ristow: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and associate professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory.
0:00:40.3 DN: And I'm David Newman. I teach Voice and Music Theory at James Madison University and I write code and create content for uTheory.
0:00:48.7 GR: Thank you, listeners, for your comments and episode suggestions. We love to read them. Send them our way by email at notes@utheory.com and remember to like us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:00.1 DN: Our topic for today is music theory and working memory and joining us to talk about this as well as her new book, The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, is Dr. Leigh VanHandel. Dr. VanHandel is associate professor and chair of the Division of Music Theory at the University of British Columbia. Her primary research areas are music theory pedagogy, music cognition, and the relationship between music and language. Her research is published in Music Perception, the Journal of New Music Research and the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy. She is co-director with Gary Karpinski of the Workshops in Music Theory Pedagogy program, a week-long summer intensive where teachers can learn from six experts in the teaching of music theory. Leigh, it's an honor to have you join us.
0:01:46.2 Leigh VanHandel: It's an honor to be here. Thank you so much.
0:01:48.6 DN: And especially right after you won this award at SMT for, what is the... The award was for?
0:01:54.7 LV: Outstanding Multi-Author Collection.
0:02:00.5 DN: Fantastic.
0:02:00.6 LV: Yeah. So The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy had an insane number, 68 authors and contributors. And so I think that qualifies as multi-author. [laughter]
0:02:17.6 GR: It's a delightful book, I have to say. We had a chance to speak with Melissa Hoag a couple of weeks ago and Stefanie Dickinson just about a week ago. And I have been just really loving going through the articles in it. It's a really... I think so many pedagogy textbooks come from one author's perspective and I've just been delighted by the variety of perspectives offered. Could you maybe talk a little bit about the origins of the book?
0:02:50.7 LV: Yeah, sure. So I'd been approached by Routledge about putting together some essay collection and the Norton Music Theory Pedagogy book was in its final stages. We knew what the format was gonna be, we knew who the authors were gonna be. And I had that moment where I went, "Well, why do we need another one of those? What can I do that's gonna be different?" And it was literally a shower thought, you're in the shower, you're washing your hair and you go, "Well, wait a minute, what if, what if I did this crazy thing where instead of these long essays, we put together a bunch of lesson plans and made something that's practical and useful and immediately relevant to people?" And so I pitched that to Routledge and I don't think they knew what to make of that idea at first, but somehow I managed to convince them to go along with this crazy idea.
0:04:00.0 LV: And I sent an email out, some people I targeted specifically, I also sent emails to the SMT mailing list and things like that and just said, "Send me your best lesson plan. Send me the lesson plan that you look forward to teaching every year that works every time you do it." And people responded. And I wasn't sure what the response was gonna be. I thought maybe I'll get 40 and maybe I can choose 30 of them or something. I got over 220.
0:04:41.1 GR: Oh my gosh.
0:04:41.4 LV: Yeah. [laughter] And so I kept having to go back to Routledge and going, "Okay, so what are the limitations of the print again? What... How many... [laughter] How many pages am I allowed to have?" And there were just so many amazing, amazing lessons and it was so exciting to go through all of them and figure out what to include and it was just... The contributors were amazing, that they were willing to share their best lessons and let people see what they do and then allow people to replicate it also. So it was just... It was an amazingly big project, but it was also really, really rewarding and in a very nerdy way, a lot of fun.
0:05:33.5 GR: And also there are the wonderful companion materials that so many of these lessons have as well, can you talk a bit about that?
0:05:42.8 LV: Yeah. So I think that was another innovation for the book is that, authors, when they talk about assignments that they might give or scores or analyses or whatever, they provided the materials and I created a website where all of these materials are on the website and you can go and say, "Oh, here's the assignment that this person uses after making that... After doing that lesson." And so there's links to recordings and there's all of this material that people can use to make these lessons happen. And that was really the goal was I wanted to make it as easy as possible for someone to read the chapter and implement the lesson in the way that the person was recommending. And there's... I also wanted it to be accessible to specialists in music theory, but there's a lot of non-specialists who are teaching music theory.
0:06:45.3 LV: There's a lot of schools these days that are hiring the bassoon/theory or trumpet/aural skills instructor and having them have these resources and materials was really important for me and having them be able to use them easily and right away. So that was the goal behind the supplemental materials was just making everything available as much as possible for everyone.
0:07:14.5 GR: That's great. We've been saying on the past few episodes, we are just in love with this book, I have to tell you. I'm [laughter] decidedly a fan and really have just been thrilled to, I mean, as you say, to have this window into these really excellent teachers' best lesson plans. It's just delightful.
0:07:35.8 LV: Yeah. Yeah. It's... I'm incredibly proud of the volume and I'm also incredibly grateful that I was allowed to come up with this crazy idea and see it through to completion and even more grateful that it's being recognized because that's just... That means a lot to me.
0:07:56.3 DN: So I have loved talking with you and Betsy Marvin about your work in music cognition. And your chapter in this on music theory and working memory opens by talking about the connection between success in math and music and how math pedagogy research can inform our teaching of music theory. Can you talk about that a bit?
0:08:17.9 LV: Sure. So I wrote an article in, I guess, it was published in 2012 in the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy about what music theory pedagogy can learn from mathematics pedagogy. And I have a really good friend who is a excellent mathematics teacher at the university level and he and I would have conversations about how people learn math and I... And he was also a musician. And so we started seeing relationships between these things. And so I just took it and ran with it. What happens is that the best predictor for how someone is going to do in a freshman level music theory class turns out not to be how good of a performer they are or how good of an ear they have, whether they have absolute pitch or anything like that, it's their score on the math portion of the SAT or ACT, depending on which exam they take.
0:09:21.9 GR: Wow.
0:09:23.0 DN: Wow.
0:09:25.5 LV: Yeah. And there's... I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done on why, but the article basically says, "Look, assuming that there is this relationship between these things, how can we borrow how we understand mathematics is best taught and adapt that into music theory pedagogy?" 'Cause mathematics pedagogy is a very, very well-funded field. Music theory pedagogy is not. So when we can steal research from anywhere, we should, I think. [chuckle] So I did a lot of reading on how people learn mathematics. And in order to make the relationship between fundamentals and math, you have to go back to first principles of mathematics, which is basic principles addition and subtraction and things that. And of course, the problem is most people learn those things when they're very young.
0:10:30.9 LV: And so the learning process, people are usually concerned that it's a little bit different. There's actually evidence that adult learners go through the exact same processes that children do just at a slightly faster rate. Not slightly, just at a faster rate. And so if you have someone who is still struggling with mathematics when they enter college, they go through the exact same processes learning basic math as a third grader does essentially. So then I thought, "Okay, if that's the case, then we can take these principles and apply them to our adult learners in freshman theory or so on, who are trying to learn these very complicated systems of music theory."
0:11:22.1 LV: And one of the challenges is that mathematics is a well-formed system. If you add four plus four, you're always gonna get the same thing. Music is what's called an ill-formed system, which I find hilarious [laughter] because sometimes in one context, the answer to something is this and sometimes in another context, the answer is this. And so it's actually even more complicated than learning mathematics in that way. So yeah, so that got me thinking about what are the different processes that we go through when we're learning to do basic mathematics? How can we apply that to basic music theory skills like spelling intervals or chords or scales? And all of that got me thinking about the cognition of teaching and learning and about what are the best, most efficient and effective ways of teaching this material to adult learners. And then that led into the working memory stuff and that led to the chapter in the Routledge Companion.
0:12:35.3 GR: That's great. And in that chapter, you talk about three kinds of memory. You talk about long-term, working and short-term memory. Can you tell us a bit about these?
0:12:45.7 LV: Sure. So long-term memory is essentially the facts, the declarative knowledge or the procedural knowledge that you have stored away in your head and it's material that's there and is available for retrieval and you don't have to walk around rehearsing that information all the time. It's there. You can... If you wanna make the filing cabinet analogy, you can go to the filing cabinet, pull out that information when you need it, and then put it away and you don't have to constantly be thinking about it. Short-term memory is our ability to hold a certain amount of information in our memory for a short period of time.
0:13:27.7 LV: So short-term memory is the thing that kicks in if you are trying to remember a phone number or if somebody tells you, "Okay, turn to page 221 and look at example 4.3," you're holding 221 and 4.3 in your head and you have that in your short-term memory. Working memory is when you are holding a short amount of material in your memory, but you're manipulating it. And so if I said to you, "Here's my phone number," and then you had to remember it long enough to run over and write it down, that would be short-term memory. If I said to you, "Here's my phone number, now repeat it to me backwards," that would be working memory because now you're having to manipulate that information in some way. Or if I said, "Add one to every number of my phone number," or something like that, that would be having to manipulate that information.
0:14:25.3 GR: And how consistent is, do we... Is there a base level of working memory that everyone has, or do we vary in our ability to use our working memory?
0:14:39.0 LV: The answer to both those questions is yes, [laughter] which seems contradictory. But in the 1950s, there was a psychologist named George Miller and he did a famous memory study in which he determined that the short-term memory limits for most people are, as he described it, five plus or minus two items. So there's a range in which most people fall, but some people have more abilities and some people have fewer abilities. And so yes, the answer to both questions is yes. There's a limit, but there's also variation within that.
0:15:26.1 GR: Yeah. And then you talk in your article a bit about the relationship between working memory and visual spatial skills or visual spatial skills. First off all, what are visual spatial skills and what is that relationship?
[laughter]
0:15:41.9 LV: So yeah, visual spatial skills are the ones that are hardest to describe. It's essentially like direction finding, the ability to rotate a figure. If you've ever taken an online test or something that where it says, "Here's an F and here's another F," but it's rotated and you have to say which direction it's been rotated or something like that. It's essentially the ability to manipulate spatial information. And your podcast listeners can't see it, but I'm rotating my hand around in circles in very bizarre ways right now because I talk with my hands. So it's that ability to manipulate spatial information, keeping one version of something in your head and then manipulating the other one to see how it changes. My theory, and I have not yet had a chance to test this and I really, really, really want to, my theory is that visual spatial memory comes into play in music theory fundamentals, especially when we're talking about things like interval inversion and things that or chord inversions, because students have to be able to spatially manipulate chord members that are out of order basically.
0:17:05.4 LV: If they're in open position or if they're inversion, they have to be able to go, "Okay, I have a G on the bottom and then I have an E, and then I have a C. Wait a minute, how do I rotate those around in my head to get them in the right order?" And I've encountered a number of students in my career who struggled with that in a way that was more than I would have expected them to. And so I have this crackpot theory that I really wanna test at some point, which is that if you have a visual spatial working memory deficit or memory deficit, then things like chord rotations or open position or things like that might be a little bit more challenging.
0:18:00.6 DN: There's a clear example of that if you're playing on the piano because it does, it feels very much... It looks like a rotation, how you position your right hand, for example.
0:18:12.6 LV: Yeah, yeah. And that's actually a really good point because one of the ways you can combat that if it's happening is through some other sensory input. Sometimes if somebody has trouble doing that mentally, the kinesthetic reinforcement of thinking about a piano keyboard, if it's something they're familiar with, if they're struggling with the piano keyboard as well, this just adds another layer to the complication. But if it is something that they're familiar with, then that can be a kinesthetic reinforcement of the rotation or representation of the rotation and can help them figure that out. But if they're having that trouble, yeah.
0:18:56.0 DN: Alright. So in the context of these kinds of memory, how is something learned? How can we solve this problem?
0:19:08.3 LV: That's a great question. So when we are learning material, the first thing it does is it goes into our working memory and our short-term memory. If we're manipulating it, it's working memory. If we're processing it for knowledge, it's short-term memory. But as it's becoming knowledge and as we're trying to get it into our long-term memory, we're creating what's called a schema. And a schema is basically an interconnected network of basically all of the things that we know. And this is a gross simplification, but there's this network where when a new piece of information comes in, our brain goes, oh, wait, that's connected to this and to this and to this. So I'm going to put that there, and I'm going to build these connections out to this other material so that this piece of information partially recalls these other pieces of information when I pull it up. So you can have isolated bits of knowledge. The example I always give is, you can tell someone who's a non-musician over and over that the key of A major has three sharps. And you can repeat that enough to them that they'll be able to repeat that piece of information back to you.
0:20:30.3 LV: And that is now a piece of knowledge that they have. It may even be living in their long-term memory if you've said it to them often enough. But they have no context for what that information means or what they can do with it. So the schema is the network that helps you figure out, oh, okay, the key of A major has three sharps. I know what those three sharps are because I know this information. I know what that means in terms of scale because I know this information. And I know what that means in terms of intervals and chords because I know this information. And all of those things are connected. And that's the goal that we want to get people to when we're teaching them fundamentals is we want them to have this schema where every bit of information that we're giving them reinforces every other bit of information.
0:21:27.9 DN: That is cool.
0:21:29.1 GR: I think, just right away about the implications for how we teach as well, just how important that means it must be to think about when we're introducing a new concept, proactively tying it into things that we've already covered and making the back connections and setting up the forward connections as well.
0:21:51.9 LV: Absolutely. Absolutely. That's the critical thing. Some students are able to make those connections on their own. And they're the ones whose schemas are pretty robust. If someone's schema is shaky to begin with, they need that explicit connection to be made for them. And even if they don't need it, it helps. It helps them to go, oh, this is how this connects to the material I already know. It helps reinforce that material. And like you said, it helps lead forward to whatever other way we're going to expand that information in the future.
0:22:28.8 DN: And this is a little off topic, but it makes me think of how does one deal with remediation? But a good description of what you're trying to do is trying to help find where the holes in someone's mental map are and maybe help patch them.
0:22:47.1 LV: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I've been teaching fundamentals for a really long time because I absolutely love it. But one of the things that happens is if a student is struggling with some material, they're usually not struggling with that material. They're struggling with one of the steps on the way to it. And so you have to investigate their schema a little bit and figure out where are they having that struggle? Where are they failing to make that connection between something and then help them make that connection. And I can't count the number of times I've spent time with a student doing that. And when you finally find that fundamental misunderstanding or that thing that never quite clicked for them and you work through that with them and then they go, oh, wait. And then all of a sudden, you see the metaphorical light bulb go on over their head and they go, wait, now I get it. And this means this and this means this. And they get really excited because suddenly all of these things fall into place. And quite honestly, those are the moments that I love. I love watching that light bulb go on and I love watching them see that connection and see this connected world of fundamentals opening up in front of them and them seeing how to navigate through that path. And those are the wonderful, wonderful moments.
0:24:15.0 GR: That's great. That's so great. I think for me, sometimes one of the challenges of that and probably for a lot of teachers is, and you talk about this in your article, is the curse of expertise. This idea that especially when we're teaching basic concepts in our field, we know those so well that it doesn't tax our working memory at all. Could you maybe give an example of this and help us with how we can work through that curse of expertise as teachers?
0:24:47.2 LV: Sure. Sure. So yeah, so the curse of expertise is basically when you've gotten good enough at something that you don't remember what it's like to not be good at it. And as a result, what that means is that you forget how many steps a non-expert has to go through to get to that point. So my favorite example of this is, because we are all experts, we do not have to tax our working memory at all if we're trying to remember how to spell common chords, for example. If somebody says to us, what's a D major chord? We go DF Sharp A. There's no... Yeah, exactly. And we don't have to use any cognitive load on that. There's no working memory burden. It just pops out, right? And it pops out immediately. What we forget is that for someone for whom this is new material, there's a tremendous number of steps that they have to go through because the number of steps that are involved in figuring that out, if we don't already know it, are really quite big. So if you go, okay, what's a D major chord? Then somebody would have to go, okay, so wait a minute, which notes are in, if a D is the root, so it would be A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A.
0:26:09.3 LV: Okay, D, F, and A. So I'm going to have some kind of a D, some kind of an F, some kind of an A. Now they want major, so major, let's see, where is that on the circle of fifths? Okay, that's two sharps. What are the order of sharps? So I'm going to have F sharp and C sharp. And wait a minute, what were the notes of my chord again? I had a D and an F and an A, and I had F sharp and C sharp. Oh, F, F sharp, F sharp. Aha, it's DF Sharp A, right? And I'm exaggerating a little bit for comic purposes or demonstrative purposes, but those are the steps. And if any one of those things is not really that solid, if they had to spend more time thinking about the key signature and the order of the sharps and whatever, by the time they came back to what were my notes that I had, they might have forgotten which the notes were, if they don't have those things set together as a chunk. And so it's really a quite working memory intensive task that we're asking someone to do if it's not already in your schema. Whereas we just go, DF sharp A, no problem. So one of the horrible things that I've asked people to do in presentations on this is I've said, okay, we are all experts at the A, B, C, D, E, F, G system, so let's take that away. You're not allowed to use A, B, C, D, E, F, G. We're now going to use H, I, J, K, L, M, N, right?
0:27:52.9 GR: Yeah. As I see you're counting them out on my fingers, yeah.
0:27:55.1 LV: Exactly, exactly. And think about your fundamental students who are doing the same thing on their fingers, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, right? They're experiencing the same thing.
0:28:06.3 GR: Or even worse, they're doing C, D, E, F, G, A, B and struggling with the wraparound after G.
0:28:11.6 LV: Yeah, exactly, exactly. So then in this exercise that I do, I say, okay, we've got H, I, J, K, L, M, N, those are our new note names. Let's keep the conceit of root, third, and fifth of a chord. We'll alternate to spell chords and so on and so forth. Wrap around when you reach the end and don't write this down. Do it in your head. And so then I'll give them some examples and I'll say, okay, in that system, what if I is the root? How do you spell the chord?
0:28:45.7 GR: I, K, M.
0:28:50.0 LV: Yes.
0:28:50.7 DN: I, K, M. But yeah.
0:28:53.9 LV: But you have to count it out on your fingers.
0:28:56.1 GR: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, people can't see that, but yes, I'm sitting here and yes, absolutely counting out on my fingers.
[laughter]
0:29:01.1 LV: Yeah. And then if H is the third.
0:29:09.0 GR: M, H, J.
0:29:12.1 LV: Yes. Why was that one harder?
0:29:14.0 GR: Because I had to wrap around. I had to work backwards from H, which is the start of the alphabet, and I couldn't wrap backwards because I couldn't remember what the end of the alphabet was, so I had to go all the way forwards to the end of the alphabet and then count backwards.
0:29:32.6 LV: Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, so that's a really challenging exercise. And then I make it harder. I add different things in where you have to... So you have to spell the chord and then you have to look at what I call a target word and figure out how many letters the target word has in common with the chord that you just spelled and manipulate the chord in some way, which is essentially the process of figuring out your letter names, thinking about the circle of fifths, thinking about what the order of sharps and flats is, and then applying that to what you're doing. It's really a humbling experience for a lot of experts. Some people don't find it that difficult, but they're still taking 10 seconds per chord to do it, whereas if I say, what's a D major chord, you go DF sharp A, and it takes you one second.
0:30:35.2 LV: And so where this creeps in is that as expert musicians with our cursive expertise, we forget the number of steps that someone has to go through in order to solve these problems that we're giving them. And so we go, oh, okay, here's 10 intervals. You can do this in a minute, forgetting that we can do that in a minute because it's six seconds per interval. But they're having to go, okay, so wait, they want a major sixth above E. Okay, so six, E, F, G, A, B, C. Okay, so it's some kind of a C. Now, let's see, major six. Oh, god, what's the key signature for E? And all of a sudden, now we're already at 20 seconds for this one interval, whereas we look at that and go, C sharp, done, next. Right? So one of the things that we have to think about when we're designing assessments or when we're trying to assess fluency is, we have a different level of expertise than our students do. We are able to come up with this information much faster because it's in our schema. That is the goal for the students. We do want them to be able to have that material, that available.
0:31:56.6 LV: But if they're just learning it, it's going to take them time to get there. And so we have to allow for, for example, more time than we think on timed tests. We can't go by how fast we can do it, basically. And then we also have to remember that it is really going to help the students if we make those explicit connections that help them develop that schema so that they can then develop that expert recall that we want them to have.
0:32:29.4 GR: As you're talking about this, I'm thinking a lot about this idea of a schema and the interconnections between pieces of information within that schema. I wonder, does this tell us anything about the value of memorization versus saying understanding processes for deriving ideas?
0:32:53.6 LV: Yeah, it does. So if you are memorizing information, yes, you're getting it into your head and you're able to pull it back out. But it's usually not connected to other information as well as it should be. A good example of this is think about someone who's memorized a piano sonata or something like that, any piece of music. What happens if they make a mistake and have to stop? They usually have to go back to the beginning of some section because that's where they've created a mental, here's where this starts and I have to go through. It's harder to pick up in the middle. And that is if they memorized it by rote, right? I do this thing after I do this thing after I do this thing. And then if you stop in the middle and go, okay, what comes next? They go, I have to go back to the beginning and work through all of this. Whereas if you have the information memorized, but you have it connected to other information, then you can go, okay, this is where I am. This is what comes next and start back up from where you left off. And the same thing happens in spelling chords or intervals or whatever. If you get a problem and suddenly you get distracted and then you go, "Wait, where was I?" Oh, right, I remember this. And then pick back up and go where you left off from.
0:34:31.6 GR: And in a topic like music fundamentals where we do want students to eventually gain that fluency and ease and speed that really only comes at the point that a lot of these things are, as you said, immediate knowledge accessible in long-term memory. Does that have implications then for how we teach to get them to that speed?
0:34:58.1 LV: Very much so. You're about to open up a rant on how we teach intervals. Is that okay?
0:35:03.9 DN: Please. Yes. Yep.
[laughter]
0:35:09.2 LV: Okay. There's a number of different ways that people think about teaching intervals and one of the ways that people teach intervals is by teaching students to count whole steps and half steps. The benefit of teaching whole steps and half steps is that it's a algorithmic process. The bad thing about it is that it is not connected to any other piece of information. If you get a student who is going, okay, every time I see a major third, I'm going to count four half steps, then they're not necessarily learning how these things connect to one another or how these are connected to the bigger schema. So I cringe internally a little bit when I see people teaching intervals by whole steps and half steps just because it's memorization of an algorithm, not of, not adding it to the system. And so there's a number of different ways that you can take students who are relying on doing that and move them towards more sophisticated understandings of how these things relate. Obviously, one way of thinking about it is if you're asked to spell a major third above F, you can think of F as the tonic of the scale and then go, okay, what's my key signature? How does this relate? And so on and so forth.
0:36:52.4 LV: And that works, but the problem with that method is what happens when the bottom note is a D double sharp and you don't have that as a tonic and so on and so forth. Then when that happens, what expert musicians do is they go, oh, okay, let's see, you're asking me for... The interval I always give when I give this example is a minor sixth above D double sharp. And that is because pretty much nobody has that interval stored in their memory anywhere. And so you actually have to think about it. What happens is if we meta-cognate about how do I solve that problem, expert musicians do what's called decomposition. They go, all right, D double sharp. No, I am not thinking about D double sharp. Mentally, I'm covering up that double sharp and I'm thinking about D. Now, let me think of a minor sixth above D. If we have it in our memory, we go, okay, minor sixth above D is B flat. Otherwise, we go, now I can think of the scale of D and now I can think of D minor and figure it out that way. And I go, "Okay, now I know that this is B flat." But my interval was above D double sharp. Now I re-manipulate that and I go, I'm going to raise my D by two half steps. I'm going to raise my B by two half steps. And now my answer is D double sharp to B sharp, which is a ridiculous interval and nobody should ever encounter that in their lives, but it's a good example how we can move people through a strategy.
0:38:34.4 LV: If somebody is spelling the interval by counting half steps and whole steps, they have to remember that there are eight half steps in a minor six and then they have to count up from D double sharp. And if they're just counting, there's a really good chance that they're going to land on C and go, oh, my answer is a C and that's not a minor sixth then other problems come about. If they're just relying on that scale method, then they're going to run into trouble because they're going to have to think about what the key of D double sharp is and nobody should ever have to do that. The more sophisticated steps are these decomposition steps, which is where you take a piece of information you already know and manipulate it into the piece of information that you need to find out mixed with this idea of immediate recall.
0:39:32.3 LV: We couldn't immediately recall a minor six above D double sharp, but we probably could because we are expert musicians immediately recall what it was above D. We did the immediate recall for that and then the decomposition to manipulate that information. What we want to do is when we're teaching students to spell intervals, we want to move them as close as we can to that immediate recall. But we also want them to have the other strategies in place for when the immediate recall doesn't work. And I talk about this some in my 2012 article. What we want to do is we actually want to show students that these strategies work because if they're stuck on using half step and whole step method to count intervals, it's because they don't trust their schema to give them the right answer otherwise. They're going back to the version of this process that they think is the most reliable for them. One of the things that I do in the classroom when I'm doing this is I very, very deliberately talk about process for every single question that I ask them. When I was in the theory classroom, I had teachers who would point at you and go, "What's a major third above A flat?"
0:41:09.7 LV: And you had to answer immediately and then point at the next person and point at the next person and point at the next person and bark out intervals. You had to answer as quickly as you could. And A, it was terrifying and intimidating, but B, if you got the wrong answer when he was barking at someone else, if you even were practicing these intervals along or if you were just sitting there in terror waiting for your turn, you didn't know why you got the wrong answer. One of the things that I do is I will always say, okay, so what is a minor third above F? I'll let people think about it for a second and then I'll call on someone. If someone goes, oh, it's A flat, how did you get that answer? And if they say, I just knew it. I'll say, okay, what if you didn't just know it? It's great that you knew that, but what if you didn't just know it? How could you get that answer? And then make them go through the steps of saying, well, I could have thought of the F minor scale and realized that the F minor scale has four flats and that A flat was one of them, so the third above F is going to be A flat.
0:42:25.8 LV: Okay, great. What's another way? And then somebody will go, well, I thought of the F major scale and then lowered the third by a half step. Okay, great. I'll do that so that the students who are struggling with these processes see how that works. And more importantly, they see that students are being successful with those more sophisticated strategies because ultimately what it is is they don't trust the strategy yet because it's not quite... Their schema isn't quite built up enough so that it's working for them. You have to work on the schema, but you also have to work on that confidence. And so that's where making that schema explicit, making those connections explicit is super, super helpful. Ironically, the other type of student that this helps, it helps the student whose schema is not fully formed yet. It also helps the overachieving perfectionist student who has the immediate recall, but has to double and triple check to make sure that their answer is correct. And so they end up spending way too long on every answer. If you get interval quizzes back where two-thirds of the questions are answered but they're all correct, you've got someone who is double and triple checking their answers to make sure that they're correct, which means that they're not getting through as many as they should 'cause they don't trust their process.
0:44:03.9 LV: Having those students see, okay, I'm using this process. This other person used this process. They got it right. I should trust my process more. I should trust my schema more. Also helps those perfectionist students who are afraid of making a mistake.
0:44:23.0 DN: I love this reminder that perhaps we need to be mindful of what our goals are and that the goal is not necessarily to know the piece of information, but to build the schema.
0:44:39.7 LV: Exactly. Exactly. That is the piece of... Building that schema is the thing that's going to help students moving forward. Having the isolated bit of information that a minor third above F is A flat will be useful in some circumstances, but does not help them with anything else really going forward.
0:44:58.3 GR: And related to that, you talk in your article on working memory a lot about ways that we can use our knowledge of working memory to improve our teaching. I wonder if you could talk about some of the strategies you identified, specifically identifying and intervening with working memory issues and also reducing cognitive load.
0:45:22.6 LV: Sure. When I present on this, the question I always get is, okay, how do we figure out who's having those working memory problems? The easiest way to tell if someone is having a working memory problem is, I think we've all had students who brain dump a whole bunch of information on the top of a task store in assignments. They'll write out the note names and they'll draw the piano keyboard and they'll draw the circle of fifths and they'll do all this stuff on the test. And the reason they're doing that is because that is reducing the burden on their working memory. They've now offloaded this information onto the page so that they have something to reference and they don't have to do the mental calculation each time. Those kind of things are crutches, basically, and they will help the students at the beginning and then they will hinder them as they move forward because they are not developing quickly enough the schema that they need and they're relying on this offloading of information. And they're doing it because they're having trouble developing that schema. This actually relates to both working memory and schema and cognitive load because essentially, they're trying to lighten the load on their cognitive burden in order to calculate these things.
0:46:50.5 LV: That's one way of identifying them. Obviously, another way is if a student is struggling with material then they probably have some weak link in their schema somewhere and you have to spend a little bit of time with them to drill down into that. But there's other cues as well other than performance on assessments. So if students are exhibiting trouble in processing information simultaneously or keeping information in their heads or forgetting what the next step is in a complicated process, for example, if they're like, okay, wait, wait, wait, what do I do after I do this? It has to be a constant thing. But working memory deficits are also implicated in things like ADHD or other attention deficit disorders. It's not the cause of it, but it's implicated in it. And so they might be easily distracted, especially if an activity is challenging, they might try to avoid completing the activity just because it's become hard for them and they don't want to acknowledge that it's hard for them. So they go, oh, look, a squirrel and they get distracted by something. So students who have ADHD or other neurodivergences like that, they tend to exhibit behavioral problems.
0:48:38.0 LV: Students with low working memory exhibit some of the same symptoms, but they typically don't exhibit any of those behavioral problems. So if there's no other issues, then working memory might be implicated in something like that. So the thing is there's no real way that we can train our working memory. So if you listen to National Public Radio for any period of time, you'll hear ads for Lumosity or something like that, train your brain kind of things. And studies that they fund talk about how this helps you with your working memory or with brain processing and so on and so forth. Independent studies find that that's really not the case. The tasks that something like Lumosity are asking you to do, you can get really, really good at those tasks, which are things like swipe on the direction of the center bird or things, there's these different exercises that Lumosity gives you. You can get really, really good at swiping in the direction that the center bird in a group of five birds is facing, but that's not going to help you spell chords. [laughter] So there's no transfer from the type of task that something like that is asking you to do into music theory fundamentals.
0:50:11.3 LV: You have to practice music theory fundamentals, and you have to develop that schema of music theory fundamentals in order to get better at it. And you mentioned cognitive load, and that's a really, really important thing for instructors to think about because if a student has a working memory deficit and you are standing in front of them going, okay, so everyone, let's turn to page 88. Let's look at example 12. I want you to identify passing tones, neighbor tones, appoggiaturas. If you're listing a whole bunch of things, by the time you're done with that list, they've forgotten what page you asked them to turn to because they've been trying to keep all of this material in their head as you've been going, and that's when you get the what page, what example, what are we doing? And so this is one of those universal design for learning principles that it's better for everyone not just people with working memory deficits. If you give instructions very, very clearly, if you provide time for processing, if you write it on the board so that they can reference it when they have questions, it's the cognitive load of... If the cognitive load of the task you're asking someone to do is very high and you're dumping more information on them as they're trying to do that task, they're going to fail at the task.
0:51:48.7 LV: There's going to be some an interrupt, whether they've forgotten the instructions, whether they've forgotten the task or how to do the task. So there's a lot of principles in learning about the best way to reduce cognitive load on students so that they can put most of their cognitive load on the task that you're asking them to do. Clear instructions, instructions that are in the same place as the question. So for example, don't design an exam where the instructions for a question are on one page and the question is on the next page because then they're flipping back and forth and they have this split attention issue where they're not able to read the instructions and immediately look at the thing that they're being asked to do. The other thing, I've observed people in the classroom where they will play music during some kind of a test. Music unrelated to the test, they will play music during the test. And their feeling is, well, students to listen to music when they study, so I should do this when they... But that's a huge cognitive load drain because students with working memory issues or with attention issues are going to be distracted by this thing that you're doing.
0:53:17.6 LV: And so that's always something I did, don't play extraneous music while students are concentrating on something. And one of the things that I figured out also was, if students are doing a test and I have a musical example that I wanna play for them, for example, it's really intrusive of me to go, okay, everyone, turn to example three. I'm going to play the example now and then play the example because they were in the middle of a task. They were in the middle of something and they had their thought processes going and they had all of that stuff where they were trying to remember, okay, I'm doing this and I'm doing this and I'm doing this. And suddenly I barge in and go, okay, pay attention to this now. So what I'll do is I'll tell them I'm going to play this music example at 10 after, at 15 after, at 20 after, and I will give you 30 seconds notice before each time I play it. And so when it gets to that point, I will very quietly say, okay, finish up whatever task you're on. I'm going to play this musical example in 30 seconds.
0:54:25.9 LV: That gives them time to make notes to themselves or finish that thing and then get that gone so that they can now concentrate on this new thing. And it's worked really, really well because one of the things I noticed when I was not doing that was that students would leave questions blank or half completed because they forgot that they were working on it. They looked at it and they went, oh, I've got an answer there that must be right and then moved on to the next question. And I don't see that as much anymore when I'm mindful of directing their attention in specific ways and carefully asking them to finish up what they're doing and now let's pay attention to this.
0:55:14.2 GR: Yeah, I'm learning so much just talking with you now.
[laughter]
0:55:15.0 GR: This is wonderful. I have the sense we could go on talking for hours, but of course, time is always...
0:55:24.7 LV: That's probably my fault. I'm sorry.
0:55:27.8 GR: It is such a gift to us. Really, it's just delightful. But for people who would like to learn more from you, there's certainly that opportunity. You and Gary Karpinski coordinate the Workshops in Music Theory Pedagogy series. Could you tell us a bit about that, about who that's for and if people want more information about that, where they can find it?
0:55:50.4 LV: Yeah, absolutely. So the Workshops in Music Theory Pedagogy have been a workshop series that's been hosted every three years. They've been hosted by Gary Karpinski at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Gary has retired and he's asked me to step in as director. So this year is his last year. We're co-directing this year and we're moving them to the University of British Columbia. And they are June 26th through 30th of 2023. The workshops consist of four faculty that are brought in who are expert music theory pedagogues and it's a week-long workshop where each faculty member talks about their strategies and things that they're specialists in. And then there's also small group workshops with each faculty member each day so you can choose who you want to go work with and get more information and feedback from each person. So this year we have six faculty. It's Gary Karpinski, me, Michael Callahan from Michigan State, Nancy Rogers from Florida State, Jena Root from Youngstown State, and Jenny Snodgrass from Lipscomb University. And so it's an amazing, amazing group of music theory pedagogy scholars who are going to have a ton of information that they can share with people.
0:57:29.3 LV: We're in the process of finalizing the registration like financial stuff, just getting the ability to have people make payments. But there is a website that you can go to which is just workshopsinmusictheorypedagogy.com and that will take you to the UBC website where the information is and that website will eventually include links for registration and housing and meals. And basically, you just live on campus for a week and do these workshops, these interactive workshops. And it's a wonderful type of nerd camp which is perfect for people who are... Like grad students who are studying to be music theorists, music theorists who just want to hear other people's perspectives. It's wonderful for faculty who maybe are non-specialists in theory who are being asked to teach music theory. Every single time it's offered, we get somebody who comes in and goes, I'm the flute instructor. I've just been told I'm teaching aural skills in the fall. What do I do? And it's the perfect...
0:58:44.0 GR: What about high school teachers who maybe are starting to teach AP theory or something?
0:58:51.1 LV: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, that's actually a great population for it as well because if you're a music ed person you had theory classes but you probably haven't had them in two or three years and now you have students who want to do an AP class and you're terrified, come to us. Come to us.
0:59:11.8 GR: Great. And we will link to that site in the show notes as well.
0:59:16.0 LV: Excellent. Excellent. Yeah, so it's really exciting that it's being hosted in British Columbia now. Late June in Vancouver is an absolutely stunning time to be in Vancouver. And I know a lot of people are planning on taking a couple of extra days at the beginning or at the end to do some sightseeing around Vancouver's area and I'm super excited to have it in here and to be part of it now.
0:59:52.1 DN: Cool. [laughter] And aside from that, what else are you up to these days?
0:59:58.5 LV: Well, I'm still relatively new at UBC. I started in September of 2020 in the middle of the pandemic, so to me I feel that first online year didn't really count. I feel like I'm still figuring out how things are going here but I've managed to get a really good music cognition lab going and so I'm doing lots of music cognition research. My main interests there are meter, rhythm and tempo and so we've been running a whole bunch of experiments on perceived rhythmic complexity and rhythmic patterns and what makes people feel something is complex. And yeah, so that's probably the primary thing that I've been working on recently is that project.
1:00:54.8 DN: Cool.
1:00:54.9 GR: I just can't wait to hear what you have to say as well.
1:00:58.7 DN: I know we need to have you on again. [laughter]
1:01:00.7 GR: This has been just such a delight talking with you today. I wonder if listeners are interested in keeping up with what you're up to, where can they find you?
1:01:10.2 LV: So they can search for me on the University of British Columbia website. I have my own website. You'll eventually find it if you search for Leigh VanHandel Music Theory. It'll probably take you right to it. On that website, you'll find information about my research lab. You'll find information about the Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy. There's also a blog that I have that I call Ask Dr. Van where I get a lot of emails from middle school students who have to do some a research project where they email a faculty member and ask a question. And so I started answering the questions and then putting them up on the website with the identifying information redacted of course. And some of the questions are really great, really sophisticated that take multiple iterations of questions to answer. And some of them are just wonderful questions why is Stairway to Heaven the best song ever?
[laughter]
1:02:19.3 LV: And I had to sit down and figure out how to answer that question. So that's really fun also looking at that and seeing that even younger students are really interested in music and what it means to them and how they think about music. Some of the questions are theory oriented. Some of them are cognition oriented. And it is really fascinating to see that kids are thinking about this and hopefully these are the students that we can get interested in it, keep them interested in it and they're going to be our fundamentals theory students and our music theory and cognition students in the future.
1:03:06.6 GR: Excellent.
1:03:07.3 LV: And people can also email me, leigh.vanhandel@ubc.ca.
1:03:13.4 GR: Awesome.
1:03:14.2 LV: So if anyone has questions, they can email me.
1:03:16.8 GR: Great. Well, thank you again for joining us. Really just such a delight to learn from you. I feel I've come away from this with 100 ideas that I'm going to have to just sit down and process as I start to incorporate them into my teaching. So really thank you.
1:03:31.8 DN: Thanks so much, Leigh.
1:03:32.0 LV: Thank you for having me. This was a lot of fun.
1:03:38.5 DN: Notes from the staff is produced by utheory.com.
1:03:41.2 GR: uTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
1:03:45.4 DN: With video lessons, individualized practice and proficiency testing, uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world master the fundamentals of music theory, rhythm and ear training.
1:03:56.9 GR: Create your own free teacher account at utheory.com/teach.
[music]
Dr. Stefanie Dickinson joins us to share some of the music fundamentals games that she uses in her music theory classroom.
Links Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy
Dr. Stefanie Dickinson’s page at UCA
The Power of Play with Jed Dearybury (Notes from the Staff Episode)
Dalcroze Solfege Games with Greg Ristow (Notes from the Staff Episode)
uTheory.com
Show Notes 0:00:21.2 Introductions
0:02:27.1 Value of play in teaching and learning
0:06:02.4 Key Words - for key signatures
0:08:47.0 360 Degrees - for scale degrees
0:10:30.4 Balance Beam - for rhythmic values and notation conventions
0:13:38.2 Meter Cards - for identifying time signatures
0:16:44.8 Notation Bloopers
0:20:15.0 Triad Bingo (can be extended to other topics)
0:23:01.6 How do you help students who are struggling to get beyond the despair factor?
0:25:18.0 Interval Train
0:26:57.5 Value of competitive games in teaching fundamentals
0:32:43.1 Phone Numbers Game (aural skills, scale degrees/solfege)
0:38:32.1 Extending games for other topics
0:40:04.6 Wrap-up
Transcript [music] - These are the notes from the staff where we talk about our point of view, and we share the things we're going to do, `cause the path to mastering theory begins with you.
0:00:21.2 Greg Ristow: Welcome to Notes from the Staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.
0:00:33.4 David Newman: Hi, I'm David Newman, and I teach voice and music theory at James Madison University, and write code and create content for uTheory.
0:00:42.9 GR: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow, I conduct the choirs at the Oberlin Conservatory, and I'm the founder of uTheory.
0:00:49.0 DN: Thank you listeners for your comments and episode suggestions. We love to read them. Send them our way by email at notes@utheory.com, and remember to like us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:01.6 GR: Our topic for today is music fundamentals games, and joining us to share some of her favorite games is Dr. Stefanie Dickinson. Dr. Dickinson is associate professor of music theory at the University of Central Arkansas. Her primary areas of research include the music of Liszt's late experimental period, issues in analysis and performance, and music theory pedagogy. She has presented her work at regional and national meetings of the Society for Music Theory and College Music Society, the International Conference on Music and Gesture, and others. And her articles can be found in Gamut, College Music Symposium, the Festschrift Liszt 2000, and most recently in the Rutledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, where she's written about games for teaching music fundamentals, which is what we're going to talk about today. Stefanie, welcome.
0:01:49.4 Stefanie Dickinson: Thank you so much. It's a pleasure and honor to be here, and I appreciate the opportunity.
0:01:54.4 GR: We're thrilled to have you. So you're teaching at University of Central Arkansas. What all do you teach there?
0:02:00.0 SD: I teach only music theory. I have two sophomore theory and two sophomore aural skills classes in the fall, and then spring I go on to teach some upper level electives. I teach the form class. We have an introduction to linear analysis, and then in the summer I teach music theory pedagogy class.
0:02:19.5 GR: Well, I loved your chapter, so I'm so excited to talk about games, and especially music fundamentals games.
0:02:27.1 DN: So a theme we've come back to several times on this podcast is the value of play in teaching and learning. Listeners may remember our episode with Jed Dearybury, author of The Playful Classroom, or the episodes where Greg and I talked about Dalcroze solfege games and about music theory songs. So we've talked a lot about this, but before we dive into specific games, I wonder if you could talk about the value of games in teaching and how you came to use them in your own pedagogy.
0:02:52.5 SD: Sure. I think that games are very, very valuable, potentially at every level of instruction, but specifically for fundamentals. And I think it's just due to our competitive natures and our desire to succeed and our desire to win that really heightens our awareness for learning. And games are such a fun environment where we can really push ourselves, but we do not have the risk that we do when we take exams. So I think this resonates with students, and we've all been playing games since we were tiny children. The fact that the games speed up our thought processes really mirrors the way that students will use these fundamentals in the real world. And I found that students, when they first come into a fundamentals class, they think that they just need to be able to master the concept. They don't realize that they actually need to master it and have, in fact, instant recall, because a lot of our students are music education majors. And they're not thinking into their future when they're standing in front of their band sight reading a piece, and they don't realize that they don't have five minutes to count the flats and to look at the next to last one to determine the key signature.
0:04:11.6 SD: So games are just a great way to build up that speed and just build up the real world skills that they're going to need. And also, these games particularly came to me when I was trying to think of a different modality for drill and practice, because we know that drill and practice is absolutely essential to mastering fundamentals. And of course we can do drill and practice exercises in class, and then we can give our students written homework. We can send them to an online website or use a computer app, but games are just fun and interactive and competitive. And one thing that I was very enthusiastic about was having my students see how their classmates perform in this situation. So some of the students who would be struggling would be able to see the students who had already mastered the concept, and they might realize, "Hey, my classmate has mastered this, so I can do it too." So I was interested in that aspect.
0:05:13.8 GR: I love that. That's great. That's great. Leigh VanHandel's new book, The Rutledge Companion to Music Theory, I've been finding absolutely delightful as I've been working my way through the various chapters. We had the chance to speak recently with Melissa Hoag about her chapter on putting the music in music fundamentals. I absolutely loved your chapter on these music theory games, and I thought it might be fun if you took us and the listeners through some of these games. And maybe for the ones that aren't too visual, David and I could go head to head on a question or two and see who wins. [laughter]
0:05:44.4 DN: You just want to show how good you are.
0:05:46.9 GR: Don't you? [laughter]
0:05:50.6 SD: Well, most of these games are visual based, but I'll see if I can think of a few questions.
0:05:55.3 GR: Sounds great. Sounds great.
0:05:56.6 SD: That will allow a little competition here on the podcast. [laughter]
0:06:00.5 GR: Excellent.
0:06:02.4 SD: I tried to think of games for quite a few different aspects of fundamentals, and I'll tell you about my Key Words. Each has a little kitschy kind of title, each game does. And one I'd like to call Key Words, and it just involves identifying key signatures. And there are three rounds for this game. The students are given 15 cards, and each card has a unique key signature. And for the first round, the students are just given a word. So I like to start with a very simple word, maybe like beg, B-E-G, or fad, F-A-D. And the students who are usually working in teams shift through their cards, and then they just place one key signature for each letter. So they might, for example, have F major, A major, D major for fad, F-A-D. Of course, I don't really specify whether they should use A major or A flat major for the A, their choice. Of course, some of our words have two letters, so that then the complimentary key signatures can be used for those. But it's really a simple kind of game.
0:07:13.5 SD: And then we go to round two, where I will say a sentence, and only one word in the sentence is actually a word that you can spell with key signatures because obviously we're limited on letters. So I'll give you a few sentences.
0:07:29.1 GR: Nice.
0:07:30.8 SD: And see if you can tell me which word that you would be able to spell with the cards.
0:07:34.0 DN: Okay.
0:07:35.2 GR: Okay.
0:07:35.6 SD: And so this is just to add another dimension, so it kind of creates a bit of a riddle. All right. My sister just earned her first scout badge.
0:07:46.4 GR: Badge.
0:07:47.3 DN: There you go.
0:07:50.0 SD: Great, great. And then you would have practice with five different major key signatures, or I could specify minor key signatures.
0:07:56.1 GR: Oh, so then once they get the word, do they have to write out the key signatures or find their key signature cards for those?
0:08:02.5 SD: Yes, they find the key signature cards and they'll have one card for each letter in the word.
0:08:09.3 GR: Got it.
0:08:10.3 DN: Yep.
0:08:10.4 SD: But we usually play this at a table and they'll line up the cards on a table.
0:08:14.7 GR: Nice. Yeah.
0:08:16.2 SD: Yeah. But one of the catches is each team only has one attempt, you have to be sure that you're accurate. So another sentence might be, do you drink decaf coffee?
0:08:23.9 DN: Decaf.
0:08:26.5 GR: Oh, good for you.
0:08:30.4 SD: Great. Yeah. And that would give you practice with another five key signatures.
0:08:36.8 DN: Coffee comes close.
0:08:36.9 GR: Yeah. I was trying coffee. [laughter]
0:08:37.8 SD: It does. I'll give you one more so we can break the tie. My friend's favorite movie is Dead Poets Society.
0:08:46.4 GR: Dead.
0:08:46.5 DN: Dead.
0:08:47.0 SD: Oh, that's a draw. [laughter] I think it's time to go on to another game. [laughter] So there's one that I call 360 degrees and the emphasis here is scale degrees. So I'll have students divided into teams and you can have, I suppose, two to four teams just depending on the board space available in your class. And this is a good way to get students out of their desks and I'll have each team line up. I'll have one person go to the board at a time, but before they go to the board, I'll call out three pieces of information; a clef, a key, and a scale degree. A clef, a key, and a scale degree. And then I'll let students think about that for a minute. And then I'll say go. And the first person on each team closer to the board will run to the board and write the clef, the key, and then the scale degree of that specific key. So unfortunately we can't play that one on the air.
[laughter]
0:09:58.2 GR: Yeah, it doesn't work too well aurally. So in other words, you would say something like bass clef G major 6.
0:10:05.3 SD: Exactly.
0:10:05.4 GR: And so someone would draw the bass clef, draw one sharp, and would write the note E on that staff.
0:10:13.1 SD: And so, of course, treble and bass clefs are relatively easy. You could throw in some C clefs. [chuckle] That would be a lot of fun, I'll tell it to them.
0:10:23.5 GR: Yeah, writing key signatures in C clefs can be fun too because they have a different shape depending on the C clef.
0:10:30.4 SD: Absolutely, absolutely. And this is also practice, of course, for writing key signatures and having the correct placement and the correct order. Another component of that game. One of my favorites I call Balance Beam. So I'll have one student from each team go to the board and write on a horizontal plane numbers 1-14. Actually, it could be any number that work, but the game that I like to start with has 14 different rhythmic values. And then I'll call out a rhythmic value for each number and my students will write that rhythmic value, no beams. So, for example, let's say numbers 1-3 each have eighth notes. Number 4 is a quarter note. Number 5 is an eighth note. Number 6 is a dotted quarter. 7, 8, 9 are all eighth notes. 10 is a quarter note. 11-14 are eighth notes. So they're just looking at what might seem to be just a random assignment of note values.
0:11:40.2 GR: And at this point not beamed at all...
0:11:43.4 SD: Not beamed at all.
0:11:45.0 GR: Just individual notes.
0:11:46.6 SD: No, because that's part of the competition. So I have five rounds. I really can get a lot, a lot of competition out of this one visual. So round one, I asked the teams to beam the rhythm in 6/8 and of course include bar lines. So, and again, I give each team only one chance. So they have to really think it through and check themselves. So for round two, I have the teams beam the same notes correctly in 3/4 and, of course, check on the bars. Round three, I asked the teams to beam the same rhythmic pattern in 9/8. And, of course, this time they have to move the bar lines. And then round four, I asked the students in 9/8 to replace each rhythmic note value with a rest value. And then for the last round, I asked them to do rhythmic transposition. So I'll have them change the rest values from 9/8 to 9/4.
0:12:50.8 GR: Change all of the values from 9/8 to 9/4.
0:12:52.9 SD: Right.
0:12:53.7 GR: Got it.
0:12:55.3 SD: Exactly. But I specifically work with rest values at first because I think it might be a little tougher than the actual note values. Although that's certainly a possibility.
0:13:03.3 GR: Yeah. That's great. And I can see all sorts of ways you could extend this as well, depending on which notes you changed to rests, it might be that in some meters you would normally combine those rests to form a longer value. Whereas in other meters, you'd want to keep them separate to reflect the metric structure.
0:13:23.8 SD: Right, and that's certainly a very important point, yes. And in addition to teaching beaming, we can also teach the proper combination of rests. Absolutely. Then I go on to Meter Cards. Each team receives two sets of cards, and on one card, there is a rhythmic value that's the equivalent of one beat. So for example, in 4/4, this could be a single quarter note. It could be two eighths. It could be an eighth and two sixteenths. It could be a dotted eighth and a single sixteenth. It's just the value of a single beat. And then I have another stack of cards with the numbers two, three, and four. Now, of course, these refer to meters or beats per measure. Usually I just start with the more common two, three, four, though you could certainly add others. And then the students basically have to figure out what the meter is when I combine one card with a rhythmic pattern with another card with a number.
0:14:30.4 GR: Can you give us an example of that?
0:14:33.3 SD: So perhaps we can do a little competition here.
0:14:35.8 DN: Yeah, I'm still trying to envision this.
0:14:38.3 SD: Okay, so I would like for you to tell me the meter or the time signature for your first card, which is a quarter and an eighth, the equivalent of a beat.
0:14:52.0 DN: Gotcha.
0:14:53.5 SD: And then the other card, which tells you that there are four of these per measure.
0:14:57.5 DN: So 12/8.
0:14:58.4 GR: So 12/8.
0:15:00.5 SD: Exactly, exactly.
0:15:00.6 GR: Four compound beats, yeah.
0:15:02.2 SD: Now, of course, simple meters are pretty easy to do, but then when I choose a compound meter, then there's a extra step of students having to think about how the time signature reflects not the beats per measure, but the divisions per measure.
0:15:24.5 DN: Great. Okay. Yeah, the part that I hadn't grokked at first was that there would be compound meter beats. Yeah, and it always seems like it's a difficult thing to explain in fundamentals why a compound meter is what it is.
0:15:42.8 SD: It really is. It's always a challenge. And I think it sometimes helps for students to see a single beat isolated on a card as opposed to just looking at example thinking that the divisions are the equivalent of beats.
0:15:58.2 GR: Yeah. And I think also it's nice, right, because so often we say in 6/8, 9/8, 12/8, the dotted quarter gets the beat. But of course, all sorts of other things can form a beat. And so, I like that idea of getting them to think about the rhythm words as being beats within those compound meters. And, of course, you could make some really hard ones. You could do a dotted 16th, 32nd, 16th, right, at which point we're in, and the number three, at which point we're in 9/16 time, where you can get some really crazy ones in there. Yeah.
0:16:36.6 SD: Right, right. And usually that's the process. You start with the easier ones and then work your way to the ones that are more challenging. I think perhaps my favorite is the Notation Bloopers Game. [laughter] And this is just to reinforce conventional notation, which I think a lot of our students are just not aware of. They take conventional notation for granted. So I'll give my students a slip of paper that has just a short melody on it, and I'll ask them to identify the mistake. And it's just really fun to come up with these mistakes. They might be as subtle as a bass clef with the dots in the wrong place. So instead of surrounding the F line, they might surround the D line. And usually that takes a while for students to identify that. And this is a fun game to play with teams because you've got the interaction of the team members as they look for the mistake. Another favorite of mine, see if you can identify this mistake. So picture this, I've got a bass clef with dots in the proper position, right? And then next you see 4/4. After that you see two flats; B flat, E flat. And then for simplicity's sake, let's say that you see four quarter notes, a bar line, and a whole note. What's the mistake?
0:18:19.6 GR: I'm cheating a bit because I've seen it in your book, and I have to say I had to read the answer. [laughter] And then I was like, oh, of course. [chuckle]
0:18:30.0 SD: So a bass clef, time signature of 4/4, two flats, B flat, E flat, followed by four quarter notes, a bar, and a whole note, with a, let's say, a double bar.
0:18:42.5 DN: You've transposed the time signature and the key signature.
0:18:47.8 SD: Exactly. [chuckle]
0:18:48.0 GR: Excellent, David.
0:18:51.3 SD: Exactly.
0:18:51.4 DN: I had to look... I had to visualize it. [chuckle]
0:18:54.6 SD: Mm-hmm. It's a lot of fun. And you could do other things like using wrong stem direction, incorrect beaming. And another one of my favorites is a mistake that my students make very often, which they'll have a melody with an upbeat, but then in the last measure, they'll have note values for the complete value of the measure. So they've forgotten to compensate for the upbeat. That usually takes a minute too.
0:19:23.0 DN: Although I... Yeah. I get to some of these things and I think, well, I've seen professional scores that feature this or feature... And, of course, I do a lot of early music, so I've seen the F clef on different lines.
0:19:40.3 GR: Everywhere. True.
0:19:41.1 DN: But I've seen the G clef on different lines.
0:19:44.5 SD: That's a great point. That's a great point. And that's a good conversation to have with students, that this, what we call conventional notation is not universal. I just had a discussion today with my sophomore students about using a Dorian key signature in a Bach chorale. So the key of G minor was notated with just one flat.
0:20:07.2 DN: And Bach does this...
0:20:08.0 GR: All the time.
0:20:08.5 DN: All the time.
0:20:11.1 SD: Right, right. So many Baroque composers. And then another game we play is Triad Bingo. So I just made these bingo cards. Let's see. With intervals, I usually do B-I-N-G-O. For triads, sometimes bing or just sometimes bingo, but... And instead of a traditional bingo card layout, you would just have single chords, just a row of single chords under each letter. And then I'll call out a letter and then a chord quality, and the students will have to find that chord quality. Usually, we just circle them. And, honestly, I only make one version of the card for each class. So everyone's looking at the same card, because it's just chaos running around looking at different cards and reconfiguring your brain.
0:21:06.9 DN: Oh, yeah.
0:21:09.9 GR: Okay. So it has been a while since I've played bingo. So just to be sure I'm picturing this correctly. So at the top are these five columns, B-I-N-G-O, and then underneath them you said qualities or letters or both?
0:21:30.1 SD: Qualities.
0:21:30.2 GR: Okay.
0:21:30.3 SD: Qualities. So, for example, under... Let's say, under B, I might have an F major triad. Maybe a D minor triad. A C augmented triad. And then a B diminished triad.
0:21:43.9 GR: Got it. And so you would call something like B augmented, and...
0:21:47.9 SD: Exactly. Exactly.
0:21:49.8 GR: And then they would put a chip on the one augmented card in that row.
0:21:53.0 SD: Correct. Yes.
0:21:55.4 GR: Okay.
0:21:57.1 DN: And so if you're all using the same card then, there's a definitive point at which someone should have won.
0:22:04.4 SD: Yes.
[laughter]
0:22:06.8 DN: I'm wondering if I could do this with aural skills, except that I fear I would get premature victories.
[laughter]
0:22:15.0 SD: Oh, you do. You do.
[laughter]
0:22:16.7 GR: I'm sure. Yeah.
0:22:18.4 SD: But once you declare a premature victory, you are out of the game.
[chuckle]
0:22:23.9 GR: And you could easily turn that game... Is that what you were saying, David, that you could turn that game to an aural skills game by calling column B and then playing a diminished chord?
0:22:33.5 SD: Absolutely.
0:22:34.5 DN: Yeah.
0:22:35.2 GR: Uh-huh. Yeah.
0:22:37.9 SD: I use the same format on intervals, on triads, on seventh chords. There's so much you can do with it. And also, you could add that aural component to the triads and seventh chords.
0:22:46.8 GR: Mm-hmm. Nice.
0:22:49.5 SD: Yes. But you really need to state up front that premature declarations of victory...
0:22:55.8 GR: Eliminate you from...
0:22:57.7 SD: Will result in elimination from the game.
[laughter]
0:23:01.6 DN: I love the fact that you mentioned that, of course, it lets some of the students see that other students are doing well, that they understand it, and, therefore, that it is understandable. I have seen some students react to this with despair that their colleagues just know these things and they don't. And I wonder how you handle the despair factor.
0:23:37.2 SD: [laughter] The despair factor is definitely present, whether it's written theory or aural skills, definitely. It's uncanny. I had this talk today with my students. In my sophomore aural skills, we do an error detection exercise every day in class, and I have some students who are just not passing them. And so, we had to have a little chat about everybody has their weaknesses, and there's some things that you can do now very well, but you were not able to do them at some point before. So none of my students were born reading treble and bass clef. They had to learn those. And I think it's important to tell students, as I'm sure you all know, that sometimes people are more comfortable with the written side of theory. Sometimes they're more comfortable with the aural side of theory. And they're all important. And it's just a matter of developing skills. And sometimes you even have to ask for help. And, of course, we as functioning adults in the real world, we call people for help all the time. We have physicians and mental health professionals and electricians and plumbers and people with professions that we just cannot live without them.
0:24:58.4 SD: So it's really difficult sometimes for my students to ask for help. They think they should just naturally be good at a skill, but that's why we do skill building. And it's just so valuable to know your weaknesses, to know where to focus your time and your effort. I have one more I'd like to share with you. I call it interval train. And this actually is not original. I think we did something like this when I was an undergrad a long time ago. [chuckle] And this is also a game that could have an aural component, but I'll focus on the written, the visual right now. So I'll have each team at the board, at a board, and I'll give them the starting note. And then I'll tell them the name of an interval and a direction. So let's say ascending minor second, and then they'll write the next note, and then I'll just go through a series of 5-12 intervals. And whoever gets to the correct final note first is the winner.
0:26:08.6 GR: I love it.
0:26:10.8 DN: It's a very modus novus...
[laughter]
0:26:15.4 SD: Yes, it is. And then, of course, you can sing... You could try to sing the melody that you created. And, of course, you could play those aural skills by playing the intervals. That'd be a great way for them to reinforce the written with the aural, which is always important, of course.
0:26:35.1 GR: And you could make it a name the tune then as well by... If you pick... Give the intervals for some tune, say...
0:26:42.5 SD: Absolutely.
0:26:44.0 GR: F sharp, perfect unison, ascending minor second, ascending major second, descending major second, and we're off to Ode to Joy.
[laughter]
0:26:51.7 SD: Great. It's great. Great addition.
0:26:57.5 DN: I wonder... And I... It's really cool to me how you've... Sort of all of these games leverage a competitive spirit to especially get out that, as you said, that immediate recall that... And I know... One of my colleagues instituted time tests on all of her fundamentals classes and Theory 1, and they would just have time tests every day. And the students kinda hated them, but at least it... Time test does not leave you time to count up the letters and figure out... Of course we know you can do that. That's not the issue. The issue is that you'd be able to see it and immediately recognize it. And so, you've leveraged this competitive spirit. I wonder, and maybe this is... I just wonder if you have games that are less competitive. Are there collaborative games? Do we have ways of... Or is that less useful? [chuckle]
0:28:11.1 SD: I'm sure there's a place for that. Certainly. There's some times when you, as a professional musician, you want to take time. You want to enjoy the discovery maybe of analyzing a piece, and when taking time is appropriate. But with these games, as you mentioned, my primary concern is that students just go beyond understanding, that they actually have an opportunity to, essentially, prepare for the real world where you don't have time to think about what the F sharp major scale looks like. [chuckle]
0:28:54.6 DN: And I've had some students, I think, who don't always understand that right away. I definitely had a conversation with one the other day who said, "Well, when you make me do it so fast, I can't... When I do the homework, I have plenty of time. So I don't understand why I didn't do well on this test." "Well, you... It's 'cause the homework... You're obviously doing it very slowly. But you can't do it slowly." [chuckle]
0:29:21.9 SD: Right. Well, I'll reveal a secret here. It seems like sometimes the students think that the primary purpose is to win the game. And I usually offer some kind of interesting reward. It might be if we have a games day, then the team who wins has their lowest homework replaced by an A. So that's something that everybody, everybody is interested in. So they think that the primary objective is to get that homework grade replaced. So that's really what they're focused on. And they're gonna just try to get through each of these exercises as quickly as possible and pull their resources together, when actually my primary goal is for them to build up their speed and recall.
0:30:13.8 DN: It's nice to think about motivation in this sense too, because I do find it frustrating sometimes that our students come to us increasingly motivated by grades and less motivated by the desire to learn. It feels like that's happening anyway. And, of course, this doesn't necessarily encourage motivation to learn, but it does provide motivation that is not grade-based, necessarily.
0:30:49.3 SD: Motivation to win can also...
0:30:50.1 DN: Motivation to win.
0:30:50.8 SD: Double as motivation to learn when you don't realize you're learning. And I agree with you that sometimes it seems like their motivation is more about getting the grade that they want, which is kind of sad. And I think sometimes it's just our place to remind students to think about why it is that they're studying music. Why do you want this music degree? Do you really want to get an A, or do you actually wanna learn the material? And not to say that in a harsh way, but just to be the voice of reason, the person who reminds them that this amazing thing that we study, that we all love, music, is a wonderful and complex area. And I often make the analogy with my students between their relationship to music and, say, their relationship to maybe a significant other. When you first meet someone and fall in love, of course there's that period when you want to know everything you possibly can learn about them in a brief period of time, because you really cherish that person. And if they love music, then they really need to have an attitude of wanting to learn as much as they possibly can. They might not like everything, but just like you don't like everything about another person, don't like everything about a friend. But it's just checking their perspective, I think, is part of teaching, especially music majors.
0:32:33.9 GR: Great. I thought it might be fun, reading your games, I thought, we should share more games just with each other 'cause I think...
0:32:43.1 SD: I would love to hear some of your games.
0:32:43.1 GR: Yeah. I was thinking, too, just as as students, the younger we are, the more learning tends to have games in it. And as we go through the grades and into college, there tend to be fewer and fewer games. But, boy, the second I hear, "Let's play a game," I'm there. [chuckle] So, anyway, a game I thought would be fun to share, I do this game with a lot of my students, but especially with any time I'm teaching aural skills. And I usually teach using scale degrees, and... But you can do it with solfège just as well. And so the basic idea is if you map the numbers one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and zero onto a scale, you can get like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and then you can have nine as a high two, and you can have zero as a low seven. And of course, you could do the same thing in solfège. And so then... I love this game because it involves students' cell phones. And how many times in class do we find ourselves thinking, Oh, I wish that student weren't on their cell phone or saying, Hey, would you put away that cell phone? And how rarely do we get to say in class, All right, everyone, take out your cell phone?
0:34:06.7 SD: Oh, that's a thrill right there. That's a thrill for a student.
0:34:09.8 GR: So I ask students to take out their cell phone, and they convert their telephone number to scale degrees using this system. And then I ask for volunteers to sing their number...
0:34:27.7 SD: Oh, wow.
0:34:28.5 GR: Not on the numbers or solfège, but on a neutral syllable, la, la, la, etc. And the first person to successfully make their cell phone ring wins the round.
[laughter]
0:34:47.5 SD: Oh, that's fantastic. Oh, wow.
0:34:53.1 GR: And we practice... Before we do this, I say, now, it's very possible you're going to dial a wrong number. And if someone picks up, you're not allowed to just hang up on them. You have to say, "Oh, I'm so sorry, I misheard a number," before you hang up.
[laughter]
0:35:15.2 SD: Wow, that's fantastic. I love that game.
0:35:18.6 GR: Yeah. I have way too much fun with it.
0:35:22.1 DN: It has great potential for embarrassment.
[laughter]
0:35:23.7 SD: It does, it does. And that's the way I've memorized my credit card numbers, by converting them to scale degrees.
0:35:30.4 DN: Oh, this is how we've memorized... Greg and I have both memorized Pi this way.
[vocalization]
0:35:41.6 SD: Awesome. That's fantastic.
0:35:44.1 DN: We've got different rhythms 'cause...
0:35:45.9 GR: We do. And I actually... I wrote a fugue on Pi. Maybe I got... Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Musical nerdiness.
0:35:51.6 SD: When there's that element of humiliation, then it really heightens your hearing.
[laughter]
0:35:58.0 GR: Right? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Another version of this I like to do is... It's harder to do now because it's hard to find the yellow pages, but I'll hand out a different page, I'll cut out pages from the yellow pages, and I'll hand each student their own page from the yellow pages. And they're to pick a company listed on the yellow pages and to write a jingle with the company's phone number. And depending on the level of the class, they might also... They might set it to a rhythm and meter or they might also add harmony and accompaniment and create a... Kind of create a thing about it. And the best jingles are ones that don't say the name of the company, but that they give you some hint about what the company does. And then the students like... And I'll usually give that as a homework assignment, then the next class, students will perform their jingles for the other students, and they'll try and figure out what the company might be.
0:37:00.8 SD: How fun.
0:37:03.2 GR: Anyway. So some of my... Couple of my favorite games.
0:37:06.1 SD: That's very creative. That's very creative.
0:37:09.4 DN: I haven't really done competitive games in my classroom. I'm feeling embarrassed that I haven't. But I've done, I guess, collaborative things where we have a challenge, and I'll let people form groups and work with their group to pass the challenge, like executing a good four against three or five against four or four against five. And the... That's proved useful, especially if you have somewhat diverse groups of students go off together, because then the ones who can do it will... They'll get peer learning. But I guess that doesn't really count as a game. [chuckle] Unless you let them come back and have a competition.
0:38:11.0 SD: Well, it's a fun activity outside of lecture time or structured time. Those are always fun.
0:38:19.2 GR: Yeah. These are really great, Stefanie. Thank you so much for sharing them with us.
0:38:23.9 SD: Thank you so much for having me. It was lovely meeting you both. And I enjoyed hearing your ideas too. I'll have to put some of those to use. I enjoyed that.
0:38:32.1 GR: Yeah. I can't I can't wait to use some of these as well. And I think we... David and I, when we did our episode on Dalcroze Solfège games, we were talking how any game there... Any game is like a seed that can be developed into so many other versions of that game, depending on...
0:38:50.9 SD: Absolutely.
0:38:51.6 GR: What you're working on. I could see these being extended, say, to Roman numerals, for instance, or to various other things, so...
0:39:00.8 SD: Definitely, definitely adaptable.
0:39:03.6 GR: Yeah, yeah. Right. And a question for you. I know you mentioned in your chapter in the Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy that you tend to do a games day, like it'll just be like we used to have field day in school where we just play games outside. Is it like that kind of a feeling?
0:39:21.7 SD: Sometimes, I'll have a fundamentalympics.
[laughter]
0:39:30.4 SD: And I find that those are good for review, your test time. Also, if I'm away at a conference, it's a great lesson plan for a substitute to come in and do. But also, of course, the games are modular. So it's always good to review a previous topic each class, so by just having a quick game, that be a wonderful way to reinforce a topic that you've already covered but your students are still working on that mastery.
0:40:03.9 DN: Great. Fantastic.
0:40:04.6 GR: Yeah. Awesome. Oh, this is... Yeah, I'm just really delighted that you've shared these with us and that we'll share them with a broader audience, and, yeah, hopefully, we'll have a whole bunch of Key Word and Notation Blooper and Triad Bingo contestants out there in the world.
0:40:25.3 SD: That will be great. And I'm so glad that that you find these helpful, and I hope... Certainly hope that your listeners will too.
0:40:32.2 GR: Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Stefanie.
0:40:33.8 DN: Thanks so much.
0:40:34.6 SD: Thank you.
[music]
0:40:39.8 Speaker 4: Notes from the Staff is produced by utheory.com.
0:40:42.8 GR: UTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
0:40:47.4 S4: With video lessons, individualized practice and proficiency testing, uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world master the fundamentals of music theory, rhythm and ear training.
0:40:58.2 GR: Create your own free teacher account at utheory.com/teach.
Dr. Melissa Hoag joins us to talk about ways we can make the teaching of music fundamentals musical, fun and effective. She shares tips from her chapter in The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, and takes us through her list of six best practices for teaching music theory fundamentals.
Links * Melissa Hoag's faculty page at Oakland University * The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, ed. Leigh VanHandel: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Music-Theory-Pedagogy/VanHandel/p/book/9781032174136 * Lana Lubany "Sold" (Harmonic minor scale at beginning): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIGxMtWXjS0 * Renaissance Composer Maddalena Casulana: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maddalena_Casulana * Bruce Haynes: Performing Pitch: The History of "A": https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780810841857/A-History-of-Performing-Pitch-The-Story-of-A * uTheory: Online Music Theory and Ear Training
Show Notes 00:01:04 - Guest Introduction: Dr. Melissa Hoag, Oakland University
00:02:01 - Why is teaching music fundamentals hard?
00:03:18 - Can you talk about your own experience teaching music theory fundamentals?
00:05:14 - What topics do you include in music fundamentals?
00:06:37 - What do we get wrong about teaching fundamentals?
00:09:18 - How do you put actual music in your music fundamentals classes?
00:14:31 - Do you still have time for drill & practice if you're spending so much time with real music?
00:15:35 - Importance of letting yourself be fallible in front of students
00:17:21 - What are ways you connect fundamentals to sound?
00:18:30 - Composition exercises in fundamentals & engaging students creatively
00:23:47 - How do you approach teaching a topic that you know so well, that you can't remember what it was like to know the topic?
00:27:06 - The value of the piano keyboard in teaching & learning music fundamentals
00:30:10 - Six Best Practices for teaching music fundamentals
00:30:30 - #1: Repetition Counts
00:35:20 - #2: Consistency and Rigor Matter
00:38:20 - #3: More Assessment Opportunities are Better than Fewer
00:39:27 - #4: Prompt Feedback and Specific Grading Are Import for Learning
00:41:02 - #5: Involve Students in Finding Examples
00:43:31 - #6: Have Fun!
00:45:36 - Final thoughts? We should acknowledge that we're talking about Western, tonal music fundamentals, and that there is much more to the world, and we value that and are curious about that.
00:46:58 - Wrap-up
Transcript 0:00:21.2 David Newman: Welcome to Notes from the Staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.
0:00:34.3 Greg Ristow: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and associate professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory.
0:00:40.7 DN: Hi, I'm David Newman and I teach voice and music theory at James Madison University and write code and create content for uTheory.
0:00:48.4 GR: Welcome to our second season of Notes from the Staff, and a quick thanks to all of our listeners for your comments and episode suggestions. We love to read them, so send them our way by email at notes@utheory.com, and remember to like us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:04.3 DN: Our guest today for the first episode of our second season is Dr. Melissa Hoag who is Associate Professor and Coordinator of music theory at Oakland University. Dr. Hoag's writings have appeared in the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, Music Theory Online, Music Theory Pedagogy Online, College Music Symposium Notes and others. She is a scholar who thinks deeply both about music theory and how to teach it in relevant ways, from her 2013 article on strategies for success in the first year music theory classroom to her 2018 article on relevance and repertoire in the 18th century counterpoint classroom, to her recent chapter in the Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, which we'll be discussing today on Putting the Music in Music Fundamentals. Melissa, welcome.
0:01:53.3 Melissa Hoag: Hi, thank you so much for having me.
0:01:55.3 DN: We're so glad to have you here.
0:01:56.8 GR: Melissa, I have to say, I absolutely loved your chapter on putting the music in music fundamentals, that's in the Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy. This is a book that we're gonna be coming back to a number of times throughout the season. Its structure is just delightful, it's like a whole bunch of lesson plans or ideas from teaching from a bunch of different authors. One of the things that you said in your chapter that I think is absolutely true is that teaching music theory fundamentals is really hard. Why is it so hard?
0:02:27.3 MH: First, I completely agree with you that the Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy that Leigh VanHandel edited is just really wonderful, and I've already used a lot of the ideas from that book myself, so I'm glad that you'll be talking about it some more this season. I think teaching music Fundamentals is hard because most of us who teach this material just think of it as part of who we are as musicians, we don't remember not knowing those things in many cases, and we find it hard, I think, to take the time to recapture what it felt like not to know things like scales or key signatures, or what a tonic is, and I think that's really the hard thing, and then I think some people also maybe consider it not as interesting as teaching analysis. I think some people might feel that it's dry or just something they have to get through to get to the good stuff.
0:03:27.5 GR: And can you tell us a little bit about your own experience teaching music fundamentals you... What classes do you teach there at Oakland?
0:03:34.4 MH: So right now I teach and have taught for a long time, Music Theory 1, which does include fundamentals. We have a separate fundamentals class for students who really have absolutely no background in music, like maybe they sing well, but they don't have any background with note reading or anything, but everyone gets a very thorough introduction to fundamentals and Music Theory 1. And then of course, I teach a bunch of upper level classes and graduate classes, but the fundamentals part of Music Theory 1 goes for the first 10 weeks, so it's most of the semester and of course, before that, before I came to Oakland, I also taught fundamentals at Indiana University, Purdue University at Indianapolis, otherwise known as IUPUI.
0:04:28.2 MH: So I taught it then as well, and that was to non-majors, and so that was a different kind of approach, but I really use a lot of the same techniques for teaching college level music majors, some of whom are music minors, and teaching those non-majors, I don't see them as particularly that different in terms of trying to engage them, the level of rigor might be a bit different, I don't wanna let things go very much when I'm teaching college majors just because they're gonna have so much more theory following it, whereas a non-major taking music fundamentals, you wanna give them a broad overview and some experience, but I really adopt the same general idea as far as how to engage them in the topic.
0:05:14.8 GR: For you all, what's included within music fundamentals? What do you cover in that first, say, 10 weeks of the first semester.
0:05:21.9 MH: So for us right now, it is very western tonal-focused. That's a topic I'll talk a little bit more about later. We're in the process of trying to find ways to broaden that a little bit, or at least acknowledge that that is the focus instead of calling it music fundamentals and acting like it's all music. You know what I'm saying? So for now, because that is the focus of our major, it is a western tonal music focus in our major, we start with, of course, note reading, we do that very quickly, because most of them don't know the other clefs alto and tenor. We do do those because it's a college level fundamentals class, and then major and minor scales, and we do quickly acknowledge the different modes and stuff like that, but we don't require them to know them just because it's enough for them to know major and minor, and they'll get to the modes later on, and then we do intervals, a very basic introduction to meter, and then we do triads and seventh chords, and that's pretty much what comprises our fundamentals unit for that first year of Music Theory.
0:06:40.2 DN: What do we get wrong about teaching music theory fundamentals?
0:06:43.4 MH: Well, I think we get... I think many people can get it wrong by teaching it in a dry way, like just showing scales, just making students write scales, just drilling things, which obviously you do have to do some drill, of course, there's just no way out of it, but having students just do these really dry exercises without making them sing... I should say inviting them to sing without engaging their musicianship and even in a class of non-majors, some of those students probably took the class because they had choir in high school, or they sing in their church choir and they wanted to take this music class or they play in a community band or a rock band, and they just wanted to know more. So they've got some musicianship, most people do, and just finding ways to plug that in, and then of course, applying it to musical examples. I try to include just as much diversity of repertoire as I can, I use like band music, I just... I think the mistake really goes back to looking at it as something we just have to get through to get to the good stuff, and then not applying it to real music and not inviting students to engage their own musicianship. So that's kind of... That's kind of been my experience.
0:08:20.3 GR: That really resonates with me. My first real teaching job was at a community college on the north side of Houston, and I taught pretty much every semester a music fundamentals class, and the first time I taught it, I taught it as though I was preparing those students as quickly as possible to go into say theory one at a major conservatory and I wasn't too concerned about doing anything musical. It was like, we are going to master these music theory fundamentals. And it didn't go so well, I have to say, and that was a real learning experience for me. And gradually over the five years that I was teaching there, I introduced more and more activities of making music, of approaching music that students are actually listening to as opposed to say the things that I had studied in my own undergraduate and graduate training and... Yeah, it brings us really nicely, I think back to the subject of your article, which is putting the music in music fundamentals. So maybe you can go in that direction a bit. What are some of the ways that you do that in your own teaching?
0:09:24.7 MH: So for me, one thing I started doing a few years ago is just their first assignment on the LMS, the learning management system, for us it's Moodle. So I will put an assignment module on Moodle and ask students a series of questions, and those include things like their preferred name, 'cause sometimes the registered name is not how they prefer to be addressed, and what their pronouns are and who their studio teacher is in case I ever need to get in touch with that person about their progress, but then I also ask them their three favorite pieces they're listening to right now. And it can be any music, there's... And I say that in the question like, there's no guilty pleasure type of judgment implied here, it can be a video game music, it can be film music, it can be a pop song, it can be something you're playing in lessons or something you've studied in band, anything. And so then as soon as I have that, I slot those things into the various topics, 'cause I have playlists for all my topics on Spotify, and that way we can either start class by listening to one of their songs or one of their examples, and I'll just have them think like, well, what meter is this? Let's conduct it. Does this fall into one of the meter types we've studied?
0:10:45.5 MH: Or what kind of scale are they singing at the beginning of that example or... Just a lot of different techniques and approaches like that, and like you said, using music that the students are listening to is a really good way to engage them. And it's impossible to overstate how much they love it when you play one of their favorite songs, it just... They're so happy. Like I have the super quiet girl who is a trumpet major, and she is... Especially for a trumpet player. She is just so quiet in class, she does not ever speak unless I call on her, and if I call on her, like if I can tell it looks like she knows the answer, then her face gets red but she'll answer and she knows the answer. So anyway, I was playing her this piece that she's working on in her lessons, this trumpet piece, and she was just so happy that we were playing that piece, and I just asked a couple of basic questions like, what harmony is arpeggiated there at the beginning? Is it at triad or at seventh chord, is it major or minor? And it just took like five minutes out of class, but it really helps the students feel engaged and it helps them feel like you care about what they're interested in. And it's also a really easy way to diversify what you're teaching, because at least I cannot keep up with what the young ones are listening to.
0:12:16.6 MH: I don't really listen to that stuff. It's not that I don't appreciate it, I just can't keep up. So it helps me stay more current as well with pop music and film music and stuff like that. And then sometimes I'll just do a quick search too on Spotify, people have all kinds of playlists and they're of various quality, like if they say it's like compound triple meter, it may or may not really be. Or if they say it's a... You have to definitely vet them, but I found some really good examples. Like this Palestinian American singer, Lana Lubany, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing her name correctly, but there's this song Sold, and it has a harmonic minor scale right off the bat, and it's this really cool... It has like... She's plugged into her Middle Eastern roots, but it's a pop song and it's in English, and so it was really a beautiful example of a harmonic minor scale. And so I played that and then I had students kind of echo it after I played it a couple of times at the beginning, and then we figured out together what kind of scale it is, and then I had them notate it and sing it on solfege, which I just kind of, guess sort of fold in organically, even though it's not, I don't give them aural skills exams in fundamentals, but I still fold in solfege because I believe in solfege.
0:13:45.4 DN: For which those of us who teach aural skills are grateful for it.
[laughter]
0:13:51.1 MH: Well, yes, 'cause they are learning it also in aural skills in that class, but even when I taught it to non-majors, I still had them sing just some basic solfege because it's just so helpful. So that's just kind of an example. And then I try to also include, if I don't get these from students, I also include like... Of course, I include works by Western classical composers as well. I try to always have an example by a woman and an artist of color... Or composer, artist of color. I just try to be as broad as I possibly can within the confines of, yes, we're still talking about major and minor tonality as the focus of what we do, just having them sing as much as they can too as I already mentioned.
0:14:33.7 GR: Can I ask a devil's advocate kind of question, which is, if I do it... If I take this time to bring real music into the curriculum, will there still be enough time for them to actually do the drill and practice they need to master these topics?
0:14:47.7 MH: Oh, yeah. [chuckle] See, that's what I do. It actually doesn't take a ton of time to do the student's favorite examples, and to me, I view that as such a valuable use of time because students are applying that knowledge and they're viewing it as contextualized, which I think helps them learn it better and retain it longer because they see it as more relevant. And then of course, my students always have an assignment due the next class period, and it's not graded necessarily, they only have one graded homework per week, but they always have something due, and I call on people just... And I said, look, we're all gonna make mistakes. If you don't know the answer, it's fine, but if you don't know it because you didn't do the homework, that's different, then you should be embarrassed, but you have to try to at least make an attempt.
0:15:47.0 MH: And if you don't know it, that's fine. And I always make sure if I make an error, I own it. During the first week of class, I messed up writing the circle of fifths or something. And I said, I have a PhD in music theory, and I just messed up the circle of fifths, and none of you need to be embarrassed about any errors. I said, it's just something that is going to happen, and it's just music theory it's not... We're not learning to do open heart surgery, no one will die if we make a mistake, it is important to learn music theory, but we can all take some of that pressure of perfection off of ourselves. I don't know if it sinks in or not.
0:16:30.5 DN: I find that so valuable to lead by example and... Yes. To show my fallibility.
[laughter]
0:16:39.4 MH: For sure, of course. It's so different from at least my undergraduate experience, it's so different. I mean, everybody was afraid of my theory teacher. I loved her, but most of the students did not love her. They were terrified of her.
0:16:57.6 DN: Well, and it's incredibly daunting if you see someone who just seems to be impossibly good at something, and then how do you envision yourself being able to grow into that if you know that this is someone who didn't used to be able to do this, and they learned to do this.
0:17:15.9 MH: Exactly. So it's important to make it seem attainable, I guess.
0:17:20.4 DN: Yeah.
0:17:20.7 GR: You mentioned you have the students sing a lot on solfege, and one of the things that you talked about in your chapter in the Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, was that importance of connecting the ideas to sound can you talk about various ways that you do that? Obviously we've talked about using musical examples, they already know, so they have a good sonic image and singing as well. Are there other ways that we might do that in our teaching?
0:17:45.9 MH: For me it really... It's all about singing. I've also had students do different things with rhythms and stuff like that, even like in Aural Skills 1, when we do rhythms, just like a dry rhythm exercise. Sometimes I'll do things like if they do it well as a group, then I'll have them count off one, two, three, four, and they'll just go measure by measure, which definitely makes it more challenging. And so that's always a fun thing to do, just as far as connecting it to sound, I've had students like when we've done compositions and stuff like that, which we tend to get to a little later. Although when I taught it for non-majors, I did have them do some little composition assignments, which is an interesting thing, like just write a little jingle in major, and it doesn't have to be perfect 'cause they really know enough about chords yet to match them to the melody. But that was kind of an interesting little experiment and then just... I played some of those and had us sing some of them, and again, they kind of muddle through, some of them I've never sang.
0:18:56.0 MH: And that's okay, I'm like, "Just do your best." But like little composition assignments, if it really is just in fundamentals and especially if it's for non-majors, I think it's really fun to have them take some risks like that. In our fundamentals unit, we just don't have time to do that. 'Cause we are going to get to that by the end of the semester, they'll be writing a phrase. And then in the second semester, a period structure. And I think we're gonna have them write a little pop song verse or something like that this year, for the first time in theory 2. But if you're teaching non-majors and you have a whole semester especially, or even majors and you have a whole semester dedicated to fundamentals, I think that would be a great thing to connect it with composition. And especially if you have the keyboard skill yourself to kind of make whatever it is sound really good, [laughter] to support it. And I don't mean that in a negative way, but if you can take their idea and be like, "I see what you're going for." And give it a progression.
0:20:03.5 GR: Give it a good harmony. Give it a good... Yeah.
0:20:06.0 MH: Exactly. Then that's really fun for them. They really love that, when you can do something like that. Even with Counterpoint class, if you can play their minuet in a really convincing way, even if there's some stuff going on, it helps I think.
0:20:30.6 DN: It reminds me of a project I did with a bunch of middle school kids, where we collaboratively wrote a musical.
0:20:39.0 MH: Oh, cool.
0:20:40.6 DN: And that was obviously a totally different structure because it was a summer camp kind of deal, and we had lots and lots of time, but I got lyrical ideas from them. And then I would get melodic ideas from them, but they didn't have to know... They didn't have to be great at creating melodies because they could give me a melodic idea and I could take it and say, "Oh right, we could do this with that, that would be cool." I hadn't thought of doing that, but that's of course, brilliant that I could, in a fundamentals class, I could still use the same techniques so that they have ownership and that they see the utility of it, which is exactly what you're advocating. That's so awesome.
0:21:28.8 MH: Yeah. I think they really connect with that.
0:21:31.8 GR: And our students are, they're creative people, right? They are musicians, they're artists, or they're taking that class, even if it's a class for non-majors because they have an interest in music. And I love these ideas for engaging that creativity.
0:21:46.6 MH: Yeah. And it's also much more fun for the instructor to... You know what I mean?
0:21:52.8 GR: Yeah.
0:21:54.6 MH: Who wants to just drill scales and... You have do those things, you have to. But making it a challenge to find these creative ways of engaging them. And so Greg, what you were asking, is there time to drill those things? We always have some time at the end of the class to do that. And then like I said, I give them an assignment, and then we go over that the next time. So they do that drill somewhat out of class too. And then with the homework assignments, we have a pretty regular schedule where they're due on... We have Tuesday, Thursday, Friday for freshman theory. So they will hand in an assignment on Tuesday, and I do everything I can to get it graded and handed back by Thursday so that I can collate common errors and address things. And especially if they have a quiz on that Friday, 'cause Fridays are days when we have quizzes five times a semester, so. But that kind of keeps us on track and it... That way you grade it with a quick enough turnaround that they remember doing the assignment, hopefully, and can think back to what they might have done wrong. And that way you're using some of the time outside of class by having those little practice assignments due every class, not for a grade, just I'll call on random people.
0:23:20.7 DN: We are fans of offloading some of that drill work to software. [laughter]
0:23:26.0 MH: Yes, I know. I know you are.
[laughter]
0:23:31.0 MH: That is a wonderful thing.
0:23:32.8 DN: Which of course only works if students do it.
0:23:35.0 MH: Right, I know.
0:23:38.0 DN: Of course, nothing works if students don't engage, that's why engaging students is so important.
0:23:41.4 MH: Yes, they do have to actually do the work. Yes.
0:23:46.5 GR: One of the things you said at the start of our interview was that it's hard to teach music theory fundamentals for a lot of us because they're already so deeply ingrained that we can't remember a time when we didn't know them. As an instructor, how do you approach a topic when you're formulating how you're going to present it given that that stuff is already so deeply ingrained for you?
0:24:08.8 MH: I just try to keep in mind what things look like from their perspective, from some of their perspectives. Some of them have more experience than others, of course. Students who already play the piano have a very different perspective. But I try to imagine what it would be like if you're a voice major and you've never taken piano lessons and you don't have any of that tactile knowledge. I just try to keep that in mind instead of expecting them to immediately import that knowledge, which is impossible to do immediately. And of course, they're taking keyboard at the same time, but it's not... They're not gonna be at the same level as another student who has already had years of piano lessons, for example. So I just try to put myself in their shoes as much as I possibly can, instead of living inside my own head or teaching to the students who are gobbling it all up. And again, I try to use a lot of... That's why I use examples that students give me.
0:25:16.4 MH: And I try to also use, again, especially with voice, some vocal music like the Renaissance composer, Maddalena Casulana. Her stuff is really beautiful, and she was the first woman to call herself a composer and to publish music that we have record of. And so that's an interesting thing. And it's Renaissance choral music, so it's very triadic. So that's a good opportunity, we've analyzed two of her madrigals this semester. And so that's a good way to engage, just making sure that you have music that addresses different performing forces, of course, but especially for those singers who might feel a little bit more behind. Not all of them, but just some of them who come in without that note reading knowledge, they might be very, very good singers and they just... They don't have that knowledge yet to back it up. They've never played a triad, so it's a foreign concept to them. They don't have any kind of tactile embodiment with knowledge of that. So showing stuff like that in different performing forces for those students helps a lot. And also just having them not just arpeggiate them but sing it in groups, make them build the cord as the class, sing it as a class.
0:26:36.9 GR: Each person singing one note of the... Yeah.
0:26:41.4 MH: Yes. And we even do the thing where it's major, augmented, major, minor, diminished. And so the augmented is kind of weird, but at least it's a way to make it more applicable to everybody, 'cause I don't... I also don't teach it in a keyboard lab or anything, I'm just in a regular classroom. So if you're in a keyboard lab, that's helpful, 'cause students can at least see the geography of some of these things.
0:27:06.1 GR: Can you talk a little bit about the value of keyboard instruction a bit more in terms of learning music fundamentals?
0:27:13.5 MH: So for me, it's such a valuable aid because you can see the whole keyboard, you don't have to learn any special fingerings to make a note sound. To play a scale coherently, you do need special fingerings, but to play... It's not like guitar or a bassoon or something where you have to know the fingerings. It's just so valuable for being able to say, "Oh yes, that is a whole step. Between C and D, we skip exactly one pitch." And for that reason, it's just so valuable to have students take keyboard at the same time because it... Of course, it's an important skill because most schools have pianos and pianos are widespread, right? It's a good thing because if students have those skills, they can use that skill in their eventual professions, but it's just such an invaluable support to Music Theory learning. And our keyboard curriculum is similar to our theory curriculum, but a little bit slower because it takes time for students to gain those tactile skills, being able to just feel the geography of a triad, of a second inversion triad, and it's just hard to overstate the importance.
0:28:27.7 GR: As you say, along those lines, I think what you're getting at is something that I see all the time when I'm teaching fundamentals, which is that students naturally tend to assume that the musical staff is an accurate representation, just in terms of the vertical space between notes, of how far apart notes actually are. But because there are whole steps between some letters and half steps between others, that vertical distance on the staff doesn't always reflect the same distance, and that... You see that creep up when students are writing scales, when they're... Any topic for music fundamentals, you have to use some tool to think back to the exact distance and not just the generic distance between letters. And of course, the piano shows us all of those, plus it shows us the letter names because of the arrangement of white and black notes on it, in a way that other instruments don't. The guitar, yeah, you can see all the half steps, but you can't see where the octaves are on the guitar in the same way you can on piano.
0:29:33.3 MH: Yeah, absolutely. And being able to see the difference between B-C and F-G. Perfect example. Yeah, exactly what you're talking about that on the staff they look the same, but they're not the same because on the keyboard, you skip a note between F and G. So for that reason, it's just so important, and whenever I've talked to prospective students, "Try to get some piano lessons before you come to college, wherever you go, it can be a helpful thing."
0:30:08.8 GR: I want to come back to your article in the Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, because you listed at the end... The thrust of the article is putting the music in music fundamentals. But then at the end, you had this just delightful list of six best practices for teaching music fundamentals. I don't know if you could just talk a little bit about each of them. So the first one you listed was repetition counts.
0:30:34.1 MH: Oh yeah, I think I remember writing about that. So basically, fundamentals never leave the whole first year of theory. On every assessment, they will have to write some intervals. And they tend to get a little meaner by the end of the year, like some augmented ones in tenor clef and stuff like that. At the beginning we're a little more gentle, but there's just always fundamentals on every assessment. They don't know which ones they'll be for sure, but even after we're finished with the fundamentals unit, they will have scales, intervals, cords, meter questions like, "Here's a rhythm with no meter, provide the meter. Or re-notate this incorrectly notated rhythm to reflect the... " Those kinds of questions. That's one thing, we never stop. And we just always, on the LMS for every quiz or midterm or finals or anything, and fundamentals, that includes everything. So they know that any of those things can come back at any time and... 'Cause when I first came here, some of the upper level students were real foggy on things like intervals, and I thought, "OH, no. This can't be." So that's why ever since then they just know that it's gonna come up forever. [laughter]
0:31:56.7 GR: I love that. And I have to say that... But yes, I have also had the experience of coaching a student who is several years past their first semester of music theory, and just saying, "Hey, what key are we in?" And this look of abject terror comes across their face [laughter] and followed immediately by the same look of terror on my face for a completely different reason. But just... Yeah. I think also about... Probably many people are familiar with Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve, which is this theory, I think it goes back in the 1960s, that the moment you learn something, you have 100% chance of getting it right, and that quickly plummets with time. But each time you're asked that question again, it's a moment of learning that pops you back up to a hundred. And the curve falls at a more shallow rate with each moment of review. So I do love that idea of bringing back those fundamentals at many points throughout that first year, because you do... When you do that, significantly decrease the rate of forgetting, conversely, increase the rate of retention for those topics. That's great.
0:33:07.9 MH: Yeah. And the way I explain it to students is, "We just... We don't want you to be afraid of anything. I don't want you to end up conducting the local high school's Jazz ensemble at 7:00 AM where you have five French horns and an Oboe d'amore and three saxophones, and you have to help them with the transpositions. You know what I mean? You have to be able to deal with these things and not be intimidated because students will smell fear." And that's how I put... I just say... 'Cause we've been doing instrumental transposition this week, which they're always like, "Why? Who allowed this to happen?" There's always these reform ideas. [laughter] Anyway, I always make the joke about the local high school's 7:00 AM Jazz band with some ridiculous smattering of instruments that are all transposing at different intervals or something, but they all wanna take Jazz band, so.
0:34:10.5 GR: I've actually referred students to Bruce Haynes' book, Performing Pitch, The history of "A".
0:34:22.9 DN: Such a great book.
0:34:24.6 GR: Because inevitably, if you start talking about why we wound up with all these different transpositions, the students get super interested in it. And like, "Here, if you want 350 pages on it, go right ahead."
0:34:41.0 MH: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm always like, "Well, the saxophone was the last one, so blame [0:34:45.3] ____ at all sax." Because those are by far the worst... E-flats? Are you kidding me? Was that really necessary? Couldn't you have done something better than that?
0:34:58.4 GR: And for me, I'm just like, "But that's just a bass Clef transposition, right? It was like, I'm just...
0:35:01.9 MH: See, I don't ever think like that.
0:35:04.0 GR: Yeah. I have the old conductor clef training where it's like, I'm reading the E-flat part in treble clef, if I just imagine the base clef then it transposes itself for me.
0:35:11.8 MH: See, I'd rather just think down a major six. I'm self-punishing like that. [laughter]
0:35:19.8 GR: Yeah. So the second one on your list of best practices was consistency and rigor matter.
0:35:24.6 MH: Oh, especially like, yes. And again, this goes back to when I first came and I was so disturbed by students who were gonna be graduating and didn't have a good grasp of any of this stuff, and they knew it, and they were like... They were upset. They didn't wanna feel like that. So starting with the first year then we just were just very specific about the sharp has to be centered on the line. And I'm not a big notation stickler, but it has to be clear, it has to mean what it means. It needs to be on the correct line. And it doesn't have to be a beautiful sharp, but it needs to be like accurate. And just being very consistent, if the rhythm is supposed to be this, that it needs to be that, don't be lackadaisical with those things and really hold them to it and they will meet that.
0:36:32.0 MH: Or if your standards are way up here, students will at least approach that, but if your standards for consistency is mediocre, then they will approach that too. So if you can do that in a fun and inviting and engaging way without... You don't wanna, again, while being fallible yourself and admitting that everyone makes mistakes, but then at the same time, being consistent and holding a reasonable level of rigor for their actual eventual gaining of those skills. At least for me, at my school. [chuckle] It all varies by institution, curriculum, goals, student body and preparation and the kinds of majors, all those things.
0:37:22.3 GR: But I guess maybe a corollary of that would be that if you're not able to have a certain degree of rigor in what you're teaching, maybe teaching fewer subjects with more rigor is better than trying to cover more with less rigor.
0:37:37.4 MH: For sure. Like maybe you don't get to seventh chords. Maybe you just do triads and that's fine. Or maybe no alto and tenor clef. I mean, for a non-major fundamentals course, I would never do alto and tenor clef. I just do that because I'm teaching first year music majors. And I know that they're gonna be looking at orchestral scores and music history and stuff like that, and so they need to know those things, but... And I think it's of course good for things like sight-singing, 'cause it tends to put everybody on a level playing field to read a clef that's really not very familiar to almost anyone. But for a non-major fundamentals class, it'd be very different.
0:38:19.7 GR: Your third best practice, more assessment opportunities are better than fewer.
0:38:24.0 MH: Oh yeah, that's just so that no one assessment activity is like this behemoth, terrifying, do-or-die kind of situation. So as I mentioned, we have graded assignments every week, we have five quizzes, one of which is dropped, so they can have a bad day, or it doesn't have to be this big stressful thing. And then a mid-term and a final. We've tried to make it so they have a lot of chances and that they can improve as the semester goes on. And if something weird happens, we work with a given student, like if they've had a bad run of health or they're in crisis or something like that, of course, we work with them and try to help them find ways to make up some of that work. So we make exceptions, of course, we'll re-give quizzes again or write a new one or whatever.
0:39:29.1 GR: And I guess really related, your next best practices, the prompt grading and specific feedback are important for learning.
0:39:36.1 MH: Yeah, like I said earlier, just I try to turn things around by the next class period, just so that they have time to get the feedback before the next thing is due, or before our... If we're having a quiz that Friday, before the quiz, so that they have time to... We have supplemental instruction which is offered through our Academic Success Center and it's a couple of sessions taught by an upper level student, and it's for Theory 1 and 2. And so SI is offered on Thursday and Friday, which is perfect. So if I give the homeworks back... They hand them in Tuesday, I turn them around and get them back to the students by Thursday morning, then they can take it to SI and get help with it there, or I can address any questions in class that day, and then they're good to go for the next one that's due the following week. But if you hold on to something like that for a week, that kind of... It doesn't happen in time for them to improve, so.
0:40:43.3 GR: Right. I think for me, this is where I often turn to technology as well, because just the ease of students... Am I writing the scale correctly? I don't have to wait two days between when I turn it in and get it back to find out whether I've written that scale correctly.
0:40:56.6 MH: Absolutely, of course. And we really need to explore some of those ideas, I think that that would be a good direction for us to take.
0:41:05.0 GR: You've already talked a bit about your fifth best practice, involve students and finding examples of various techniques. Anything else to say there?
0:41:09.5 MH: Oh yeah. I mean, just that I'm always saying things like, for later in the year, I really need some musical theater examples of ascending five, six sequences, or I don't have enough compound triple minor mode pop music examples. And every now and then, even an upper level student who I haven't had since their first year, will send me an email and be like, "Hey, this video game has... Here's a YouTube video," or this one kid sent me a rap example and was like, "Before you play it in class, make sure you find a clean version." [laughter] He wanted to make sure I didn't just play it without listening more of the way into the track, 'cause I think it's fairly profane. Anyway, I definitely, especially some of them who I know are really into it, I'm like, "Please go find some of these things, or listen for them and send them to me," and it just kinda helps them stay... Keep their theory brain on when they're not in theory.
0:42:23.5 DN: I've been doing the same thing in oral skills with... And we've listened to Childish Gambino twice this semester. We're doing metric modulation, and one of his songs does metric modulation.
0:42:35.7 MH: Oh cool.
0:42:37.3 DN: It's great. And just used the Marvel Studios theme song too this week.
0:42:45.2 MH: See? And that's what I rely on students for because my knowledge of film music is not good. I mean I know a few things, but I'm not like they are, and certainly not video game music, other than the Super Mario Brothers from my childhood, which is surprisingly still relevant, I found.
[laughter]
0:43:04.1 GR: It's amazing.
0:43:05.3 MH: It's wonderful.
0:43:06.5 GR: That's my favorite [0:43:07.6] ____ is the opening of... [chuckle]
0:43:11.2 MH: Or of mode mixture when he dies.
[vocalization]
0:43:15.7 MH: Oh yeah, totally.
0:43:16.4 GR: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. [laughter]
0:43:17.6 MH: It's so great. It's the best example of mode mixture ever.
0:43:21.0 GR: Yes.
0:43:23.5 MH: Yeah.
0:43:23.6 GR: The Water World, The Planning, oh god, don't get me started. [laughter] Well, I guess related to our lecture, your last best practice is have fun, and I think you've given us some ideas of how you create that fun environment in your classes. Anything else to say along those lines?
0:43:41.9 MH: Use puns. [laughter] No, I mean I'm kind of joking, but I just find that it depends on how you are in the classroom. Everybody is different. But for me, I tend to be fairly silly. I mainly... I feel like I just want them to see me as approachable. And I think they do, and I want them to see Music Theory as something that is pleasant and interesting and fun. And so especially with the first year students, I tend to be rather silly. Like today, we were talking about, as I said, instrumental transposition, and a couple of the instruments had to be transposed to C to sound in B-flat and I said, "Do you see what I mean? No pun intended." And it's like the stupidest joke ever, but they all laughed even though it's like... I mean talk about a dumb, worst, stupid pun ever, but...
0:44:44.1 DN: They don't need to be good to be fun.
0:44:45.5 MH: No, they're better if they're bad. [laughter] It's even stupider. But I mean just having fun and adopting a sense of joy and, I don't know, like a sense of wonder or like, "Isn't a half diminished seventh chord the most amazing thing ever?" and then play in a couple of quick examples just on the keyboard, like "Listen to that. Nothing else sounds like that." And just trying to kind of infect them with some of that sense of wonder. And the success varies. Some students are maybe not ever gonna feel like that about Music Theory, but I hope some of them do. [laughter]
0:45:35.9 GR: Gosh, well, this has been just a delight. Any last words of advice or wisdom for our listeners?
0:45:42.1 MH: I mean, I think I mentioned at the beginning, I think the next hurdle, at least for me, is trying to just find a way to acknowledge that this is like, we're talking about total Western tonal music fundamentals and maybe building in even some like, just little writing assignments here and there. And especially if I were teaching non-majors, I would do it a lot more, I think, if I weren't building toward this later curriculum of comparing and contrasting something like Ragas and minor modes, and a way of acknowledging that there's this whole other part of the world and that we value that and we are curious about it regardless of what our focus happens to be here. So I think finding a way to do that in a way that's meaningful and respectful and fosters a sense of curiosity. I think that's kind of like the next, for me, the next hurdle for me and my curriculum and my students at my school. So that's the next challenge.
0:47:00.4 DN: Well, we're so grateful to have you spend this time with us.
0:47:02.9 MH: Yeah, it's wonderful to talk to both of you, and I'm definitely going to look up that Bruce Haynes, The History of "A".
0:47:09.7 GR: Yeah, it's really fun. The funny thing, of course, is if you type the History of A into Google, you get totally unhelpful results. [laughter] So, I think it's either performance pitch or performing pitch, the story of A. So yeah.
0:47:25.6 MH: Okay. I will definitely have to look that up because, I mean I know some things about the history of instruments and stuff like that, but...
0:47:35.0 GR: Yeah. And he goes really down into the weeds, so like...
0:47:37.8 DN: Yes. The details of why a clarinet is...
0:47:40.1 GR: "We measured the C pipe of this organ in this city built in this year, et cetera."
0:47:40.2 MH: Very fascinating. And it would be great to have something like that to point students toward so they can just nerd out on their own time.
0:47:53.6 GR: Totally.
0:47:54.9 DN: That's why we have Bach Magnificat in D, which is later the Bach Magnificat in E. 'Cause it was easier to transpose some of the parts to match...
0:48:07.3 MH: Oh.
0:48:08.2 GR: To match the local pitch.
0:48:09.4 DN: Yeah.
0:48:09.9 MH: Huh. I did not know that. Very fascinating.
0:48:13.7 GR: We are definitely approaching our time in here, so yeah, Melissa, thank you again so much.
0:48:20.3 MH: Yeah, it's wonderful to meet you and to talk to you both.
0:48:23.5 GR: Excellent. Thank you again.
0:48:24.8 MH: Yes thank you.
[music]
0:48:30.1 Leah Sheldon: Notes From the Staff is produced by utheory.com.
0:48:32.8 GR: UTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
0:48:36.7 LS: With video lessons, individualized practice and proficiency testing, uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world master the fundamentals of music theory, rhythm and ear training.
0:48:47.6 GR: Create your own free teacher account at utheory.com/teach.
Leah, David and Greg reflect back on favorite moments of first season of Notes from the Staff, and chat about coming features for uTheory.
Links: Solfege Sally
uTheory.com
Show notes: 0:00:00 Theme Song
0:00:20 Introductions
0:01:00 How David jumped in and sang a Mozart Requiem with Greg on 5 minutes notice
0:03:45 Reflecting on the 2022 Pedagogy in Practice conference
0:05:30 Favorite moments from season one of Notes from the Staff
0:06:14 Theme 1: Using multiple systems to reach learners in multiple ways
0:08:15 Theme 2: Making learning engaging
0:10:30 Theme 3: Trends in Music Theory Pedagogy today
0:14:10 Solfege Sally -- our silly Simon-like solfege game.
0:17:35 What we've accomplished with uTheory this year: a complete backend and frontend rewrite into modern frameworks, over 120,000 lines of code written (or rewritten)
0:18:20 New features coming to uTheory
0:19:00 The ability to create practice assignments
0:20:15 Consolidating all assignment types into a Learn tab, and allowing assigning of content to entire classes, groups of students or individual students within a class.
0:21:10 Rolling out the new uTheory extended curriculum: a curriculum designed to be used over a two-three year period, especially in a high school or middle school context, to allow a carefully paced introduction with ample time for building fluency.
0:22:05 The lessons and exercises will be customized for the student's primary clef, whether its treble, bass, alto or (for pianists) grand staff.
0:22:48 The curriculum will interweave written music theory, rhythm, ear training and improvisation together.
0:23:20 The curriculum will be a spiral curriculum, so that concepts are introduced at a basic level, and returned to with review and more advanced work frequently throughout the curriculum.
0:23:50 And the curriculum will be much more gamified -- with little touches like confetti, badges, and games like Solfege Sally.
0:24:30 With these changes, configuring lesson and assignment order will become as easy as dragging and dropping -- one of the most frequent feature requests we hear from teachers who are using uTheory.
0:25:40 Practice vs Mastery Assignments
0:30:00 The new curriculum should make it even easier for teachers to use uTheory with their classes and students, because it will do even more of the work of customizing the learning for individual students.
0:31:00 Previewing a new game, "Pitchy Fish" to help teach pitch matching and vocal control.
0:35:30 Previewing some of David's new music theory songs which will make appearances in the new curriculum: Where the Half Steps Live, and Black Notes on Pianos
0:38:50 Chit-chatting and signing off for the summer!
Transcript: 0:00:00.0 [Theme Song]
0:00:21.2 Leah Sheldon: Welcome to Notes from the Staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.
0:00:34.6 Greg Ristow: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and Associate Professor of Conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory.
0:00:40.8 LS: I'm Leah Sheldon, head of teacher engagement for uTheory.
0:00:44.6 David Newman: I'm David Newman, and I teach voice and music theory at James Madison University, and I write code and create content for uTheory. A quick thanks to listeners for all your comments and episode suggestions. We love to read them. Send them our way by email at notes@utheory.com. And remember to like us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:06.3 GR: So it's episode 11, and it's our last episode of the first season. Today, we're gonna look back at some of the highlights from our first ten episodes. We're gonna chit-chat a bit, and we'll share a preview of some of the things that we're working on for uTheory. David, Leah, how are you guys doing?
0:01:24.3 DN: Good.
0:01:27.4 LS: Great.
0:01:27.5 GR: Leah, I think you know this, 'cause you saw it on Facebook, but David and I had this delightful experience this weekend, where I was conducting a concert at Oberlin and a big alumni and community performance of the Mozart Requiem. And about five minutes before the show started, I walked out into the lobby, and who do I see but David Newman there.
[laughter]
0:01:50.7 LS: Did you know he was coming?
0:01:53.2 GR: No, I... I knew he was driving through, 'cause David, you were at a conference, right?
0:01:57.7 DN: Right.
0:01:58.6 GR: So, he was driving through from Virginia to Ann Arbor, Michigan. And I... We'd seen each other when David was on the way there, 'cause he has to drive right by Oberlin, but I didn't know David was gonna stop in on the way back, and... Anyway, so I was like, "Hey, wanna jump in and sing?"
0:02:15.1 DN: And... And I did. I didn't... I didn't know you were gonna have a concert on the way back, and when I saw that I was gonna arrive near Oberlin around 1:30, I thought either it would be shameful for me not to go and sit down and take a break from driving to attend [laughter] a performance of the Mozart Requiem, but instead, I got to sing it, which was great fun. So.
0:02:39.1 GR: And I don't know if you know, but you were actually standing basically right behind my dad, who said he was just delighted to have your voice behind him.
0:02:44.4 DN: [laughter] Ah, I did not make the connection.
0:02:49.2 LS: And for our listeners who don't realize, it's not very often that the three or even two of us are together in person, frequently.
[chuckle]
0:02:58.1 GR: That's right, yeah, we're in three different states.
0:03:01.1 LS: So this is very exciting. [chuckle]
0:03:03.3 GR: Yes. [chuckle] Anyway, David, thanks for jumping in. That was... That was... That was...
0:03:08.3 DN: Well, it was my pleasure, and... And... Yeah, it really was a joy, and what a great thing to be a part of. And... Yes, as anyone who saw my Facebook post knows that... I also think it's cool, because my great-great-grandfather was the pastor of the other congregational church in... In town, where the Oberlin Conservatory now stands.
0:03:34.4 GR: So that was second, yeah. For anyone who knows Oberlin... Oberlin history, that was second church, yeah, and that's... My office is right on top of where the sanctuary was. That's very cool.
0:03:45.1 DN: Anyway, it was a cool family connection thing for me.
0:03:51.5 GR: So, David, you're just... You're just back from a cool conference. You wanna talk about that a bit?
0:03:56.3 DN: Yeah, I... This was the 2022 Pedagogy into Practice conference. I think we were supposed to do it in 20... The last one was in 2019, and then the... It had been cancelled due to COVID, or altered due to COVID, so this was our first time back together. And it's a great organization and a great conference, at which we are really looking at how to be better theory teachers. And... There are so many presentations, and it's such an incredibly supportive community as well, so I really love that. It doesn't feel like many other academic conferences. It feels like everyone is there to support each other in being better teachers. And all of the talks tend to be on just things that we can do in the classroom to be better teachers, so I'm actually hoping that we can get some of those people on our podcast and let them share their talks more widely with our audience.
0:05:09.3 GR: Yeah, and some of them we've already had on our podcast. You mentioned that you saw Betsy Marvin there?
0:05:14.1 DN: I did; I got to have lunch with Betsy twice. [laughter]
0:05:17.3 GR: Excellent.
0:05:20.4 DN: And Peter Schubert, and Steve Laitz, and Jenny Snodgrass. I hope we can get any or all of them on. [laughter]
0:05:33.3 GR: Awesome. So yeah, you know, I was... As I was getting ready for this episode, I was going back and listening to our previous episodes of the season. We... It's... We've only been doing this, what, since January? And wow, we've talked to some really, really cool people. Leah, David, what are some of your favorite moments?
0:05:58.3 LS: Well, I think that I did the same as Greg; I listened back. I've listened all season long, and several times on some of the episodes, and I've got two major themes that kind of stuck out to me, if I could kinda go in that direction.
0:06:12.5 GR: Yeah.
0:06:14.5 LS: And the first being... Since we just mentioned Betsy Marvin, I'll talk about the importance of using systems, whether it's a solfege system or a rhythm system, and not just from her episode, but from multiple episodes. I guess I just... What stuck out to me was that students learn in so many different ways, and we know that, but hearing it back really makes you think about it, and... Have different learning experiences early on that influence the type of learner that they become later. So, having not just one system, like a rhythm system or a solfege system, but having two systems is so beneficial. This helps for sight-singing. So, when we talked about choral sight-singing with Denise Eaton. And sight-reading; we talked about contest sight-reading with Dr. Andrew Machamer. And then for students who learn with perfect pitch, how sometimes, one system can be confusing; you know, fixed... Or movable do might be confusing versus fixed do, and switching to numbers instead. So, as a teacher, having a system for teaching your students, but then having two systems to get at all the different learners that are in front of you.
0:07:28.6 GR: Yeah. Totally, right? And of course, with pitch solfege, then we're typically talking about the system that names the notes, whether that's letters or fixed do, and we're talking about a system that names function, where something is in the scale, and that's typically our scale degrees in movable do. And then yeah, I hadn't thought about it, but yes, totally, that's a great connection to when we were talking about rhythm systems. And we were talking about systems that are kind of analytical, that label the various subdivisions of the beat, or possibly the... Where the beats are in the measure. And mnemonic system systems, where we give kinda fun names to... To rhythms, whether that's lemon yellow, or watermelon, or you know, whatever kinds of things. Yeah. Nice. That's a great theme.
0:08:16.3 DN: Yeah, and there was a... I don't know if I'm jumping in on you, but one of the other big themes was how to make... How to be... How we can make all of these lessons engaging with the students, and Jed Dearybury talking about the value of play, and... This was... There was a... There was a presentation at the conference I was just at about gamifying the aural skills classroom. Or maybe it was music theory; I'm not sure whether it was specific to aural skills, but... And of course, all the Dalcroze games that we played together, Greg. You know, I love them, and I just... I want to use them as much as I can. I want that kind of spirit in my classroom, so I hope that... I hope we were able to share that with other people in a way that they also felt like they wanted to incorporate that spirit.
0:09:18.6 GR: That was such a fun episode for me to record with you, David, the Dalcroze games episode. And, you know, I think also related to that, our episode on your music theory and ear training songs, right? Like, talk about playful spirit and bringing that kind of joy into the classroom. Those are just so wonderful.
0:09:38.7 DN: Well, I'm working on more, so there we go. [chuckle]
0:09:41.3 GR: Excellent. [chuckle]
0:09:43.9 LS: Funny enough, that was my other theme from the season, was the importance of play in teaching, and specifically, those three episodes stood out to me.
0:09:53.2 DN: And I think especially in the wake of COVID too, we're really living through some collective trauma, and I think we need to have reasons for students to be engaged with us, so that they have a sense of... That learning doesn't... Isn't some tedious thing that they have to buckle down and apply to, but that they can... I think if we make it enjoyable, then they will come more joyously and maybe more fully.
0:10:28.4 GR: Totally, yeah.
0:10:30.7 LS: And I would maybe add one more into that; the part of the episode with Megan Long, where we talked about trends in theory pedagogy. And as someone who's not in that world all the time, or at least as much as Greg and David are, it was really interesting to hear from Megan talk about how she's adapting teaching to... So for example, she talked about analyzing music and broadening the tools that we would need to analyze music beyond just harmonic analysis. That was really interesting to me.
0:11:09.5 GR: Yeah. David, were those themes echoed at the Pedagogy and Practice conference? In terms of broadening approaches to analysis of music beyond just, say, Roman numeral, Schenkerian-style analysis?
0:11:23.5 DN: Were they included? [laughter] Well, Philip Ewell gave the keynote address at the end of the conference, so yes. And yes, you saw that throughout the... There was a lot of presentations about sort of decolonizing or recentering various pedagogies. There's a grad student I'd love to bring on here who talked about using rap to teach rhythm. And that was a really... That was a thought echoed through several different presentations, and one of the things that was a common thread through them was putting up words, so that even students who didn't know notation could align things with where certain words were happening, and talk about what was happening in the music at those words. And there was a lot of talk about ways to talk about musical things without having to use notation, or at least using some kinds of protonotation, which is another theme that we've at least been wanting to talk about.
0:12:40.2 GR: Yeah, I think those had, really, a lot of my... My favorites, I... You know, listening back, there were things I was just... That I came away with as sort of gems of knowledge. I think about, like, Denise Eaton's advice that when you're learning to teach solfege or ear training, find a mentor who's good at it and ask them how they do it. And, you know, this coming from someone who has written a bunch of books on teaching it, that she's right; so much of that is about seeing someone else do it live, and trying out what they do with your own students, and seeing how it goes. I was thinking about our chat with Betsy Marvin. And, you know, I thought I knew so much about what we know about perfect pitch, but it turns out there's a ton I didn't know, and there's so much that we... That I thought we knew, that in fact, we don't know, right? I mean, it was sort of the gospel for about a decade that you couldn't acquire perfect pitch after about age 6, and Betsy really blew my mind when she said, "Well, actually, there may be some research, or there's some research recently that suggests that, in fact, maybe it is possible to acquire perfect pitch later." Yeah, really just fascinating stuff, so I feel really lucky that we get the chance to ask these brilliant people questions and hear what they have to say.
0:14:09.7 DN: Yeah.
0:14:11.7 GR: Great, so shall we... Shall we change gears and maybe talk a little bit about what we have planned for uTheory coming up?
0:14:18.0 LS: Definitely.
0:14:18.9 DN: Sure. I was excited today when... When... To open up my computer and see that Solfege Sally is now available on uTheory. [chuckle]
0:14:31.2 GR: Yeah, yeah, in our experiment section, yeah. David, you wanna tell us something about Solfege Sally?
0:14:37.7 DN: Yeah. I mean, it's something that... Well... That I had been thinking about for years, of wanting to create a game like Simon, except with all of the diatonic solfege notes, and then just be able to practice working memory and identification of those diatonic notes in the scale. And then, when we first talked, it turned out you had been thinking about the same thing, so that was exciting, and I was just glad to see it finally come to fruition, and I think it's kind of fun.
0:15:15.1 LS: It's fun.
0:15:15.8 GR: It's totally fun, yeah. [laughter] Absolutely. [laughter] And a friend of mine... A friend of mine posted on Facebook, "I got 305. What's your top score?" Yeah, I know, I have not gotten to 305. I'm like, "Go, Mattie."
0:15:32.4 DN: Well... Of course, the score is... You know, it adds up... As far as you got every time you hit a correct button, so it's not that the melody was 305 notes long, but... But still, that's impressive.
0:15:48.8 GR: Yeah, yeah, I can't quite do the math backwards to figure out how long that melody would have been, but it'd be long.
0:15:54.7 DN: It involves factorials and... [chuckle]
0:15:57.5 GR: Yeah, yeah, it's a little more complex than factorials, because there's the addition of one on each... Oh, I guess it is just factorials, you're right, yeah, yeah.
0:16:04.4 DN: Yeah. Anyway, it doesn't... It... It... And what I forgot was that you can choose your level that you start at in the... If you click the settings button.
0:16:17.7 GR: Oh.
0:16:18.5 DN: But it's not clearly a settings button, but it definitely... If you go on Jedi Master or whatever is the... The highest level, then you can get some big leaps. [laughter]
0:16:31.6 GR: Yeah. I'll have to try that version of it. Yeah, we'll... We should make that more clearly a button before we graduate it out of the experiments section.
0:16:42.3 DN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a... There's a few... The layout of that is... Is in need of some repair as well, but... Oh well.
0:16:49.0 GR: Yeah. Yeah, and you know, I think... It's fun, though, to... To share, a little bit, some of the things that we're working on in an incomplete format, just so that... Just so that, you know, people can see it.
0:17:00.8 DN: And to get feedback.
0:17:02.3 GR: Yeah.
0:17:03.0 DN: So I had someone, for example, ask, "Hey, could you... Could you do major and minor pentatonic scales?" And I thought, "Yeah, probably with a few lines of code."
0:17:13.1 GR: Mm-hmm, yeah. And... [chuckle] And I had a friend text me, "Is uTheory perpetuating the terrible lie that the fifth degree of the scale is called so and not sol?"
0:17:25.6 DN: Oh. Oh dear.
0:17:26.9 GR: In a very joking way. [laughter] We can probably change that one too with one letter of code. [chuckle]
0:17:35.2 DN: One letter of code. [chuckle]
0:17:38.3 GR: So, you know, it... It's probably not obvious to most users of uTheory, but we have shipped over 120,000 lines of new code this year; a complete backend and frontend rewrite. And, you know, at this point, you can't see that much of anything has changed, because... Because, really, almost none of the functionality has changed. But what we've done is we have gotten the backend framework in a place to where it has become much easier for us to now create new... New ways of structuring and storing data, and the frontend to a framework that makes it much easier to interact with that data. And those are two kind of key... Key building blocks for allowing us to build bigger features. And so now, as we come into summer, we're... We're turning our attention to some... Frankly, some big changes in uTheory. We're internally calling it uTheory 2.0, although we wanna be clear that your existing classes and settings, all those are going to migrate just fine, and if you like uTheory as it is, fear not, you don't have to change. But... Yeah, but some of the things that are coming are things we've been... that teachers in particular have been asking us for for a long time. So, to start with, we're adding the ability for teachers to create practice assignments and to create mastery assignments. Leah, you wanna talk about that a little bit?
0:19:16.0 LS: Sure. So, on the... I think the biggest change here is that teachers have a greater customization. So, for example, if you wanna create a practice assignment that has a set number of questions, or even a set amount of time, a minimum amount of time for students to practice, you can configure that when you create the assignment. You'll also be able to customize the topics a little bit further; in terms of, for example, say, an exercise in key signatures, being able to specify which key signatures are included. You'll continue to be able to set due dates, and you'll also be able to set an available date, so you can create the assignments in advance, and they'll become available to the students on the date that you choose. And you can assign practice or mastery assignments to just specific groups of students versus just an entire class.
0:20:16.3 DN: Or even individual students, if you want, within a class.
0:20:17.7 LS: Yes.
0:20:18.4 GR: Yeah. And along the lines of that, as we add these new kinds of assignments, in addition to the existing lesson and checkpoint assignments and skill mastery assignments, we're gonna be consolidating content into a Learn tab. The Learn tab's gonna become the central location for students to find what they should be working on, and that'll include lessons, checkpoints, custom tests, practice and mastery assignments... And... So that you as a teacher can arrange that sequentially, so students don't have to go "Okay, wait, now it's time to take a test. Oh, where is that? Oh, that's on the Test tab," versus "Oh wait, where am I supposed to go for this skill practice?" So yeah, so we're bringing that all together into one place to make it easy to find and easy to sequence.
0:21:10.0 GR: And then, related to that, we're going to roll out a new curriculum. I've started calling this the uTheory extended curriculum, and thinking of the one that exists presently as the uTheory accelerated curriculum. So, you know, when we started building uTheory, the idea was, how can we quickly get students who are thinking about doing a music degree ready for college level music theory and ear training? And so, the curriculum as it exists right now is designed to be done in a pretty intense semester of work. But that doesn't fit the needs of a lot of our users, especially at the high school and middle school levels, where... You know, where teachers work with students for multiple years, and similarly in private lesson studios. And their goal is not to cram all this knowledge in, but they'd like to be able to pace it out and build fluency on that.
0:22:05.9 GR: So, the curriculum that we're building is designed exactly for that. And from the beginning, it'll start with the option to configure the clef that a student... Or clefs that a student is learning in. So, whether their primary clef is treble clef, or bass clef, or viola clef, alto clef, or grand staff, for a pianist. And the lessons and skills practice and mastery assignments and checkpoints will all... And videos will all adjust to that, so that the student's work early on is exclusively in that clef, until eventually, we start introducing other clefs as well. The new curriculum is going to be one that integrates rhythm, ear training, and written music theory concepts all together into one single learning sequence, so that the things that you're learning in... As you're learning, for instance, to write intervals, you're also learning to hear intervals. As you're learning to write scales, you're learning to hear your way around scales in stepwise ways. As you're learning to write chords, you're learning to hear different qualities of chords.
0:23:20.5 GR: And it'll be what we call a spiral curriculum, so, that is to say that, you know, when you learn, you learn the basics of a concept early on, but we're gonna keep coming back to it. We're gonna keep reviewing that concept in later assignments, and gradually increasing the level of difficulty with it. As David sort of previewed with Solfege Sally, it's gonna be a gamified curriculum. It's gonna feel a lot more like... Like Duolingo, right? Complete with badges, and confetti, and literal games, and all of that, so. And I think finally, the big thing about it is it's gonna be much more configurable; that as a teacher... Teachers will be able to create their own lessons, assignments, tests, or to edit the existing ones, to rearrange them. We recognize that teachers know better than a computer ever can what their students do and don't know, so, we want to give 'em all the tools that you need to give your students what they need. So... Yeah, that was a lot of talking. Did I miss anything?
0:24:34.1 LS: I don't think so. I just wanna highlight again the importance of two things that Greg said based on the requests that we've gotten from teachers, so he mentioned arranging in sequential order, so, this means that you can change the order of the lessons. Teachers have asked, you know, "Is it possible to make this lesson appear before this one?" and now it is; just with a simple click and drag, you'll be able to reorder the lessons. And also, the existing uTheory is not going away or going anywhere for the teachers who are using uTheory as is and love it, and we know that there are a lot of you. This does not mean that you have to change what you're doing. You'll still be able to continue to teach as you have.
0:25:19.3 GR: And effectively for... You know, what will happen is, for existing classes, the Lessons tab will turn into the Learn tab, and will look very much like the Lessons tab looks for your current classes. But you'll have the option then, at that point, if you want, to also add additional assignments, mastery or practice assignments, and tests to that as well.
0:25:43.8 LS: Could we maybe talk just a little bit about the difference between practice and mastery assignments?
0:25:48.7 GR: Yes, absolutely, created, yeah. So, effectively, practice assignments... The... Obviously, a practice assignment... A goal of a practice assignment is to increase the student's mastery of skills. But we're distinguishing between practice and mastery assignments, in that a practice assignment will be an assignment that has a specific number of questions and kinds of questions on it, or a specific time limit for those kinds of questions, whereas a mastery assignment is an assignment where uTheory will generate questions based on a set of skills that you select for that mastery assignment. So for instance, you might create a mastery assignment for the skills of... Intervals between notes with no accidentals on them, white note intervals. Right, and then, that would... That would provide questions and train students until they reach a certain level of mastery on all of the possible questions from that area. And so, as we're doing this, one of the things that's going to change from the teacher perspective is, currently, under Classes and Choose Skills, you have a bunch of checkboxes for sort of the subskills. And what will happen for each of those skills is instead, you're gonna get a more robust configuration panel, so that let's say we're talking about the skill of triads in pitch and harmony. So that's writing triads, identifying triads, etcetera.
0:27:28.1 GR: That skills panel is now going to give you options for things like whether you want to allow triads in various inversions, what qualities of triads you want to allow, how many accidentals and what kinds of accidentals you want to allow within those triads, or if you wanna filter and say "I only want to allow triads within keys, say, up to two flats or two sharps," you'll be able to do things like that. So we're gonna be writing lots of ways to configure the kind of practice that students get when you configure either practice assignments or mastery assignments. Similarly, the ability to configure what clefs are included. And, you know, you'll have the option of choosing a student's primary clefs, secondary clef or both of those and also, you know, any of the... The seven clefs: Treble clef, bass clef, alto clef, tenor clef, soprano clef, mezzo-soprano clef, baritone clef... Did I miss one? I must have. No, I think that's all. Anyway, there's that, right? So, yeah. If you want... If you want your poor students to have to drill on mezzo-soprano clef, you can absolutely give them second line C-clef and make them do everything in second line C-clef.
0:28:52.8 DN: But I love C-clefs. They tell you exactly where C is. It's so useful.
0:28:57.8 GR: Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. You know, and... Although we don't usually have to read mezzo-soprano clef unless you're a conductor, in which case, if you put it over in a transposing instrument, like, say, in the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, it comes out in concert pitch. And similarly, we don't usually have to read baritone clef, you know, again, unless you're a conductor and you put it over a G-transposing instrument, like alto clef in Holst's The Planets, and out it comes in concert pitch. So, even in any case, practice versus mastery assignments. A mastery assignment is one that the student just continues working on until they reach a certain level of mastery, whereas a practice assignment is one that has a specified time or a number of questions cutoff to it. So it's a lot more like a traditional homework assignment. So, yeah.
0:29:48.6 LS: And even with all of these new configurations and types of assignments, uTheory will still do the question generation for you and will still do all of the grading, so we're not adding any work to the teachers' plates. [chuckle]
0:30:00.3 GR: That's right, that's right, yeah. And we think also that this... This new curriculum is going to take a lot of work off of teachers' plates. Some of the... Some of the... Or the power users of uTheory have kind of created their own curricula that bounce around to the different parts of uTheory to make it work, and have then... You know, either in their learning management system, or even in Google Sheets for individual students, have then listed out all of those things to help students find where to go. We really think this is just gonna make it a lot easier for a student logging into uTheory to go "Okay, here I am, and oh look, there's the very next thing I need to do," 'cause it'll basically appear as one long kind of list. So, with that, we have some... So we're hoping to get the... What we're thinking of as the first, roughly, year or 12-ish units of the extended curriculum out around August 1st. And we have some stretch goals with that, including rolling out sight-singing elements in ear training, which is really exciting. We've been working for a long time on algorithms to do pitch detection in a way that works for singing, which has more vibrato, which has changing vowels, which has consonants, and I think we're pretty close on that. David's got a great game that he's been working on called Pitchy Fish, where you... Tell us about Pitchy Fish, David.
0:31:38.3 DN: It's a little bit like Flappy Bird, except that instead of hitting a button, you control the height of the fish in the water with your voice, so you sing a higher pitch and the fish goes up, and then you sing a lower pitch and the fish goes down. And this idiom, I think, will, A, make it fun, but, B, just give so much feedback to students, especially ones that may have more trouble than others matching pitch, or getting the pitch in their head to be the pitch that's coming out of their mouth, and to know whether they're on target or not. And we can extend it to actual sight-reading exercises easily, but... But this is a great sort of training ground that I think, like most good games, feels fun as you're learning to do it.
0:32:38.6 GR: Yeah, and I think... You know, any of us who've tried to help shy singers gain confidence with their voice know that finding ways to do that that are fun... It's critical. It's... You know. People are understandably very self-conscious. You know, as a singer... We've always remained a bit self-conscious about our voice; it is an instrument that is literally connected to us. Yeah, so, you know, whether you're working with student singers or student instrumentalists, helping them to find their voice is huge and raises so much awareness of pitch and intonation and all of those wonderful things. Yeah. Pitchy Fish; of course, we can extend it to... You know, to sight-singing particular things. Also to exercises of intonation, of really fine-tuning with things, so yeah.
0:33:42.1 DN: All of which depends on a good pitch detection algorithm, and boy, you can see how hard that is by how not good so many of the products out there are. [laughter]
0:33:53.0 GR: It's true, it's true.
0:33:54.2 DN: But we've been working hard, and I say we, and mostly you, have been working really hard on this problem and coming up with great solutions, but we've tried so many things to get the computer to accurately recognize what someone's actually doing.
0:34:09.8 GR: Yeah, and I don't wanna give away too much of what we're doing, but... Only to say that we are using a combination of traditional algorithmic methods for detecting pitch. Also machine learning. I'm pretty happy with where that's headed. Cool. I don't know, what else should we say?
0:34:33.1 LS: I don't know. Can we give another call for feedback?
0:34:38.7 DN: You know, yeah. And I recently had... Speaking of comments and suggestions, I got a comment and suggestion from my in-house critic, my wife, who said... [laughter] Not as a criticism, who said, "You know, you should do an episode where you answer questions from your listeners," and I thought, "Well, that's a little bit what we already do, but we don't." We don't say, "So and so said "I have this question," and I answered it." We could... We could... If... You know, if people send us enough questions, we can do a Q&A. Ask Me Anything. Of course, Ask Me Anything can spiral away from music theory very easily, but...
0:35:23.8 LS: Yeah.
0:35:25.3 GR: Yeah. [chuckle]
0:35:27.0 DN: Ask me anything about music theory.
[chuckle]
0:35:30.4 LS: You're gonna get song requests.
0:35:31.9 DN: [laughter] I am down for song requests.
0:35:36.8 GR: So, one of the things that I'm super excited about, as we're talking about gamifying the curriculum, is that, you know, we're working to include, as we mentioned, literally these games, but also, to start including some fun music theory and ear training learning songs. David, do you wanna preview that a little bit for us?
0:35:54.7 DN: Well, I did write... I mean, I wrote a couple songs on the way up to the theory conference. And I need to get them recorded, but one of them, I'm... I just almost want to write out just the melody in Notation so that people can play it for themselves, because it's just about how to find C on the piano. And... I mean, maybe if you can't find C on the piano, then this is gonna be problematic to play, but it's "Black notes... " Or I should start on the right key. "Black notes on pianos come in twos and threes. Check out these ebonies. To the left of every pair, you'll find the Cs. That'll get you tickling the ivories."
0:36:44.3 GR: [laughter] Nice. For those of us who have a low F-sharp, yeah.
[laughter]
0:36:49.3 DN: But "Black notes on pianos" (sung an octave higher), we can do it up here.
[laughter]
0:36:52.7 GR: Right?
0:36:54.8 DN: But, you know, if you... If someone decides that they wanna sit down and play it on the piano, then...
[music]
0:37:04.1 DN: Then they're gonna be doing exactly what they... What those words say, and they'll go "Oh wow, I wanna find the Cs. Oh, look at that, that's a C. How useful." [laughter]
0:37:20.2 GR: Nice.
0:37:22.7 DN: I don't know. I was pleased with that, and I've... I've envisaged a nice ragtime accompaniment for it, but I haven't actually written it out yet.
[chuckle]
0:37:34.3 GR: Great. And "Where the... " "Where the half steps are", is that...
0:37:40.6 DN: Do you want a preview?
0:37:42.4 GR: Sure.
0:37:44.3 DN: How does it... "From... From sev to one and back again, this is where a half-step lives. And from three to four and back again, this is where a half-step lives. In a major scale, the other steps are whole steps. So let's celebrate where the half-steps live. Where the half-steps live. And let them bring us home."
0:38:34.6 LS: Yes.
[applause]
0:38:37.0 GR: Oh, I love it. Yeah, David, if that's done before... In the next three weeks, I am totally using that with my Interlochen students this summer as we dive into writing scales.
0:38:47.6 DN: Okay. Then it will be done in the next three weeks.
0:38:50.4 LS: That's the deadline.
[laughter]
0:38:52.2 GR: Yeah, exactly.
0:38:54.3 DN: I think it probably won't be done while I'm in Illinois, but then as soon as I get back...
0:38:58.9 GR: Mm-hmm. You're off to sing some Bach again?
0:39:01.9 DN: I am. I'm gonna go sing St Matthew Passion with Andrew Megill and the Illinois Bach Academy, and then I have a week-and-a-half break, and then I... Well, break... [chuckle] Break from singing, and then I'll be in Carmel and doing the St John Passion with Andrew Megill.
0:39:23.6 GR: Oh wow.
0:39:24.7 DN: And we're... Also, we... This is... We're... At Carmel, we are finishing up a search for the new director, which means that we have all three final candidates coming in to direct different programs, which is... They've each chosen these amazing programs, and I can't wait to work with all of them. So we're gonna do Brahms' Requiem and Bach Easter Oratorio. There's so much great music happening this summer, I can't wait.
0:39:58.0 GR: Nice, nice. Excellent. Well, maybe this is a good place to wrap things up. This has been so fun, I have to say... You know, the... I thank Leah for coming up with a crazy brilliant name for this podcast, and David for our delightful theme music, and all the wonderful editing and everything else you do is just... Yeah. This has been a ton of fun, and I will miss our recording sessions over the summer, but I'm so looking forward to our next season of Notes from the Staff together. Yeah. As always, if you... If... Listeners, if you have any feedback, send it to us, notes@utheory.com.
[music]
0:40:47.5 LS: Notes from the Staff is produced by utheory.com.
0:40:50.4 GR: UTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
0:40:54.3 LS: With video lessons, individualized practice, and proficiency testing, uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world master the fundamentals of music theory, rhythm, and ear training.
0:41:05.1 GR: Create your own free teacher account at utheory.com/teach.
David Newman shares his music theory and aural skills teaching songs, as well as some of the stories behind them, in this laughter-filled episode of Notes from the Staff.
Links: The Well Trained Ear on BandCamp
David Newman on YouTube
Show notes: 0:00:20 Introductions
0:02:03 How did you begin writing teaching songs?
0:03:48 David's most popular song: The Periodic Table Rap
0:11:00 Greg and Leah's favorite songs of David
0:11:46 The Dominant Seventh Song
0:14:13 Hinting at future topics in songs about more basic topics
0:15:57 Sophie Lay on My Sofa
0:20:00 Collaborators on the songs
0:23:47 Third Away song
0:26:22 Navigating singing Bach professionally, and recording these popular style theory songs
0:30:25 Intervals in Inversions song
0:34:00 David's favorite song: Second Inversions
0:38:45 The Chord Spelling Song
0:42:51 How teaching songs can help students hear and recognize things as they're happening.
0:46:41 Where can listeners find your songs?
0:49:30 The Notes from the Staff theme song
Transcript: [music]
0:00:20.0 Leah Sheldon: Welcome to Notes From The Staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.
0:00:33.9 Greg Ristow: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and associate professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory.
0:00:40.6 LS: Hi, I'm Leah Sheldon, head of teacher engagement for uTheory.
0:00:44.6 David Newman: Hi, I'm David Newman. I teach at James Madison University and I write code and create content for uTheory. A quick thanks to listeners for all your comments and episode suggestions. We love to read them. Send them our way by email at notes@uTheory.com and remember to like us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:03.7 GR: In our second to last episode for the season, we're turning the tables one more time. And Leah and I will be interviewing our co-host Baritone David Newman. David teaches aural skills, music theory and voice on the faculty of James Madison University. He's famous for his teaching songs, which have millions of views on YouTube. He released his music theory songs in a 2019 album, The Well Trained Ear. They're widely used by elementary, middle, high school and college teachers. Previously, David taught at the University of California Davis, San Jose State University, University of Virginia and Shenandoah Conservatory. He maintains an active performing career as a classical singer and can be heard on the Philips, Dorian, Analecta, K617, and Nexus Labels. Despite COVID-19 precautions, David continued to make music and inspire others to join in the harmony with his innovative drive and choir concept profiled in both the LA Times and New York Times. David thanks for joining us.
0:02:01.5 DN: I'm so glad to be here.
[chuckle]
0:02:03.6 GR: So, we're gonna talk about your teaching songs which are just utterly delightful. I think this is a lovely follow up to our episode a couple of weeks ago with Jed Dearybury about The Playful Classroom. How did you get started writing teaching songs?
0:02:16.6 DN: Oh, wow. I mean, I could go really far back and say that I initially went to music school with the thought of that being a backup for my great career as a singer-songwriter, but really it started when my daughter was in third grade and she brought me a study packet for science and asked me if I would help her study for a test. And we looked at the... I looked at the packet and there was a lot of stuff to memorize. And I said, "You know, we could probably turn some of this into a song." And so I wrote a quick little ditty about soil, [chuckle] and its components and recorded it. And I threw it out on YouTube just to share it that night and got such a positive response that I wrote another song the next day. And I wrote four songs in four days and then I completely burnt out.
[laughter]
0:03:25.2 DN: But then I did it again several times, and this was also in the first year that I was teaching aural skills. And so, later in that year, I just thought, "If I can do this for my third grade daughter, why can't I do this for my aural skills students?" And then I wrote a few songs for them and it just kept going from there.
0:03:48.8 GR: What's your most popular song? Is it one of your music theory songs or is it one of your songs for other... [laughter] A uTheory advantage of having YouTube statistics, right? So.
0:04:00.6 DN: You know, I know... And it's... I don't know if I should be embarrassed about this or not, but my... Yeah, my most popular song is me rapping the periodic table of elements. I have over a million views on that song alone.
0:04:15.4 GR: Can we take a listen to that?
0:04:18.2 DN: Sure. [chuckle] And there's of course... I also wrote that in one afternoon/evening, and I was finally ready to record the female vocal parts at midnight, which meant that I accosted my wife at midnight as she was wanting to go to sleep, and I said, "Please, I just need you to sing these few things." [laughter] Yeah. And then I just think it's funny that my entire career as I view it has been as a classical singer, singing Bach, but I probably have reached more people with my rap stylings.
[laughter]
These are the elements, the periodic table, in order So we got hydrogen, helium, lithium, berylium, boron, carbon, nitrogine and oxygen, flourine. Now stop snoring... this isn't boring, and this is stuff you shouldn't be ignoring. Neon ("noble"), sodium, magnesium, aluminum, silicon, phosphorous, sulfur, chlorine. That's under Flourine. Hey, we're up to 17! You've never had it better for remembering the elements.
These are the elements... Then we got argon ("nobel"), potassium, calcium, scandium, titanium, vanadium, chromium. Manganese, iron, cobalt nicketl cpper zinc, gallium, germanium, arsenic, selenium, and bromine. That's under chlorine and flourine. Just keep storing the order for your mortar board.
Krypton, rubidium, strontium, ytrium zirconium niobium molybdenum, technitium (it's radioactive, woah). Ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, silver ("bling"), cadmium and indium. Tin, antimony, tellurium and iodine.
[laughter]
0:06:29.6 DN: I love watching your reactions.
[laughter]
0:06:33.2 DN: Well, that was the... Yeah. I don't know. And I would feel totally guilty writing a rap. Which is not my wheelhouse at all, except that, I know what I like about rap. I'm frustrated by educational music that doesn't honor the musical side of things. And so I did try to make it interesting. And I did try to do things like internal rhyme and the kinds of things that make rap enjoyable for me. And I loved so much, sorry, I loved so much watching your reactions. 'Cause I guess you hadn't seen that before. [laughter] And I do try to work humor into my songs. And I really do love sharing some of them for the first time with people who haven't heard them before, and just seeing them react to things that they get. The little inside jokes. I think sometimes the inside jokes are useful for students, too, because if they don't get them, then they want to get them. They wanna know why everyone else reacted at that moment.
0:08:00.6 LS: Or why that "Noble" was such a moment.
[laughter]
0:08:08.9 DN: Which I did after every noble element.
0:08:10.5 LS: That will help me remember the noble moments.
0:08:14.4 DN: Of course, I wrote this, what, 11 years ago? And... 12 years ago, maybe? And now it's incomplete. [laughter] There have been eight more... No six more named elements since then, so 118 completes are all of the table.
0:08:40.0 GR: I'm sure that people have made the comparison of this to Tom Lehrer's Element song just made me think of his last verse, 'cause like, there may be many others.
[overlapping conversation]
0:08:50.2 DN: These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard, and there may be many others, but they haven't been discovered.
[laughter]
0:09:00.3 GR: Yeah. That's right. Yeah.
0:09:01.0 DN: Which is, of course, a Gilbert and Sullivan tune. Yeah, I was aware of that. And Tom Lehrer is, of course, one of my huge influences. But the frustrating thing about the Tom Lehrer version of that song is that it's not in order. It's not only very incomplete by today's standards, but it's also not in order. So it's more just a witty thing that you can do naming a bunch of elements and not particularly useful for learning anything. Or no, you could argue that memorizing the table isn't particularly useful for anything either. But memorizing it in order is something that Virginia students have to do. And so I was writing it specifically in response to a request from my sister who said, "Kids need this." I thought, "Okay, challenge accepted, I will come up with something."
0:10:07.3 GR: And you said, you started writing these teaching songs, right at the same time as you're starting to teach aural skills. And so I presume that's what led to all of your music theory and aural skills songs as well.
0:10:18.5 DN: Yeah. And also, I think there's something... Teaching a new course, especially when it's not something that you've spent a long time thinking about how you were gonna teach, I feel like I grew a million brain neurons [chuckle] that year. I think there's something about learning something new, digging deep into something new that just fosters creativity. And that was an incredibly creative year for me.
0:10:54.1 GR: I know Leah and I have both listened to probably all if not most...
0:10:58.1 LS: I think so.
0:11:00.5 GR: Of... Probably most if not all of your teaching songs. Leah, do you have a favorite?
0:11:07.4 LS: Well I like a lot of them but I do think that... I'm gonna put Sophie up there.
[laughter]
0:11:20.4 LS: And maybe The Dominant 7th.
0:11:24.8 GR: Yeah, I was... Yeah. For me the... For me... Yeah, I love Dominant 7th would be totally top of my list, partly 'cause it's just so darn useful. You just play this once as students are coming to the classroom and they never forget what the notes are of that Dominant 7th.
0:11:41.3 DN: Right. As long as you're using movable do.
[laughter]
0:11:46.4 GR: As long as you're using movable do, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Should we listen to it a bit?
0:11:50.8 DN: Sure.
This is a I chord and a V in first inversion, Then a vi, a passing I 64, then IV. But this song might get boring and you’d prob’ly start ignoring me If I tried naming every single chord.
But there’s one chord that’s terrific, and its function is specific, And it hangs around in cadences for fun. With solfege we can state it if we just arpeggiate it, and Sol-ti-re-fa is a dominant 7, which brings us home to I.
Of course the IV chord (FA-LA-DO) can be pleasant to the ear. Then there’s V7/V (RE-FI-LA-DO) That’s a chord we’re going to learn about more next year!
We’re back to I now, and there’s that V in first inversion, Just repeating what we’d played when we’d begun. And this path that we had charted’s going to finish what we started ‘Cause SOL-TI-RE-FA is a dominant 7, which brings us home to…
OH NO! That cadence was deceptive! It went to minor vi instead of I! That sort of trick can be effective At making things last longer when we thought that we were done!
0:13:34.1 GR: I love that deceptive cadence, David.
0:13:35.9 DN: [laughter] I have to give credit to Matt Grisset, one of my students, for that. I was still writing the song... I don't know. It was written over a period of time, and I shared my initial thoughts, maybe the first verse or two with my students that year, and Matt said, "You need to put a deceptive cadence in there," and challenge accepted. [laughter]
0:14:10.2 GR: [chuckle] Nice.
0:14:13.1 DN: But that was great, and the... It was so useful... It is useful in the classroom, if you're teaching in movable do, to be able to say "So ti re fa," and just... Then... People... Yeah, it just gets stuck in their heads, which is the thing that you want to have happen. [laughter]
0:14:34.1 GR: Totally, totally.
0:14:35.6 LS: But you also acknowledged other concepts in there without taking away from the Dominant 7th, but really staying true to what's happening musically.
0:14:45.0 DN: Yeah, and pedagogically, we talk about spiraling, or coming back to the same concepts and seeing them with new eyes, and I... Add into that the... I think it's totally fine, in fact, admirable to introduce... To throw out a concept that they haven't learned yet, so that when they get to it, you can say, "Hey, remember when we listened to that song? Remember when it did "Re fi la do"? Now we're gonna talk about what that is. That's secondary dominant, and it gives them a hook to go, "Oh, this is a thing I already know." And I hope, when we're teaching aural skills, that a lot of it can be, instead of, "Here's a theory thing that you have to know," it's, "Here's a thing that you know and love. And now I'm gonna put a name to it. I'm gonna give you a way to name it and understand that it's happening. You already love it. You already know what it sounds like. It's just here's a context for it."
0:15:57.7 GR: When we were talking with Megan Long a couple of weeks ago about hexachordal solfege, and she started talking about [0:16:07.1] ____ and solfege puns from the Renaissance era. Of course, you know, that brings to mind Leah's favorite song, Sophie Lay on My Sofa, which is just... Can you introduce that for us a little bit, David?
0:16:24.5 DN: Oh gosh. Well, I had already written one solfege pun song, but that was just a sort of attempt to do Sound of Music, Do-Re-Mi, but, you know, in a different way.
0:16:39.4 GR: Is that the silly solfege song?
0:16:39.8 LS: The silly solfege?
0:16:41.5 DN: The silly solfege song.
0:16:42.0 LS: I love that too.
0:16:43.3 DN: Which is fine, although it still bothers me that I had to use bad grammar in order to keep the solfege puns going. I mean, it really, really pains me, [chuckle] but I wanted to see if I could incorporate a solfege pun song with lots of chromatic solfege and... Get, yeah, more of those relationships in there, and then, that became a fun challenge, just to see how to write the story in a way that it would make musical sense. And also, I really, really wanted to get "Fa li" in there, which of course means that the li has to be followed by a ti, so how can I make a story that has "Fa li" followed by the word tea. And the version that I recorded and put on YouTube was just me and a guitar. But the version we recorded for the album turned out to be kind of a really fun, bluesy song. [chuckle]
0:18:04.9 GR: Nice. Well, let's have a listen.
Sophie lay on my sofa Eating raw dough, and drinking tea Sophie don't lay on my sofa so... Don't tease me so! Let yourself fall for me. Eating raw dough is folly. Tea's not so bad. But Sophie, don't lay on my sofa Eating dough.
0:19:27.4 GR: [chuckle] Love it. I love it. Of course, if you're a la bass minor person, that one is going to be very confusing, for us do bass minor people. [laughter]
0:19:38.5 DN: Well, I'd also... I mean, I think it sort of modulates there in the middle, and I don't modulate the syllables at all, but whatever.
0:19:45.7 GR: Yeah.
0:19:46.7 DN: I achieved my pun goal, and that was the important thing, [laughter] right? So I don't know if that one's pedagogically, you know, super useful, but...
0:20:00.6 GR: I mean, I think just the experience of listening and saying "Oh my god, that is actually so. Oh, that's fi." Right? And yeah, it is totally fun and valuable, pedagogically.
0:20:13.9 DN: I also think this is a good place to give a shout out to Jacob Rose Meisel, who was one of my voice students at JMU, who came to me in the middle of his senior year and said, "Hey, I arranged one of your songs, and I want you to see what you think of it," and it was the Non-Dominant 7ths, and he had created this elaborate progressive rock kind of arrangement of it, and I was... I just thought, "Wow, this is amazing. Can you do this with other things?" And he ended up producing and playing instruments, and he was the driving force behind making this album happen out of a bunch of YouTube videos that I, you know, mostly wrote and recorded in the same day. [chuckle]
0:21:18.5 GR: And you said your backing vocals, those are your wife and daughters, is that right?
0:21:27.1 DN: Depending on the track. Sometimes, it's my wife and daughters. There were a couple songs where I got... I just asked for student volunteers and community... Student and community volunteers, I think. I just had a bunch of people on the album. I got a bunch of people together, and we just recorded all of the backing vocals together, including at the end of the Second Inversions song, Manny Davis did this great, completely ad-libbed riff of Amen [chuckle] at the end of the Second Inversions song, and it's fantastic. I'm just so grateful for all those amazing people who sort of stepped in and helped. Oh my gosh, and... Sorry, if I'm talking about amazing people who stepped in and helped, my friend and colleague Sam Suggs came in and played bass on a bunch of tracks. My friend and colleague, Dave Pope, came in and recorded a sax solo. He came into the recording studio, he did one take, we listened to it, and he said, "Yep, that's good."
[laughter]
0:22:53.2 DN: And I'm sure I'm forgetting someone. Who else came in? Oh, Casey Cangelosi, my friend, colleague, and neighbor, came in. He wrote a whole sort of aleatoric drum thing, percussion thing for the first piece.
0:23:20.3 GR: Nice, nice. I was thinking, you know, one of the ones that I love is... Sometimes, when we're trying to convey an idea to students, like for instance, "If you're having trouble finding a note, don't just blindly leap for it, but use your reference pitches of one and five or Do and So in the scale," you know, that's a big concept to convey to them, and it's hard to make it fun.
[laughter]
0:23:47.3 GR: So, I was just thinking, I love your Third Away song for that idea, because it does... It says so clearly, and in such a fun way, that any note you need is never more than a Third Away from one or five, from Do or So. And, you know, yeah, it makes it joyous to think about it that way. Should we listen to it a little?
0:24:10.5 DN: Sure.
When you're trying hard to sightread and see a leap to a Fa, La, Ti, Mi, or a Re... Well as long as you can always find So and Do, You're never more than a third away. You can try and sing big intervals that you see, And if you're good at it, well that's okay. But as long as you can always find So and Do, You're never more than a third away.
So if you're leaping to "Mi," you can think "So Mi" And if you're leaping to "La," you can think "So La" And if you're leaping to "Ti," you can think "Do Ti" yeah... as long as you've got So and Do, you'll go far!
So keep working on your intervals big and small And try to practice them every day But as long as you can always find So and Do, You're never more than a third away. Yeah, as long as you can always find So and Do, yeah... You're never more than a third away.
0:25:24.0 GR: We really get a sense of your vocal range through these songs from a very low to a very high David.
[laughter]
0:25:30.3 DN: I did sing that high C just 'cause I could.
[laughter]
0:25:31.9 LS: 'Cause you should.
0:25:32.0 GR: What's the low note like on Sophie? Was that a low F? What was that?
0:25:42.6 DN: I don't know. The Dominant 7th song is a low F. I don't really think about it. Either I can sing it or I can't. I mean, I can probably... Well, if I cheat, I can get close to four octaves now, but that means having to do, [pitched vocal fry] "Ahhhhh," can't get any lower than that today.
0:26:11.3 GR: Okay.
0:26:15.2 DN: But that's a trick. [laughter]
0:26:19.2 LS: And that's a whole 'nother episode.
0:26:22.3 GR: Yeah. Exactly.
0:26:22.4 DN: Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No... It is funny, I was afraid. When I first started sharing these songs, my biggest fear, and something that almost held me back from sharing them, was I make my living singing Bach. And I thought what if someone hears these and thinks, "Oh, that's not the voice I want." But I decided, and I hope I was right, that someone who hears that I have the flexibility to sing all these different styles will go, "Oh, and he sings Bach well. Okay."
0:27:06.7 GR: Yeah, I have to say, as we've gotten to know each other, I just continue to be blown away by the variety of things that you do and do well, it's...
[laughter]
0:27:22.4 DN: I fear sometimes that I do too many things and don't do any of them well, but I guess that's the life of a musician is having to explore all opportunities. [chuckle]
0:27:40.2 GR: Yeah, there's so much fun wordplay in your songs, have you always been one for puns and wordplay and that sort of thing?
0:27:49.4 DN: Boy, I haven't thought of that. I do enjoy it. Have I always enjoyed it? I think I've always enjoyed it, but I don't know that... I think it was especially writing educational songs that I felt both the desire and cultivated the ability to engage in wordplay. But thinking about the best educational songs that I knew and grew up with, the best ones were really compelling both musically and lyrically in ways that made me want to hear them again, or that would make them stick in my head, and I think especially the Tom Lehrer-esque wordplay, for me, was something that just went hand in hand with good educational songs.
0:28:49.2 GR: Yeah.
0:28:49.9 LS: And that's so important that holding true to the musical side of things, because there are a lot of creative lyrics out there that are not musical or are just spoken and auto-tuned and they are very hard on the ears even though the information in the lyrics is good.
0:29:13.9 DN: Yeah.
0:29:14.7 LS: Yeah.
0:29:16.3 DN: It looks like I'm gonna be co-presenting for a conference in the fall that is about music and education, but a challenge in educational music is sometimes that it's written by educators or scientists who maybe didn't think about as much about the musical side of things. And there is even a sense in some aspects of that community that it doesn't matter, that it's all about the content and not about the musical side of things, and I think the musical side of things really does matter, and you can... I just would hate to force my students to listen to music that wasn't very good, just to get a point across. Now, that sounds like I have a high flute in opinion of my own music. And I don't love all my own songs, but I do try really hard to make them good.
0:30:25.1 GR: One of the ones I find most musically impressive, frankly, is the Intervals Inversion song that you were able to make all of these inverted intervals work melodically, which can't have been an easy thing to do.
0:30:40.0 DN: You know the irony is that one wrote itself in about 15 minutes, it just...
0:30:45.6 GR: You're kidding. [chuckle]
0:30:46.1 DN: It wasn't a puzzle to be solved. I was actually reading an old theory textbook from, like, 1920 and looking at its explanations of chords and inversions, and I just, sort of, like, that opening line I was just thinking, "Ta-ta-ta-taa. Ta-ta-ta-taah. Oh." And that just makes such a natural thing and the rest just flowed right out of it in 15 minutes. [laughter]
0:31:22.3 GR: We should listen.
A minor third is a major sixth in inversion A major third is a minor sixth in inversion A perfect fourth is a perfect fifth in inversion. Oh. A minor second's a major seventh A major second's a minor seventh, and oh... A perfect unison's an octave in this game But what we call a tritone stays the same.
0:32:24.5 GR: I think one of the things I love about that is that totally takes me back to '90s cheesy pop, right? There's something about that that just speaks to the music I loved in my childhood, the music theater, that time period and, yeah.
0:32:43.9 DN: I was listening to that and just remembering, oh yeah, the introduction is all showing different inversions in both hands, and I guess it's not in the left hand, but in the right hand, it's doing inversions deliberately. And I've been asked about the tritone bit because of course, technically a tritone is three whole steps, and so only one of those is a technical tritone. This is though why I said what we call a tritone because in aural skills class when it's out of context, that interval is a tritone.
0:33:24.3 GR: Mm-hmm.
0:33:25.3 DN: At least in my class. Yeah I understand how someone could quibble with that, but I deliberately said what we call a tritone for a reason. [laughter]
0:33:36.5 GR: Yeah.
0:33:37.1 DN: If you wanna listen to... You may not have heard my science song "Erosion", but you'll like that one too. It's got the same era vibe. [laughter]
0:33:47.7 GR: Nice. I'd say the acoustic base on that, I love. When that just comes in, it's so good.
0:33:52.9 DN: Thank you, Sam. Oh my gosh, yeah.
0:33:57.4 GR: Yeah.
0:33:57.8 DN: He's amazing.
[chuckle]
0:34:00.7 GR: David, what's your favorite song?
0:34:04.0 DN: Oh wow. What is my favorite song? I've been asked this and I... But I like Second Inversions a lot. I like it because it's got a great groove. I feel like it's extremely pedagogically useful, even though some people disagree with me. [chuckle] And I feel like it just works.
[music] Second inversions are chords I adore I write them down with a 6 and a 4. These chords we encounter in four different ways… You can tell from the context you hear, From the chords that are near, And the movement you hear in the bass.
The first we’ll call pedal (or stationary) ‘Cause the bass stays the same. But when bass notes move stepwise Often passing’s the name. When the bass goes a leaping, arpeggiated’s what we’ll say. And when we come to the end of a section, my friend A cadential 64 can help carry the day….
(IV 64)... well that IV 64 was stationary, oh… (I 64)... a passing I 64! Passing I 64! (vi 64)... ain’t it great when we can arpeggiate! And for the next one I’m just going to savor it ‘Cause a cadential 64 is my favorite second inversion…. Second inversion… Mmm, Second inversion…
0:36:39.0 GR: And that was the famous "Amen" that you were talking about earlier, yeah?
[laughter]
0:36:43.2 DN: Yeah. Oh gosh.
0:36:46.3 GR: That's great.
0:36:48.6 DN: I do enjoy this. The criticism that I've gotten for this is that it's not the way some people wanna teach second inversion chords, or they may even say that they don't even believe in second inversion chords. And it's very much the way it was taught in the book that I was using at the time. And of course, people have different names for these things. I've even learned new terminology that I didn't know before through responses to some of these songs.
0:37:20.3 GR: Mm-hmm.
0:37:21.7 DN: In the Dominant 7 song, the deceptive cadence, I got a note from someone in England saying, "Is that what we call an interrupted cadence?" "Oh, apparently it is."
0:37:37.4 GR: See, and now this is gonna take me right back to my Schenkerian training, because an interrupted cadence is... An interruption in Schenkerian terminology is effectively a half cadence, right? 'Cause the phrase is interrupted before it's able to complete its normative motion of three, two, one or five, four, three, two, one.
0:38:00.1 DN: And some people will insist on calling it deceptive motion.
0:38:06.1 GR: Mm-hmm, or deceptive resolution, yeah. Mm-hmm.
0:38:09.0 DN: Right. The funny thing is, when I'm teaching, at least, I just sort of say there's lots of names for things and there are many lenses to view it through and not one of them is correct.
0:38:22.7 GR: And I think probably at the heart of it, it matters less what we call it, and more that we know what it is as a thing.
0:38:30.5 DN: Right, right, or that you recognize... Yeah, yeah, ideally, we would recognize these things happening musically and just sort of know why they work and not in a limited fashion but in a holistic fashion to go, "Oh, this has a lot of aspects to it."
0:38:48.3 GR: Mm-hmm. So the other one that I find just delightful is the Chord Spelling song because Like...
[laughter]
0:38:58.9 GR: Can you tell us about that? 'Cause this one is so clearly to me like this is a pedagogical song, this is a song that I would totally just pull out and use within my classroom. In fact I'm thinking about just transcribing, so that I can do this in singing with my students.
0:39:13.4 DN: It has been transcribed. Mark Boyle has transcribed it, and I will talk to him, but I think maybe we can put up a transcription so that people can use it, he uses it as a warm-up with his choirs.
0:39:29.4 GR: Yeah, can you tell us a bit about the song?
0:39:31.3 DN: Yeah, I think it was my second year of teaching aural skills and I was heading into school. At that point, I had an hour commute, and I was heading into school, and the topic of the day was going to be spelling all the different chords, and as I was driving into in school, I thought, "I cannot stand the thought of standing in front of a blackboard and spelling out one chord after another, each diatonic chord and singing them, there's gotta be a more interesting way to do this." And I basically wrote the song on my commute, and by the time I got to school, I had the general framework of it written, and I taught it to each of my classes that day, and then we sang it at the end of class and recorded it and put it on YouTube.
[laughter]
0:40:30.5 GR: Nice.
0:40:31.5 DN: So, that was... Yeah that was composed and recorded within a couple of hours.
0:40:39.2 GR: And when we hear that on The Well Trained Ear Album, are those of your students we're hearing singing?
0:40:46.7 DN: Those are my students although that... And honestly, I think that the recording on YouTube that was recorded within a few hours is probably better than the one on the album.
[laughter]
0:41:02.2 DN: The album was recorded very much on a budget, and that particular song suffered because I recorded it without people singing along, I played the piano part and I played it way too fast, and so it's a little bit too fast on the album for my taste.
0:41:23.2 GR: Well shall we listen to the YouTube version?
0:41:25.9 DN: Sure. Yeah, let's listen to the YouTube version. I mean, what's cool about the YouTube version anyway, it's just that students really... I taught it to them. That was the end of class.
Do Mi So Fa La Do So Ti Re Ti So Do Do Do Do Mi So Fa La Do So Ti Re Ti So Do La ... La Do Mi Re ... Re Fa La La ... La Do Mi Mi Si Ti So Ti Re
Do Mi So Fa La Do So Ti Re Ti So Do Do Do Do Mi So Fa La Do So Ti Re Ti So Do Do ... Do Mi So Mi ... Mi So Ti La ... La Do Mi Re ... Re Fi La
So Do So So Re Ti So So Do So So Fa Re Ti So So Do So So Fa Re Ti Si Mi La Do Mi Do Mi So Te Fa La Do So Ti Re Ti So Do Ti Do Ti Do Ti Do Ti Do Ti Do!
[laughter]
0:42:45.6 GR: I love it, I love it.
0:42:51.7 DN: And that has more of that cycling, spiraling idea of, but introducing concepts ahead of time. Because at that time you just need to know, here's what I have to sing here, but then later I'm... I could say, well remember when we sang, do re mi so ti, but that's, that's a five, seven, zero, four. And then when they hear that sound they can connect it with the place in the song where they've heard it. And, I mean for me, that seems like a... I just thought why hasn't anyone done this before? , and a little bit the answer is that, people had done it before and I just didn't know. [laughter] And so it's been really cool like to meet Joseph Downing, who has written a bunch of music theory songs, but they're not on YouTube. I probably should... He's sent me the sheet music for his songs, so I should probably record some of them and put them on YouTube. [laughter] But hearing things in context, that's the other tricky thing about aural skills, is that you can't understand any of these things out of context. It's all about hearing them in context. And then, how do you get someone to recognize it in context? So, that's q place, where I think that the songs are useful, because it's just naming things as they happen.
0:44:27.1 GR: Yeah.
0:44:29.0 DN: And to a degree naming things... I was surprised to share my International Chord song with some people and to point out things that were being explicitly named in the, in the song and to discover that some of my colleagues didn't, didn't even recognize what was happening. Didn't recognize, what that those things were being named as they happened, or didn't recognize all the subtleties, I don't know. You know, when I, when I do, sometimes I... Like, sometimes I want to hear some German, sometimes, you know, sometimes I like to hear some French, and then I on the French, you know, I... French is the note that distinguishes him from German.
[laughter]
0:45:27.0 GR: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's reality too.
0:45:29.6 DN: But understanding those chords and how they work, It's just helpful to hear them in context.
0:45:37.8 LS: And surely that will help students make the connection to their rap.
0:45:41.9 GR: And also to hear that I think in more popular styles were so often we're teaching these concepts with reference to Western classical music, which frankly, maybe our students aren't listening to that much.
0:45:52.9 DN: You know, I forgot until just now that, you know, I showed you my second inversion song, but that the predecessor to that [chuckle] was the first year I taught, I wrote a chorale. I wrote a chorale that did all four of the second inversions that we were supposed... That I was supposed to teach. And I gave it to them as a dictation. And I wrote little words, you know, about second inversions are chords I adore. I write them down with a six and a four. [laughter] But I didn't... Yeah, the chorale wasn't quite as catchy as the gospel-ly song.
0:46:39.2 GR: The bluesy. Gospel. Yeah.
0:46:40.5 DN: Yeah. [laughter]
0:46:41.1 GR: But this has been really fun to where if people want to hear more of your songs, where can they find them? Where can they find you?
0:46:49.1 DN: They're scattered all over YouTube. And, of course, I have the album on Bandcamp The Well-Trained Ear. If you google The Well-Trained Ear, you will find it. And, of course, I would be deliriously happy if anyone wanted to buy the album on Bandcamp, but you can also listen to it for free. [chuckle]
0:47:14.3 GR: Awesome. So, yeah, hopefully our listeners will support the creation of these wonderful music theory teaching songs. And, yeah, I certainly... I have the album in my iTunes and...
[laughter]
0:47:27.0 GR: Yeah, yeah, I hope. Hope others will as well. It's always a little funny when like I'll have it on shuffle at a party and then suddenly, you know, up pops David Newman singing the Silly Solfege Song.
0:47:39.9 DN: That could be particularly shocking if it turned out to be The Locrian Song.
[laughter]
0:47:45.9 DN: In what on an any normal album would be shockingly inappropriate. I love that, it goes straight from a poly meter heavy metal song to a swinging jazz tune.
[laughter]
0:48:09.9 LS: And let's not forget about TikTok.
[laughter]
0:48:13.5 LS: One of my favorite little things is David Newman singing his office number for his students to remember, now I have it memorized as well.
0:48:23.1 DN: That's fantastic. Yeah, no, it's great. And you know, I did write it for my students. Although, actually, I wrote it for me, because I got moved into a new office and then COVID hit. And then I wasn't in that office, and I knew where to find it, but I couldn't remember my own office number, so I thought I need to share this, and then of course, when I realized I was in office 213, re do mi. So that is not on the album. I guess I could add it, add it to the album. Yeah, I put it on TikTok. I have a couple of things on TikTok that are not on the album. So yeah, follow me on TikTok. And if people start following me on TikTok, maybe I'll start making more content for it. [chuckle]
0:49:18.1 GR: Well, I wonder should we close out by hearing The Locrian tune, what an unsettling way to end.
[laughter]
0:49:25.1 DN: I'm not sure. That might be something people have to seek out for themselves.
[chuckle]
0:49:30.0 GR: Alright, that's fair, that's fair. You know, our listeners may not know or may not realize it, of course, you wrote the theme song for Notes, Notes From The Staff. So that's...
0:49:41.0 DN: You know, I wanted to talk about that.
0:49:42.4 GR: David's voice in here.
0:49:43.1 DN: Do we have time to talk about that?
0:49:44.5 GR: Yeah. Sure.
0:49:46.2 DN: As we close up? I mean, obviously. I started with a surprise.
[laughter]
0:49:55.8 GR: In the form of the Surprise Symphony?
0:49:58.7 DN: And I figured that everyone upon hearing, you know, tun tun tun tun tun tun tun they know what to expect. And then I don't give them what they expect. And the way I think about writing these, I am really inspired also by Bach. And, when I thought about writing this I had already seen the the logo with a treble clef and notes on the staff. So I decided that I was going to make the melody do all of the notes on the staff, on the treble clef staff. So that is the opening line is, these are the Notes From The Staff da da. So I did every single note that is on the staff.
[laughter]
0:50:48.5 DN: You know, I think sometimes maybe it doesn't add anything, but I think sometimes, I think, what we learn as creative people, is that a blank page is scary, and so it's great to give yourself limitations like that, and out of that, springs creativity.
[music]
0:51:13.9 LS: Notes From The Staff is produced by uTheory.com.
0:51:16.0 GR: UTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
0:51:30.9 LS: With video lessons, individualized practice, and proficiency testing, uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world master the fundamentals of music theory, rhythm and ear training.
0:51:37.0 GR: Create your own free teacher account at uTheory.com/teach.
[music]
Jed Dearybury, author of The Playful Classroom and The Power of Play for All Ages joins us to talk about how bringing play into classrooms--no matter the age or level--leads to deeper, more engaged and more joyful learning.
Links: Jed Dearybury’s webpage: https://www.mrdearybury.com/
The Playful Classroom: https://theplayfulclassroom.com/
Jed’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrdearybury
Jed's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV4Y68wd0lR5kuIzghPGxCw
Ron Clark: Move your Bus - http://www.moveyourbus.com/
A Mathematician’s Lament
Improving Science Content with Choreographed Songs
Show Notes:
00:00:15 Introductions
00:01:00 Guest introduction: Jed Dearybury
00:03:45 How did play become your profession?
00:09:00 Play is when we feel best in life and in the classroom, it allows us to let go of self-criticism and fear.
00:11:00 What are the benefits of play in the classroom?
00:15:00 Sometimes our music teaching is not as playful as our math colleagues imagine it is
00:19:50 Deep play
00:24:15 Value of songs with movement in teaching in non-music areas
00:27:45 Play personalities & types of play (Stuart Brown’s research)
00:35:40 Types of Play
00:38:00 “Level Up” – when students begin to take a game and add a layer of difficulty on top of it
00:38:45 How do you create a culture that’s safe for play?
00:45:24 If you’ve had teachers who were playful, that gives you a model, but what do you do if you haven’t had a model of a playful teacher?
00:47:50 What advice do you have for teachers who may face naysayers when working to create a playful classroom?
00:53:10 What would you say to someone who wants to include play in their classroom, but is worried about still being able to cover all of the content?
00:59:20 Imagination, sociability, humor, spontaneity and wonder – elements of the playful mindset
01:03:26 In the history of educational psychology, we have lots of evidence that we learn through play. Why hasn’t this way of teaching become the norm?
01:09:00 Where can people follow you?
01:11:00 Wrap-ups
Transcript: [music]
0:00:21.0 David Newman: Welcome to Notes from the Staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.
0:00:35.5 Greg Ristow: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and associate professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory.
0:00:41.8 Leah Sheldon: I'm Leah Sheldon, head of teacher engagement for uTheory.
0:00:45.4 DN: And I'm David Newman. I teach at James Madison University and I write code and create content for uTheory.
0:00:52.7 LS: And before we get started today, a quick thanks to our listeners for all of your comments and episode suggestions. We love to read them, so send them our way at notes@utheory.com, and remember to like us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:07.1 GR: Our topic today is the power of play in teaching, learning, and life. And joining us is world play expert, Jed Dearybury. Uh, Jed, did I say that name right?
0:01:17.9 Jed Dearybury: It was close. It's Dairy Berry. Dairy, like a cow and Berry like a fruit.
0:01:21.9 GR: Great. Actually we can do all that again.
[laughter]
0:01:25.8 JD: No, you did fine. You did... You don't even... Don't even, David don't even edit that. He did great. You did great.
[laughter]
0:01:33.9 GR: So, yes, joining us is world play expert Jed Dearybury. Jed is the author along with Dr. Julie Jones of The Playful Classroom: The Power of Play for All Ages, of The Courageous classroom with co-author Janet Taylor, and of the forthcoming, The Playful Life, also with Julie Jones, which will be released in November 22. We'll remind you when that gets closer. As a classroom teacher, he was featured in GQ Magazine as Male Leader of the Year, met President Obama as the South Carolina honoree of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science teaching, and was named as a top five finalist for South Carolina Teacher of the Year. Since 2015, he's been leading professional development across the country, as well as training the next generation of educators through his work and teaching in higher education. Jed, thanks for joining us.
0:02:24.1 JD: Thanks for having me and thanks for that great intro. I mean, I think that we're just recording our voices though. So all your viewers can't see how adorable cute I am to know about that GQ award, right? I mean, they'll have to look me up online.
0:02:36.8 GR: I mean, I can just imagine the spread.
0:02:38.4 JD: I mean, just imagine how awesome I look, right?
[laughter]
0:02:43.5 JD: Oh, goodness. Yeah. I'm glad to be with y'all. Thanks for having me. I'll tell y'all, when I was listening to you do the intros, man, y'all all have classic radio voices. Maybe like a NPR vibe, I felt like, "Man, this is like serious business here. I don't know if they're ready for my Southern drawl to be on here." But anyway, here I am. Thanks for the invite.
[laughter]
0:03:11.1 GR: Actually, I think we're, but I don't know about you, Leah, I always feel a little jealous of David's resonant baritone.
0:03:16.8 JD: As soon as he started...
0:03:17.7 LS: Definitely.
0:03:18.5 JD: As soon as he started speaking, I was like, "Wow, that is like, David you that... I don't know what you, I mean, you'd said what you did, but you need to be doing that. It's full time. Like get you some gigs, man."
0:03:30.1 DN: I do so many things I can't even think.
[laughter]
0:03:37.9 GR: So Jed play... I was just thinking, how did you get into, how did play become your professional life?
0:03:44.7 JD: You know, I knew that you were gonna ask me that question, I had been thinking about that answer and I don't know exactly other than I was born that way. I guess, I was born with this playful spirit personality. I credit a lot of it to my mom. My mom is a very playful person. She had a hard life growing up, there was lots of bumps along her way, but I think that she embraced that and got through that by being, having a playful spirit. She loves to make art. She loves to dance. She loves to try to sing. She's not that great of a singer, but she loves to try. You know, I just think that my mom is probably the one that instilled a lot of that in me. And then when I took that into my classroom, people started noticing what I was doing in my classroom. I was just minding my business. I had a piano in my classroom, new music teachers will love that. I have a great story of how I got the piano in my first classroom. I was working in the building late one evening. I was the only one in the building and I was, I don't know, just in an adventurous mood. And I started going around and looking in the empty classrooms to see if there was anything that I needed for my room. 'Cause if it was in an empty classroom, it's fair game, right? Nobody's using it, you can put it in your room. And in the gym, in a supply closet, in the gym, there was a piano covered in about two inches of dust, and I was like, "You know what? It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission."
0:05:20.5 JD: And I just wheeled that thing right down to my classroom and cleaned it up. And the next day, of course, I started playing with my students and the principal came across the hall and she was like, "Where did you get that?" And I was like, "Oh, it was in the gym." And she said, "We had a piano in the gym?" And I was like, "Yeah, it was in the closet in the gym." And I said, "Do you mind if I use it?" And she said, "Nobody else is using it." [chuckle] She said, "I didn't even know it was here." And so that started the... That started my playful classroom, I think, right there is me having that piano because anytime, and let me just stop right here and say, I'm not an expert piano player by any means, I just know some chords and can... I read music obviously, cause I play the trumpet, and I read piano music bass and treble, and... But I just like to make up stuff. You know, you get a couple of chords and just bang it out and see what happens. And we would make up fun little songs in my classroom to different content that we were learning. One of my favorite ones that we did was, it was learning about the things that plants need to grow. And it was to the tune of bingo. You know, there was a seed down in the ground, how will it grow? Water, light, air, soil, space, water, light, air, soil, space, water, light, air, soil, space. That's what it needs to grow.
0:06:41.0 JD: And then the first year that I did that, I had this really amazing kid, his name was Zaelon. He is now a college graduate, but he was very gifted reader in first grade and he had just read a book about how bees help plants to grow. And so right at the end of that song, he would always chime and go, "And bees," and he would give his fingers like a little spirit finger wave, you know. And so we added that to our song and that was where play started for me, I guess, in my classroom. Fast forward to 2015, I met Julie around that time. I can't remember exactly when we met. I just know that we met and she and I are the exact kind of teacher. We just like to have fun and play with our students all based on the content that we're trying to teach. And both of us work in higher ed and we were trying to write something to help communicate to our college students what teaching should look like. What playful teaching should look like. And we realized about halfway through, this is a book that all teachers need to read, not just our students. We need everybody who's in education to read this, not just classroom teachers, but administrators, anybody who has an education role. So anybody who works at your institutions of higher ed, even if they work in the office, the human resources office, they need to read this book, because they're connected to playful classrooms across that campus. And... But not only those people, but anyone who's in a teaching type role.
0:08:14.2 JD: So I've done a lot of work with the 4-H Club, those leaders, they are absolutely teachers, the American Campus Association, the Special Olympics, all of those people connected to those organizations are in essence teachers creating playful classroom spaces, wherever they teach their participants. And so, next thing you know, people are asking me to come play with them and teach them about play. So here it is, this is my life. And I hate your viewers can't see me, but it's authentic. You see, this is my home office that you're looking at in the background. Maybe take a screenshot, you could put it out there in the world or something, I don't know. But this is what I do. I guess I do play for a living. But you know what? If you're a good teacher, you play for a living anyway, you just call it something different, you call it teaching, instead of playing for a living. But that's what you do, if you're good at it. That was a lot of talking.
[laughter]
0:09:14.5 DN: That is when I feel best in the classroom.
0:09:16.0 JD: Mm-hmm.
0:09:18.6 DN: Even, and yeah. Even with a room full of jaded college sophomores. [chuckle]
0:09:25.6 JD: Yeah, yeah. Look, I agree. Sometimes in my college courses, I bring what I think is one of the most fun lessons. And I just finally look at 'em I'm like, "Look, I could pull a PowerPoint up and just talk to you for an hour if y'all would rather do that. And they're like, "No, no, no." I was like, "Then get engaged with this. We need some participation, don't we," like you said, you know? So I fully understand that too, but you're right. I too feel at my best in the classroom when I'm teaching and it's playful like that, and not just with little kids, but I love teaching adults, and helping them to find their childhood again. Because I think the problem is in our culture, we have squashed that. We have forgotten the joy of childhood because the heaviness of adulthood is upon us. But I think if we were more playful as adults, that, that heaviness wouldn't be so large on our shoulders. And there's science to back that up. We're killing ourselves in essence, you know? I'm very open and honest about my own journey with anxiety and depression. And I have found that when I am in moments of play, that that releases itself, it lets go of me for a bit. I get lost in the flow of the playfulness. I let go of that self criticism that fear, play does that, it's 'cause all the things that are released, all the feel good chemicals in your brain that are being released when you're playing, it just makes you feel better.
0:11:04.0 GR: So beyond the feel good nature of it, what are the benefits of play in the classroom and learning?
0:11:11.9 JD: Well, being more playful, first of all, it helps you to have an emotional connection to the learning. So I could absolutely put a PowerPoint up and I could talk to you and you could take notes in a traditional format. And for some people that still is the way they wanna do it. But scientifically speaking, if you have an emotional connection to the learning, you remember it better and play helps us to have that emotional connection. If we took the time to ask each of you to share something that you learned through as a kid, I guarantee you it would be something that was connected to a playful event. The very first thing that most of us learn academically speaking, is our ABCs, right? We learn our ABCs, and how do we do that? We learn 'em through a song. Singing is playing. Music is playing. And so that right there should show you the power of play just that alone should sell you on it, I think, because it makes the learning stick. You have this emotional connection to the song. People cheer for you and you learn, "Yay. You sing all of it. Yay." Now I'll sing along with you. You know, like the end of the song says. And you have this emotional connection, music make the learning stick. You ask somebody to say their alphabet, nobody really says it. They sing it even as an adult.
0:12:39.4 JD: If you have to put things in ABC order, most people inside their brain are singing the alphabet, whether they wanna admit or not, even the business, the suits at the highest levels of the corporations, if they had to put something in alphabetical order, they're gonna sing it in their brain because that's the way they learned it. And imagine if you can take that into numerous aspects of the curriculum. So rather than just a song, maybe you created a piece of art that helped you remember the life cycle of the butterfly, or maybe you did a tableau to help you remember the sequence of events that led to the American Revolution. Or maybe you created a game that involved a piece of paper, balled up in a ball, aiming at a bullseye on the floor that you made outta tape that helped you to remember... I don't know, the physics of that piece of paper. You see, I went really deep there because I was trying to... I went from the life cycle of a butterfly to physics and hitting that bullseye, right? Because that is what, play is for all ages. It is literally for all ages. I get so frustrated when I hear people say, "Oh, that's great for early childhood, but I teach calculus." If ever there was a course that needed some playfulness in it, good God calculus is it, right? I mean, look, I took pre-cal and I honestly, follow this here, I thought pre-cal was what happened before the cal.
[laughter]
0:14:09.3 JD: Did you hear what I said there? I took precalculus, I still don't even know what it is. I took that course for a whole year in high school. Miss Inclen, God lover, she was, I'm sure she was a great teacher, but I didn't know anything. I didn't, I really, I still don't even to this day, know what pre-cal is. I still think it's, I think it's just what comes before the cal. [laughter] They're gonna revoke my adjunct teaching position after they hear that, they're gonna kick me out.
[laughter]
0:14:39.2 DN: As a fellow adjunct, I... But I've been doing it for 16 years and they haven't, they haven't not rehired me yet, so...
0:14:49.3 JD: Well, that's good to know. That's good to know. I've been doing adjunct work in some capacity since 2010. So I'm not far behind you there.
0:14:58.0 DN: This, that your talk about, pre-cal reminded me of... Greg and I were talking about the other day an article I had read and I found it, it's Lockhart's Lament and it's about teaching math. And of course they're, the first thing he does to say why we teach math wrong is to imagine a musician waking... Having a nightmare where instead of letting kids play music, they force them to just write down notes on a page and know their modes and scales. And we don't actually do music till we get to college. And we were talking about the problem that sometimes music teaching does look a little too much [chuckle] like that. But...
0:15:53.5 JD: Well, I think teaching in general can sometimes look like that, because what happens is and all of you are educators, there's a certain amount of fear that every educator has that they won't know the answer, that they won't know the right path, that they'll lose control of the classroom. And so in order to alleviate those fears, they find a box, they find their lane, they find their path and they get in it and they stay in it because it's comfortable. It's easy. And you don't know what you don't know if you don't get out of the, where you do know, does that make sense? You stay there. And I think that's the problem that we have is that we're just afraid. And some of the fears are valid, especially in public education world, there's a lot of testing going on, you're constantly being evaluated as a teacher, but I think if our administrators who are doing that would read our book and understand the brain benefits of playfulness, your scores are going to increase because your kids are going to be more engaged.
0:17:03.5 JD: They're gonna have these emotional connections to the learning. They're going to feel better about themselves, about each other. The playful classroom is also an empathetic classroom. It's a compassionate classroom. It's a classroom where people are not afraid to take risk with their learning, and maybe even not afraid to take risk with their own personal adventure, you know? Like in a playful classroom, maybe some kid will come to school with a crazy new hairdo because he just felt adventurous that day, and knew that in his playful classroom, he would be loved and accepted. So I will never understand why we hold so tightly to those fears when the evidence is so blatantly obvious, that this helps our students. And it helps you, the teacher. I think we need to address that too. You said it, David, you feel your best when it's that way in the classroom. Leah, Greg, what do y'all think? I mean, when the classroom feels more playful, how do you, as an educator feel?
0:18:11.8 LS: You can't match the level of engagement, no matter the age of the students that you're teaching. When everybody is involved in playing and those light bulbs are going off, whether you know it, whether they know it or not, that is just...
0:18:26.0 LS: The best kind of learning.
0:18:28.6 GR: Totally, and also the freedom to... You learn so much, so quickly about what students know or don't know when you're playing because you just... You see it, you see it in the choices that they make, and you can direct towards that in a way that's a lot easier than if you've got your fixed PowerPoint or whatever.
0:18:49.6 JD: Yeah, 'cause 99% of the time when you're delivering the PowerPoint, you're focused on the PowerPoint. Are your word spelled right? Are you flowing correctly? Did you advance the slide too fast? When the students are playing, that gives you a moment as an educator to truly just watch and to take it in and to listen and to sometimes participate alongside with your students? There's numerous times when I was in my second grade classroom when I was right there beside the students, playing with them, so it gave me a first-hand account of not only their academic ability, but their social ability, their mental ability, how were they... Were they able to handle if something went wrong and if they weren't able to handle it, what triggered them to go the wrong way? Why did they get frustrated? It's just... I just don't know why anybody doesn't wanna have a playful classroom, but they're out there, and that's why we have this podcast, and that's why we have this book, so we can help educate them.
0:19:54.5 GR: I think the reality is that a few of us were taught with a play throughout our learning, it's like... I remember a certain amount of play in some classes, physics class, where we'd be given a challenge and just the whole day to figure out a way to try and solve how far away are we from San Francisco based on the sun shadows or like... Those are some of the most formative learning experiences of my life where it was just like, Just play, just see if you can figure out a way to do it.
0:20:24.6 JD: Yeah.
0:20:26.4 GR: But it's certainly not how most of us were taught all the time, I was so struck reading the playful classroom by... This is gonna sound a little weird, but by what serious business play is, how much really interesting research there is around it in psychology and sociology. Could you talk a little bit about the concept of deep play?
0:20:46.8 JD: Well, you've all experienced deep play, whether you knew it was called deep play or not, think about those moments where you just were completely lost in time, where you started a project or you started a game, and then you looked at your clock and you're like, "Oh my gosh, it's been four hours. We've been doing this for four hours." I think of a deep play, it's very similar to like working a puzzle. Now, I know a lot of people are gonna hear that and they're gonna be like, Oh, that sounds horrible. Working a puzzle, because working a puzzle to some people is just boring, I get it, but if you've ever worked a puzzle, especially with another person, you can get lost in it very easily because your mind becomes fixated on finding that one little piece to make that connection and when you find that one little piece to make that connection, what happens in your brain, you're like, "Ahh, I did it, I did it. I found the piece." Right? You're so excited. And then guess what, you're ready to find the next piece, because what happens is all of that, those endorphins just are like, Ah-Ah-Ah, they got a hold of you and you like you found that piece.
0:22:00.5 JD: And maybe it's not, maybe it's not a puzzle for you, maybe it's being on the golf course and finally making an amazing shot from the bunker into the hole... Like like dude did on Masters a couple of weeks ago. Maybe it is decorating your house and getting that flower in the vase just at the right spot after hours of arranging. So the deep play is digging into that deep inner self of what satisfies you, what brings you joy, what brings you contentment and peace, and a lot of times, our mistake with play is that we think it's what little kids do in the yard with blocks, and it is that, but it's also much, much more than that. And I think that as we dig deep into our understanding of what play looks like as an adult, because I don't think that we talk enough about that. We have these fun cliches, work hard, play hard, and play hard usually means like go to the bar and have drinks after work or something, but I think if we learn how to bring that work and play together, that is what helps us define the deep play.
0:23:14.2 JD: For example, you've seen how some companies are. They provide play bikes during the middle of the day for their employees, they have foosball tables and ping pong tables and all that's great. I love a play break, but imagine if you could somehow figure out how to make the work itself playful. For example, if you're a Mason and you lay bricks all day... Right. Okay, you're scooping out the cement, you're laying the brick, you're scooping out the cement, laying the brick, if you can somehow make a pattern, Boomchik-Boomchik-chikaboom, you've turned it into a playful and next thing you know, you've laid 500 bricks and it was 'cause you were singing and you were playing and you got lost in the deep play of it all, and just that I turned it into music that just was bonus for your listeners.
[laughter]
0:24:05.4 JD: I just remembered where I was, all of a sudden, notes from the staff. That was some ideas for the staff right there.
[laughter]
0:24:17.7 DN: I don't know if you all know that I collaborated with the planetarium at JMU to write a bunch of science songs for their space camp, and because they were tracking... They were doing pre-testing and post-testing for this camp, we were actually able to publish a paper about the value of songs with movements in teaching these science concepts, and there is...
0:24:53.5 JD: I need you to send me that link. I would need to read that.
0:24:56.0 DN: I will send it to you. Yeah, there is a... The first year they actually had a loss of learning on this one topic, and then the year they introduced my song, it was very high, it was very high the next year, and it was only low the third year because the pre-testing was so high and you can't do better than a 100% on post-testing.
[laughter]
0:25:22.6 JD: Yeah, you guys know this because you are music experts and you understand how that is an emotional connection. Even for kids that don't like to sing, the music gets stuck in their head. It finds that little place and it rests there. That's why I like to write. Specifically, I like to write parodies instead of writing my own original music, because that way when they hear that song out in the world, it connects back to learning. I love it when a kid... I had a kid of mine... I wrote lots of parodies too. It's a small world.
[laughter]
0:25:58.5 JD: Because... I did, to the same, to the same tune, because number one, the kids knew it, number two, I knew it, I knew the chords, I knew the basic chords, and I can just go over and play it. Right? And so I wrote parodies to "It's a small world," and I would have kids go to Disney World and ride "It's a Small World", and they would come back and they'd be like, Mister Dearybury, they were using your song.
[laughter]
0:26:19.5 JD: They are thinking it was a my song, and I would try to tell them, No, this is not my song, I didn't write this. I would set it up, but then they would go down there and parents would come back and say, Mr. Dearybury, we were at Disney World and we were riding the ride, and it's a small world was singing, singing, singing, and all my kid was doing, "There are seven continents, there are seven continents" and they would let me run through this amazing ride, but my students were singing about the seven continents that we had learned. Music is essential to the playful classroom, you gotta have it in some form or fashion.
0:27:02.1 LS: And that applies to adults as well. I watched the snippet on YouTube from one of your professional development sessions where you used "It's a Small World" and "I'm so glad I get to teach" has been stuck in my head for the last week.
0:27:12.5 JD: I'm so glad I get to teach. Yeah, I'm glad you watched that. That's fun. I gotta ask you this, Leah. Was I dressed as a squirrel?
0:27:24.4 LS: No.
0:27:24.5 JD: Or was I dressed just in normal clothes?
[laughter]
0:27:26.5 LS: Normal clothing.
0:27:26.5 JD: Okay, so what you saw, that video that you saw was the very first time I ever sang that song. So it's gotten so much better since then, and now sometimes I dress as a squirrel when I sing that, and it's a whole big production of a keynote that I do, but maybe one day you'll get to see it live and in person. And I'll sing that song and be dressed as a squirrel and you're gonna remember our time together here, you'll be like, I remember him singing that. Oh.
0:27:54.9 GR: So, there were so many things that really struck me in reading the playful classroom. The one that I think just absolutely bowled me over was the idea of play personalities and also of the 16 types of play. I wonder if you could dive into those a bit because I think they're, especially maybe helpful if we're thinking about how to make our contents more playful.
0:28:19.0 JD: I wish that I could take credit for that research and those words... It's just amazing, Dr. Stuart Brown, if you all don't know who he is out there in the listening world, look him up, he's America's leading play researcher that he's like our play guru that we go to and ask questions. Julie and I both had read his work for several years, and then we got involved with the US Play Coalition based out of Clemson University, and they have a conference every year the first week in April. And we go to the conference and there's Stuart Brown, there he comes and we just were blown away that he was at this conference and that he just... He's like milling around, just like hanging out, there wasn't a line a mile long to see him, he was just out and about. And we had this moment where the conference led us in this big group dance, and they were giving us all these different ways to dance and we were... Every time they changed the dance, we had to find a new partner, and one of the ways that we dance was like Spider-Man, and Julie and I did the Spider-Man dance with Stuart Brown, and we were like freaking out. And so we got to know him and he wrote the forward for our book, and the play personalities and the types of play. Those are... That's his work.
0:29:47.8 JD: The play personalities, I think is so beneficial for educators because it's basically helping us get a glimpse into who the student is, to understand who they are and understand how to craft experiences for them. For example, there are eight different play personalities, and I'm going to try to name them all, but I have a little help here. The viewers won't see this, but we have these little posters that we made to help us remember them all, they're out there in the world on my webpage somewhere. Storyteller, Kinesthete... Yeah, Storyteller, Kinesthete, Competitor, Director, Explorer, Joker, Collector, Creator. And in the book, Julie and I came up with a very non-scientific quiz to help you identify yourself a little bit. Think of it like one of those quizzes you used to take in the Teeny Bopper magazines back in the '80s. I don't know what the age group of your listeners are, but surely, they'll know what I'm talking about, but that's what we based it off of. So it's not scientific, but I will tell you almost everybody who has done the quiz has been like, Yeah, that's kind of me, or they say, Well, I got two or three different personalities.
0:31:06.6 JD: Well, that's true too. And depending on your mood, you can be all of these, and I think being aware of the different play personalities is the most important thing as an educator, so that you could craft experiences over time that hit on all of these. Storyteller, I think that's obvious as somebody who likes to tell a story, but also likes to listen to stories, likes to build stories. I thought that Storyteller was gonna be my highest one, because I am very much a storyteller. Public speaking is what I do for most of my work when I'm not in the adjunct career, so I thought storytelling would be mine, it wasn't. We'll get to mine in a minute. Kinesthete, the person who likes to move. A little bit of behind the scenes about that. When Julie and I were writing the book, we kept typing the word Kinesthete into our document and Google wanted to correct that to kinesthetic. And we were like, No, this is Kinesthete is the noun, the person who likes to move and it's in Stuart's work, and we kept using it and it wouldn't even find it anywhere, so we Googled it, and the only place we could find it was in Stuart's work.
0:32:18.1 JD: It wasn't in the dictionary, it wasn't in encyclopedia, it wasn't anywhere. So when we saw Peter, I mean saw Stuart at the play conference, we said, Hey, tell us about this word. He was like, Oh, I made it up. I just made up that word. [laughter] And I guess if you're America's leading play researcher, you can just make up words, so we rolled with it, and that's what we use. Competitor, obviously, the person who likes games, wants to win. Director, think of the director as the person who is behind the scenes organizing, organizing the podcast, getting everything set up, inviting the guest Greg to be on the show. Maybe David is the person who does all the editing, that's very a Director job too, I think.
0:33:05.2 JD: Next up is the Joker. And no surprise, maybe after this podcast, listening to me, this was the one I scored the highest on. I was a little bit shocked, but I think Joker and Storyteller do go hand-in hand, because if you're a good storyteller, you gotta be able to make people laugh in the middle of that, to keep them involved and engaged. And so the Joker is somebody who loves to laugh with others, not necessarily to tell jokes or to be the butt of the joke, but that's...
0:33:36.2 JD: The next one is Collector, which was also very high on my list, and at first I was like, I don't think that's accurate. But if you could see my home office for the benefit of you all... Okay, look over here. Do you see those rainbow cans?
0:33:53.3 DN: Yeah.
0:33:53.9 JD: Every one of those has a different... Every one of those has a different set of pins in it, pins are markers, so I guess I am a little bit of a collector, I don't know. Then there's the Explorer, and this is not just a person who likes to travel, but it's also somebody who likes to try new things, adventurous, just walking around the neighborhood and looking at the world through a fresh lens, but of course travel is on that list. And then there's the Artist Creator, which also was on my list, I think the top three for me are Joker Collector and Creator. Now, why is that important for me as an individual? Well, it helps me to know better what I like and what's gonna connect with me the most. Taking that into the education world, if you had all that information about your students, then when you're sitting there planning your idea, you're not gonna put some kid who hates competition in a game, in a leadership role.
0:34:55.9 JD: You're gonna come up with a different path for that student and you say, Oh well, I don't have time to come up with all these different ways and ideas. Sometimes the ideas just unfold themselves, so if it's a game that you are wanting to do, then why not let the kid who hates the game maybe be the Director of the game. Maybe while the kid is watching the game, he can sketch note or doodle what's happening in the game, so he's still participating in the game, but it takes the competition part out and it's very simple to do, and that you just give that kid another path, but is the learning still happening? Yes, because whatever his play personality is, he's connecting to it in a way, he's connecting to the learning in a way that's meaningful to him.
0:35:43.2 JD: You also mentioned the different types of play. They're 16 different types of play, I won't go through all of those because it would just be boring to listen to me talk about them, get the book, read it. But knowing the different types of play, there's a poster that we have in the book that's also on the website. I encourage teachers to have that poster handy just so they can look at it and think, Oh, how could I drop this kind of play into my classroom? How could that be a director or a artist creator or a storyteller in my classroom? Because what this does, it broadens your teacher toolbox, but it also broadens it in a way that brings meaningful relevance and fun into your classroom.
0:36:29.8 GR: That's awesome.
0:36:30.0 JD: And I hope all that makes sense.
0:36:33.4 GR: Yeah.
0:36:33.4 JD: If it doesn't make sense, I'm available to come and do professional development in your school and we can make it happen in person.
0:36:41.1 GR: Jed, I have to tell you, after reading about the play personalities, like the very next day, I was in the classroom and working with a group of kids, and we were doing this ball game, which involved one student partners, one student bouncing the ball to another student as that student tossed another ball, and it was not going great, and this is a very competitive class, and I just said, Oh, wait a second, I said, Let's make this a game. I say... As I said, Okay, so we're gonna do three rounds as we sing the song, and the group that can keep going the longest without their ball flying all over the room wins, they were so into that game, I couldn't leave that exercise, it was like... They said.
0:37:22.0 GR: Okay wait. Let's do it faster. Okay wait, what if we did it... I was just... I scored lowest on the competitor. It's not where I think at all.
0:37:31.2 JD: Yeah, me too. Me too. I mean... Not me.
[laughter]
0:37:34.6 GR: But wow, did that induce the class.
0:37:37.9 JD: I have some deep seated trauma from one year in little league baseball... And when I was in sixth grade, it was traumatic. And so that did me in with competition. But it's amazing how you saw the impact just immediately. Just a little tweak of the game... Or the experience into a game, and then what happened was the student started coming up with ways to level it up.
0:38:02.8 JD: One of the things I talk about a lot in my work with just... I call it level up. And it's just taking something just one little step from where it is to an upward space. And 99% of the time those kids were... Once you give them that freedom and permission to know that they don't have to do exactly as you told them, that they can level it up just a little bit... That's what happens.
0:38:29.8 JD: And they had ownership of it then... It sounds... They said, "Let us do this. Let's try this." And thankfully, you had sense enough to give them that freedom instead of being like, "No, you have to do what I say." You know... Of course, you have to have safety parameters and make sure they're staying on content, but within that parameter, you gave them the freedom that they needed. And it sounds like... You said you couldn't pry them away from it.
0:38:53.4 LS: So how does a teacher, no matter the age that they teach or the subject that they teach... How do you create this culture? How do you get your classroom and your students to a place where everyone feels safe and free to play?
0:39:08.7 JD: Well, it starts prior to even the first day of school... Or the first day of the semester, whatever you're doing. It has to be... And this is why we wrote the follow-up, the playful life. It has to be a part of who you are to some extent. I don't think you can manufacture this. I don't think that you can force it. I think it's something that has to be... You're willing to cultivate it in your own personal life... Daily practice.
0:39:42.3 JD: I will be honest with you, there are some days I am not in a playful mood... Okay... That just happens. We're just in a grumpy mood... Maybe something happened that upset us. That is where you have to dig deep into your own personal play history and who you are as a playful person to get through that in your... So it can come into your teaching. If not, it's gonna crash and burn. You're gonna let that mood get into your classroom.
0:40:08.7 JD: So I think a lot of just personal practice is the first thing that you have to do. Second of all, I think that it's something that you model to your students on a daily basis. And it doesn't have to be just in the way that you deliver content, it's the way that you... If you teach at... The age group where kids have to line up to leave the room... Just in the way they line up. Create a playful way for them to do that. Create a playful way for materials to be passed out.
0:40:41.8 JD: One of the things I loved in my classroom was to create a playlist geared to students in the classroom... Ask them what their favorite song is... Okay. Ask them what their favorite songs, and then create a playlist of just their favorite songs. And whenever their favorite song comes on, that is three minutes for them to dance, to wiggle, to go give their friend a high five... Whatever. It's a great way to introduce a brain break. It builds a culture of play. It gives them freedom to understand that, "Hey, those moments are coming where I'm gonna get my turn to play." And it sets the ground work for you to invite play into the other areas.
0:41:22.1 JD: So I have been in classrooms where a teacher is very strict. Sit in your seat, face the front, in your rows... And then all of a sudden they say, "Oh, now we're gonna play a game." The kids don't know what to do because they don't... They don't know if they're allowed to get into the game... Are we allowed to make noise? And the teacher's like, "Oh yeah. Yeah. Get into it. Get into it. But the teachers never invited them... Never modeled for them how to get into it. Does that make sense?
0:41:51.7 JD: You can't just flip on the switch, and all of a sudden they play... I was in a kindergarten classroom one time... This was heartbreaking to me. I was in a kindergarten classroom and I was doing this lesson with tin foil. Y'all may call it... Look at me, I'm code-switching with y'all. I said foil. It's tin 'foal'. That's the way I say it down here. Tin 'foal'. Y'all might say aluminium foil. But anyway, I was doing... Doing a lesson with foil, and I passed out a piece about a foot long to each kid. And instinctively kids should wanna touch it to make noise with it, maybe even wrinkle it up before hand. These kids were terrified and they sat there and they did...
0:42:40.1 JD: They wouldn't even touch it. Even after I gave them permission, they didn't know what to do with it. They were like, "What do you want us to do?" I was like rip it up. Ball it up. Twist it. And they were just... Kept flattening it with their hands. And one of them said, "We don't wanna mess it up." And I began to think in any other kindergarten classroom I'd been in that wouldn't happen... What was going on in that classroom was so structured. The kids were afraid to experience that.
0:43:05.3 JD: So when you think about how do you... Your question was, how do you start this in your classroom... You have to give kids the freedom that they need. Kids instinctively have this play drive in them... You can go anywhere in the world, and regardless of the kids' social status, economic status, racial status, sexual... Whatever their sex... Kids all around the world have an ability to play instinctively. But when they're in an environment where that is controlled and squashed, they're reserved.
0:43:42.4 JD: And that's what was happening in that kindergarten classroom, is that the model hasn't been set... The freedom wasn't there, and it wasn't part of the teacher's daily practice in her own life. And I knew that teacher personally, and it definitely was... The reason I was even in that room is 'cause she thought that I was just saying a bunch of hog wash and she said, "I need you to come to my room and show me. My kids can't do this."
0:44:06.4 JD: So I went down there. And she was right. They couldn't at first, but by the time I was done with them, they were making little trees and nests and birds and eggs. And we had a great lesson on where do birds go at night... And it was all focused on sculpting with tin foil while we were learning.
0:44:24.5 JD: And a great story, a year later, after that experience, I was at the grocery store... Literally across the street from the school that I had worked at... And a little girl came up to me and she said, "Are you Mr... " She was... First grade and she had a little problem with 'R'. She said, "Are you Mr. Dearybury?" I was like, "I am Mr. Dearybury." She said, "You're the bird man." I was like, "The bird man?" And she said, "Yeah. You came to my school and taught us about birds."
0:44:53.8 JD: A year later, she remembered me being in her kindergarten classroom talking to her about birds. And it's because... I'm a firm believer... It's because we had this emotional experience where we connected with the tin foil. And probably it was probably the first time they had gotten to play in a while based on their reaction there at the beginning. So... I hope that answers your question Leah. Three tip there. Personal practice, modeling and freedom for the kids to explore... And I'm gonna write that down 'cause I liked it.
0:45:31.0 DN: I do... I tell people that... I tell my students that any good thing I do as a teacher is based on me just trying to channel all of my best teachers that I had. And so I guess if you've had a teacher who was playful, then that gives you a model. And if you haven't... What do you do?
0:45:56.8 JD: Do the opposite of everything that teacher did... I don't know... You know what I think about my own teaching career. I had a... And maybe this was why I was drawn to second grade... I don't know. My second grade teacher was not great. She was... I had her the year that... Remember when the Challenger tragedy with the space shuttle... That was the year that I had her.
0:46:25.0 JD: And every second grade classroom was watching the Challenger that day. Now, we didn't know how it was gonna end up. Nobody knew what... The traumatic event that was about to happen. But our second grade class wasn't watching that day, 'cause we had work to do. She was just a mean teacher. She wouldn't call me... My initials are JED and that's how I get Jed. My name is John Edwin Dearybury III. And she refused to call me Jed.
0:46:55.1 JD: She would say if... She said to me, "If your momma wanted you to be called Jed she should have put that on your birth certificate. Now have a seat John. Have a seat."
0:47:05.2 DN: Oof.
0:47:05.7 JD: She was just horrible. Call the kids by the name they wanna go through... Let them be a part of the grade level experiences... That teacher was just... I think back on all the things that she did. She had us sitting in rows, whereas other teachers were starting to experiment with groups during that time.
0:47:22.9 JD: I mean, I get it. It was the mid-80s, so grouping wasn't exactly a popular seating at that time, but they were starting. We didn't do anything fun in her classroom. I remember there was this other teacher down the hall, you'd go by her room and she had stuff hanging from the ceiling and they were out in the hall making stuff. And what were we doing? Sitting in our desk facing the front. And I can't remember anything learning wise from second grade. So if you had a teacher like that, just do the opposite of everything she did... Just opposite.
0:47:55.9 LS: I was just gonna say, do you have any tips or any advice for teachers who face naysayers? Teachers who are inherently playful, and... I think back to when I started teaching and it was an elementary school and there were chairs and desks in the room, and I wanted them gone. And I was looked at like I had three eyes and a horn sticking out of my head.
0:48:19.2 JD: Oh yeah... Look, I have been there Leah, many, many times. I have faced the naysayers... And I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna pretend like, it's not difficult. Those naysayers are hard because sometimes those naysayers are teachers that you thought that you loved and respected in the profession. They are people who've been doing it for a long time, so there's definitely a... I always give credence to those who have been teaching longer than me. But I also know that teaching is very evolutionary and that it changes over time, because society changes over time.
0:48:58.2 JD: Kids today are not the same in many ways as 50 years ago, but in many ways, they are... So we have to be evolutionary in our teaching so we can reach the students that we have. And so it's hard to face the naysayers. But I will tell you that's why... If you read the book, I wrote the specific section on the excuses that we have. And one of the excuses was my admins won't like it, or my colleagues won't like it. All I can say to you is that usually naysayers respond to data. They respond to scientific research. They value those things.
0:49:42.9 JD: So carry this book around with you everywhere you go, highlight it and mark it up... Put tabs on it, so you'll know exactly where to flip when somebody says something... There's a specific story in the book where I talk about an instructional coach coming to watch a lesson that I was doing... A sample lesson... A Skype in the classroom lesson... Where we Skyped with an Arctic expert... A Penguin expert who was in an Antarctica. Her name's Jean Pennycook.
0:50:17.5 JD: And it was... Amazing experience. We spent a whole hour with Jean, learning about penguins on Antarctica. And the very first thing that instructional coach said to me when we walked out of that room... She said, "You know at our school, we like to focus on the standards and penguins aren't really standards for third grade." And I said, "No. But this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this." I rattled off like 10 different standards that we had covered during that experience, but she was so fixated on penguins that she forgot of all the other things that we were doing. So I think in order for you to respond to the naysayers, you have to be aware of what you're doing. Don't try... If you know that naysayers are around you, don't try to fly by the seat of your pants. Arm yourselves with knowledge.
0:51:06.9 JD: Know what's best for your kids. Know what's best for their curriculum. Know that you are doing a great job in spite of what they say. Because sometimes those people look with a very narrow lens. And I hate to say this, but sometimes administrators look with a very narrow lens. They look at their checklist and not at this big holistic picture. And because they didn't say two or three things on their checklist, maybe they think, "Oh, well, that teacher didn't do what she was supposed to," or he was supposed to. And I think if you are armed with the knowledge of what you're doing, then that's gonna help fight the naysayers.
0:51:41.2 JD: Another thing too, I'm gonna tell you... You have to ignore some of the naysayers. I don't know if you all have read on Ron Clark's book, Move Your Bus. Have y'all ever heard of that book? Do you know who Ron Clark is? You should look... Look Ron Clark up. He has an amazing school in Atlanta. He's got a book called Move Your Bus, and he talks about in that book how there are different types of teachers.
0:52:06.7 JD: Some of them are go-getters. They're the ones... Think of the bus being like a Flintstones bus with everybody's feet dangling at the bottom... You know... And it's those feet that are moving the bus forward. There are some feet that run, there are some feet that walk, but there are some teachers that have their feet up in the seat and they're not giving anything to the bus. And guess what, they're never gonna put their feet down.
0:52:31.5 JD: And every time you try to get them to put your feet... Put their feet down to power the bus, you are taking energy away from yourself, from your students from the colleagues who are invested and you're giving them too much attention to put their feet down when they've already made up their mind... They're not part of it anyway, and they don't wanna be.
0:52:49.6 JD: And so there comes a time where you have to just ignore some of the naysayers and say, "You know what, the evidence is here. I'm gonna go this path, you do your path, and I wish you well." Because if not, the naysayers can suck life out of you and take away from your playful life. Trust me. I have to tune out naysayers a lot. They comfort me sometimes on Twitter, and I just have to just put my ear muffs on and tune them out.
0:53:18.3 GR: Jed, I have to say, as you were talking about the checklists I recognize a bit of myself in that description. That I often think, "Oh gosh, I really have to get through these things." What would you say to someone like me... I want to involve more play in my teaching, but I'm really worried about losing out on time to cover everything I need to cover.
0:53:39.2 JD: Well, I'm gonna free you up right here. Give yourself grace and give yourself time. Grace and time helps a lot because this is not something that you can go into your classroom tomorrow, Greg, and totally upend everything that you've done for decades. And not only that you've done for decades, but probably... Like you said earlier, that has been modeled for you by your teachers. I would gather to say that most of you when you were in your higher ed institution as a pre-service teacher, you were taught in a very traditional way, how to be a teacher.
0:54:13.8 JD: So we're undoing a lot of years and decades of training. So give yourself some grace there. But also give yourself some time. Because what will happen as you become a more playful teacher, you will begin to look at those things that you have to do with new eyes, with new lens of, "Hmm, maybe I could try this to make that more playful." Right now, you might have to keep doing it like you've been doing it. But over time, as your playful spirit grows... We talk about it in the book, the playful mindset.
0:54:48.8 JD: The playful mindset begins to grow and helps you start to see things in your everyday life that can become more playful. A prime example of how the playful mindset grows... Used to when I would come on a podcast like this in the morning and I would get my tea ready... I would be frantically trying to get my tea ready, but now I've turned it into a game. I know exactly how many seconds I have from the time I close the curing lid until the time tea is ready. So I know that I can come in here, get my computer turned on... Log in... And I've got my timer set. I'm like, James Bond around the house.
0:55:26.8 JD: That didn't happen at the beginning... To make the connection to what you're saying... As a teacher, I fully understand that we all have those checklists of things that we have to get done. Don't try to flip your classroom completely upside down and just play all day every day at the onset. You have to give yourself grace and time to grow into this, to understand this.
0:55:53.7 JD: Think about your first year of teaching. Were you good your first year of teaching? No. Nobody was. Anybody who says they were... They're lying. They don't even know... Maybe a third year teacher would say, "Oh yeah, I was so good." They don't know what they don't know yet. Give it 10 years and then look back and you'll be like, "Oh my God, how did any of those kids survive my class, right? But you did the best you could. And over time, you have grown in that practice. Playful teaching is the same way. It takes time for you to begin... Like if you're looking... If you're an algebra teacher and you have to teach the quadratic formula... I don't even know if I said that right. Quadratic formula... Equation. I don't know.
0:56:34.0 JD: I taught elementary school. Anyway, whatever you're having to teach, you may have a very set way that you have to teach it for now, but as that playful mindset grows, you'll begin to look at it in a different way and maybe come up with an idea that who knows is revolutionary, and you put it on YouTube and go viral, and everybody wants to copy you, and the next thing you know, people are inviting you to your school to teach that playful way of how to teach that quadratic formula equation, whatever. Time and grace, Greg. Time and Grace.
0:57:04.4 GR: Another thing I've started to realize is the things that if I teach them in a very traditional way, if I ask the students about those two weeks later, they don't remember them. It's like we never did that.
0:57:17.8 JD: They don't know anything, they don't know. They don't know. Look, I remember more about the American Revolution from a rap that my student teacher wrote than I ever learned in any textbook, any class that I ever took about US History. Because she talked about the Stamp Act, the Tea Act, she talked about all those things, and she wrote it to a rap. And the rap was so good, then we put it in our class musical that we did, our grade level Musical, we taught it to the other kids, it's just... I don't know, you've got to think of non-traditional ways to deliver the content, you've got to. Because look, you're competing... As much as I hate it, you're competing with YouTube and TikTok, and look, I think... Look, if you really wanna be a great teacher, figure out a way to put every bit of your content into a TikTok. I'm serious. Figure out a way to put all of your content into a TikTok. Your kids will nail the test, I promise, if you can figure out... 'cause that's where they're at. That's where they're at. They're swiping through those TikToks, those reels. If you could figure out how to... Now, you don't have to really put it on TikTok unless you'd want to, but if you could figure out how to deliver look and just those little bits.
0:58:37.4 JD: That's where the minds are, give me little bits, little chucks. And guess what? TikTok is playful. 'cause there's dancing going on. There's this, the fun ones where the little things pop up on the screen.
[vocalization]
0:58:51.3 JD: I hate that people aren't seeing me 'cause I'm giving some really good motions here. [laughter]
0:58:56.5 GR: We can put some clips up, actually. It might be...
0:59:00.0 JD: It might... I mean, please put some clips up because I do better in person. People are gonna listen to my voice and they're gonna be like, Lord, he's just a southern redneck from South Carolina, he didn't... I'm better when people can see me.
[laughter]
0:59:15.8 GR: That's great. You mentioned the playful mindset. Early on in the playful classroom, you quoted Dr. Anthony Benedet, who identified imagination, sociability, humor, spontaneity and wonder as elements of that mindset, I highlighted that and I wrote... I wrote in my book. I wrote this is a recipe for play, 'cause it really... I just... I...
0:59:38.9 JD: It is. It is a recipe for play that came from his book, playful intelligence, it is a recipe for play, because each of those components is so vital to the playful spirit and in the playful mindset. So the more you cultivate those specifically like spontaneity in the classroom invites playfulness. I'll give you a classic example of what spontaneity in the classroom looks like. Several years ago, I was... Someone nominated me for the Presidential Award for excellence in math and science teaching. You all mentioned that at the beginning of the show, I got to meet Obama, so you know that I won the award. But as part of the award, I had to record a 45-minute video of my teaching. 45 minutes in second grade, it might as well have been a marathon y'all. I'm just telling you, that was an incredible amount of time, and I was like, There's no way there's that it's gonna be 45 minutes of me lecturing from the board, obviously. So there was about five minutes of that and then I let them go with their Lego Robotics, they had a challenge that they were doing. This was actually when I taught third grade.
1:00:45.4 JD: And so they were doing their robotics, doing their robotics, and right in the middle of the lesson, there was this huge splash in the pond that was right outside of our classroom window. We had one of those ornamental goldfish ponds that had been sponsored by our PTA and there was this huge splash, and I'll never forget it. One of the kids said, "Mr. Dearybury, it's a bullfrog, it's the bullfrog." And we knew that there was a bullfrog that had been living in the pond because we often heard him splash going into the water, and we never... So we would run over there and never saw him, but this particular time he was jumping out of the water. So right there in the middle of the video, all the kids leave their robots, run across the room to... They're all glued to the window, and I had this moment where I was like, I can freak out, I can get them back on task. Or I can be spontaneous and we can roll with it. And this particular group, I knew what they had learned in second grade about the amphibians, and so we just had a little pop-up lesson about amphibians right there at the window, we went through the characteristics of amphibian, we sang our amphibian song, and then we went back to our robots.
1:02:06.2 JD: Now, we did have to repair one of the robots that got trampled when all the kids ran to the window, but every single judge for that award, on my feedback, every single judge, there was 10 of them, I think, commented on how the spontaneity of that moment added to my classroom experience, and that was a very playful moment. I could have... My second grade teacher would be like, "Get away from that window. Get back to your work... And that's what a lot of teachers would have done, that's what they would have done because they were so focused on the goal of the robotics lesson that they missed that spontaneity. What else happened at that window? There was some wonder, kids were in awe of the... And yeah. I'm telling you that was the biggest bull frog I've ever seen. I'm trying to think of something in the real world, but like, I'm showing you all about how big it was. It was as big as my head. It was as big around as my head, it was the biggest bullfrog I'd ever seen, and he sat there forever and just let us look at it and it was just amazing. There was... It was just a beautiful moment of play, and it captures like what you said, the recipe for play. I like that, I like that you named it that.
1:03:22.2 GR: This is great, I feel like it gives me a lot to think about. Maybe just one sort of last curve ball question, as I was thinking back on my own Music Education Training and Educational Psychology, I think about reading Pasulotsi and POJ and Ria Montessori and it seems like all of them kind of come from this mindset, and this is not a new thing.
1:03:51.0 JD: It is absolutely.
1:03:53.2 GR: Why do you think it hasn't taken over?
1:03:57.3 JD: Well, I don't wanna go to the canned answer, but it's the right answer, testing. The testing culture of our country squashed this. I think if you look back, the early childhood years really really embraced that POJ and Montessori life, even though now we call it a Montessori classroom or a Montessori school. Back in the day, I think a lot of what happened, and when I say back in the day, I mean when I was a kid, and before... I was a kid in the '80s. My kindergarten classroom was very playful. I remember the kitchen center and the Block Center, and the alphabet Center, and the Play door Center. I remember those things and a lot of that has been taken out of kindergarten, but... And the reason that those upper grades are even more fearful of the playful classroom is that we have developed this culture where test scores are the only thing that matter, and they think that the only way to get those test scores is to cram it all in there. You cram it all in there. Cram, cram, cram, cram, cram. It kills me when I hear a teacher say, Oh, I have to cover this. You are not a coverer, you are a teacher, your job is to teach that not to cover it. But what they're doing is operating on that checklist that's based on the standards, which leads to the test.
1:05:21.0 JD: And I get it. We're under a lot of pressure as teachers, so I'm not... I'm not faulting those teachers, but the question was, why has it not caught on? It's because somewhere between when POJ and Montessori and all that wrote their pedagogical beliefs, we've interjected it with this testing culture, and I don't know that they knew we were going that route.
1:05:46.1 JD: I don't think any of us did, but even in the '80s, I remember taking a BSAP test, we took a test called CTBS test. We used to have these rallies where they would psych us up for the test, you can do it, you can do it, you can beat that test. And it was ridiculous that we did this. So I think that's the number one answer. Number two, our American culture has a lot to do with it. Our American culture is very much work, work, work, work, work, work, work. And anything that's not, work, work, work, work, work cannot be... Lead you to success. I think that's why a lot of older people, and I'm gonna lump myself into that 'cause my generation is kind of becoming an older generation. I'm mid-40s now, that's why they look down on kids who make the TikToks and make the Instagram posts because they don't understand it, they think, Oh, they're just playing.
1:06:47.2 JD: But man, some of these kids have developed multi-million dollar businesses because of... They're just being silly and playing on their Instagram and their TikToks. I think some of these old people are jealous is what it's really... They can't make the millions of dollars. Right? I think our American culture has really distorted what play is and its benefits, I think if you look at cultures that there's always these studies that come out, or cultures that are the happiest around the world, the cultures that are happiest are the ones that don't focus so much on the work, work, work, work work. They have a good balance. And I think one of the ways for us to find that balance here at the beginning is by infusing more play into our work, that's why we want the playful classroom, that's why the playful life is coming. We want you to be playful everywhere, not just in little isolated pods, but we want you to learn that play can happen anywhere at any time with anybody. We... In the next book, we even talk about how you can play with strangers at a coffee shop. One of my favorite things to do is just look at a stranger in the coffee shop and throw up my rock, paper, scissors.
1:07:53.7 JD: Just throw it up, and... Rock, paper, scissors shoot. And sometimes you might have to do it two or three times before they catch on, but I promise you, if you do it, nobody can turn it down. Nobody can turn it down. Even the grumpiest old curmudgeon of a man if he knows the game, he is gonna throw up a rock... He's gonna play with you, I promise. Next time you're at a coffee shop, give it a try. Leah, I know it's a little scary to think about, you're going to have to... Look, you're gonna have to be vulnerable.
1:08:24.6 LS: You saw my face.
1:08:25.9 JD: I saw you, I saw you. You're gonna have to be a little vulnerable there, remember spontaneity part of the recipe, maybe just maybe just try it at a faculty meeting then. If you're sitting at a faculty meeting and just look, make eye contact, look. And this is all you have to do. You don't even have to bet, you don't have to go... All you have to do is like this, and then go and then mouths go, "One, two, three." Just mouth that one, two, three and then, "One, two, three." And then see how many times you win. Oh, let's make it fun, see how many times until you get caught. And then when you get a caught say, "Hey. Everybody, lets play rock, paper, scissors." A little bit of play even in the faculty meeting. Right. What do you think, David, are they gonna fire you if you do that?
1:09:05.2 DN: Possibly.
1:09:06.4 JD: You're an adjunct, you don't have to go, have to go. Wait, do you have to go to faculty meetings David?
1:09:11.6 DN: No, I don't. I don't. It's the blissful perk.
1:09:12.8 JD: Yeah, that's the best part of being an ad job. It is a perk. It is a perk. They pay us pennies, but I'll take those pennies so I don't have to go to that faculty meeting.
1:09:26.6 GR: Chad, this has been just wonderful. If people wanna... Sorry, if people wanna read the book or follow you, where can they find you?
1:09:35.7 JD: Well, I'm on social media, @Mr.Dearybury is my handle on Twitter, Instagram. Those are the two I'm most active on. I try to make TikToks, I'm trying to get better at it. But I'm not consistent, I think. But TikTok is another platform that you could connect with me with. Mr.Dearybury dot com is my consulting website where you can read about the consulting options I have, you can also order a book straight from me on the website. Of course, you can order on Amazon. You can pre-order the playful life on Amazon. I haven't got the pre-order up on my website yet, but should be soon, we'd love for you to order... If you order it straight from me, you get an autograph copy and you get some stickers. Amazon and... Amazon Abaser's, they don't have all that, and you just get a... Just a random copy that's sitting in some warehouse. But from me, you get one filled with love and my signature and Julie's and find a little sticker for your water bottle. Also if you wanna learn more about the playful classroom and see what resources we have out there, theplayfulclassroom.com is full of resources.
1:10:41.6 JD: Also, I wanna mention this, Julie and I do have an online course that goes with our book, it's through the company advancement courses. If you go to advancement courses, we have a... You type in Jen Julie in the search, type in The playful classroom. The official title of the course, I think is Let's Play, creating a playful classroom. You can get renewal credit or you can get grad credit, and you interact with Julie and I through the process we're your assessors. And it's a lot of fun. Our students are giving us rave reviews, and we would love to see some of you pop into the course there.
1:11:22.6 GR: Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining us. This has really been a playful fun hour together.
1:11:29.3 JD: Yeah, it's been a lot of fun for me too. A great way to start my day. And let me tell you all this too, I didn't mention this, but a couple of months ago, I started a little YouTube series called a Dearybury of a day. It is where you join me on a zoom call, just me and one other person, and we start our day with a moment of play, it's about 10 or 15 minutes. I come up with a game or an arts experience, or a dance or something that we can do together via Zoom. And then I record it and drop it out there in the world, and you can find it on my YouTube channel, which is also Mr. Dearybury. But if anybody out there wants to be a guest on my show and start your day with a moment of play, if you go to my Instagram, there's a link there where you can sign up for a date. I start as early as 6:00 AM. And my last one, is at 9:00... Yeah, I do look... And people have signed up for 6:00 AM. We get up and it's still dark outside, and I always show my phone what time it is so that people will know that we're starting our day with moment play. But my first recording... I record Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays.
1:12:39.2 JD: First recording is at 6:00, the last one's at 9:00, and I have 30-minute blocks that you can sign up for. So I would love to start the day with a moment of play, if anybody's out there wants to join me, I'd be happy to have you.
1:12:52.1 GR: Awesome. Very cool. Did we miss anything that we should have talked about?
1:12:57.1 JD: This was fantastic. I thought you all had some great questions... This was so much fun, thank you for allowing me the opportunity. I'm so tickled that you reached out and that the book is resonating with you all. And if you all ever need me again, let me know.
1:13:14.9 GR: Thank you.
1:13:15.9 LS: Thank you.
[music]
1:13:20.5 LS: Notes from the this stuff is produced by utheory.com.
1:13:22.1 GR: UTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
1:13:26.8 LS: With video lessons, individualized practice and proficiency testing. UTheory has helped more than 100000 students around the world, master the fundamentals of Music Theory, rhythm And ear training.
1:13:38.1 GR: Create your own free teacher account at utheory.com/teach.
[music]
Dr. Megan Kaes Long of Oberlin Conservatory joins us to talk about the earliest system of Western solfege, hexachordal solmization, and recent trends in music theory pedagogy.
Links: Dr. Megan Kaes Long's Oberlin Faculty Page
Long, Megan Kaes. Hearing Homophony: Tonal Expectations at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century
Early Music Sources: Solmization in the 16th Century
Smith, Anne. The Performance of 16th Century Music
Orlando DiLasso's Novae aliquot et ante hac non ita usitatae cantiones suavissimae
Show Notes: 00:00:20 Introductions
00:01:45 What is hexachordal solmisation?
00:04:10 The pattern of the hexachord
00:05:35 Mutation -- linking hexachords together to melodies beyond a range of a hexachord
00:06:30 Singing a scale with hexachordal solmisation
00:08:15 Relationship between mutation and points of imitation in Rennaisance music
00:10:00 Solmisation in Renaissance musical pedagogy, and the connection to improvisation
00:11:05 The Gamut
00:12:00 Renaissance names of notes, like "C sol fa ut"
00:15:40 The relationship of letter names and hexachordal solfege, and the question of octave equivalence
00:16:30 The Guidonian Hand
00:18:53 The "Do a Deer" of the Renaissance
00:20:40 The interconnectedness of the history of solfege and of staff notation
00:21:30 How do we get the other accidentals, besides B-flat, that aren't in the gamut?
00:24:50 What is musica ficta?
00:28:25 How does thinking in hexachordal solmisation change how you hear Renaissance music?
00:30:15 Puns and jokes in hexachordal solmisation
00:35:30 The intersection of movable and fixed solfege in hexachordal solmisation
00:37:00 Teaching and learning hexachordal solmisation
00:41:50 If we want to learn the basics of hexachordal solmisation, where should we start?
00:42:45 How is the field of music theory adapting to the changing world of music, and a desire to broaden the music that students are able to understand and analyze?
00:46:45 Oberlin's reframing of the music theory curriculum: Rhythm, timbre, melody, harmony and bass.
00:51:15 How might we refocus the music theory teaching we're doing at the high school level?
00:53:17 Do we have to sacrifice part writing for this?
00:55:53 Transforming the first-year theory curriculum from being a weed-out course, to become an entry point and gateway into learning music.
00:57:30 Wrapping up -- plus several conferences to be aware of
Transcript: [music]
0:00:03.9 Theme Song: These are the notes from the staff, where we talk about our point of view and we share the things we're gonna do and we're hope you're learning something new, 'cause the path to mastering theory begins with you.
0:00:21.1 David Newman: Welcome to Notes from the Staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.
0:00:35.3 Greg Ristow: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and Associate Professor of Conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
0:00:42.2 DN: And I'm David Newman, I teach at James Madison University and I write code and create content for uTheory. We have two topics for today, hexachordal solmization and recent trends in music theory pedagogy and with us to talk about both is Dr. Megan Kaes Long.
0:01:00.1 GR: Dr. Long is Associate Professor of Music Theory at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and a scholar of vocal music in the 16th and 17th centuries. She's the recipient of the 2021 Wallace Berry Award from the Society for Music Theory, the top award for music theory book for her work Hearing Homophony: Tonal Expectations at the Turn of the 17th Century. Her writing has appeared in the Journal of Music Theory and Music Theory Spectrum among others, and she's the editor of SMTV, the Society for Music Theory's video journal, we've put a link in the show notes. She's received numerous grants and fellowships including awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies. Megan, thanks so much for joining us.
0:01:42.3 ML: Thanks so much for having me. It's a delight to be here.
0:01:45.9 GR: I'm really excited for both of our topics today, hexachordal solmization is something I've heard a lot about over the years but not really done, we thought it'd be fun to chat about because it's this solfège pedagogy system that has a really rich history, but that is I think not something I know. David, have you done much hexachordal solmization?
0:02:07.9 DN: I've done almost none, but I have been super interested in historical pedagogical styles and part a mentee, and when I read about the book The Solfeggio Tradition, I ordered a copy and I started to read it, and so, I've found it incredibly interesting.
0:02:26.1 ML: Yeah, one of the things I really love about hexachordal solmization is that it sounds really scary, the word sounds really scary, hexachordal solmization, and when you read about it, it sounds impossible, how would you possibly do it? But it's actually pretty simple to learn and to put together, and it was invented to teach little children how to sing, just the same reasons that we use solfège today. And it's just as accessible and just as logical and approachable as any of the other kinds of solfège systems that we already use and we already teach, and especially if like me, you're immersed in music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, it is so illuminating and it really... The way they say, when you learn a new language, you start to think in a different way, I feel very much that way about singing Renaissance music using hexachordal solmization, I just hear the music differently, I make different musical connections. I feel like I have a much better understanding of how the composers and the musicians that they were writing for understood what they were doing, and that I find extremely exciting, it's like unlocking a door into the world of the Renaissance, which can be a hard place to access.
0:03:38.2 GR: So, what is hexachordal solmization? I think the only time I heard the word hexachordal, in my music theory training...
[laughter]
0:03:43.9 GR: Was poly-hexachordal combinatoriality, literally like...
0:03:46.8 DN: Oh, my gosh.
0:03:47.0 GR: Crazy 20th century set theory work. We're not talking about 6-Z7 hexachords, are we? What is this?
0:03:55.2 ML: Absolutely not, it is the opposite of that in every way. So hexachordal solmization is the original kind of solfège and it dates from the Middle Ages, and it was used all the way through the Renaissance, and a hexachord just means a six-note collection, hexa, six, six notes. And so the pattern of the hexachord is ut, re, mi, fa, so, la. So just like our modern do-re-mi-fa-so-la, except we use ut instead of do, and the idea in the Middle Ages was that the notes that were available to sing, the scale, the gamut, you could make that six-note pattern in three different places, so you could make it on F, using a B-flat, ut, re, mi, fa, so, la and you could make it on C with no B, ut, re, mi, fa, so, la. And then you could make it on G, I'm not in the right key, ut, re, mi, fa, so, la with a B natural. And so you have this one pattern and it can only be replicated at three places in the gamut, and those three places are important and distinct because the middle of our hexachord is our half step between mi and fa. And so the hexachord is always helping us orient to where the half step is. And so just like modern solmization helps us figure out where our half steps are, just exactly the same principle is supporting hexachords, just a little more flexible than modern solmization because the way the scale is constructed in the Renaissance is a little bit different and a little more flexible than the modern scale.
0:05:35.2 ML: The other thing that's important to understand about hexachords is that obviously most melodies have more than six notes in them.
[chuckle]
0:05:41.7 ML: Right? So the way it works is that you do what's called mutation, you mutate from one hexachord to another hexachord when you're extending beyond the range of your single hexachord, and it's by linking these hexachords together that you can fill out and sing a whole tune.
0:06:03.2 GR: So if we wanted to just sing what we think of now as a major scale, how could we do that since we don't have ti?
0:06:11.3 ML: Yeah, I think... Actually, I think the minor scales are a better way of demonstrating what's interesting about hexachords. Do you have a D? Could I get a D for the here?
0:06:19.3 DN: Yup.
0:06:20.2 ML: Okay, so say we wanted to sing a D Dorian scale, so all the white notes on the piano starting on D, so D, we're gonna start in the C hexachord. So D is gonna be re in the C hexachord, so I'm singing, re, mi, fa, so, la. And when we get to la, we're out of notes, so we need to mutate and since we're headed to B natural, we need the G hexachord 'cause that's the one with B natural in it. So we'll sing re, mi, fa, so, re, mi, fa, so.
0:06:52.5 ML: And that takes us right up our scale, notice that the low "Di-Re" and the high "Di-So" are actually different syllables, so we don't necessarily have octave equivalents in the syllables that we use, but the mutation from the C-hexachord to the G-hexachord makes sure that our half-step is in the right place. Now, say we wanted to sing a D-Aeolian scale, so we're gonna use a B-flat instead of a B-natural, then we need to mutate to the F-hexachord, instead of the G-hexachord, and that's gonna put our half-step in a different place, so we would sing... What would we sing? "Re-Mi-Fa-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La... Re-Mi-Fa-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La... " so we mutate just a teeny, tiny, bit earlier from the C-hexachord into the F-hexachord, and then that ensures that our half-step is between A and B flat, and we get our D Aeolian scale instead of our D Dorian scale. And this is useful because tunes built on D in the Renaissance will use both B natural and B flat, so once you get up to G A, you can kind of go either direction, depending on what your tune is doing.
0:08:02.3 DN: I noticed in both of those, that the text, as it were, of the scale kind of repeated itself. You started, when you mutated, it began with Re-Mi-Fa-So each time. Is that significant in terms of like... We think everyone starts music off having these points of imitation at different pitch levels, is that significant in the solfege system, that you sort of hear where those possible places of repetition are when you solfege?
0:08:29.8 ML: Absolutely. And this is one of the most fun things about singing Renaissance music on solmization. It doesn't work every time, but often when you have a motive and then it's imitated at the fourth or the fifth above or below, the motive will have the same solmization in every hexachord. So we might sing "Re-La-So-Fa-Mi-Re" and then another voice will sing "Re-La-So-Fa-Mi-Re" [laughter] so then you can hear these connections and then eventually, often, another voice will come in at a new pitch level and we'll introduce a new accidental. Then we get, "Re-La-So-Fa-Mi-Re" so the motivation for the introduction of, say, a B flat or something will come from the solmization, and this desire to maintain the solmization, and Renaissance music theorists even had a special name for imitation where the solmization stayed exactly the same. They called imitation that was diatonic, so where the half-steps might move around, they called that imitazione, and then imitation where the half-steps were exact and the solmization was exactly the same, they called fuga, the precursor to our word fuga. Yeah, and they're very insistent about this, and the treatises is like "No, no, no, no, no."
0:09:50.2 ML: "People said that This was fuga, but the syllables change, and fuga the syllables have to stay the same." So there's this real emphasis on how you're solmising, how you're singing the syllables, what their names are, that shapes what kind of imitation is happening.
0:10:06.4 GR: And obviously this was meant to teach singers, but I gather that it's also meant to teach other kinds of musicians, so that musicians were taught through singing. Is that fair to say?
0:10:18.9 ML: Absolutely, and it's important to remember that before anyone does any composing in the Renaissance, what they're doing is improvising. And so little children are taught to improvise pretty complex polyphonic music, and when a composer is notating music, is writing music out, what they're really doing is writing out a complex improvisation, and so having these patterns that repeat themselves in predictable ways is a really helpful strategy for successfully improvising and then successfully composing complex polyphony because you don't have to memorize as many combinations when you know that those combinations can be transposed by fifth without changing anything about the way your counterpoint is structured.
0:11:01.4 DN: If I'm tracking this right, you have access to B flat and B natural in this system, but what about all of my other black notes?
0:11:12.2 ML: This is a great question, and it's a way in which the background scale of Renaissance music is pretty different from the background scale of contemporary music. Renaissance music is built on what's called the gamut, and if you've heard like, "Oh, we're gonna run the gamut," that comes from solmization. And gamut is a kind of portmanteau of gamma-ut. Gamma being the lowest note of the scale, and ut being the solmization syllable for that note. So the Renaissance gamut, it's the set of notes that are considered diatonic in the Renaissance, so more like a major scale or something than all of the keys on the piano, and it starts from the G at the bottom of the bass clef staff, and it goes up to the E at the top of the treble clef staff, and you hear theorists will say something like, "Well, the reason that's the end of the gamut is because anything below that will sound like a low grumbling, and anything above that will sound like a kind of constrained shrieking." So our gamut is constrained in range and register, and the gamut includes what we think of as all the white notes on the piano and also B flat.
0:12:21.0 ML: So like in the example of the Dorian versus C Aeolian scale, B natural and B flat are both available pretty much all of the time. And if you've seen the complicated names for notes like "A-La-Mi-Re" or "C-Sol-Fa-Ut," what those names are, that's how Renaissance musicians named the notes, they're just the letter name for the note, and then all the possible solmization syllables that that note could have.
[laughter]
0:12:54.5 GR: So, I wish... I'm sorry... [laughter]
0:12:54.9 ML: Greg is making a face like he's in awe right now. [laughter]
0:12:56.1 DN: I'm just thinking of there's that Shakespeare, fa me Bianca. There's these places where you hear this in Shakespeare, and I just thought it was a bunch of notes, but it's like one note?
0:13:06.8 ML: Yes, if we find that passage, I'd be happy to parse it for you, to construe it for you, which is the language he uses. Yeah, so if you wanna dig that up, that might be fun to look at.
0:13:15.8 DN: I think it's maybe "Be me Bianca," what is the line from?
0:13:20.5 ML: She's also conjugating Latin verbs or something.
0:13:23.2 GR: There was also a composer who used the pseudonym Alamire, remember that correctly.
0:13:28.8 ML: Yes, and so Alamire is like A-la-mi-re, so the note A is la in the C hexachord, mi in the F hexachord and re in the G hexachord and this composer Alamire famously would sign his name by just drawing a base clef and the note A.
[chuckle]
0:13:47.5 ML: Because if you saw that, you would say A-la-mi-re, that was the name of the note.
0:13:51.6 GR: Awesome, so that was not a pseudonym? It was a real name or was it a pseudonym?
0:13:55.6 ML: I think that was his real name, I don't know for sure, but that's just the sort of... There's a lot of puns that are possible using solmization, and that's... It's I think really indicative of the way musicians in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance thought. Just like we see the note E-flat and we say that's an E-flat, and sometimes students will say, "That's an E," and we're like, "No, no, no, no, the name of the note is E-flat, and that's important." The note A was A-la-mi-re, there was no just A in the Renaissance, it was important that you used all of that note name and all of the syllables and that was one of the ways you learned to navigate through the gamut as a choir boy. Maybe I should kind of restate what I said before about the gamut and talk a little bit about the Guidonian Hand.
0:14:43.9 DN: Oh, yeah.
0:14:44.5 GR: Sure.
0:14:45.5 ML: 'Cause I know Greg's now hunting for Bianca talking about...
[laughter]
0:14:48.6 DN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Be my Bianca right, is the... I found it's Act 3, Scene 1 of Shrew but...
[laughter]
0:14:58.6 ML: Oh, here we go. Gamut, I am the ground of all accord, A re, to plead Hortensio's passion. B mi, Bianca, take him for thy Lord. C fa ut, that loves with all affection. D sol re, One clef, two notes have I. E la mi, Show pity or I die. Call you this gamut? Tut, I like it not. Old fashions please me best; I am not so nice to change true rules for old inventions. So what she is doing is learning the gamut the same way a child would learn it, which is you say Gam-ut, A-re, B-mi, C-fa-ut, D-sol-re, E-la-mi. And so she's just learning the first six notes of the gamut and just simply saying their full names in that passage.
0:15:44.9 DN: Wow, so letter names also were a thing.
0:15:49.7 ML: Yes, absolutely, and one of the interesting things that comes up a lot in terms of hexachordal solmization, is there such a thing as octave equivalence in this system. Since you remember when I sang my scales from D to D, D at the bottom was re and D at the top was sol or la, depending on which scale I was in, but they are both D-la-sol-re. So there is that octave equivalence built into the way the notes are named in the gamut, even while they might be solmised in different ways depending on what octaves you're singing in, or sometimes if you're singing in an ensemble, you'll be singing octave Ds say, and we'll be singing different syllables on the same note but somebody will be singing an A that harmonises with it, and that will be the same syllable as something that we're hearing in another voice.
0:16:38.6 GR: So, was this the first version of solfeggian western music?
0:16:41.9 ML: Yeah, so it was and it's the predecessor obviously to our modern solfège. Ut has changed into do, and we have ti now, which is really useful, but it was invented for the same reasons that we use modern solmization. So we don't exactly know the origins of the solmization system, but it's been attributed to Guido of Arezzo who was a monk, and he was active in the early 11th century, he died in the year 1033, and he had... One of his responsibilities as a monk was teaching chant to choir boys, and if you're a monk in the Middle Ages, you sing chant all day and you sing the entire Liber Usualis every year, so you sing thousands and thousands and thousands of chants, and you learn them all by ear and you remember them all because you're in a culture that's steeped in memory. And Guido got frustrated with how time-consuming it was to teach all of this repertory to choir boys and so he came up with this system to make it more efficient to teach them new chant.
0:17:51.6 ML: And so the idea was I will teach these children this pattern ut-re-mi-fa-sol-la, and then I will point to those different notes and then they'll be able to sing those notes back to me, and the way he pointed to them was he drew all of the notes or he would imagine all of the notes in a spiral on the palm of your hand. So you've probably seen these diagrams where you see a hand and a million little letters and note names and things and clefs and all sorts of things written on hand, and the idea was that you would hold up your hand for the choir boys and you would point to whichever joint represented the specific note they were supposed to sing, and then they would sing that note back to you. And the way Guido taught them how the relationships between the notes were, where the half steps and whole steps were, was the same way we teach children now, which is he used a song like doe a deer, a female deer.
0:18:51.0 ML: His song was a chant that he composed called Ut queant laxis but it was the same idea, Ut queant laxīs, Resonāre fibrīs, Mīra gestōrum, so exactly the same idea, ut, re, mi, fa, so, la, each line was one of the notes. And so he used that as a reference and then was able to extrapolate outwards from that with his students to teach them chants, and it's very similar to using solfège hand signs today like we often do in the classroom. It's not a...
0:19:26.1 DN: And... Oop, go ahead.
0:19:26.9 ML: Oh yeah, go ahead, sorry, Greg.
0:19:27.9 DN: As you said, so Ut queant if I remember, 'cause when I took Renaissance Counterpoint in grad school, assignment number one was to memorise Ut queant and to sing it back.
[laughter]
0:19:38.4 DN: And if I recall, it doesn't ever leave those first six notes, that first hexachord, is that right? There are no mutations in it?
0:19:45.7 ML: That's right, and this is how you teach solmization to children, and this is how I teach solmization to my college students too, is you start with tunes that live in one hexachord and you get comfortable, and then you add a single mutation. So you add tunes that start in your main hexachord and then just occasionally mutate upwards by one hexachord. And then you add B-flats and B naturals to introduce a little more complication. And then maybe you add something that will also mutate down below, so you kind of gradually add complexity and add mutations as you go, until each mutation becomes kind of second nature. 'cause you can't... When you're singing on hexachords, it's not like you have access to every possible syllable, every possible moment. There're fixed locations where you might mutate from one hexachord to another, and so it's all about kind of practicing and getting familiar with those exact locations. One more thing I wanted to say about the Guidonian hand and Ut queant laxis is that, it's not a coincidence that the history of staff notation coincides pretty much exactly with the history of solmization.
0:20:55.5 ML: 'cause what's happening in the 11th century is a shift from an entirely oral tradition, where music notation is just a mnemonic device to help remind you, "Wait, which chant was this?" So you've probably seen neumes, unheightened neumes and heightened neumes, which are just kind of squiggles that tell you the contour of your chant. This is the period when, all of a sudden, we have the invention of the five-line staff or the four-line staff and the clef, and these more precise ways for notating the exact locations of half and whole steps. So we have to, if we're gonna have a notation that's exact like that, we also have to have a system for understanding how to read that notation, and hexachordal solmization goes hand-in-hand with staff notation for that reason.
0:21:44.2 DN: I am fascinated by this, I have to say. I'm getting a little caught up on this, but I'm wondering about the... Still, how do I get to the other black notes?
0:21:51.7 ML: Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to answer your question. So there's this idea that like, "Oh well, Renaissance music, it's in the modes, it's very pure, it just doesn't use accidentals." And that's not true at all. And "Oh, the Gamut, it only has B-flat in it, so what about C-sharp? Surely there are C-sharps." So sharps and flats are different in this period. So sharps are kind of ornamental and you use them to make your cadences lovely. So say, I'm cadencing on D, I might sing, re, ut, re, and I'm gonna be singing a C-sharp there. So the rule, which is not entirely agreed upon by all Renaissance music theorists, but is more or less shared by a critical mass of them, is that when you're singing a sharp, because that's a kind of decorative ornamental thing, you don't change your solmization.
0:22:48.7 ML: So, so, fa, so, no problem, you just kinda sharp your fa, you don't say anything different. Flats though will always change your solmization. So a flat will always be fa, no matter what. So if we're hanging out in a world where we have no B-flats and all of a sudden we have a B-flat, we're gonna call that fa, and that will constitute a mutation into the F hexachord. And if we get an E-flat, same idea, we're gonna imagine what we call a fictive hexachord on B-flat. So imagine that ut is B-flat, and then that E-flat is going to be fa in our B-flat hexachord, so just basically transposing our F hexachord down by a fifth and transposing our whole Gamut down by a fifth to make that happen.
0:23:39.4 DN: Very cool. And that's where people may have heard, was it fa supra la and is that where you just put a B-flat on top of an A briefly?
0:23:51.6 ML: Yeah, more or less. So there's this principle, Una nota supra la. Semper est canenda fa, which is bad Latin for, "If you've only got one note above a la, you're gonna call it fa." And so the idea is if you're singing ut, re, mi, fa, so, la, fa, la, so, la, fa, la, so, fa, mi, you don't have to mutate all the way into your next hexachord, you're just gonna go ahead and sing that one as a fa. And that rule mostly exists to avoid a tritone from fa up to mi, 'cause what we don't want is, fa, so, la, mi, la, so, fa, so, fa, so, la, fa, la, so, fa, kind of helps us prevent that indecorum. It doesn't work every time, and it's not a hard and fast rule, but it's a good rule of thumb, it's a kind of shortcut for a mutation that accommodates really common melodic patterns in Renaissance music.
0:24:49.2 DN: And that starts to get into something that we hadn't even talked about, which is this idea of Musica ficta, in other words, we might be looking at a piece of Renaissance music and there might not be an accidental written, but we might have to sing one?
0:25:00.9 ML: Yes. And the tune Greensleeves is a really good example of this. If we see notated versions, it looks like re, fa, so, la, mi, la, so, mi, ut, something like that. And a lot of people will flatten that B at the top, re, fa, so, la, fa, la, so, mi, ut, that's using the fa supra la principle as a way of approaching that. It's not actually obvious that one or the other of those solutions is the right one or the best one, and it may be that that's a tune that could be sung both ways, because yeah, these Musica ficta accidentals, they're are non-notated accidentals that performers would have known to sing, that composers would have implied, but there's a gap between what composers might have implied and what performers might have chosen to do in practice.
0:25:57.6 GR: And there are some required ones too, like at cadences, like you were saying.
0:26:02.2 ML: Yes. Musica ficta is a whole other situation. It gets into a lot of really messy things that I don't think that your listeners are gonna wanna hear all about in excruciating detail. We tested Musica ficta in my class this week, and I think the students left with a lot more questions than they came in with, because the basic takeaway was, all of your answers are probably right and they're also probably all wrong, and we kinda lived in that space.
0:26:35.4 DN: I also feel like as a choral conductor, as a singer, every rehearsal I've been in where musica ficta ever comes up, we all leave with more questions than answers, like, "What note should I sing in measure 23?"
0:26:46.0 ML: The interesting thing about musica ficta from the perspective of modern performance is we're so used to a score giving us all the information that we need. And in the Renaissance, that wasn't necessarily the case, and it's not because this notation was deficient in some way, it's really like a feature not a bug of the notation that there's stuff left up to the performers and stuff that's left unnotated, and it's hard for us to reconstruct that now because it's been hundreds of years and a lot of that tradition has been lost. But this idea that there's only one right set of notes to sing is a very modern idea. And in the Renaissance, there are stories about people getting into fights about musica ficta in rehearsals, like, "Oh, I think this should be flat, and I don't think this should be flat," and the composer's in the room and nobody asks the composer, that's just not relevant, because there's flexibility. The same way that we wouldn't expect somebody to write out today all the rubato that you would take in a performance. That would be so unmusical to put quarter note equals 60, quarter note equals 58, quarter note equals 54, quarter note equals 62. That kind of...
0:28:00.3 GR: Although I've seen some scores like that. [chuckle]
0:28:02.2 ML: Well, and we've all sung Carmina Burana, where every note has an accent and a tenuto and a staccato mark. So I think, in the Renaissance, it's just like, why would you notate all of that stuff? Why are you trying to control something that should be up to the performer?
0:28:20.4 GR: Very cool.
0:28:22.8 DN: So you mentioned early on, you said that singing this way affects how you hear and understand this music. Could you talk a bit more about that?
0:28:32.1 ML: Oh, that's such a big question. There's almost nothing about Renaissance music that I don't experience differently now that I think more in terms of hexachordal solmization. I think for me, the biggest revelation is that B-flat and B natural are both equal partners in the Renaissance style. There's not one of them is default and the other one is a deviation from the norm, but rather that they're both opportunities that are available to a composer over the course of, say, a motet, and that composer may or may not choose to take advantage of that B-flat that's just right there waiting for him. But it's there if he wants it, and that's a really different way of thinking about what it means to be diatonic than we're used to where we're like, "There's diatonic notes, and then there's chromatic notes."
0:29:29.5 ML: So there's a kind of flexibility that goes all the way back to how I sang those two D-scales. Where once we get to Ray-Mi-Fa-So-La, we have a choice to make, we can go either way. That is everywhere once you start looking for it in Renaissance music. The other thing that I've really notice is imitation; noticing where imitative patterns are repeated with the same solmization syllables at different pitch levels. And when I sing with my students, if you're the second voice to enter and you've already heard your line and it's already been beautifully solmized for you, just 'cause you're entering a fifth above you just copy paste what just happened.
0:30:11.1 ML: So that's a really great opportunity that solmization provides. Renaissance musicians also embedded all kinds of puns and jokes involving solmization into their music all the time, and those are really fun to uncover and really revealing about how people were thinking about solmization all the time, even if they were singing music on words or were just singing "la la la la la." Would you like to hear some more about some of those sorts of things?
0:30:41.6 DN: Absolutely. Please. [chuckle]
0:30:42.9 GR: Are you able to tell these jokes, explain these jokes, in a way that doesn't ruin them for us? [laughter]
0:30:48.5 ML: Absolutely. Absolutely. So there's two kinds of solmization tricks that I really like. The first one is what's called the soggetto cavato, which is the idea of a subject that's carved from the words. And so a famous example is the text Lascia fare mi, which means leave me alone, but if you notice, La-scia-Fa-Re-Mi sounds like the solmization syllables, La-So-Fa-Re-Mi. So, the composer sets it, "Lascia fare mi," and every time it comes back at every pitch level, you can solmize it so that the syllables of the... The solmization syllables match up with the sounds of the words, and there are lots and lots and lots of examples of tunes like this, where the composer took somebody's name, or took their own name or anything like that and turned it into a tune, a kind of precursor to Bach's BACH motif. Same idea.
0:31:51.0 GR: That's the kicker, I don't know anybody who likes solfege puns. [chuckle] I've never heard any solfege puns in my life. [laughter]
0:31:58.0 ML: I'm looking at two of those people. They're everywhere. And sometimes you'll find them just in the middle of a motet or something, all of a sudden, it's just for the Altos and as an alto I'm like, "Alright, this is just for me," [laughter] "Nobody's going to appreciate this but me, but I'm loving it at this moment." The other technique that composers use is a technique called inganni which means deceptions, and the idea of inganni is you take a melody that's solmised in one way, and then you mutate somewhere unexpected and you keep your solmization syllables the same, but you change the melodic contour of the tune. And so it's a deception because you think you're looking at two totally different melodies, but actually the solmization is the same for both of those melodies, which is a neat trick. If you give me a second, I can find an example. Just pulling my copy of Zarlino's Art of Counterpoint off the shelf.
[laughter]
0:33:06.9 DN: As one does.
0:33:06.9 ML: I'm serious, I literally pulled my copy of Zarlino's Art of Counterpoint off the shelf. Okay, so here are Zarlino's examples of this concept that's called Inganni, so deceptions. He gives us a tune, ut, re, mi, fa, la, so, fa, mi, re. And then he gives us the same tune, but different, ut, re, mi, fa, la, so, fa, mi, re. And then he gives it a different way, ut, re, mi, fa, la, so, fa, mi, re.
0:33:48.6 GR: Gotcha.
0:33:49.7 ML: And so there's a mutation between the first four notes, ut, re, mi, fa, and then the last four notes, last what? Five notes, la, so, fa, mi, re. And he changes what that mutation looks like each time, and so that gives us three different versions of the same tune, that if you're looking at a score, you might not notice, you might not find a relationship between them, but if you're singing in solmization, you can't miss them. And there's lots of really great ways to use this trick. It's really common in the ricercar, which is an instrumental type of composition where you showcase like your most learned counterpoint. And there's this question of, okay, well, ricercar means to... Ricercare means to seek out or to search for something.
0:34:38.7 ML: And one theory of what's being searched for, when you're playing, usually on the organ, when you're playing a ricercar, is what you're searching for is the subject, and what the composer is doing is finding as many ways to hide or bury that subject in the counterpoint as possible, and you, as the performer, have to figure out, using these inganni, these deceptions, where is the subject? Where is it now? What's happened to it? And these get extremely complicated, to the point that some early 17th century musicians, like Trabaci, make these really complicated chromatic ones, and they just label them, they're like, "Inganno, inganno, inganno, inganno." 'cause otherwise people can't find them because the tune is so disguised that they're like, "Wait, but I did something really clever, let me show you."
[laughter]
0:35:29.8 DN: Oh, that's great, that's great. I keep thinking with this that, there's an interesting intersection between movable solfège and fixed solfège, and this kinda seems to live somewhere in between the two of them.
0:35:41.8 ML: Absolutely. That's kind of... I grew up on movable do solfège, and now I teach fixed do solfège, which was a challenge, and now I mostly think in terms of hexachordal solfège. So keeping three systems in mind is a real challenge all the time, but one of the things I find interesting is that hexachordal solfège is both a movable solfège and a fixed solfège at the same time. And in some ways, you get a little bit of the best of both worlds when you're using the system, because you get this kind of sense of, here are the actual notes I'm singing, here's where I'm actually living in musical space, relative to the notes I'm reading on the page, but also, here are where the half steps are, here are musical relationships that are being replicated throughout this piece, and I can feel that they're the same, even though they're happening in different places in the scale. One of the reason this works is because there's not that many keys in the Renaissance. So you can't do hexachordal solmization on something in A-flat major or B major or keys with a lot of accidentals, because this is not a system that's designed to accommodate that, but when you live in a world where there's only two key signatures, there's what we call cantus durus, which is no key signature, the hard B, and cantus mollis, soft B, where there's a B-flat signature, it's a lot easier to navigate that whole musical system using this kind of fixed, movable hexachord system.
0:37:18.0 GR: So pedagogically, when you're teaching hexachordal solfège, does that help with fixed do or movable do, or does it hinder? Do people have trouble moving back and forth?
0:37:30.0 ML: That's a great question. So I only teach hexachordal solmization to my juniors and seniors who are taking my Renaissance class. I would not foist it on my freshmen, who are learning fixed do for the first time, but I do like...
0:37:47.3 DN: And they're also learning scale degrees, right?
0:37:48.8 ML: Yeah, and a lot of them came in with movable do, so we do a lot of group therapy in Aural Skills One here.
[laughter]
0:37:57.2 ML: So I reserve hexachordal solmization for my seniors, where I tell them, "You thought you didn't like fixed do, just wait." But I think it really helps you to understand the Renaissance in a new way and helps get you in this mindset that this music is just different in some important ways from music today. And they pick it up pretty fast. And all of a sudden, we're in class, and was like, "Well, isn't that a fa supra la? And isn't this a re tonality and how will that be impacted by the sol cadence here?" And it's really exciting to hear them using this vocabulary that's native to music, and you just can't understand this music without having some of those tools. It's a lot harder to find, for instance, exact imitations versus diatonic imitations, if you don't have access to solmization. It's almost impossible to learn how to do Musica ficta, if you don't have access to the tools of hexachordal solmization. So navigating Renaissance music, specifically, is really useful. When I teach hexachordal solmization, I like to use these duos written by Orlando di Lasso, in this collection from... It's called Novae aliquot something, something, something, something, has this long name, from 1577, and he has 12 texted duos and then 12 untexted duos. And this is a tool I learned from Anne Smith, who is a musicologist and historical performance practice person in the UK.
0:39:33.7 ML: But what she found was that the second set of these duos, the untexted Lasso duos, are they clearly designed to teach you one new solmization challenge per duo, and they're really smartly designed, they're kind of really well-designed rhythms in the Hall Rhythm Book. Which is that they start out in slow notes, with not a lot of mutations, and then each one gets a little faster and then introduces more mutations and then introduces some syncopations and they get harder and harder and harder as they go. And then each duo is designed to work a specific mutation point. So I like to start with those in my class and the students kind of build up their solmization skills as they go. It's a great pedagogical tool, and you can imagine these Renaissance musicians teaching music to choir voice in just exactly the same way.
0:40:29.1 DN: This raises so many interesting thoughts for me, but I think back to episode one, where we were talking about different solfege systems, and even Do-minor versus La-minor, and how, depending on the music that you work with, one may be more suitable than the other. It's so interesting to hear this carried over to hexachordal solfège, and here's a system perfectly matched to this kind of music, and also this balance of thinking in fixed versus movable space, that keeping track of where you are on the staff and also where you are in your scale or hexachord. It's such cool stuff.
0:41:08.6 GR: And at the risk of... I don't wanna prematurely move us on, except that what I think is cool talking about the hexachordal system and how that was developed, and then looking at these... Hearing about these Lasso pieces is that these are people, active musicians, thinking about how to teach about pedagogy. "How am I gonna teach music?" And this was something we wanted to talk about. [laughter] Am I premature in moving us onward?
0:41:43.2 DN: No, no, I think that's good. I feel like... I guess the only other question I would ask, Megan, is if someone wanted to learn, obviously, you have really been spending a lot of time in hexachordal solmization with your own study. If someone wanted to learn the basics of this where should they go?
0:42:00.7 ML: I would recommend two resources that are a great place to start. The first is, there's a YouTube series called Early Music Sources, done by Elam Rotem, that is terrific. And he has a great video on hexachordal solmization that is a great place to start. The other place I would look is Ann Smith who has a book called The Performance of 16th Century Music, and there's a chapter in there that teaches how to mutate between hexachords, and she's written out the solmization for a bunch of tunes and explained the thinking behind it and shows original sources and justifies all of that, and so that's a great place to learn these basic techniques. So those are two places I would start.
0:42:46.8 DN: Those are great, we'll put both of those in the show notes. And the other thing I wanted to chat about, is music theory has been changing a lot in recent years, and I think maybe more than even other fields in academia as we sort of confront the biases, and biases in the way that we've been teaching these things, you've been really involved with a lot of work on that, at Oberlin in particular, and I wonder if you might just talk with us a bit about that. You're so plugged into the broader music theory community, how is the world of music theory evolving?
0:43:24.5 ML: This is something music theorists are thinking really hard about, because the way we teach music theory hasn't changed very much since the 19th century. But the things that we're training musicians to do has changed quite a lot since the 19th century. At a music conservatory like Oberlin, obviously we're training a lot of our students to go play in major orchestras or sing in major operas, in opera companies, but a lot of our students are not doing that. A lot of our students are playing a lot of new music, are doing a lot of innovative work with technology, are thinking about outreach and bringing music to the broader public. And we're seeing a lot more musical hybridization, we're seeing a lot more cultural appreciation in what we think of as the realm of classical music performance.
0:44:15.5 ML: One of the things that we're grappling with as a discipline of pedagogues and a discipline of scholars is how do we prepare all of these musicians for their lives as musicians? One way that we've framed it here at Oberlin is that in the traditional conservatory music theory curriculum, we are really great at teaching our students to say extremely interesting things about music by Beethoven and Brahms, and that's great, that's a really worthwhile thing to do. But it's a little disheartening when you have a junior come to your office with a piece by Ravel and say, "I don't have anything to say about this," that's a real failure of our pedagogy, and Ravel is not out there particularly.
0:45:01.4 ML: Ravel is pretty mainstream canonical composer. So then what do you do when you have a student come in and they wanna talk about hip-hop? Or they wanna talk about music videos? Or they wanna talk about something that Roomful of Teeth is doing? Or they wanna talk about any number of new things happening in the musical world? So different... We're working collectively as a community of music theorists to think about how to approach this problem, and our solutions are emerging and are widely varied. Ranging from... On the one hand, just re-discovering the work of a lot of composers who are Black, composers who are women, composers from South America and Latin America, composers who have been excluded from the canon. I'm hesitant to use the word rediscovery because scholars of color have known about these composers, and have been writing about these composers and teaching about these composers for a long time, but White scholars especially and White pedagogues have not been aware of this music.
0:46:10.7 ML: When we add more of this music into our curriculum, it changes the questions we think to ask and that changes the tools that we need to develop to answer those questions, so that's kind of one way that we're working on revamping the music theory curriculum. Another way is just really thinking much more broadly about what does it mean to think about, talk about and write about music when music isn't just western concert music mostly written between the years 1785 and 1914, what if we wanna build tools to talk about a lot more music, so what we've tried to do at Oberlin is reframe our curriculum in terms of musical parameters that are not specific to any one kind of repertory.
0:47:00.1 ML: So our new freshman curriculum is about teaching about rhythm and meter, and that includes all sorts of things from timelines and the idea of groove, and it creates opportunities for us to talk about really complex metrical structures in 20th century art music but also African drumming and that sort of thing. We're talking about timbre, sound production, the different ways that acoustics work and how timbre might be used as a kind of analytical tool. We're talking about melody, so not just... It used to be that we would teach species counterpoint, we would teach out of the Fux book, which is ostensibly teaching the Palestrina style, we'd say, "Well, Palestrina would write melodies that have no leaps larger than a fourth, and when you leap up by a fourth, you must descend, and that's how you write a good melody." Well, so now in my class, we start with film scores, we start with Princess Leia's theme from the Star Wars soundtrack and come up with why is this a good melody? What are its characteristics? What kinds of tools might we use to analyse the melody and you don't have to use music in this kind of western concert tradition to do that, what are the values of melody in a pop music context? What are the melodic values in the context of the gamelan? We're talking about harmony and different kinds of ways of combining different melodies at the same time.
0:48:38.6 ML: That is where we spend most of our time pretty steeped in western music, but there's lots of other ways to think about and talk about harmony. And we're talking about bass, which is not something that I had ever really thought all that much about but becomes very interesting when you start to think about what are all of the different ways that bass and bass lines work and how is that specific to different repertories, different cultures? I really enjoyed spending some time with my students listening to Herbie Hancock's Chameleon and thinking about the bass riff at the opening of that and how it establishes groove and... So we're trying to think about ways to frame the central questions of the curriculum that aren't necessarily specific to a single repertory.
0:49:26.5 GR: I love that.
0:49:27.8 DN: It sounds like... How are the students responding to it?
0:49:31.1 ML: They love it. I've never had my students be more engaged and more excited. And what my hope is for my class is that every student is gonna see some kind of music that is important to them, and every student is gonna see some kind of music that is totally unfamiliar to them, and I want all of those experiences to be valued, I want my students who come in reading only guitar tablature to feel like their musicianship and musicality is meaningful and relevant. I want students who have only really looked at lead sheets before to feel that that's a kind of music notation that is valuable and that that is as important for classical students to learn as it is for jazz students to learn how to read piano staves. I want students whose primary experience is working with Dos to have something to contribute to the class that nobody else has been able to contribute before. I want students whose background is in traditions that aren't the western tradition, to hear music that they grew up with or music that they like to perform, to hear that represented in the classroom, so we have a long way to go.
0:50:41.2 ML: Obviously, we all have a lot to learn to be able to teach musics that we're not trained in in a way that's ethical and in a way that is accurate and respectful, but it's been a really amazing experience to just start to sit down and learn about some new repertories, and to meet brilliant people around the world who are working on this music and learn from them, and to figure out how we can bring that experience into the classroom.
0:51:12.5 DN: So if I'm working say with high school students to help prepare for this broader approach to music theory, what kinds of things should we be stressing at that level, do you think?
0:51:27.3 ML: I think it's really important to teach students how to ask interesting questions, and to learn that a piece of music or a repertory will tell you what sorts of questions to ask of it if you don't come in with too many preconceived ideas about it. So one way I like to start my theory classes is to play some top 40 song that has a lot of cool production techniques involved in it, and to say if we were to build a music theory just to describe this piece of music, what sorts of things would we need to talk about here? And students hear so much, they're steeped in this music, they hear so much that I don't hear, and they're talking to me about filter sweeps and reverb and like oh, it sounds like she's underwater and like oh, it sounds like she's far away, and all of a sudden we're developing all of these schemas, all these categories, we're talking about what's happening, oh, the size of the space she's in, it feels like it's changing, how does that go with the text?
0:52:31.4 ML: And oh, we're hearing a lot of audible breath, and why is that important? And that's stuff that doesn't come up on the AP Music Theory test, but is very much a part of being a professional musician, a working musician today and having interesting things to say about music, it's training your ears to listen for what's there and build around to that. I think the more we can empower our students to identify what's interesting about something and find their own way of talking about it, the better prepared they're gonna be to embrace a new repertory, a new style that they're unfamiliar with and be game to see how it works and to get to know it.
0:53:14.0 DN: That's very cool. That's very cool. The sort of devil's advocate question, but what about part writing? Can they still part write?
0:53:21.6 ML: We're still teaching chords, we still do a lot of that. And if you actually look at what's being taught in music theory classrooms around the country, as much as we're making space for new repertoires, we're still spending a lot of time on Mozart and Beethoven. These people aren't going away. I feel for my class, if I'm gonna teach Mozart arias, I love teaching Mozart arias, I should pick two instead of nine. So I'm trying to think about how can I focus on the most important of these or the ones that I feel like I get the most pedagogical benefit from, and what opportunities come from making room for other things? If I teach a Coleridge Taylor song instead of a Mozart aria on Thursday, what opportunities are gonna be there and what sorts of questions are my students gonna raise? And I've found that to be really rewarding. Another question to play devil's advocate right back.
[chuckle]
0:54:28.5 ML: Is what has part writing done for you lately, Greg?
[laughter]
0:54:31.3 GR: Yeah, that's fair.
0:54:34.8 ML: I don't know that resolving the seventh of a seventh chord down every time is that hard of a thing to learn, but I also don't know that it's that useful of a thing in the real world. I think that we have expanded our part writing curriculum to fill the four semesters that we're given, and it is really useful to a small number of students in some very specific contexts. And so what we're trying to do here is find ways to reach those students in those contexts and give them the tools they need to be successful without making a bunch of students who are never gonna use part writing in their lives and who aren't gonna get that much out of it, spend four semesters on that in lieu of learning about any number of other things that they are gonna encounter every single day.
0:55:22.0 DN: Yeah and you know I have talked about this a lot, and that I had that very classical, I can analyse Mozart through Brahms beautifully kind of music theory training, but part writing didn't click for me until I had figure-based training and was actually having to do real-time part writing improvization at the keyboard, and suddenly I thought, oh, doing this all on paper maybe didn't make the most sense for me originally, even so. So I'm with you on that despite my devil's advocate question.
0:55:52.7 ML: One way I think about this problem is traditionally the freshman theory curriculum at the college level is a weed-out course. These are courses that are really hard and that you have to have really strong fundamentals, and you have to just do a lot of part writing, and a lot of students get through that kind of by counting, by writing in note names and by doing the algorithm and doing the math. I'd rather see the freshman curriculum being an opportunity, being an open door, being an entry point, a gateway into studying music, and then giving the students the opportunity to drill down on those really very specialized skills a little later on.
0:56:31.1 ML: So one of the things we're doing here is offering a portmanteau class for sophomores. And so that's where students who are interested to learn really detailed nuances of 18th century style, they learn to improvise in the 18th century style, they learn to compose in the 18th century style. In a way that's really much more robust than what we do in a traditional part writing curriculum. And jazz students probably won't take that class, and probably a lot of voice majors won't take that class either unless they want to, but organ majors probably will take that class, and will get the very specific skills that they need and that will support the repertoires that they're gonna be performing for the rest of their careers. In a way that's actually a lot more interesting and a lot more historically accurate than the way we teach part writing in the traditional music theory curriculum.
0:57:20.4 DN: Yeah, I think it's really lovely and I am jealous of these students getting this broad approach to music theory, and I just can't wait to see what that means for our next generation of young musicians.
0:57:38.9 ML: We can't wait either, and we're all learning and growing together and we're... I'm sure we're gonna make some mistakes and hopefully be supportive of each other as we all find our way through this new landscape because the thing that's clear is that we can't do nothing, we can't just keep doing things the way they've always been done. And so you have to start somewhere.
0:58:00.8 DN: Awesome. Well, I think that's probably a good place to wrap things up, I don't know, do you think, Megan, David, anything we missed we should talk about?
0:58:09.3 GR: I can just say thank you so much for visiting us and talking with us about this stuff, and actually both of these things and actually if I dare with all this pedagogy stuff, there are some conferences coming up that are going to talk about these issues that are focused on these issues, and one of them I can't go to, but I am definitely going to be at the music theory pedagogy conference in Michigan in early June. I don't know if anyone is planning to be there.
0:58:41.9 ML: I will be this June at a conference at Case Western Reserve University about analysing music by Black composers. Really exciting conference that's hopefully gonna be really inspiring for helping music theorists think more about a much wider swath of repertory and how we can ethically bring that repertory to our students.
0:59:04.6 GR: Yeah, and that one's June 16th, am I right about that?
0:59:09.0 ML: That sounds right.
0:59:09.8 GR: I think that's why I can't go. [laughter]
0:59:12.8 ML: Yeah, June 16 through 18. Theorising African-American music.
0:59:18.9 DN: Meghan, thanks so much for joining us for talking about these two huge topics, I feel like I've learned just an enormous amount in this short time from you, and I'm looking forward to diving into these topics a little more.
0:59:31.1 ML: Absolutely. I am always happy to talk hexachordal solmization, it's my very favorite thing.
[laughter]
0:59:36.8 GR: Thank you so much. Excellent.
[music]
0:59:43.1 ML: Notes from the Staff is produced by utheory.com.
0:59:45.7 Speaker 5: uTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
0:59:49.9 ML: With video lessons, individualized practice and proficiency testing, uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world, master the fundamentals of music theory, rhythm and ear training.
1:00:00.0 S5: Create your own free teacher account at utheory.com/teach.
[music]
Leah Sheldon shares tips for going beyond bake sales to build a sustainable fundraising model that can support a vibrant music program.
Like what you're hearing? Have topics you want to hear more about? Drop us a note at notes@utheory.com.
Show Notes: 00:00: Introductions
03:28 What does the fundraising landscape look like these days?
04:00 Traditional fundraising: Sales and Raffles
06:00: How to choose the right time and the right things to sell
08:10 Challenges of sales-based fundraising
10:30 Build a strong team of parent volunteers
11:37 Passive Income Fundraising Sources: online donations/crowd-sourcing/project funding
14:30 Know the policies of your school for fundraising, handling money, and restrictions on uses of various accounts
16:37 Getting creative on fundraising: Sponsorship ideas
19:45 It doesn't hurt to ask -- you never know who's just waiting to help out.
20:45 Sponsoring Students: "Make it possible for a student to join band"
21:30 Creative raffles: parking space raffle, seating raffles, "band on demand" raffle
23:45: Shoe drives
25:15 Grants: What they are, where to look for them, how to get them
27:30 Finding a match between the granting organization and your program
29:00 How to work with your administration on funding
31:30 Covid Relief Funding: CARES & ESSER
35:11 Last thoughts: Build a core group of parent volunteers, know your school policies, send thank you notes. And, above all else, don't do nothing: even if it's one little thing, your students and families will see your own investment in the program and it will be reflected in their attitudes.
Links: NAfME’s ESSER Funding Toolkit: https://nafme.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/ESSER-Funding-Toolkit-2021.pdf
How to develop a needs statement for grant writing: https://www.grantsedge.com/needs-statement/
Grants4Teachers: https://www.grants4teachers.com
GetEdFunding: https://www.getedfunding.com/c/index.web?s@1_9EUGaBPOylM
Scholastic: https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/teaching-tools/articles.html
Grant Watch: https://www.grantwatch.com/cat/42/teachers-grants.html
Solfeg:io - https://solfeg.io/music-education-grants
Transcript: [music]
0:00:21.6 Gregory Ristow: Welcome to Notes from the Staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.
0:00:37.0 Leah Sheldon: Hi, I'm Leah Sheldon, Head of Teacher Engagement for uTheory.
0:00:40.7 GR: And I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and Associate Professor of Conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory.
0:00:46.9 LS: Before we begin, we want to thank our listeners for your feedback and episode ideas. We love hearing your thoughts. Let us know what you think at notes@utheory.com.
0:00:55.9 GR: Our topic today is Funding Your Classroom. And we're again turning the tables. I'll be interviewing my co-host, Leah Sheldon. Leah is Head of Teacher Engagement for uTheory and an experienced public school music educator, having served as a middle school and high school band director, assistant marching band director, and kindergarten through fourth grade elementary music teacher. A recipient of the Teacher of the Month Award through Partners in Education, Leah is passionate about helping teachers meet the needs of today's learners. Leah, thanks for joining us.
0:01:27.6 LS: Thanks for interviewing me.
0:01:29.2 GR: So Leah, for our listeners who may not know you in this context, how is it that you have wound up having so much experience in this area of fundraising and funding a classroom?
0:01:39.9 LS: Well, when I taught, I taught in a wonderfully supportive district. The administration and the community were both very supportive of music programs and arts programs in general. I was very, very lucky in that sense. But the district as a whole did not have the means to create an appropriate budget that is required by an instrumental music program, or even a choral or elementary program, for that matter. It was very fairly allocated across the district, but it just didn't leave me with enough to, say, purchase or maintain instruments. And we had a large percentage of each class in the programs, so we're talking about a lot of students, a lot of kids. So I just often had to turn to outside sources of funding to meet their needs.
0:02:27.8 GR: So are we gonna be talking about bake sales today?
0:02:30.8 LS: [chuckle] We'll touch on bake sales a little bit, but we're also gonna talk about getting creative and what else you can do if you're not into selling items.
0:02:38.7 GR: Yeah. I think probably this is a challenge that a lot of us are familiar with around the country, around the world. That it is expensive to run a high quality music program, whether that's, as you said, elementary, chorus, orchestra, or band. And when you look around schools, it seems to me that everyone is selling something, right? It's like, "Oh look, here come the cheerleaders selling their chocolate. Here come the whatever selling their candy-grams," and all that. So I'm glad to hear that there are other things beyond that. Maybe can you introduce us a little bit to what the fundraising landscape looks like these days?
0:03:20.7 LS: Sure. So it's still really popular to sell things, and I think that's because it's familiar and it's safe, in some way. Students are the ones going and selling items, or sometimes the students' parents, let's be honest. And parents are familiar with it too. You look at an order form, or you go online and place an order, and it's... Almost guarantees a profit. So it's just... It's familiar. It's easy to turn to. There are lots of companies that provide fundraising for selling things, whether you're selling wrapping paper or candy or... I mean, uh... Candles. There are just so many things. And then we've got big ticket items too, right? Like, now it's getting more and more popular to sell Christmas trees and mattresses, and even a local district where I live right now, they're actually selling mulch. You can have it delivered by the yard or you can have the boys' lacrosse team come and spread it for you for an additional fee. But so that... I thought that was a creative take on selling things. But I think... Yeah, it's just... It's readily available, everyone knows what to do with it, and it's usually profitable.
0:04:33.0 GR: Yeah. So what else is there beyond sales, in the big picture of things?
0:04:37.3 LS: Yeah. So sales, and I'll kind of put raffles in under that as well, just selling tickets either for a 50-50 raffle, or selling tickets to win something like a gift basket, and even just selling tickets to concerts. I know that's a hot topic. Sometimes should we be asking parents to pay to come to concerts? And I think the answer is maybe sometimes. But yeah, so selling things and raffles. And then we're also gonna talk a little bit about some passive income options, some creative options, like I said. And then we're also going to touch on grant funding and COVID relief funding.
0:05:24.5 GR: Great. Great. So maybe what should we start with?
0:05:28.4 LS: Let's keep going with the sales and raffles, because I think they're... Probably everyone's familiar with it. And if you've already heard this before, I hope that maybe you hear something that gives you a new idea or reminds you of something that you do like to do.
0:05:44.1 GR: So I think about when we're at music educator conferences, like OMEA or TMEA, and we see all sorts of companies with ideas for selling things. And what would you say are some of the most successful ones in this area?
0:06:00.8 LS: Well, I... It's hard to define success, because it's gonna depend on your community. It's gonna depend on other groups in your district. If there's already another group that regularly sells chocolate-covered pretzels, and everyone knows to go to them at a certain time of year for chocolate-covered pretzels, you're probably not gonna have as much success if you try to jump on that bandwagon, and might even create some tension by maybe kinda stealing their thunder a little bit. So you don't really wanna get yourself into competing with another local group or group within your district. So look for something that's different. If you can find an item that you think that the community would have a need for or be interested in and would be willing to purchase it through the school or through your program, then that's what you should go for. And I can't necessarily tell you what that is.
0:06:52.7 GR: It's great advice, yeah. You mentioned a number of creative ideas already, and I see in our outline, you've suggested a few others that I hadn't thought of in a long time. What is a spirit wear.
0:07:07.9 LS: Oh yeah. So a spirit wear sale is you're literally selling t-shirts, sweat shirts, with the school logo on it, and then usually also something that denotes that it's from the music program. So maybe you get a logo drawn up or you have your students design a logo with the school mascot and marching band or choral department, something along those lines. The nice thing about those now is that mostly everything is done online, so parents can go online, look at all the products that are offered, and maybe even have the option of customizing, so getting a student's name also printed on the clothing item. I think spirit wear sales can be replicated across the district, so it's okay if your soccer team is doing it and the football team is doing it and the band is doing it, because they're all gonna be just a little bit unique, and parents and students want something that represent what they're in, so that's usually a pretty successful and easy thing to pull off.
0:08:14.1 GR: What are some of the challenges of doing sales-based fundraising?
0:08:17.9 LS: So the challenge, like we've already mentioned, that sometimes you find yourself selling things that other groups are already selling, or the students are just tired of selling things. They do it all the time, or their parents... Parents are tired of either helping their students sell it, or they're tired of buying it. [chuckle] So the students and parents kind of lose motivation, maybe, and then if there is product involved and if you are... If you're gonna need to be distributing that product at the end of the sale, then you've gotta have a group of volunteers to help with that, for sure, parent volunteers, because it's often too much for just one single teacher to manage on their own. It can be done, but it's a lot easier with volunteers.
0:09:06.2 GR: And I'm thinking about return on investment too. How much are you putting out monetarily to get the product versus how much it costs for these kinds of things.
0:09:18.2 LS: Right. So all companies will take a percentage of the sales, so the school will make... They'll tell you up front what it is that you're gonna make, and I think it's really important to look into what company you're going to use to sell things. And it's okay to reach out and sort of interview lots of companies before you pick one for this kind of sale, because you wanna see who has the highest percentage of profit that will come back to you, and also look for other things, like, do they require a minimum amount of product? Or a minimum threshold of money to be reached? Some of them do have a minimum, and if you don't meet the minimum, then there's an additional fee, or they take a higher percentage of the cut. So that's always something to look out for it, especially if you've never done it before and you're not sure what you're going to be making. Maybe look for a company that doesn't require a minimum to start.
0:10:14.2 GR: It also sounds like a lot of organizational work and coordination of people. Yeah?
0:10:21.4 LS: It is. It definitely is. And I was gonna touch on this later too, but one of my biggest tips for fundraising, whatever fundraiser you do, you have to have a solid group of parent volunteers. It's just... There's so much demand on teachers already. We have so much that we're doing, and this could turn out to be a large investment of time, unless you've got some people that you can trust and delegate it to. So whether that's your booster group, or you just reach out and you have a group of parents in charge of fundraisers for the year, as much of the fundraising that you can turn over to them as possible. Let them look for ideas, let them look for things to sell, or companies, or things to come up with. Really give them some room to make some decisions, and with your approval on everything, of course. But the more that you can hand over to them, the better it will be for you. [chuckle]
0:11:16.3 GR: So with some of those challenges you've outlined, if I as a teacher starts to realize, "Okay, so maybe sales isn't the strategy we wanna use, or maybe it's part of our overall strategy," what are some other things we might look at?
0:11:33.1 LS: Yeah, so I always say that the best place to start is just find some passive income. It's gonna be the least amount of time investment, least amount of work, physical work and preparation work, and anything compared to a selling type of fundraiser. So when I say passive income, I'm talking about using something like GoFundMe or DonorsChoose or even just seeking donations.
0:12:03.3 GR: Can you... For those of us who haven't heard of those, what's GoFundMe? What's DonorsChoose?
0:12:09.1 LS: Yes. So let's talk about DonorsChoose. So donorschoose.org, that's a website, it's an organization that lets teachers post usually, like, a specific project that they're trying to fund with some explanation. They let you post it on their platform, and then anonymous donors who are browsing the site for projects that align with their mission will choose to make donations to your project. This is free, free for teachers. The only thing that you need to be able to do is define your need and define your project and what your goals are and how much money you're looking to raise.
0:12:47.1 GR: It sounds great. And so then let's say I posted a project, right? Let's say that I wanted to get all of our school-owned instruments worked on because a technician hadn't touched them in however many years, then what do you do? Do you then reach out to parents? Or do you just sort of hope that the broader world sees it and says, "I wanna support this," or...
0:13:11.8 LS: I think social media is huge here. This is something that if you have a social media account for your music program, it gets shared there. If you can get your district to share it from any of their social media accounts... Alert the parents, too, and ask for them to share it as well. The more it is shared, the more people who will see it, and more likely that someone will say, "Oh, I support that. Let me make a donation."
0:13:38.0 GR: Awesome. So that's DonorsChoose... And you also mentioned GoFundMe. I think a lot of us have seen GoFundMe campaigns, but tell us a bit about those.
0:13:46.5 LS: Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about. The thing about GoFundMe, it's not specific to education. DonorsChoose is just for teachers, and I think teachers are gonna have a lot more success on there. But if you wanna post your project in both places and... You never know, right? It doesn't hurt to try. But yeah, GoFundMe is open to anyone for any idea, any product, anything... So I would definitely start with DonorsChoose.
0:14:17.5 GR: So DonorsChoose, GoFundMe, any other sources of passive income we should look at?
0:14:21.6 LS: Don't be afraid to ask for donations, even if it just means printing a little blurb in a concert program about, "We're always looking for this," or, "We'd like to increase our instrument inventory," or, "Music is expensive. If you'd like to make a donation... " And just simply put how or where they can make a donation of any amount.
0:14:43.1 GR: Speaking of that, I'm just imagining I finished conducting a concert. A parent comes up to me and hands me a $100 bill...
0:14:48.2 LS: Yes.
0:14:49.8 GR: I'm suddenly very nervous about that, about the implications of money coming in, and it's gonna be true for all of these fundraising things. What sorts of things do we need to be aware of there?
0:15:00.7 LS: Yeah, absolutely. You need to know the policies for money and for fundraising, and if you don't, please ask your administration or whoever it is in your district that handles that. Know what the rules are. Know what the policies are. Know where the money is going to go. You can ask them that, "Hey, if someone wants to make a donation, even if they just give us a cash donation, what do I do with that? Where does it... " Most schools are gonna have some sort of form that gets filled out or a special safe that things like that go into until it's deposited appropriately. But know exactly what account it's gonna go into. Make sure it's not gonna just go into some district general fund. You wanna know that that's gonna actually come back to your program, and it's more likely to do that if you know the process and you take the appropriate steps.
0:15:48.5 GR: Awesome, awesome. Passive income sounds great. I have to say the effort of all the sales stuff is not something I love, but... Yeah, but the idea of sharing, "Hey, these are some things we need," and making it possible for people who do have the means to support that, to support that. Really sounds great.
0:16:08.5 LS: Right.
0:16:09.1 GR: It probably depends a lot on your community.
0:16:10.9 LS: It absolutely does. That's just what I was gonna say, and sometimes it's just a matter of making your needs known. People don't know that there's a need, and the nice thing about passive income, you're not putting something else on top of the students, or asking parents to do any additional work for some profit. It's just a simple ask.
0:16:30.7 GR: Great. So what else? We've talked about sales, raffles, we've talked about passive income...
0:16:38.2 LS: Okay, so let's talk about getting creative. So what of your parents and students in the community are losing motivation to participate in the traditional fundraising? Sometimes it's a matter of just a slight change of wording. So continuing on the donation request, if asking for donations is not working, then try asking for sponsors. The thing about asking for a sponsor is usually right up front, you're saying exactly what you need a sponsor for. So, like, "We're looking for a sponsor for this concert," or, "We're looking for a sponsor for a student." Say, for example, a student who isn't able to afford the fees for the program. Then the person who's making the donation knows exactly what their money is going for, or even exactly who it's going to. And that's a huge difference. If someone knows exactly that, "Oh, this $50 that I'm gonna donate is going to buy a piece of music that I'm gonna hear at the next concert," they might be a lot more willing to give that up versus just, "Oh, here's $50 for the program?" So yeah, just changing the wording a little bit.
0:17:48.9 LS: And some more ideas to go along with that. So asking someone to sponsor a concert. This might be something that you go to a local company for or a well-known restaurant in the community. And you explain what it is that you're gonna do, and you offer to, of course, put an ad for them in the program, or if they would like for you to hang a sign somewhere at a concert, you offering to do that. They like that.
0:18:21.7 GR: And can I ask, like, what... Sorry. Can I ask how much would you ask to sponsor a concert?
0:18:29.0 LS: Again, the 'how much' questions, this always is going to depend on your district, your community or what your needs are, you might go out and get multiple sponsors for $100, you've got five sponsors for $100 each, and they've sponsored the concert by providing money to buy music with, you're gonna have to... You really have to know your community, know what people are willing to support. And also know your program needs. If you do have, like I had, an extremely supportive community, you may be able to find companies that will... Or even individuals, not really, not individuals, but you may be able to find someone who will sponsor a season, so for example, an entire marching season, a company that will say, pay for all the snacks for the marching band students, or pay for the dry cleaning of the uniforms twice a year. So again, it's gonna depend on what your need is, but you can kind of sit down, prioritize your needs, break them up into create three levels, like a big need, a medium need, and a small ask, and then decide what you want those amounts to be from there.
0:19:49.1 GR: Yeah, and I think back to when I was starting teaching too, and I was frankly just so afraid to ask, but especially companies, a lot of them are looking for ways to be visible in the community, and they're used to being asked these things and it's not abnormal. It doesn't bother them. They're happy to say no, if they're not... If they can't do it.
0:20:12.1 LS: Right. Yeah, it does not hurt to ask, you may also find out that parents within your program have connections either because they work for a company or a local corporation that is willing to donate or they know someone who is, so just by putting the need out there and asking you never know what you might end up with.
0:20:34.1 GR: Yeah, that's great. Sponsorship. That's a great creative idea. Yeah.
0:20:40.0 LS: And sponsoring students too. That's one that... I didn't do that right away. I didn't do that until later in teaching, till I figured out really how to word it, and once people realize that they could make a donation that would go directly to allowing a student to be in band, it was very successful.
0:20:58.2 GR: So what wording did you use to invite parents to make that kind of donation?
0:21:03.7 LS: Yeah, so it ended up being as simple as just saying, Make it possible for a student to join band, we had such a big alumni base in our community that they knew what joining band meant and what that would mean for that student, and so they were happy to make that possible.
0:21:20.6 GR: Great. So yeah, other creative ideas?
0:21:25.8 LS: So we talked a little bit about raffles, which usually look like buying tickets to win a basket or 50-50 raffles, but again, know your community and find something that you think they would say, "Oh yeah, I would buy a ticket to that." So for us, parking was an issue, it was always an issue because we just had small parking lots, and that meant the concerts... People had to park very far away and walk a lot, so we tried raffling off a parking space real close up front, and that was very successful, so that was something that we decided to continue with. But yeah, so parking spot raffles, you can do concert seating raffles, again, that's gonna depend on what that looks like, is it a matter of raffling off a really good seat or is it mean raffling a padded folding chair versus the bleacher, the concert seating was a good one, and this is my favorite concert on demand raffle. Again, it worked for our community because it was a small community, but we called it Band-On-Demand, and parents could buy tickets to you have the band show up in their front yard and play a concert or on their street if there wasn't room to fit the whole band in, but that was wildly popular.
0:23:00.7 GR: That sounds amazing.
0:23:01.4 LS: It was fun.
0:23:03.5 GR: Awesome. Yes. Okay, so sponsorships, raffles, these are just great creative ideas and also it seems like not as frankly much work as say, selling mattresses or whatever.
0:23:18.8 LS: Right. There's still... I don't wanna say that it doesn't require any work, it might just be a little bit of work upfront to create a flyer that you're going to take to businesses to ask or putting that wording together. But then once you've done it, it's done, and you don't have to keep recreating the wheel. And there's one other thing I wanna bring up. It's been popular, and I've even done it myself, shoe drives are gaining popularity, and there are a lot of organizations now that will do this, but I worked specifically with Funds2Orgs, that's funds number two orgs. And it was a very profitable fundraiser. You ask for the community and parents and students to donate shoes, and then they at the end, they come with a grappling giant truck and you load up all the shoes onto the truck and they take it and they weigh it. And your profit depends on the poundage of shoes that you were able to collect, and they take nearly all types of shoes from used to gently used to even new. The challenge of a shoe drive is there is some physical work involved, all the shoes need to be tied together or rubber banded together and put into plastic garbage bags, and you need to have somewhere to store that, you might think that you know what 100 bags of 25 pairs of shoes looks like, but then you see it and you realize, "Oh, this is a lot of shoes."
0:24:52.0 LS: And then you get 500 bags and then it's really so the... Yeah, the challenge with the shoe drive is making sure that you have students and parents who will volunteer to help put things together for it and make sure that you have the room to store it but very profitable.
0:25:07.8 GR: That's great, that's great. Okay, so we have sales, fundraising, we have these wonderful creative ideas, passive income ideas, and then probably the big area that we haven't talked about is the area of grants. Can you talk a little bit about that?
0:25:24.4 LS: Sure, so grants are... A grant is money that you receive from an organization, it does not need to be paid back, and usually they'll board money for a project that aligns with their mission. The thing about grants is that they... Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. Grants are a lot of work. When you're writing a grant, the grant application itself does require a bit of writing, companies who typically receive grant funding generally have a staff person dedicated to grant writing, and your district may have someone dedicated to grant writing, but funding the music program may not fall under their umbrella of responsibilities. So if you might be interested in looking into a grant, just know that you're going to need to be prepared to write a project summary, you're gonna have to write about how you're going to evaluate it, because grants do require evaluation and reporting because they wanna know that the money that they're giving is having an impact.
0:26:38.4 GR: So meaning, let's say I receive a grant from our local arts council, but at some point in the year after I receive that grant, I have to provide back some kind of report?
0:26:48.7 LS: Yes. And even in the initial application, you're gonna have to talk about how you plan to evaluate for that, what you think the impact will be, what the community need is, your current strengths and challenges of your program and future sustainability without the grant funding. So those are just some things that you'll need to prepare to write about up front and then again throughout the year, be collecting the data on that evaluation and then submit an evaluation at the end of the life of the grant.
0:27:25.2 GR: I've worked with a community chorus for a number of years, and part of my responsibility there was being involved in that grant writing process, and one of the things that I found, and I know that you and I have talked about this as well, is how important finding a good match between the organization and... The organization that needs the money and the organization that is making the grant, how can you know if you're... If the organization you're looking at who's giving grants is the right organization to approach?
0:27:55.3 LS: Call them and ask. Do not be afraid to reach out to them, to email or call and say, "Hey, here's what I'm doing. Does this align with your mission?" They'll be happy to answer questions, in most cases.
0:28:10.5 GR: Yeah, yeah, and where even do I begin to figure out what grants are available?
0:28:16.1 LS: So this may require a little bit of research on your part, but we will provide a couple of links in the show notes that are a good starting place. A couple of organizations that either provide grants for music teachers or provide a list of other organizations that provide grants for music teachers. And also in the show notes, we'll also put a link to a website that helps you develop a needs statement. A need statement is very important for your grant application, and honestly, it can be used for all fundraising, especially if you're planning to be requesting donations or looking for sponsors, check that out, check out this website, read through how to develop a needs statement because that will help you clearly define your needs, no matter who you're asking for money from.
0:29:11.8 GR: Great, great. I think also speaking about that, maybe... Especially for teachers who are just getting started. One thing we haven't mentioned is, you can certainly start by going to your administration and saying, "Hey, we have these needs to make the program really successful, to be able to provide the experience that students need, we need these specific things. Is there funding for that?" And I think that's a lot of times, just that organization, as you're talking about, making a need statement, but also taking the time to actually just make a budget and say, this is what running a top level program for the course of the year really costs, and how much of that can come from the school's budget, and how much of that do we have to be more creative about finding ways of funding.
0:30:08.3 LS: Yes, absolutely, that's a great point. Don't be afraid to ask administration, but if you're planning to do that, yes, absolutely, prepare to do that. Like you said, and I wanna add to that, also prioritize the needs, because very frequently the administrator's gonna say then, "We can't do all of this, but if we can do some of it, what would you like us to do?" Come prepared, have the numbers, have your need clearly defined and prioritized and just make it easy for an administrator to look at and say, "Okay, I understand."
0:30:43.2 GR: Yeah, yeah, I've always found with the administrators that if I say I need 20% more money, they say no, but if I bring them a list of like, Okay, here's what we need, and here's why we need it, their response is, we may not be able to do it, but let's see what's possible. And that makes for a much easier starting place for a conversation.
0:31:02.1 LS: And back it up as much as you can with the student achievement, if you can tie it into state standards on why we need this particular new method book, or why we need to be purchasing new music, and again, make it show how it applies to the students learning as much as possible.
0:31:22.9 GR: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Great, what else should we know? This is just such good stuff, Leah.
0:31:29.9 LS: Well, we haven't talked yet about the newest available category of funding, which is a COVID relief funding. If you wanna touch on that.
0:31:37.2 GR: Yeah, please.
0:31:40.3 S12: Yeah, so the CARES Act in 2020 brought this new level of funding for schools, that is now the most recent bill of this is the America rescue plan, but this all falls under the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund. The thing about this money is that the federal government distributes it to states, and then the states distribute it to the districts. Some districts may get a lot, some districts may get none, so the first thing that you need to find out is, did our district receive any emergency relief funding? And then if your district did, then I suggest just like when talking to administration, you pull together your needs and prioritize your needs, and then you present this to administration. To receive this funding, a teacher cannot go and request it or fill out an application for it. Again, the state gives the money to your district, so you need to talk, you need to find out who it is in your district that handles this. Is it a principal, is it the superintendent. Is it the head of the LEA, the Local Education Association.
0:33:00.2 LS: So you need to find out who to talk to and then come prepared to discuss your needs and what you're looking for, the funding is available for anything related to creating safe learning spaces due to COVID or addressing any learning lost from remote instruction when schools were closed for COVID. So for example, technology and software for virtual learning or remedial instruction, additional instruments and equipment to avoid students sharing supplies for cleaning and sanitation, materials for social distancing and PPE, facilities improvements and even extra-instructional support, so even hiring a private lesson teacher could all fall into that.
0:33:50.2 GR: And as I recall, with the ESSER funding and specifically, kind of the big catch-all is that idea of remediation, the idea that there was learning lost because of remote learning, and we need to make the current situation better to make up for that, and that opens a lot of possibilities for requesting funding there.
0:34:10.6 LS: Absolutely, so if a teacher wants to use uTheory to address remedial or to provide remedial instruction, then that absolutely falls under that category.
0:34:20.1 GR: Great. So yeah, so CARES Act, ESSER and these things. Can you remind me when does ESSER expire? When's the last chance people can get funding for that?
0:34:29.7 LS: So the first round of funding actually expires, I believe this coming September, September 30th, 2022, there will be money available until 2024 for this, so it doesn't hurt to ask now.
0:34:44.0 GR: Great, great. Well, I have a lot of ideas now. This is certainly exciting, ideas other than calling up my boss and saying, "Hey, I need more money," although that's not an awful thing to do. Is there anything that we've missed or is this a good place to wrap things up?
0:35:04.2 LS: We can wrap it up. I just wanna reiterate that, you know, no matter what fundraiser you decide to do, I think it's really important to have a strong group of parent volunteers to help with some of this, and again, knowing the school policies and knowing the rules for allowing students and parents to handle cash. Even if you do have very trustworthy parents or students, always have multiple adults present if there's going to be cash being handled, and definitely have supervision over students collecting cash, and please remember to say thank you and send thank you notes. Thank you notes to donors or sponsors or those parents who are volunteering their time a little thank you note will go a long way because then they will know that they're appreciated and that they've been seen and they'll be more willing to come back and help again.
0:36:03.3 GR: And even administrators who are able to up your budget ever so slightly, they appreciate those little thank you notes too.
0:36:10.8 LS: And one final tip here is, don't do nothing, do something, even if it's one little thing, one little fundraiser, one little request for donations, start somewhere. By doing nothing, you're showing your administration that, Oh, you're fine with whatever funding you get, if you get any. And you don't really have any needs or anything like that, and it won't be on their radar for next year that I need to consider what the music program needs, and also if the parents and students see you going above and beyond to give them the best possible program then, that's gonna be reflected in their attitude and their effort as well, so don't do nothing.
0:36:54.1 GR: Awesome, that's great. It's great advice. Leah, thank you for that. Thank you for all these wonderful ideas. And thanks for joining us.
0:37:04.2 LS: Absolutely. Any time.
[music]
0:37:08.8 Speaker 3: Notes from the staff is produced by uTheory.com.
0:37:11.7 Speaker 4: UTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
0:37:15.6 S3: With video lessons, individualized practice and proficiency testing, uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world master the fundamentals of music theory, rhythm and ear training.
0:37:26.4 S4: Create your own free teacher account at uTheory.com/teach.
[music]
Eurhythmics teaches music through movement, improvisation and play. In this episode, Greg Ristow shares some favorite games for teaching solfege drawn from the Dalcroze approach to music education.
Videos: Bodyfege for teaching solfege: https://youtu.be/ArVsGHZ8pTE
Doop Canon for teaching Quarter, Eighth, Half and Whole Notes: https://youtu.be/kj7tNtNHeVM
Links: Urista, Diane. The Moving Body in the Aural Skills Classroom
Ristow, Gregory. An Introduction to Dalcroze's Solfège Pedagogy
Ristow, Thomsen and Urista. Dalcroze's Approach to Solfège and Ear Training for the Undergraduate Aural Skills Curriculum
Dalcroze Eurhythmics with Lisa Parker (YouTube)
Show Notes: 00:23 Introductions
01:40 What is Dalcroze Eurhythmics?
04:00 Dalcroze Eurhythmics has been around for a while, but not that many people teach it, why?
07:05 Let's do some Dalcroze solfege games together.
07:44 Goals of Dalcroze Eurhythmics solfege training: Ground in students a sense of the feeling of each degree of the scale, and build the skills that allow them to translate immediately between knowing where they are in a scale and knowing what note that is (if they know what key they're in).
08:10 Solfege systems used in Dalcroze Eurhythmics. Eurhythmics teachers use two systems: one system to identify where we are in the scale (functional), such as moveable Do or scale degrees. One system to identify the letter name/pitch level of the note (phenomenological), such as fixed Do or letter names.
09:20 Bodyfege
12:00 Pacing of introducing notes over multiple classes. Changing the roles, having students lead the exercise to build improvisation skills.
13:30 Dalcroze games enable students to learn from each other, because they can look around and see how other students are moving, and help each other to find the right answer.
19:00 Bodyfege is a great game to sprinkle in for about 30-seconds at a time in each class over a long period of time.
19:30 To build translation between function (scale degrees/moveable do) and pitch space (letter names/fixed do), you can do Bodyfege using either.
20:20 Why do we leave out accidentals and syllable alterations for chromatics in Fixed Do, and usually not sing accidentals for letter names, for Dalcroze Solfege?
24:00 Relation of Bodyfege to Kodaly/Curwen hand signs
25:00 Partnering vs groups for Bodyfege.
27:00 In Dalcroze pedagogy there's no fixed version of any activity. Each game is an invitation to create a new variant of it to fit the students you have at that moment.
27:30 Dalcroze C-to-C Scales: Goal of making it possible to hear any note as any degree of the scale.
32:30 Using C-to-C scales to build fluency of translation between scale degrees/function and letter names/pitch space.
34:05 Different ways of prompting C-to-C scales
36:00 C-to-C scales help students call to mind harmonic context for parts of a scale.
36:45 Prompting C-to-C scale with a V7 chord with C on top.
39:45 The whisk and cluster prompt for C-to-C scales.
43:41 Using and trusting physical knowledge -- whether knowledge of what something feels like in the hands at an instrument, or the physical emotional feel of a scale degree
45:20 Modulation Exercises
47:45 An example of Dalcrozian way of teaching rhythm -- "Doop Canon"
50:30 The importance of keeping exercises musical
51:50 Teaching the layering and relation of rhythms
53:30 Ways of spinning out the Doop Canon into improvisation and rhythmic dictation
57:00 Learning through Play
58:05 Wrap-up & sign-off
Transcript: [music]
0:00:00.0 Theme Song These are the notes from the staff where we talk about our point of view, and we share the things we're gonna do, and we hope you're learning something new, 'cause the path to mastering theory begins with you.
0:00:21.6 David Newman: Welcome to notes from the staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.
0:00:35.0 Greg Ristow: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow founder of uTheory and associate professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
0:00:42.1 DN: And I'm David Newman. I teach voice and music theory at James Madison University and I code and create content for uTheory.
0:00:49.4 GR: Thanks to all our listeners for the great feedback and ideas you've been sending us at notes@utheory.com. Keep them coming, we love your ideas and we'll try and get to everything that you suggest we should do.
0:01:00.4 DN: Our topic today is Dalcroze Solfege Games. Today, we're turning the tables and I'll be interviewing my co-host Greg Ristow. When he's not working on uTheory, Greg is an associate professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory, where he also teaches classes in Dalcroze Eurhythmics. In the Summers he conducts the World Youth Honor Choir and teaches music, theory and ear training at the Interlochen Arts Camp. He has given numerous workshops on Eurhythmics in the US and abroad and his writing on your Eurhythmics appears in the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, American Dalcroze Journal, Being Music: The Canadian Dalcroze Journal, and Theory and Practice. He holds the Dalcroze Certificate from the Juilliard School and the Dalcroze license from the Longy School of Music. Greg, Welcome.
[laughter]
0:01:44.7 GR: Thanks David.
0:01:46.0 DN: So, [laughter] this is the big question. What is Dalcroze Eurhythmics?
0:01:51.1 GR: Yeah, So, the 30 second elevator: pitch Dalcroze Eurhythmics is a way of learning music through movement improvisation and play. In a Dalcroze Eurhythmics education, we approach musical concepts first by exploring them in movement in physical and musical improvisation. And then we turn from that towards theoretical concepts. A lot of people think of Eurhythmics as a method for learning rhythm, but in fact, as Dalcroze envisioned it, it's a method for learning all about music, any concept that you can think of in music, you can teach using Eurhythmics. Dalcroze himself was a teacher at the Geneva Conservatory in the late 1800s.
0:02:39.8 GR: He then actually resigned from the conservatory to found a school outside of Dresden in Hellerau, Germany where actually two brothers who were kind of industrial. I don't know what I call them. I guess magnates at this point. They were wealthy industrialists who built a little town with the idea that everyone would take classes and go to concerts, etcetra. And so they built the whole Eurhythmics school there to Dalcroze's specifications, including staircases in every classroom, so that you could practice all your rhythms not just on the flat surface, but going up and down the stairs and you know, this was, Eurhythmics really had its Heyday while the school was open which is like 1909 to 1914. And during that time everyone who was anyone was there: Stravinsky came, Orff came Diaghilev was so taken by the school that actually, they hired one of Dalcroze's top pupils to help them prepare the premiere of Rite of Spring, the choreography of Rite of Spring and so Nijinsky and Marie Rambert, Dalcroze's student worked super closely in that. So, yeah, in a nutshell, that's Eurhythmics. It's, I find it a very joyful way of both teaching and learning music.
0:04:00.6 DN: Is... I hadn't, I read a lot about Eurhythmics from, in reading old books and I kind of thought about it as an old thing. It never got brought up in my music education classes and I didn't know anyone before you, who taught it, and I think we've talked before about some reasons why that is but, why don't we know more about it?
0:04:26.9 GR: Yeah, I think at the heart of it is, there's a very tightly controlled certification process, which has has ensured over the century or so that Eurhythmics has been around, that people who are teaching it are super qualified and really good at it. But has also made it much harder for more people to learn about it. So at this point to get the top level of certification, which is the only level that allows you to certify other people, you have to go over to Geneva to the Dalcroze Institute there and do a course of study which takes about two years usually to do that. So...
0:05:03.5 DN: Wow.
0:05:04.7 GR: I have my certificate from Juilliard and my license from Longy. That's the highest level you can get in the US without going over to Geneva. And I've spent some time in Geneva, but not nearly enough to get the diploma, which is the highest level of certification. Also, I think a real impediment is that, Eurhythmics teachers, when we teach, we generally teach from the piano and we're generally improvising music for whatever musical concept we're teaching. And so there's, there's some piano skills that are required. Although, you can do a lot of improvisation on any other instrument, but certainly there are improvisation skills that are required which may not be at the center of a lot of people's musical training. Although, if you come up in a Eurhythmics approach, then improvisation is very central to all the work we do.
0:05:47.2 DN: Yeah, and of course, a lot of the conversations in higher level Music Theory Pedagogy is about how we need to do more improvisation.
0:06:00.1 GR: Yeah.
0:06:02.1 DN: So, this is exciting to me to sort of see how what ideas I can grab from this without going through the whole certification process.
[laughter]
0:06:12.6 GR: Absolutely. And I think actually, that's a great way of looking at it: that Eurhythmics, even if you're not going to go and become a full-fledged Eurhythmics teacher, then absolutely, there are great ideas from the Eurhythmics approach that you can bring into your teaching especially because so many of the things we do are little short games, you can just... You know I think it was just being like, "Oh, yeah, let's sprinkle in a little Eurhythmics here, and then let's go back to the chalkboard and teach the way I normally teach."
0:06:40.8 DN: Yeah. Yeah, and I've already got some, you had recommended to me the, the book.
0:06:48.5 GR: Diane Urista's book?
0:06:49.7 DN: Yeah.
0:06:50.5 GR: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
0:06:53.1 DN: The Moving Body in the Aural Skills Classroom, which has a whole bunch of great ideas in it.
0:06:58.0 GR: Yeah, it's a great book and, yeah, we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. Yeah, I thought what we might do today is... Our topic is Dalcroze solfege games... Is that we might just play the role of teacher and student, and I might take you through some Dalcroze solfege games that I might do with a class. Does that sound good?
0:07:18.3 DN: I am so here for this.
0:07:19.8 GR: Okay, [laughter] awesome. And for everyone listening at home, we're also video recording this because a lot of Dalcroze work is movement involved. So while we'll try and talk about what we're doing in movement, we'll also put some clips up to YouTube and put those in the show notes so that you can check out and see actually what we're doing beyond our audio descriptions of it. As we dive in, I should say, a primary goal of Eurhythmics training is to really ground... Of Eurhythmics Solfege training, is to really ground in students a sense of the feeling of each degree of the scale and an ability to translate immediately between the degree of the scale and the note name in whatever key we happen to be in. And so Dalcroze teachers work always in a system that describes where we are in the scale and in a system that describes what actual pitch level we're at. And so for many Dalcroze teachers, that's a scale degrees to describe where we are in the scale, and fixed Do to describe what pitch level we're at. But I thought today, because it's more common in America, that we'd work using movable Do for where we are in the scale and using letter names for what pitch level we're at, since I think more of us in America speak that language, and that's absolutely consistent with the Dalcroze work. You just need one of each system to work. So, yeah, shall we dive in?
0:08:49.1 DN: Yeah.
0:08:49.6 GR: Great. Okay, David, if you're comfortable doing so, would you stand and step back a little bit to where we can see a little more of your body, and I'm going to do the same.
0:08:57.5 DN: I might have to adjust my...
0:09:00.7 GR: Your camera a bit. Sure, and I'll do the same for mine. Good.
0:09:04.5 DN: I'm not sure I have the... [laughter] Can I kneel?
[laughter]
0:09:11.5 GR: I think that's gonna work, okay. As long as we can see your hips then we're fine, and yeah, great, okay. We're going to do a game that I call Bodyfege. I learned this game from Lisa Parker at the Longy School of Music. When I introduce this, I just say, "Face a neighbor." And you have to imagine, David, that you have a neighbor, and I say, "Do what I do four beats later." And then... Yeah, okay, so here we go. Let's just be, why not in this key. Do, Do, Sol, Sol, Sol.
0:09:45.3 DN: Do Do Sol Sol Sol.
0:09:47.9 GR: Good and the "Sol, Sol, Sol" for everyone who is listening as we do this, the Do is fists tapping on your thighs. Yup. And the Sol is high tens with your partner, so flat palm high tens with your partner. Great, okay, here we go. Do-Do-Sol-Sol-Sol.
0:10:08.0 DN: Do-Do-Sol-Sol-Sol.
0:10:11.5 GR: Sol-Sol-Sol-Do-Do.
0:10:14.4 DN: Sol-Sol-Sol-Do-Do.
0:10:17.5 GR: Do-Sol-Sol-Do.
0:10:20.3 DN: Do-Sol-Sol-Do.
0:10:23.1 GR: Do-Sol-Do-Sol-Sol-Do.
0:10:26.2 DN: Do-Sol-Do-Sol-Sol-Do.
0:10:28.3 GR: Do the same thing, but I'm gonna play it on the piano instead.
[music]
0:10:34.0 DN: Do-Do-Sol-Sol-Sol.
[music]
0:10:39.8 DN: Sol-Sol-Sol-Do-Do.
0:10:41.5 GR: Good, and David, I'm gonna make just a little correction on what you're doing. The Do is actually straight arms really on your thighs, not on your hips, but on your thighs.
0:10:48.2 DN: Fantastic, okay.
0:10:48.6 GR: We're gonna need our hips for another degree of the scale as this goes on. [laughter] Okay, great going on.
[music]
0:10:57.7 DN: Do-Sol-Sol-Sol-Do.
[music]
0:11:03.4 DN: Sol-Do-Sol-Sol-Do-Do.
0:11:06.4 GR: Sol-Sol-La.
0:11:10.9 DN: Sol-Sol-La.
0:11:11.5 GR: And La is as a little snap, just above the high tens, so exactly. Go ahead and snap as you do it. Sol-La-Sol-La-Sol.
0:11:21.2 DN: Sol-La-Sol-La-Sol.
0:11:23.3 GR: La-Sol-Do-Do-Do.
0:11:25.3 DN: La-Sol-Do-Do-Do.
0:11:29.9 GR: Do-La-Sol-Do-Do.
0:11:32.9 DN: Do-La-Sol-Do-Do.
[music]
0:11:38.9 DN: La-La-Sol.
[music]
0:11:44.7 DN: La-Sol-La-Do-Do-Do.
[music]
0:11:50.9 DN: Do-La-Sol-La-La.
[music]
0:11:56.7 DN: Sol-La-Sol-Do.
0:11:58.6 GR: Good. Now, I'm gonna keep adding notes, and I think it's worth saying here that when I'm doing this with a class, this is something that I space out over a number of weeks. We start with just a few notes, usually with just these first three notes, and then once those start to be really solid, we gradually add other notes to it. Although I'm gonna get us through the whole scale now, this is not something I would do in one class. This is to gradually build up over it. Now, the other thing that as we're building it up, in any Dalcroze exercise, a great joy is to switch around who's the teacher and say, "Okay, let's have... Who would volunteer to lead this?" And it's a great game to lead and also for you to test not only can students identify what they hear, but can students call to mind the sound of each Solfege? So David, do you wanna lead it with these three notes so far?
0:12:50.1 DN: Sure.
0:12:50.9 GR: Great.
0:12:52.1 DN: Sol-La-Sol-Sol-Sol.
0:12:56.9 GR: Sol-La-Sol-Sol-Sol.
0:12:58.1 DN: La-Sol-Do-Sol-Sol.
0:13:03.3 GR: La-Sol-Do-Sol-Sol.
0:13:03.6 DN: Sol-La-Sol-Do-Do-Do.
0:13:05.8 GR: Sol-La-Sol-Do-Do-Do. Excellent, excellent. And now, why don't you lead it? Sing like... Bum-Bum-Bum, something without the syllables.
0:13:19.5 DN: Right. Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum.
0:13:22.6 GR: Do-Sol-La-Sol-Do.
0:13:24.6 DN: Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum.
0:13:27.5 GR: La-Sol-La-Do-Do-Do.
0:13:29.7 DN: That's great.
0:13:30.6 GR: Yeah, yeah. No, this works really well in classes, even very large classes, because the students also see what's happening around them. So if they're wondering, 'Wait a second. Was that Do-So? Or was that Do-La?' They can kind of see, 'Is my partner going to a snap, or is my partner going to a high ten?'
[laughter]
0:13:50.3 GR: And there's that sort of communication and trust. And I think this is true of a lot of Dalcroze games, that the class teaches, in many ways, itself through that. And now, if I had given you a pattern that you had made a mistake on, then what... Instead of just doing that pattern over again, or saying, "Oh, that was wrong".
0:14:13.1 DN: Mm-hmm.
0:14:14.1 GR: I'll often then do a pattern that will correct it. So let's say that I'd given you...
[music]
0:14:19.5 GR: And you went, 'Do-Sol-Sol... ' Then, I just go...
[music]
0:14:25.1 GR: At which point, you've got, 'Oh, yeah. It's Do-La-La-La.' Right, so, just a pattern that simplifies things to correct it. Yeah, good. Should we add some more notes?
0:14:34.5 DN: Sure.
0:14:35.2 GR: Okay, great. Now, do what I do four beats later. Do-Do-Mi.
0:14:39.5 DN: Do-Do-Mi.
0:14:41.9 GR: So, Mi is a clap right in the center of the chest, right in front of the body. Do-Mi-Sol-Sol-Sol.
0:14:49.3 DN: Do-Mi-Sol-Sol-Sol.
0:14:52.3 GR: La-Sol-Mi-Sol-Sol.
0:14:55.4 DN: La-Sol-Mi-Sol-Sol.
0:14:58.5 GR: La-Mi-Sol-Do-Do.
[chuckle]
0:15:01.2 DN: La-Mi-Sol-Do-Do. That's a...
0:15:04.2 GR: La-Mi-Mi-La-La.
0:15:08.2 DN: La-Mi-Mi-La-La.
0:15:12.1 GR: Sol-Mi-La-Do-Do.
0:15:16.4 DN: Sol-Mi-La-Do-Do.
0:15:20.6 GR: Mi-Do-La-La-Sol.
0:15:24.8 DN: Mi-Do-La-La-Sol.
0:15:29.1 GR: Sol-Mi-La-Do.
0:15:32.5 DN: Sol-Mi-La-Do. [chuckle]
[music]
0:15:33.7 DN: Sol-La-Mi-Mi-Mi [laughter]
[music]
0:15:40.3 DN: Mi-Mi-La-La-Sol.
[music]
0:15:46.0 DN: Sol-Mi-Mi-Sol-Sol-Mi.
[music]
0:15:52.1 DN: La-Sol-Mi-Do.
0:15:53.4 GR: Do-Do-Re.
0:15:55.7 DN: Do-Do-Re.
0:15:58.1 GR: Re is hands on hips, elbows out to the side, a big strong posture. Do-Re-Mi.
0:16:07.0 DN: Do-Re-Mi.
0:16:09.6 GR: Mi-Re-Mi-Re-Re-Do.
0:16:14.7 DN: Mi-Re-Mi-Re-Re-Do.
0:16:19.8 GR: Sol-Mi-Re-Do-Do.
0:16:24.3 DN: Sol-Mi-Re-Do-Do.
[music]
0:16:26.7 DN: Do-Re-Mi-Re-Do-Do-Do.
[music]
0:16:32.0 DN: Do-Re-Mi-Sol-La-Sol. [laughter]
[music]
0:16:39.5 DN: La-Sol-La-Sol-Mi.
[music]
0:16:42.9 DN: La-Sol-Mi-Re-Do.
0:16:49.8 GR: Do-Mi-Fa.
0:16:52.4 DN: Do-Mi-Fa.
0:16:55.0 GR: So, Fa is hands up and out to the side in a questioning gesture like, 'What is that?'
[laughter]
0:17:01.8 GR: Do-Mi-Fa-Fa-Mi.
0:17:04.3 DN: Do-Mi-Fa-Fa-Mi.
0:17:06.9 GR: Sol-Fa-Fa-Mi.
0:17:09.1 DN: Sol-Fa-Fa-Mi.
0:17:11.3 GR: La-Sol-Fa-Mi-Do.
0:17:14.0 DN: La-Sol-Fa-Mi-Do.
0:17:16.7 GR: Re-Fa-Fa-Mi-Mi-Mi.
0:17:19.7 DN: Re-Fa-Fa-Mi-Mi-Mi.
0:17:22.8 GR: Sol-Fa-Mi-Re-Do-Do.
0:17:26.0 DN: Sol-Fa-Mi-Re-Do-Do. [chuckle]
0:17:29.2 GR: So, yeah. Exactly, you did it.
0:17:33.8 DN: I can keep up with the syllables, but not with the action steps. [laughter]
0:17:38.8 GR: Not with the motions, right? This is the other thing to... Of introducing it over a longer period of time, yeah. So, what remains? Ti. Of course, Ti, right? And so, Ti... Actually, before I introduce Ti, I usually introduce a high Do. So, high Do... Our low Do is fists with straight arms on thighs. Our high Do is fists pumping straight up into the air. So, Do-Do-Do-Do-Do.
0:18:00.3 DN: Do-Do-Do-Do-Do.
0:18:04.0 GR: Sol-Sol-Do-Do-Do-Do.
0:18:06.6 DN: Sol-Sol-Do-Do-Do-Do.
0:18:10.2 GR: La-La-Do-La-Sol-Do.
0:18:13.6 DN: La-La-Do-La-Sol-Do.
0:18:17.0 GR: La-Sol-La-Do-Do.
0:18:19.9 DN: La-Sol-La-Do-Do.
0:18:22.8 GR: Do-Do-Ti-Ti-Ti.
0:18:25.5 DN: Do-Do-Ti-Ti-Ti.
0:18:28.2 GR: Ti is just a good old-fashioned curving point-your-finger T, with arms... Upper arms parallel to the shoulders and fingers pointing up. Do-Ti-La-Sol-Sol-Sol.
0:18:42.3 DN: Do-Ti-La-Sol-Sol-Sol.
0:18:46.3 GR: Ti-Sol-Re-Re-Do.
0:18:49.4 DN: Ti-Sol-Re-Re-Do.
0:18:52.4 GR: Fa-Mi-Re-Do-Do.
0:18:55.3 DN: Fa-Mi-Re-Do-Do.
0:18:58.0 GR: Anyway, you can see how you can introduce this slowly, let's say, over the course of a semester, or even longer, especially if you're working with kids, to introduce each of the notes.
0:19:08.8 DN: Yeah.
0:19:09.1 GR: And an important thing...
0:19:09.3 DN: And we get a work out.
0:19:10.5 GR: And we get a work out.
[laughter]
0:19:12.0 GR: Yeah, you have seen. You get moving. I love to do this even with my college students, with Oberlin College Choir. I love to do just 30 seconds of this at the start of rehearsal. And just brings us into thinking about a tonal space, which is great. You can also, with your classes, and this is a very Dalcrozine thing to do. I give the prompts on Solfege, you give the prompt back to me in letter names. I will tell you what key we're in, and we switch it around that way. Or vice versa, right? Or I tell you the key, I give you the prompt from the piano, you give it back on letter names. You're still doing the motions showing where we are on the scale. So, let's say if we count to D major, right?
0:19:53.6 DN: Right.
0:19:54.0 GR: Then, if I gave Do-Do-Sol-Sol-Sol, you'd give D-D. A, A, A. And just because it takes too long to say F sharp, F sharp, F sharp, F sharp, F sharp, we don't bother saying the accidentals when we do this. We just say the letter name. Yeah.
0:20:15.8 DN: Is that... In the long run, does that inhibit or... I know that when you do fixed Do, you don't... I'm doing fixed Do in classes right now for non-tonal Solfege, and we're using the chromatic declensions for the purpose of interpreting exactly where we are, so we know exactly what the letter name is, but... Obviously that works. I just wonder why it works. [laughter]
0:20:50.5 GR: In other words, why in fixed Do not using the accidentals works?
0:20:55.0 DN: Correct. Yeah.
0:20:58.7 GR: I'll tell you in... If we actually go back and we look at Dalcroze's book on Solfege pedagogy, which came out in 1906, he suggests actually using alterations for the chromatic syllables, but he stopped doing that in his own teaching at some point, I think to match more just how fixed Solfege is used throughout Europe. But actually, we'll get to this in a moment. In the Dalcroze world, there's actually a little bit of benefit to not using alterations because in some of the exercises we do, it's about discovering where the half and whole steps are. And by not using alterations, in other words, F would always be F, even if it's an F sharp, F flat, etcetera, or if we're using fixed Do, it'll always be Fa. Then the class can sing, for instance, through a scalar passage, not knowing what key they're in, but discovering as they go where the half and whole steps are, to then be able to figure out what those are.
0:22:08.6 GR: That's, boy, without a classic example, that seems really weird, so maybe we should dive into some of that stuff, yeah? But before we do, one more thought on Bodyfege, which is, this is designed to get students to recognize the feeling of each note of the scale, to build up comfort... to make it comfortable for students to go between any two degrees of the scale. What intentionally it does not teach is intervallic thinking. It really teaches, does that sound like a Do, does that sound like a So? I remember where Do is, I remember where So is. And our goal is with that Bodyfege work, that students are really memorizing where each degree of the scale is in relation to tonic, and that they would be able to go to and from any other degree of the scale regardless of interval.
0:23:06.5 DN: Which is so much more useful, I think, for most levels of... Yeah.
0:23:13.1 GR: Yeah, yeah. We do have to build up tonal intervals. We'd have to build Do, Mi, Re, Fa... We have to build up the thirds within the scale, the fourths within the scale, etcetera. And it points to that La-Mi moment where it was like, "Ooh, that La-Mi feels weird." 'Cause it does 'cause that's a much less common leap. Yeah, the other thing that as you're teaching these, as you get enough notes to build the different triads, to work through arpeggiations of the different triads within the key as well, to build those in. Cool. Okay, shall we leave Bodyfege?
0:23:45.8 DN: Sure. [laughter] But that was great, and I can see so many reasons to do it. As I may have mentioned possibly, it's embarrassing, but you know at the college level, I hadn't done Kodaly hand signs until maybe five years ago. And I hadn't ever seen anyone else do it at the college level except in choirs, but I thought we need to get some physical involvement. And I think what's neat about this is it has the same opportunity for a kinesthetic engagement, and I like how much more physically engaged this is. I'm making plans for...
[laughter]
0:24:38.0 GR: It's also, I don't know if you noticed. It's actually, it's designed to transfer to and from the Kodaly hand signs relatively easily, 'cause Do is fists, just the way it would be in Kodaly. Re you put your hands on your hips and if you just bring those up, they become like the Re. Mi, your hands are flat when you clap, and of course, Mi also flat hands. The Fa is the weird one and that's fine.
0:25:00.6 DN: It's fine, and the partnering aspect of it, that sounds great. If you have an odd number of students, do you group three people together?
0:25:09.3 GR: Absolutely, and actually, sometimes early on in this, I'll have students work in groups of three or four with the hopes that at least one person is going to be strong in that group of three. 'Cause if you have one leader, they can gradually pull the others along.
0:25:26.3 DN: That's great. I've always looked for ways of having the stronger students help the weaker students without pointing out like, "Hey, you should probably get help from this person." [laughter]
0:25:37.4 GR: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And also your stronger students asking for volunteers to lead it, it will often be those students who know they're strong at it who are like, "Oh yeah, I wanna lead this." And it's another level of magnitude harder to lead this than it is to follow it. And of course it is improvisation. You're creating little one-measure phraselets.
0:26:00.7 DN: But what a great start to improvising. That's not intimidating. That's not gonna be intimidating to most people or...
0:26:07.9 GR: Yeah. Especially...
0:26:09.3 DN: I shouldn't say that.
0:26:10.5 GR: No, no, no. Especially if you start with, say just Do and So.
0:26:13.5 DN: Right.
0:26:14.0 GR: Right? That's... Yeah, you can... Yeah.
0:26:16.8 DN: And then you're encouraging them to explore on their own how those notes function with each other and what sounds good and maybe what sounds bad. [laughter]
0:26:29.0 GR: Yeah, yeah. And I should say also, we were in 4/4, but I love to do this in different times as well. So, maybe we'll do it in 3/4, which actually... When the... As the duration between when you hear it and when you respond shortens, it becomes harder and harder, and so 3/4 in 2/4 is very hard, 6/8 is delightful because there's just so much more space in the measure to have different notes.
0:26:56.3 DN: Mm-hmm.
0:26:58.7 GR: Yeah, so lots of possibilities for extending that. Then of course, if you want, you could extend it to two measures, although I think there's something fun about the quickness of the call and response nature of it.
0:27:10.6 DN: Mm-hmm.
0:27:11.5 GR: And this is also... This is really central to Dalcroze pedagogy is the idea that it's not... There's not one right game, but every game is an invitation to create other games out of it, to modify the rules to change what we're doing, etcetera.
0:27:27.1 DN: Right?
0:27:27.5 GR: Yeah. Cool, okay, so in Dalcroze Solfege, we have these weird scales that are called C-to-C scales, and they're very central to the classic Dalcroze training. And what we mean by that is we sing all of our scales major and minor starting from C or C-sharp or C-flat, whatever is in the key, going up to the next C and coming back down.
[chuckle]
0:27:55.6 GR: And as I describe that, you might be thinking, "That sounds a lot like modes."
0:28:00.8 DN: Right.
0:28:00.9 GR: Right? It sounds like a rotation of a scale, and you're right, the notes are the same as the modes, but what we work really hard to do with these is to actually learn them as major or minor scales already in progress.
0:28:20.1 DN: Right.
0:28:20.5 GR: So that if we were going to do the F-major C-to-C scale, we'll start on C, but we wanna hear that C... We wanna hear it not as being some... Ah, sorry. As being some sort of lovely Mixolydian thing.
0:28:40.0 DN: But that was a very nice Mixolydian demonstration. Thank you very much.
0:28:43.1 GR: Yeah. Absolutely. And you feel... And that C feels like tonic and that B-flat feels like part of the mode, and that is... And there is a modal C-to-C, right? But instead, what we work to do in Dalcroze is to say, "Can you make this C feel like scale degree five in your mind?" And to help that along the way, as we're introducing the scales generally one by one over a longer period of time, we'll say, "Okay, let's sing our F-major, C-to-C scale. Let's sing it on movable Do Solfege." So what syllable will be start on in F-major, David?
0:29:25.0 DN: Sol.
0:29:25.7 GR: Absolutely. So let's sing together our F-major, C-to-C scale, on movable Do. Here we go.
0:29:32.7 DN: Sol La Ti Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do Ti La So.
0:29:51.2 GR: And the tonic is?
0:29:52.7 DN: Do.
0:29:58.0 GR: Yeah, and so now that F feels very much like tonic, right? Even though we've sung the scale from C-to-C, we're very clearly in F-major. Now, let's do the same thing... Would you do it on letter names this time?
0:30:10.2 DN: Okay.
0:30:10.9 GR: And I'm just going to play one chord underneath you as you do it. Here we go.
0:30:15.0 DN: C D E F G A B C B A G F E D C.
0:30:23.8 GR: And the tonic is?
0:30:36.2 DN: F.
0:30:37.7 GR: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so at that point, you have both the movable Solfege and the letter names going in your mind. Now, let's do the same thing... And I'm just gonna play a C, but we do the same thing. And at any point in the scale, I might call out switch, which means change from letters to scale degrees or vice... Letters to movable Solfege or vice versa. Yeah, so start in whichever you prefer.
0:31:04.7 DN: Sol La...
0:31:06.8 GR: Switch.
0:31:08.3 DN: B... Oh, shoot. [laughter]
0:31:11.9 GR: Now, I'd suggest you imagine playing along in your mind and it'll... Yeah.
0:31:15.7 DN: Right.
0:31:16.8 GR: Go ahead.
0:31:17.3 DN: Sol La Ti...
0:31:20.8 GR: Switch.
0:31:21.2 DN: F G...
0:31:23.2 GR: Switch.
0:31:24.8 DN: La Ti...
0:31:25.6 GR: Mi Fa...
[laughter]
0:31:28.7 GR: Yeah.
0:31:29.9 DN: Ooh, boy.
0:31:30.5 GR: Yeah. So...
0:31:31.4 DN: This is tricky.
0:31:32.7 GR: Let's do the intermediate step that we totally skipped, which is...
0:31:35.2 DN: Okay.
0:31:35.5 GR: Sing each note on both. So Sol is C, La is D, etcetera.
0:31:42.8 DN: Sol is C, La is D, Ti is E, Do... Yes, Do is F, Re is G, Mi is A, Fa is B-flat, really?
0:32:08.4 GR: And...
0:32:09.4 DN: Sol is C.
0:32:11.8 GR: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so we built that up, and even you feel the mental gymnastics that goes on to do that, right?
0:32:19.6 DN: Yeah.
0:32:19.9 GR: And this is... I think the connection, the instantaneous connection of letter names and Solfege, this is something that takes a lot of time to develop, and it's something else to take the time to develop in each key.
0:32:32.8 DN: Mm-hmm.
0:32:34.5 GR: I was thinking back to our episode with Denise Eaton, where she was talking about how important the visual element of each key is when you're doing sight singing.
0:32:43.8 DN: Mm-hmm.
0:32:44.5 GR: And this is another way of getting at that of saying, "Okay, we're gonna do... We're gonna be working in this key." Let's work our C-to-C scale in that key, and let's practice going between the letter names and the Solfege, so that when we go over to the staff, I see that C and F-major and I'm like, "Yep, that is a Sol, and I know it."
0:33:05.9 DN: Right.
0:33:08.6 GR: And similarly, if I am hearing music that I know is in F-major, I hear a Mi and I say, "Oh yeah, absolutely, that is an A." And I know it.
0:33:22.1 DN: Yeah, that's a great thing to establish that connection.
0:33:26.0 GR: Yeah, yeah, I find my experience with students has been that the analysis of music is typically slow because the process of moving between the letter names and where they are in the scale is also slow.
0:33:45.0 DN: Right.
0:33:45.6 GR: And so these C-to-C scales, that is their primary goal is to connect in an inseparable way, that sense of in the key of F, A is three and three is A and ever more shall be so.
0:34:02.7 DN: Right.
0:34:04.7 GR: The other thing we do a lot with the C-to-C scales is we have different ways of prompting them. For instance, I could say, "Okay, hey everyone, let's sing our E-flat major C-to-C scale and let's sing it on movable Do so we'd all start on La and that would be fine." Actually, David, would you do that, would you sing the E-flat major, C-to-C scale starting from C on movable Solfege.
0:34:31.2 DN: Okay, using La based minor then?
0:34:33.9 GR: No. This is an E-flat major scale but we're starting from C, so we are starting on La.
0:34:40.1 DN: So it's La Ti Do Re Mi Fa Sol La.
0:34:52.3 GR: And that feels very much like C natural minor and...
0:34:57.3 DN: Right.
0:34:57.9 GR: To moveable-do La minor people sounds like it... Right.
0:35:00.7 DN: Right, absolutely.
0:35:02.2 GR: Okay, would you do the same thing again and I'm going to give us a little harmony.
0:35:06.0 DN: Okay. La Ti Do Re Mi Fa Sol La.
0:35:21.0 GR: And coming down.
0:35:22.4 DN: Sol Fa Mi Re Do Ti La.
0:35:32.6 GR: And the tonic is?
0:35:34.5 DN: Do.
0:35:36.5 GR: And when we're that close we sometimes sing up to it.
0:35:39.1 DN: La Ti Do.
0:35:40.0 GR: Yeah, exactly, just so we feel... Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And now it feels it's the same notes, but it feels very much like E-flat major.
0:35:50.0 DN: Mm-hmm.
0:35:51.5 GR: And a primary goal of these scales is also to start to be able to hear harmonic contacts so that I could just singing La Ti Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Sol Fa Mi Re Do Ti La Do versus La Ti Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Sol Fa Mi Re Do Ti La Si La that I could call to mind whatever harmonic realm I want for those notes.
0:36:27.8 DN: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting that I heard the harmonic context of both of those. [chuckle]
0:36:35.8 GR: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the other thing about this, I said I could prompt it by saying what we're doing, but I could also prompt it by playing a C and then giving you a chord that's going to strongly suggest what key we're in. So here's that C and I'm gonna give us a chord that makes C very clearly a specific part of the scale.
0:37:02.0 DN: Okay.
0:37:02.7 GR: And let me know what part of the scale you think that is.
0:37:10.8 DN: That sounds like Ti.
0:37:13.1 GR: Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. Now, students may not get there that quickly, and one of the joys of singing without accidentals is that we could sing up and down the scale to feel out where the half and whole steps are on letter names. So let's do it, let's do it without accidentals on letter names, here we go.
0:37:30.9 DN: C D E F G A B C D.
0:37:38.4 GR: C, come down.
0:37:43.4 DN: C B A G F E D C.
0:37:50.1 GR: And tonic is?
0:37:55.6 DN: Do.
0:37:56.8 GR: Otherwise known as D and what kind of D is that tonic by the way?
0:38:06.0 DN: That's... Oh it's gotta be a D flat.
0:38:08.3 GR: It's gotta be a D flat because it started from a C natural, yeah absolutely. So we could cue a scale just by giving a chord, let's do another of those. So I've put C on top. Let's sing it together in letters and let's see what we figure out.
0:38:24.9 DN: Mi Re Do...
0:38:25.9 GR: Yes, bingo, good, let's sing on letters, here we go.
0:38:37.0 DN: C D E F G A B C B A G F E D C.
0:38:51.6 GR: And tonic is?
0:38:53.3 DN: A flat.
0:38:54.0 GR: A flat indeed, yes.
[laughter]
0:38:55.5 GR: Right, so... And so yeah we can cue... uh, what I'm doing is I'm just playing a V7 chord and I put a C on top of that V7 cord.
0:39:04.3 DN: Right.
0:39:04.9 GR: So in that case, it was just an E flat dominant seventh and I put the C on top which makes it a dominant 13th chord.
0:39:12.0 DN: Right, but still, as soon as you have that dominant seventh chord, if you're thinking in standard tonal harmony, it just tells you what key you're in.
0:39:22.0 GR: Absolutely, absolutely. The proof of that, of course, is there's only one tritone within the major scale, so theoretically, if you have the tritone plus any other note of the scale, you can identify where you are. That's actually a very hard prompt that we sometimes do is we'll do tritone plus C.
0:39:40.2 GR: Gosh yeah, and can I share with you another prompt that I love?
0:39:45.1 DN: Sure.
0:39:45.2 GR: This is called the whisk and cluster prompt. Whisk and cluster, ready?
0:39:48.8 DN: Okay.
0:39:54.4 GR: I whisked first, and then I clustered, and now hum around in that and see if you can figure out where we are.
0:40:10.0 DN: Yeah, it sounds Lydian to me, but...
0:40:17.2 GR: Right. Uh-huh. And now, of course, if I put with it a... Now it feels not so Lydian, right?
0:40:24.1 DN: Right.
0:40:24.4 GR: And the harder version of that is we take the whisk away and we do purely the cluster. Ready for a cluster?
0:40:32.2 DN: Yep.
0:40:32.8 GR: Okay, here we go.
0:40:33.5 DN: Da da da da. Da. Da da da da da da da da da da.
0:40:45.0 GR: Almost.
0:40:45.3 DN: Oh, thank you, thank you. Da da da da da da da da da da da...
0:40:53.1 GR: Good, let's sing it on letters, ready? Here we go.
0:40:54.7 DN: Alright.
0:40:55.2 GR: Here we go.
0:40:56.2 DN: C D E F G A B C B A G F E D C.
0:41:08.8 GR: And the tonic is?
0:41:12.8 DN: Do.
0:41:13.4 GR: Yes. Otherwise known as, in letters?
0:41:20.0 DN: B flat.
0:41:21.3 GR: B flat, indeed, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's... Yeah so that's the cluster prompt, right?
0:41:28.0 DN: Right.
0:41:28.2 GR: And that one is just great to let students hum around and sort of figure out where are the half steps, where are the whole steps? And then they're purely identifying where they are in the scale based on that arrangement of half and whole steps, which is really I think fun and delightful. You can do the same thing with harmonic minors. Right to where now we know clearly we're in...
0:42:02.1 DN: Yeah, well... Da da... I hear that very well. Can you cluster it again? Da da. Da da da da da da.
0:42:16.2 GR: Yeah, uh-huh.
0:42:19.4 DN: Da. It's decayed so much that I'm not sure I can hear it anymore. Da da da da da da da da da.
0:42:31.9 GR: Mm-hmm, yeah, so...
0:42:33.4 DN: Hava Nagila, Hava Nagila... I can't help but hear it in a mode.
[laughter]
0:42:38.6 GR: And that's kind of a question, do you hear Hava Nagila in... With this as tonic or do you hear this as tonic? I hear this a tonic myself. I hear it starting on a V chord. But you know, either way, right? In any case, yes absolutely, we're starting from... Oh, pardon my clock here. It's got... This is the thing about doing these C to C scales is, you really start getting into hearing where are things between C and C?
0:43:18.3 DN: Uh huh.
0:43:18.3 GR: And then, I don't know about you, but after I've done a few of these, especially these cluster examples, I'll turn on the radio and I still have in mind where C and C are and I just start hearing the collection of clustered notes between C and C and the key emerges and suddenly, I know all the notes I'm listening to.
0:43:39.9 DN: I think there's great value in having a lot of avenues into things. And one thing that I have never quite explained to myself, because I'm a terrible pianist but I can still, within my skill limits, I can play anything that I hear by ear. Anything? That's probably an exaggeration, but definitely a pop song. And I've noticed that I can be going along and listening to a pop song and I will get to a chord or get to something and I will lose track of where I am. And I'm trying to mentally analyze where things are. Doesn't everybody do this, mentally analyze all the pop songs you hear on the radio? Anyway, I have exposed myself. Alright. But I have found moments where I lose track of where I am and I think, "How would I play it?" And my fingers immediately know where they would go.
0:44:41.8 GR: Yeah, yeah.
0:44:44.3 DN: I will be like, Oh, now I know where I am.
0:44:48.9 GR: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.
0:44:50.9 DN: That's some other part of my brain that knows how to do that, but I think having these multiple avenues...
0:45:00.1 GR: Yeah, and Dalcroze was really after training that sort of subconscious level of the brain. That the goal was to make things so automatic that you couldn't disentangle pitch from scale degree, that you couldn't disentangle hearing the half steps and whole steps in a row and going, "Oh yeah, I know that that exists as either two, three, four or as six, seven, one. And therefore, I am in a specific place in the scale.
0:45:30.9 DN: Right.
0:45:31.4 GR: And which is it? Oh, now I have enough information. It's two, three, four"
0:45:34.4 GR: Right.
0:45:35.3 GR: Which also leads to wonderful exercises of modulation as well, that we could say, I'm starting from C again, and what arrangements of half and whole steps was that? That was a half step and then a whole step. What are the keys I could be in? Don't tell me, just think of them. And would you improvise a little tune that starts from that C that convinces me of what you have decided is tonic in that key."
0:46:00.2 DN: Uh. Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da.
0:46:10.4 GR: Great. And I believe absolutely that you're in A flat major. Yes, you fully convinced me of it. Did someone in the class pick a different key? Don't tell me what it was. Let's hear your tune. And suddenly you've introduced the concept of modulation.
0:46:24.3 DN: Right.
0:46:24.4 GR: And of pivot. Of pivot scale fragments instead of pivot chords. Of course, you're having just sung that we would then sing it back either on letter names or scale degrees or moveable do.
0:46:34.1 DN: Right.
0:46:35.0 GR: Mi fa sol la ti la sol fa mi, la ti do, do re me.
[laughter]
0:46:44.7 GR: Sorry... I live in fixed do you see, and so...
0:46:45.6 DN: It's hard to switch.
[laughter]
0:46:45.6 GR: I'm gonna need numbers. "Three, four, five, one, sev, six, five, four, three, one, two, three. A six, five, four, three". I think you did something like that. Do you remember?
0:46:55.6 DN: That was good memory.
0:46:56.9 GR: Right? And so was...
0:46:57.6 DN: This is another thing we try to teach students.
0:47:00.7 GR: Absolutely. Absolutely. It's the... Yeah. Yeah. And of course going back to the Bodyfege, that is also about tonal... About tonal memory, memorizing small...
0:47:07.7 DN: Yeah.
0:47:08.7 GR: Smaller sections, yeah.
0:47:11.6 DN: Now I think, of course, I was trying to not sing a tune that immediately sprung to mind. And then I thought, "Oh, well, for another key... Oh, Danny Boy... ".
[laughter]
0:47:21.5 GR: Yeah. You were gonna sing... Yeah.
[music]
0:47:28.4 GR: Yeah, which is a great... I mean, there aren't that many well-known examples of tunes that began on scale degree 7. Isn't that a great one? "Sev, one, two, three". Totally. Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so these are the C to C scales. There are infinite games that you can spin out of them. We've only... We've only touched on a few. I wanted to share one more thing, which is just to give a sense of how Dalcrozians might introduce rhythm elements in the classroom. Shall we do a quick rhythm game?
0:47:55.1 DN: Sure.
0:47:55.9 GR: Okay. So this is gonna sound familiar, 'cause this is something you hear quite a lot in a Dalcroze class. "Do what I do four beats later."
[laughter]
0:48:03.8 DN: Okay.
0:48:04.3 GR: Doop. Doop. Doop. Doop. Doop. Doop. Doop. Doop. Oh, we have earphones on, we have to tug on our earlobes for this next part. Because for the "Doops... " When we say the "Doops," were touching our pointer finger to our nose. And when we get to "Chikas", which will be tugging left, right, left, right, left, right on my earlobes. When I eventually get to "Ooh's", I'll be tracing a long arc of a hand from down by my knee up to the sky. And then when I get to a "Ksss," I'll do a clap in the middle of my body, spreading out over the full length of the "Ksss". Okay. So now our listeners know what we'll be doing physically, but we also post it quick. Okay. Here we go. Doop. Doop. Doop. Doop.
0:48:42.7 DN: Doop. Doop. Doop. Doop.
0:48:45.5 GR: Chika. Chika. Chika. Chika.
0:49:21.1 DN: Chika. Chika. Chika. Chika.
[vocalization]
[laughter]
0:49:42.2 GR: So this was... You should know David and I are doing this over the internet, and we're using Jamulus, which has pretty low latency. There's still a little bit of latency, so I was having to be ever so slightly ahead of David, which was totally... drammatically confusing for me.
[laughter]
0:49:58.3 GR: But yeah... So, just to talk through the sequence of that. First we did one sound at a time, leaving silence and echoing. Then I would do one sound for measure and the next measure, I do was put a...
[vocalization]
0:50:09.2 GR: A whole note in.
0:50:11.3 DN: Mm-hmm.
0:50:11.4 GR: And then each measure changing to whatever I want it to be, but still... By the way, every fourth measure I was putting a ksss [whole note]
0:50:21.8 GR: In, so that there was a sense of cadence and ordering to the phrase length.
0:50:26.5 DN: That is so important, to me, is that things be musical.
0:50:32.8 GR: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
0:50:34.4 DN: Because you can do things at random, and if you don't make them musical, are you really... It's like you're putting another impediment in the way while you're creating new skills.
0:50:46.1 GR: Yes, yes. And I'm really glad you said that, because the next thing I would do... Actually, let's just go a little more, yeah?
0:50:54.5 DN: Okay.
0:50:55.5 GR: Ready?
[vocalization]
0:51:15.9 DN: I started my chikas too loud.
0:51:17.3 GR: Oh, it's all good...
[laughter]
0:51:21.2 GR: It's all good, right? But to intentionally then create dynamic, and even pitch shapes within it, so that it starts becoming not just a... We have doops, we have chikas, we have oohs, but we start to create a thing.
0:51:31.3 DN: Right. There's a whole other layer of information that we often don't work on.
0:51:39.7 GR: Yeah. And intentionally, when I first did this exercise, I do not put that layer of information in.
0:51:45.4 DN: Right.
0:51:45.5 GR: At the beginning, this is an exercise of, can I do one thing...
[laughter]
0:51:51.7 GR: While seeing another thing being done?
0:51:52.6 DN: Right.
0:51:54.4 GR: And that's a really hard skill to learn at first. With college students, yeah, great. But with elementary students, that I'm holding my own, and I'm not doing what I'm seeing, that takes a lot of work. And actually, what I will do in that, I do sort of like a Simon Says kind of thing. I'll say, "Do what I do. Do, do, do." We're all doing it. And then I say, "Keep doing that. Don't change until I say change." Class keeps doing it, I start to... chk-ah chk-ah
0:52:23.4 GR: "Keep doing your doops until I say... Change." And now we're all doing... chk-ah chk-ah
0:52:28.6 GR: Until I can... So you can layer it up that way of having them experience, "I'm doing eighth notes while I'm seeing quarter notes," or vice versa and starting to feel the relationship of those different notes.
0:52:39.4 DN: And you know what's also great about this? And this is just stating the obvious, I know. But it's all a game.
0:52:47.0 GR: It's all a game.
0:52:47.9 DN: It's all a game.
0:52:49.3 GR: It's all a game. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, okay, let's spin this game out a little bit. So now I'm just going to do the sounds at the Piano. But would you do everything back just as you were doing it?
0:53:00.5 DN: Okay.
0:53:00.8 GR: So when you hear doops, chikas, oohs and...
[vocalization]
0:53:02.2 GR: From the Piano.
[laughter]
0:53:03.8 GR: Ready? Here we go.
[music]
[vocalization]
[laughter]
0:53:47.5 GR: Yeah, Exactly.
0:53:49.0 DN: And then you end with the symbol crash. Fantastic.
0:53:51.7 GR: The symbol crash, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And of course, what we are doing is rhythmic dictation. We're doing real-time rhythmic dictation.
0:54:00.3 DN: Yeah.
0:54:00.8 GR: And as we build it up, I could change the note value within the measure. Which I wasn't doing at all, I was doing a full measure of each, right?
0:54:06.6 DN: Right.
0:54:08.1 GR: We changed the note values within the measure, which adds a little bit of complexity. Or as I was doing that, I was trying to play things that kind of sounded like our sounds. But I could just improvise freely, and everyone would still do about the same motions. But I don't necessarily have to do that. Or I could do like a bad Beethoven Sonata, like a... As if I start, it goes...
[music]
0:54:37.6 GR: You know, if I just...
0:54:38.0 DN: Right.
0:54:39.1 GR: You can just spin it out in any number of ways that you wanna spin it.
0:54:44.7 DN: And if I didn't feel confident at the piano, I can go... La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.
0:54:55.8 GR: Absolutely... Which is equally good. Which is... Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And, as we were talking about with Bodyfege, having students lead this exercise, starting with the basic form of doing the doops and chikas, as we talked about. With the rule of every fourth bar they're gonna do a ksss [whole note]
0:55:10.3 GR: And that's hard, that's really hard to remember. Often actually, as they're doing it, I just politely say, "One... Two... " At the start of each bar. "Three... " And then gradually take that away. To learn to create four measure of shapes...
0:55:26.6 DN: Right.
0:55:28.7 GR: Is wonderfully challenging. And as we did, adding that layer of musical information that exists on top of notes and rhythm as well, really, these are wonderful pathways into Improvisation for students that they can do away from their instruments and in an art school classroom so cool.
0:55:49.7 DN: This was great.
[chuckle]
0:55:52.6 GR: I feel like that's probably enough as with anything in Dalcroze, you can take any of these and spin them out in infinite directions to fit your class...
0:56:03.2 DN: Right.
0:56:03.6 GR: To fit what you wanna work on, but I think...
0:56:06.2 DN: Yeah, I think, yes, I would love to see seven more hours of games, but just knowing this approach, there's a whole lot that one could invent on one's own...
0:56:19.5 GR: Totally.
0:56:20.5 DN: Just saying, "Oh, okay, I can use this." And probably, probably many people already are using games like this and they...
0:56:29.8 GR: Yeah.
0:56:31.8 DN: But if you're not, holy smoke. What a great process!
[chuckle]
0:56:35.7 GR: Yeah, yeah, and I find having a number of these in my tool bag as it were, these are great quick transition fillers, like, we're going between this piece and this piece, insert 30 seconds of doop canon.
[chuckle]
0:56:51.0 GR: And that we're working. And it's just great ways, especially if you're teaching in a band or a choir orchestra situation, great ways to sneak in some really deep musical learning without having to take a bunch of time aside for it.
0:57:05.0 DN: Yeah, yeah. And the joy of playing, and we learned so much by playing, that's how we learn.
0:57:13.9 GR: Yeah, yeah, and this is the other thing because this work is so rooted in play, it takes, it removes a layer of stress that can absolutely be a blocker for learning concepts. I think when we're learning to play basketball, right, we don't go like, "Oh, I missed the basket, I give up." Right?
0:57:34.5 DN: Right.
0:57:34.6 GR: And we don't overthink it.
0:57:36.1 DN: Well, some of us do.
0:57:36.7 GR: Some of us do. Yeah...
[chuckle]
0:57:37.9 GR: Especially adults, right? But give a kid a basketball and a basket and they'll just keep trying, and they're learning so much by that trying without horrible negative voices. The negative voices can typically come from maybe the coaching or the pressure of the game, of winning, but yeah, just working in play can be, especially for any students who are inhibited by their own stress or self-critique, it can be very freeing.
0:58:11.0 DN: Greg, this is fantastic, and thank you so much for sharing all these ideas today, I'm excited to incorporate some of them in my own classroom, and I'm sure that anyone listening is going to be thrilled as well so...
0:58:26.5 GR: Awesome. Well, thanks David. This was fun to flip the tables and do this. So...
[chuckle]
0:58:31.2 DN: Great to see you.
0:58:32.5 GR: You too David.
0:58:35.7 DN: Bye.
0:58:36.6 GR: Bye.
[music]
0:58:37.3 S1: Notes from the staff is produced by utheory.com.
0:58:40.0 GR: UTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
0:58:44.1 S1: With video lessons, individualized practice, and proficiency testing uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world, master the fundamentals of Music Theory, rhythm, and ear training.
0:58:54.9 GR: Create your own free teacher account at utheory.com/teach.
Rhythm counting systems: what they are, how we use them, and why might we choose one over another. We break down the plethora of approaches (including 1-e-&-a, Takadimi, Gordon, Kodály, and Orff) into groups, and share tips from our own experience teaching these from preschool to college.
Links: Free Printable Rhythm Resources on uTheory
Eastman/1-ti-te-ta Counting System
Traditional American/1-e-&-a Counting System
Gordon Rhythm Solfege
Takadimi Counting System
Varley, Paul. An Analysis of Rhythm Systems in the United States: Their Development and Frequency of Use By Teachers, Students and Authors. (Ed.D Dissertation, UMSL, 2005)
Show Notes: 0:30 Introductions
01:20 What are counting systems? What ones do you use?
03:05 Kinds of Counting Systems: Analytical/Metric Subdivisional vs Mnemonic
04:45 1e&a/Eastman/Traditional American approaches
06:11 Gordon Rhythmic Solfege
07:55 Takadimi
10:11 Mnemonic/Pattern-based/rhythm word approaches (Orff)
14:00 Note-syllable approaches (Kodály)
16:00 Kinesthetic Approaches (Dalcroze)
17:35 What are shared goals of counting systems?
19:40 Conceptualizing rhythm as existing within a metric grid, rather than as the addition of longer- and shorter-duration notes
21:22 How do you use these systems when you're teaching?
24:00 Role and value of using rote teaching with rhythm
25:50 Teaching the reading of rhythm using counting systems
29:23 Value of using multiple approaches: using both a subdivision & pattern-based system, and with each system varying the kind of activities and engagement
31:45 Teaching dictation using rhythm counting systems
33:00 Protonotations ("Box approach", "Beat sheets", drawings, symbols, etc...)
35:45 Call and response exercises
37:55 What are strengths/weaknesses of analytical-subdivisional approaches and mnemonic/pattern-based approaches?
43:50 Creating a sense of meter, especially in systems that don't make them explicit
49:30 A shared goal with pitch solfege systems is to learn a rhythmic system so well that in the end, we don't need it at all
51:40 Challenges of analytical/subdivisional systems
53:50 Wrap-up
Transcript [theme music]
0:00:20.3 Leah Sheldon: Welcome to Notes from the Staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education. I'm Leah Sheldon, head of teacher engagement for uTheory.
0:00:37.3 Greg Ristow: And I'm Greg Ristow, I'm an associate professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory and the founder of uTheory.
0:00:43.1 David Newman: And I'm David Newman, I teach voice and music theory at James Madison University and I write code and create content for uTheory.
0:00:50.6 GR: Our topic today is one that several of you wrote in to say you would love to hear. Shoutouts to Noel Warford, Michael Joviala and Maddy Tarantelli, in particular.
0:00:58.9 LS: We'll be talking about counting systems or rhythm systems, which are basically solfège systems for counting rhythms.
0:01:05.6 DN: There are a lot of systems, but we'll break them down into categories and give examples of why you might use one or more of these to help teach rhythm.
0:01:14.3 LS: We've also got links in the show notes to helpful references, including printable rhythm system resources you can find at utheory.com/teach/resources.
0:01:24.9 GR: So, yeah. Let's dive in. What is a counting system? Probably many of us have had encounters with these growing up. The most common is, in America at least, is probably the 1-e-&-a, 2-e-&-a approach. So yeah, so what are these? Why do we use these? And I wonder, what systems do you use, Dave and Leah?
0:01:45.7 DN: Well, when I started teaching aural skills, I didn't use any system at all, I definitely used a version of counting in college when I was learning. Mostly in choir though. Then we switched to Takadimi at James Madison University. And then recently we have switched to what we're calling the Eastman System, which is 1-e-&-a and 1-la-li, 2-la-li. I guess that's not really the Eastman System, but it's some hybrid. [laughter]
0:02:19.4 GR: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally. I think it's probably... One of the things you mentioned you did a lot of it in high school choir. I think that for a lot of us, that's probably where we learn our counting systems is through our school music programs.
0:02:32.6 DN: Right.
0:02:33.2 GR: Certainly for me that 1-e-&-a, 2-e-&-a was a constant partner to my years in band. How about you, Leah? What systems do you use, have you used?
0:02:42.6 LS: Yeah, I grew up using 1-e-&-a, 2-e-&-a, so just a traditional counting system. Used that throughout college as well. In my first couple of years of teaching, especially at the elementary level, I actually taught with Kodály syllables. And then when I began teaching at the middle school and the high school I was mostly teaching counting again.
0:03:05.2 GR: Yeah, yeah. So there are different kinds of approaches to this and in a lot of ways, I think they parallel the debate about how to teach reading, just how to teach reading a language. And there are approaches that you might call phonics approaches, where you kind of break down the rhythm and analyze the relative durations and then there are approaches that you might think of as being more whole language or whole word approaches, where you learn basically rhythmic patterns in groups. So you might learn like an eight and 2 16th, ti-ta-ta as pine-apple, or 2 16th and an eight as cherry pie. So we're gonna talk about these approaches in different categories, we'll talk about what we're calling analytical or metric sub-divisional systems and these are the kind of traditional systems like the American Counting System, 1-e-&-a, 2-e-&-a, or the Eastman System 1-ti-te-ta. Gordon, the du-de's and Takadimi as well. And pneumonic or pattern-based systems, these are especially used in the Orff approach to music education.
0:04:16.4 GR: Note syllable systems, as Leah mentioned, the Kodály system, where we have things where the syllable is associated with the note duration, so ta as a quarter-note, ti as an 8th note, etcetera. Although doesn't follow that exactly. And a little bit kinesthetic approaches like the Dalcroze approach to music education, which combines a bit of the analytical metric subdivisional system approach and pneumonic approach with work through movement. So yeah, let's dive in. Let's talk first about these analytical or metric subdivisional systems. We've said a couple of times, probably the most common is that 1-e-&-a. It doesn't really have a name, if you look around, people call it the Eastman System though the Eastman System is proposed by McHose and Tibbs was actually 1-ta-te-ta, which is still in use in quite a lot of places. When we say that, what we're saying is that if you take 4 16th notes in simple time, you would call each of those notes by a syllable 1-ta-te-ta, right? So if I had 2 eighth notes, I could say 1-te, 2-te, 3-te, t-te for a measure. If I had a measure of 16th, I'd say 1-ta-te-ta, 2-ta-te-ta, t-ta-te-ta, 4-ta-te-ta.
[laughter]
0:05:30.8 GR: Which, you know, the Eastman System seems to have been... Is newer than the Traditional American System, which I think most of us are familiar with 1-&-2-&-3, right? It's modified so that you get a more percussive beginning to each syllable. In the Traditional American System, we go 1-e-&-a, 2-e-&-a, t-e-&-a, 4-e-&-a. And if we're in compound meter in the Eastman System, we go 1-la-li, 2-la-li, or if we have 16th notes, say we're in six-eight and with 16th notes, we can subdivide all the way down to 1-ta-la-ta-li-ta, 2-ta-la-ta-li-ta, 1-ta-la-ta-li-ta, 2-ta-la-ta-li-ta. See that's Eastman/Traditional American System and a lot of people use a combination of those. Leah you wanna talk about Gordon?
0:06:14.5 LS: Sure. So Edwin Gordon's music learning theory really focuses on teaching the students to audiate and think in rhythms and that's done through learning the patterns that are really based on macrobeats, microbeats and then what he calls melodic rhythm. So for example, if the macro beat were a quarter-note, that would be duuuuu-duuuuu and we break that down into eighth notes then we have duuu-de, duuu-de all the way down into 16th notes du-ta-da-ta and in compound meters, we're breaking that into du-da-di-du-da-di and if there's further subdivision, du-ta-da-ta-di-ta. But again, the whole approach of Gordon is to help students audiate the rhythm. So it's not necessarily looking at the rhythm and reading it from notation, but hearing it so it's subjective. What one person hears as a macrobeat might not be what someone else is hearing as the macrobeat. But it at least it gives us a way to analyze the rhythm that's heard and be able to break it down into those syllables.
0:07:31.6 GR: And the Gordon music learning sequence places a big focus, I think what you're saying, is on the sound before sight kind of thing.
0:07:39.7 LS: Yes, yes.
0:07:42.2 GR: Yeah. And if you're listening and you're saying, oh my goodness, they're saying all these syllables and how am I going to remember what's what, don't worry. We've prepared resources on these counting systems for you at utheory.com/teach/resources. So how about Takadimi, David?
0:07:58.3 DN: Takadimi is interesting. It was conceived relatively recently, about 20 years ago, maybe a little longer, as a way of sort of making a fluent way and a logical way of dividing up each beat, so. And I think all of the systems that we've talked about so far, they're... We've talked about them referencing a quarter-note beat, but they can be used with a half note beat or a whole note beat. They're really beat-based and how you divide up that beat. So when you divide up a beat into four parts in Takadimi, you use, surprisingly enough, Takadimi. [chuckle] And if you divide it into three beats, you do ta-ki-da and if you divide that further into six beats, then you use ta-va-ki-di-da-ma. And one of the things that they tried to design it around, aside from the fact of changing the part of your mouth that makes each syllable so that they're easy to do fast syllables together, is that they made sure that di is always the middle of the beat, so the middle division of the beat. So even if you have ta-ka-di-mi, ta-va-ki-di-da-ma, di still lines up in the same place.
0:09:30.6 GR: Cool. I have to say, I love the sound of Takadimi when I hear people do it well and fluently. It has kind of... I find it as a sort of musical flow, maybe because of what you're talking about with where the syllables are, that my beloved 1-e-&-a doesn't have so much.
0:09:51.0 DN: And people like the crispness of the consonants as well, which is my colleagues' main complaint with the counting, is that wa is very ambiguous about it, where it starts.
0:10:08.3 GR: Yeah. For sure, for sure. So these are all these what we've been calling analytical or metric subdivisional systems, which is to say that given a beat that's either in simple time or at a time where the beats divide in two or four, or in compound time where they divide in three or six, then we can break down the beats into the notes within the beat into various syllables. These are the most probably common approaches to teaching rhythm. We also have mnemonic or pattern-based approaches, sometimes these are called rhythm word approaches, where you assign different... You can assign different words, actually literally English words to syllables.
0:10:48.0 GR: So I use these a lot myself when I'm teaching compound meter, which has fewer commonly used patterns. So for instance, say we're in six-eight and we have three eighth notes, if we're in geography land, that might be Ca-na-da, Ca-na-da. The dotted quarter could be Ro-me, Ro-me. The eighth and a quarter could be... I don't know. What's a good da-di, da-di-da? I've used Lo-ngy, Lo-ngy because I learned these at the Longy School of Music, but that may not apply anywhere else. And for eighth quarter, I've always used Scot-land, Scot-land, Scot-land. So just wind up with... And I think one of the nice things about these mnemonic approaches is that they get students thinking at a beat level and not at a micro sub-divisional level. And they get them there very quickly.
0:11:45.5 DN: That's super important. And I did the... I realized I did the same thing. In 2011, I made a video that ended up going a little bit viral with... Using food words that we had come up with in my class for simple meters. It wound up on a t-shirt somewhere.
0:12:06.2 GR: And this is... I think, especially anyone who's had training in Orff is saying right now, Oh yeah, this is what we do. This is just very, very central to the Orff approach to teaching music education is thinking in these words. And there's that connection as well with Gordon and I think a lot of music education philosophy of... That allows doing a lot in sound before actually moving to musical notation.
0:12:40.8 DN: Yeah. Which is another great advantage of it. Although I regularly see memes being shared on Facebook with words attached to various rhythms and there's always one that's wrong. [chuckle]
0:12:56.9 GR: Yeah. Where the stresses just don't work, right? Yeah.
0:13:02.4 DN: Yeah.
0:13:02.4 GR: Yeah. We'll talk more about various strengths of these. But one of the challenges of, if you're assigning a word to each pattern, is sometimes, the way these patterns line up in music, they don't all begin... The musical idea could begin before the beat, not necessarily on the beat. And then, how does that change the words you might wanna say?
0:13:30.9 DN: Right.
0:13:31.3 GR: The danger of, sometimes, these patterns, is that they always... You wind up with words that always stress the first note of the pattern, which may not be where the stress actually falls, musically. So yeah, so we have the mnemonic or pattern-based approaches. And, generally, people who use those tend to call them approaches rather than systems, because there is this idea of, let's find words that match and maybe one class will have a different set of words because that's come out of the students ideas in another class. There are also note syllable systems. We mentioned Kodály. Leah, do I remember that you taught with Kodály?
0:14:14.0 LS: I did, I did. And, although I have my Orff levels, I drew on a variety of approaches based on what we were working on. And even in my own circle of music education peers and colleagues, there were some discrepancies between what the actual syllables are once you get to the 16th note level. Some may disagree but...
0:14:37.3 GR: Can you talk us through the basic syllables? Can you talk us through the basic syllables for Kodály?
0:14:42.6 LS: The quarter notes are always ta and a pair of eighth notes is ti-ti and 16th notes are, either, ti-ka-ti-ka or ti-ri-ti-ri, or I've even heard, ti-ki-ti-ki. So, the disadvantage being that you're not necessarily distinguishing where the macrobeat is versus the microbeat. Like, an eighth note isn't ta-ti, it's always ti-ti. But it does make it very easy for students to identify types of notes from a very early age and understand that, oh, it's a pair of eighth notes and that's a beat that's divided into two sounds.
0:15:26.9 GR: And because of that, there's not... You don't have to make this determination early on are we in... When Looking at music, is this in simple time or compound time? 'Cause you can just name each note by it's syllable, or each rhythmic...
0:15:41.9 LS: Yeah, so much so to the point that students in kindergarten through second grade, may not even know that that's a quarter-note. That's a ta and that's a ti-ti. Which is probably a challenge. [chuckle]
0:16:01.1 GR: Good, so yeah. So, okay, so we've talked about analytical or metric subdivisional approaches, mnemonic approaches, note syllable systems like Kodály and then kinesthetic approaches, the Dalcroze approach is, probably, the most famous for this, where... Most Dalcroze teachers will connect rhythmic patterns to particular rhythm motions. And one of the things that I do a lot, when teaching basic rhythms, is, I'll do an echo canon with students. So I'll say, okay, I do what I do, four beats later and I'll tap my nose as I say, tu-tu-tu-tu and then they'll tap it back and I'll, with my right hand, left hand, tug gently on each ear and say, chk-chk-chk-chk for eighth notes, to a little raising arm motion, ou-ou for half notes and do a clap, with a long, kssss, for whole notes and you can spin that out in a bunch of ways to get to reading and things like that. But that is... You're connecting sound to different motions and in the Dalcroze approach, I think similar to Orff, it's not that there is one approved motion for a particular rhythm pattern, but there's a real emphasis on having these movements, these sounds, these words, be drawn out of the students as they learn to feel the different patterns. Leah, you've got your Orff certifications, would you say that's parallel in the Orff approach?
0:17:35.7 LS: Yeah, absolutely.
0:17:37.3 GR: Yeah, great. So, with that overview of counting approaches, what are our shared goals of using counting systems? Why do we use them?
0:17:48.6 DN: Accuracy [chuckle] but also understanding. But they all do encourage different ways of understanding.
0:17:54.5 GR: Yeah, for sure. I think some of them are definitely geared towards helping us to get quickly between sound and notation, they're very notational-based approaches, especially those... The metric subdivisional ones, but I think... And, Leah, what you were talking about with the Gordon approach, right? That maybe there's more of a focus on oral analysis.
0:18:15.3 LS: Right and exposure. Exposure to rhythm patterns and meters and giving students, even young students, an opportunity to build a rhythmic vocabulary and to, down the road, then, have a deeper understanding of rhythm and reading it and writing it from notation and also just facilitation for ease of imitation and repetition and everything that comes with sound before note.
0:18:50.4 GR: I think it can also really reveal if there is some rhythmic issue happening. Adding syllables or words to it can help you, as a teacher, diagnose what's going wrong. Let's say you have a student trying to perform two sixteenths and an eighth and they're performing it wrong, you say, "Okay, we'll try it on rhythm syllables," and they say, "Okay, 1-&-a" then what you've discovered is they've misidentified looking at it, visually, where the 16ths were versus where the eighth was, right? And so it can help you get to understanding, Is this a visual theoretical misidentification, a misrecognition of a pattern, or is this an issue in the actual accounting of it? And if you're doing mnemonic words then that becomes very apparent right away, yeah.
0:19:42.3 DN: I'm also reminded of a student that I had where they just couldn't do rhythms, they couldn't dictate rhythms properly. And I finally figured out that they were trying to figure out how long each note was, instead of figuring out where it happened within the framework.
0:20:00.5 GR: Yeah.
0:20:01.6 DN: So, that is another...
0:20:03.8 GR: David, I think this is... You've touched on something that I think is really huge and that maybe a lot of us aren't aware of, but I think there... I would say, there's a good 20% of students out there, at least that I see at the college level, who come in and they believe rhythm is about the addition of short and long notes together and not about orientation within a metric grid of some sort. And especially, I do... There're a lot of things I love from the Kodály method. But especially students whose only approach to reading rhythm has been Kodály and a ti is this long and a ta is this long and a to is this long, can fall into that trap. So I think it does go back to if you're using an approach like that, it's important to combine it with another approach where as we've been talking about, where they understand where they're fitting within that metric grid, because students who think of rhythm as the addition of long and short notes, the minute inaccuracies that add up each time they perform a note, get bigger and bigger. And what do those students do if they get lost in the middle of a measure? There's nothing to help them find their way back in, so I'm so glad you brought that up, David.
0:21:21.6 GR: So let's talk a little bit about how we use these when we're teaching. And I guess the classic things are... We're generally either going from notation to sound in some way, whether that be performing on an instrument, or we're going from sound to analysis or sound to notation, right? We hear something, we wanna be able to play it back, we hear something, we wanna be able to write it down, we hear something, we wanna be able to say, "Yeah, that's a du-ta-de." So yeah, maybe let's talk about reading rhythms and teaching rhythm reading. Leah, I think you probably have the most recent experience teaching this at the most basic level of, "Oh, my God, I'm facing a class of elementary students and middle school students, etcetera." Can you talk with us a little bit about how you would work with students in that context?
0:22:14.5 LS: Sure. And it also... It does depend on, not necessarily what system you're using, but it does with young learners, you have to have a very clear objective and outcome. And for example, with a teacher who's teaching with the Gordon learning sequence, you're looking at whole-part-whole instruction in most cases and the rhythm solfège really plays into the part of that, where you've shared a song and now you're breaking it down into parts and you're isolating the rhythm patterns from the song. And that's where you're chanting rhythms using the du-des. And then putting that back into the big picture, again, back into the whole for students to have learned to sing a song or to perform a song versus using Kodály syllables that more quickly transfer to notation, that could be something as simple as looking at the rhythm on the board, labeling the notes with ta and ti-ti and then having the students chant that rhythm, first together and then until they're able to do that individually on their own.
0:23:31.7 LS: So it really depends on what you're working on and we don't even possibly have time to get into all the ways to go through that. But as just a quick overview, most of the time it's just working with a whole group of students, having them chant together as a group, maybe slightly older students then are able to work in small groups and be doing that on their own, especially with Orff, coming up with their own words for the rhythms that are presented to them, drawing on either a book that was just read or a song that was sung. So, the options are endless.
0:24:10.4 GR: Yeah, they are. One of the things that you love that I forget about a lot, especially working at the college level, is this idea of, maybe first learn something by rote and then figure out what's in it. And that can be really, really beautiful to do, yeah. And I think it's generally our default when we're working with younger students, especially at the elementary level.
0:24:31.9 LS: Absolutely and that depends on teacher's philosophies too. But generally, if you are someone who has Orff levels or has gone through the Gordon Institute of Music Learning, then you're probably gonna be doing rote teaching and whole-part-whole instruction.
0:24:50.7 DN: Even at the college level, I think Cynthia Gonzales recently told me that she never makes them do a rhythm or a melody by dictation that she hasn't already done with them in class, that they haven't already defined in class.
0:25:09.4 LS: And it doesn't mean that your students can't independently do this. Again, Gordon's whole point is, that your students are able to audiate rhythm patterns. So you're gonna get to a place with your students, if you do enough chanting and if you're teaching an appropriate sequencing, that your students can look at a pattern and think, audiate how it's going to sound or be able to chant it in tas and ti-tis, or... Like I said, come up with words that fit. So, they can also read it, we're not... I'm not talking about only teaching by rote at the elementary level, but that's definitely a big part of it.
0:25:50.8 GR: Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about... Actually, if we did wanna focus now on teaching the reading of rhythm, ways that we might use these systems. Let's talk metric analytical systems, so these are the Gordon, are Takadimi, are Eastman or American traditional systems. I think the two most common ways would be you're looking at a rhythm and then you either count aloud all of the subdivisions at whatever subdivisional level you need, while clapping the rhythm, so that might be something like 1-e-&-a, 2-e-&-a, 3, kind of a thing, or you speak the rhythm using just the syllables that begin each node of the rhythm. So if you take that same rhythm of... If that was 1-e-&-a, 2-e-&-a, 3, if I were speaking or chanting or intoning, people often prefer so that it's a bit more vocal, becomes 1-&-2-&-a-3, kind of a thing. Yeah, does that match with how David, Leah you do things when using these approaches?
0:27:05.3 LS: Yeah, I think to add another layer on to that when you're teaching instrumentalists though, that you're also teaching them to be constantly having whatever system is running in their head because they're not clapping and counting aloud when they're playing their instruments, they're pulling their instruments. So, constantly being able to have the... If you're counting then you've got the 1-e-&-a's running in your head while playing, so. There's a whole host of techniques that come up with instrumentalists, so now we're sizzling on mouthpieces the rhythm, or we are just T-T-T, the rhythm, because that's how we're gonna articulate it on the instrument source of... [chuckle] I don't know if we're trying to go down that path right now, but... [chuckle]
0:27:55.2 GR: No, I think that's beautiful, yeah.
0:27:58.3 DN: That really emphasizes how important it is to have that inner metronome going and whatever we can do to reinforce that inner metronome with inner subdivisions. [laughter]
0:28:12.4 GR: Yeah. This takes me... I wonder... We had a doctor beat in the end which is this metronome that probably a lot of us experience that will actually count aloud the 1-&-2-& and 1-e-&-a and you can turn up or down all the subdivisions, probably with that goal of getting... Leah as you were talking about, that constant sub-divisional line running in your head as you are performing.
0:28:45.0 LS: Right.
0:28:45.0 DN: There's also the... If you're reading music, there's a visual component and then there's a, "What does it sound like?" Component. And so I know that in the Musicians Guide series, they encourage written exercises where you just write in the syllables that you're using, so that you've dealt with the visual component, so that's again one of those assessment opportunities where you can sort of figure out whether there's a problem understanding what you're seeing versus understanding how it sounds.
0:29:23.6 LS: Right. And again, when you're working with middle school level students, for example, you're not always just picking one way and sticking with that, you're trying a whole bunch of different ways to get at all the different learners in the room, so. Just like David said, yeah, sure, I would have students write in the counts and then sometimes we would also... They came to me with knowledge of ta's and ti-ti's, so let's go ahead, write in ta and ti-ti. And then we would go through and we would chant them a couple of different ways and then however the students were thinking in their head when they're playing, they've had an opportunity to vocalize that and reinforce that. And this kind of leads me to a point. I think it is so important to have two frameworks for the students, especially if they're coming from something like ta and ti-ti or just using words connected to rhythm patterns. It is so important then to be connecting that to something analytical so that they have a means for figuring out what the rhythm is independently.
0:30:31.5 GR: Yeah, this seems to be a theme that's come up on just about every episode so far, this idea of using different ways of thinking about things with Solfege systems, something to name the letters, the actual pitch space versus something to name its function in relation to a scale, to a key. I'm 100% with you on that Leah. I think we need something that does let us do that subdivisional analysis, but we also need something that gets us to that pattern level thinking where we're not looking at every rhythm as though it were a totally new thing that we had to analyze, but we recognize a lot of what's within it.
0:31:11.5 LS: And I'm not saying that there's any right or wrong way to do it, I think it takes a variety of approaches. Like David said earlier, there have been times out on the football field, that I was shouting words just to get the students to bring the rhythm together so we could get it lined up and you are like, "Whatever works." [laughter]
0:31:30.0 DN: I love whatever works. [chuckle]
0:31:33.0 GR: Especially on the football field, oh my Lord.
0:31:37.3 DN: Oh, gosh.
0:31:38.4 GR: Something we choir directors pretty much never have to do.
0:31:40.8 DN: Yeah.
0:31:41.7 GR: Yeah. So yeah, reading, that's great. And then dictation is really oral analysis and Leah you talked about with the whole-part-whole approach, the idea of taking a song we know, a piece we know and then breaking it down, what are the rhythmic patterns in here, what's going on? And whether we write that down or not, that's a kind of dictation, right?
0:32:10.9 LS: Mm-hmm.
0:32:11.8 GR: And very related to what... Say, if we were at the college level in an aural skills musicianship classroom, the kind of thing we'd be doing there, if we're using analytical methods there... If students are familiar with them and have used them a lot, then they can often go straight from sound to, "Oh, yeah, that's a 1-&-a," or that's... Whatever in the system we're using. One of which I think is probably worth mentioning is what some people call the box approach, which if you're using a sub-divisional or analytical system, or let's say that you're just starting off with beats and rests, so you have... Say, we're working three/four, you have three boxes, you have a rhythm, ta-ta and the students mark, "Oh, there's one in box one, there's one in box three," and learn how to translate that to notation. If you break it down to the eighth levels, here we're still on three/four then now you have six boxes, a box for one and two and t-& and the students mark down where the notes begin and translate that to notation. And actually, for students who've used a drum machine, this feels very natural to them, 'cause drum machines and things like Ableton or Logic, wherever you see all your subdivisions spread out and you turn on or off different sounds on different subdivisions. Do you all use the box approach? I use it very early on and I try and get away from it as quickly as I can myself. [laughter]
0:33:50.5 LS: I used... It's basically the same thing, I call them beat sheets, where there's literally a picture of a heart because we're feeling the beat. So maybe a four/four, then there's four across and it's a four measure patterns, you've got four across, four going... It's the same exact thing.
0:34:09.8 GR: Are the four down the subdivisions of the beat for you or is that four measures?
0:34:16.6 LS: So four measures, but we can easily subdivide the beat by drawing a line right down the middle of the heart.
0:34:22.7 GR: I love the heart, that's so great. And beat sheet, that's so much better.
0:34:26.6 LS: It's very, very popular, but it's... I've stolen that from many other educators, that's not something I came up with by any means.
0:34:35.6 GR: And now I'm going to steal it from you. These will forever be beat sheets when I teach now, it's great. [chuckle] Yeah.
0:34:42.4 LS: You don't have to stick to heartbeats, you can get creative, but... [chuckle]
0:34:45.3 GR: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I suppose drums work too, there's something nice about a heart, although a heart's really hard to divide in four.
0:34:52.0 DN: I've used both, spatial... Spatial analysis works really well for me, but for a student who has trouble with spatial awareness, that isn't gonna work really well necessarily. I've also used beat level systems like piano roll notation and also symbols symbolizing what happens within each beat.
0:35:16.7 GR: So yeah, beat sheets or whatever we wanna call them, these are kinds of protonotation, there are things that provide an intermediate step between Western musical notation and sound and there are lots of different ones. Jenine Lawson Brown just published an article on one in Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy and actually we'll be talking with her about that in an upcoming episode. And yeah, those can be great for helping smooth that transition between our aural recognition. One of the things that I think is really useful that certainly those of us who have a Music Education Degree were taught to do is probably a lot of call and response kind of things, where I'll do a pattern aurally for students, I'll perform aurally O and students will respond with whatever approach we're using. So if we're using a Kodály approach, I might go... I'll choose intentionally not to use Kodály syllables, I might go boom-boom-boom-boom-boom and they go ta-ti-ti-ta-ta, that kind of back and forth and all of these approaches enable doing that sort of real-time aural dictation. I think one of the things I found teaching aurals was at the college level, is maybe some of us tend to go too soon to let's write down what we're hearing, that maybe we skip sometimes that first step of do we actually have these rhythmic patterns in us for each beat before we're trying to write down an eight bar rhythm?
0:37:04.6 LS: And on the complete other end of that with the youngest learners, that often looks like picture notation or just for example, where your students are... Maybe not even dictation, maybe this is even more composition but your students are composing rhythms using pictures of strawberries and blueberries and squeaky shoes, 'cause I'm drawing from a Pete the Cat lesson that I used to teach and they're writing these wonderfully complex rhythm patterns without any notes, not even stick notation. So again, maybe this is... Maybe we consider this a protonotation, but...
0:37:46.0 GR: Absolutely.
0:37:46.7 LS: We've got patterns of strawberries and blueberries and they can look at it and they can chant it and so now they have a means for dictation as well.
0:37:56.3 GR: Leah, I think when you said the importance of combining two different approaches, can we circle back to that? Can we talk a little bit about why that's so important? In other words, what are some of the strengths and weaknesses of say, analytical subdivisional approaches versus mnemonic pattern approaches and why might we need to combine both things?
0:38:21.2 LS: Right, so like I was just saying, the younger students before they're even, maybe even reading words can be dictating rhythm and composing and using symbolic notation if you're using a word-based approach or even a pattern-based approach. But then if you continue to just, to only do that, then when they're in an ensemble or they start taking piano lessons or whatever it is that they're doing, they're looking at this notation going, I don't know this, but then they hear it and they know it. So helping them make that connection is going to allow them to be independent musicians much sooner than just down the line, suddenly, okay, now we're gonna count this instead. And they're not realizing that it's something that they already know, they think they're learning something new versus if we had introduced it much earlier than they've already got the skills.
0:39:19.1 GR: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, so if we're talking about mnemonic, or pattern-based approaches, one of the things that I found working with students who've learned primarily or exclusively using this system is sometimes those students really think at the beat level. And for instance, an example of poor performance might be Cherry Pie, watermelon, apple, right? Where that's like you can hear the thought of the time in between that it takes them to get to what each mnemonic is. And of course, right, that's something that we have worked to smooth out and you might get that as well in an analytical subdivisional system. But in the mnemonic approach there's nothing that specifically says, here is the underlying metronomic subdivisional flow to it. And so, usually when we're working in these mnemonic systems or pattern-based approaches, we're doing something else to encourage that. And so that's... It might be something kinesthetic with students patting the beat or swaying the beat or conducting to help build in that flow and that understanding of it. Certainly, another thing about these pattern-based approaches is... And Leah, this goes to exactly what you were saying of so I know these patterns in experiments, orally I have this protonotation, whether it's drawing ice cream cones or whether it's... You know. But then...
0:40:54.3 LS: The options are endless. [laughter]
0:40:55.8 GR: The options are absolutely endless. I've done so many little compositional activities with, you know, ice cream, ice cream. Yeah and yes, absolutely, right. And ice cream cones are very easy to draw quickly, which is helpful for little kids. But yeah, as connecting that to the analytical side of things, so that students can eventually... Well, wait a second, I don't know this pattern. What is this? This isn't... This is a less common rhythmic pattern that maybe I don't have a word for. And how do I count that? Yeah. I find the mnemonic approach leads itself to a lot of creative kind of work, those compositional activities you were talking about. But it may not engage... It makes it a little harder sometimes to engage with on an analysis of the music.
0:41:48.7 LS: Right. If students know that this is a macrobeat and this is a microbeat and they have a way to apply that to writing or reading, then they know that they can figure out how rhythm is gonna go, is this du-du-de-du-du or this is ta-ti-ti-ta-ta. But they probably aren't gonna look at notation and go Oh yeah, that's a watermelon and... [laughter]
0:42:20.5 GR: Yeah. But you know...
0:42:23.1 LS: And that's how they've been taught consistently. Again, I'm not... Nothing is off the table.
0:42:28.1 GR: Yeah. I'm actually down in Colorado right now, covering a maternity leave for a Dalcroze friend of mine, who runs this wonderful community music program for kids ages four through high school. And they have five levels of Dalcroze classes that they go through. And they learn all of their rhythmic patterns, like, just about everyone you could think of on color names. And it is the most complete mnemonic pattern-based approach I have ever seen. And to the point that, you know, I will put the rhythm on the board and I'll say, What's this? And they will say, that's a neon lemon yellow. [laughter] Right? They just... That is how they hear those.
0:43:19.3 LS: So I'll make my point again, that it really depends on the teacher and the sequence and what the learning objectives are.
0:43:26.6 GR: Totally, totally. Yeah, you know, but I have had like, oh, I wish... You know, especially with the upper levels of those classes. And like, oh yeah, we need to also start layering on to this a rhythmic analytical system because it's not enough to see them in little blocks of patterns. Yeah, one thing we haven't talked about so much is some of these approaches lend themselves to helping us know where we are in a measure better than others do. Like the traditional American counting system, one and two and the Eastman system, where they name the beats. You can hear right away, Oh yeah, okay. That's where I am in the measure. And that's important, right? The relative stress shape of the measure tells us a lot about how to perform music, so if we're not working with the Eastman or traditional American system, how can we get students to feel that, to internalize and know how to translate measure shape into performance?
0:44:41.2 LS: Conducting.
0:44:42.5 DN: Even at the middle school, elementary school level?
0:44:47.1 LS: Yeah, absolutely. Especially for students who are in an ensemble. I started out teaching them conducting, 'cause otherwise they don't know what I'm doing in front of them.
0:44:56.6 GR: Awesome.
0:44:56.9 LS: They have no idea. They need to know that, like, if they're not sure, for example, where we are in the music, how do they find the downbeat again, they need to know what a downbeat looks like in conducting, because if somebody doesn't teach them that they probably don't know.
0:45:15.0 GR: Right.
0:45:15.6 LS: And if you're not counting using numbers, then if they're just thinking in their head and in another system that is not giving them numbers, they're just thinking, du-u du-u du-u and everything's quarter notes then they're gonna be so lost.
0:45:35.3 DN: We do also, at the college level teach... Just to have them conduct with it. And we definitely did that when we were doing Takadimi, so that we knew where we were in the measure, just required conducting. But I have also taken my students and had them dance to something, [chuckle] step, clap, step, clap and just show that there is a meter that is so common, we call it common time and that they already know how to conduct it with their feet and their hands. So, yeah.
0:46:12.3 LS: And my other answer was gonna be Dalcroze. [chuckle]
0:46:14.8 DN: Yeah. [laughter]
0:46:17.4 GR: Yeah and for listeners who don't know, I come from a real Dalcroze background, I do a lot of teaching using approaches from the Dalcroze method and I also teach teachers to teach the Dalcroze method. And David, when you asked, even at the middle school, elementary level, I'm about to teach a class of 4-year-olds in a couple of hours. And on our lesson plan for today is we're going to be doing a game where we're in two/four and we're patting, touching our head, back and forth. And then on three/four and we're patting, clapping and touching our... Excuse me. No, we're patting, we're in a circle and then we clap our neighbor's hands for a side and then we touch our head one, two, three and then when we're in four/four we go pat, clap, touch our neighbor's head, so it's pat, clap, neighbor's head. Right, so it is... And that is of course, right like that, so that it's the traditional conducting gestures.
0:47:16.3 DN: Gotcha.
0:47:17.5 GR: And then as the students... When I'm working with slightly older students, say I'm working with 7-year-olds where they now have the dexterity to be able to bounce and catch a ball, you can translate into... Yeah, you just build all those things in through various conducting like motions and sequences.
0:47:38.9 DN: That's brilliant, I love it.
0:47:39.9 GR: It's great fun and you're having students... You give students... Let's say we're in four/four, right and so we might be doing, bounce, catch, toss, catch and walking around the room, or we might be in place. A great classic Dalcroze game is I play a rhythm, a measure later you translate that rhythm into movement in your feet across the floor. So, they're moving with their ball, doing their bounce, catch, toss, catch the hair, di-da-da-di-da-da and they're still bouncing and catching, but now they're also walking it across the floor doing that. We've assigned specific things, so quarter notes are steps and eighth notes are step touches or you can do... You make them up and change them. So yeah, yeah, movement, it's great if you have the space to move across the floor, but yeah, certainly, we can all think of any patterns, movement patterns to get a sense of where we are in the beat. And the classic one of course, if you have instruments in your hand, it seems really basic, but tapping the foot, it's just... It doesn't help us know where we are on the meter but it certainly does help us know where we are in the beat. Yeah and then eventually teaching students to just squeeze their toe and then just feel it and... [laughter]
0:48:56.9 LS: I was just gonna say or just tapping toes because telling smaller children to tap their foot becomes a whole stomping fiasco. [laughter]
0:49:06.3 GR: Yes it does, but it can be really helpful actually to see... I certainly, in piano lessons have had students just tap in a way that I can see it so that I can identify are they aware of where the note falls in relation to the beat?
0:49:23.5 DN: And I suppose with all of these, then we have to make sure that we leave them room to unlearn that behavior when they're performing. [laughter]
0:49:33.8 GR: Yeah, yeah. Oh, in this... And if we go back to episode one on solfège systems, this idea that we want to learn a solfège system so well, that at the end of the process, we don't actually have to think about it, I think applies here for these rhythmic approaches also. We wanna learn them so well so that at the end, I don't have to be thinking my du-ta-de-ta's or my 1-e-&-a's or my watermelons. I know so deeply how these rhythms feel, how meter shape feels that I can just perform it, hear it and if I need to, I can go back to analyze it or figure out what the patterns are. Yeah, but that's that last stage, fluency. Certainly, fluency is the goal, speaking music as a language, hearing music as a language, reading music as a language, are the shared goals of solfège and rhythmic counting systems.
0:50:35.1 DN: I love hearing from both of you that a combination of techniques is helpful. Because I think I've thought that too, but I feel obligated to commit to a system and I think maybe for an analytical system, it's useful to commit to one system so that students aren't trying to embrace multiple analytical systems but having multiple approaches sure gives students a lot of avenues into understanding.
0:51:09.9 GR: Yeah and I've certainly found for some students an analytical system is like oh yeah, this is me, I want this, I love this. And for other students, a mnemonic pattern-based approach is what really speaks to them and so it can be... Leah, you mentioned as well speaking to the different ways that students in your classes learn really, yeah, yeah.
0:51:34.4 DN: Plus there are problems with the analytical systems that you might want another method to supplement and we should talk about what some of those drawbacks are.
0:51:46.4 LS: I think we've touched on some already, but they can be very mathematical and maybe this plays into knowing where you are in the measure but it lends itself to being unmusical since the students are literally looking at it, maybe even like a math problem. They're going through and they're counting and writing in subdivisions and now it's become this complex thing on paper that is not music they're performing, but it's this problem to be solved.
0:52:20.6 GR: Totally. I think also with these analytical subdivisional systems, if you start thinking about patterns, they sound really similar like du-te-ta versus tu-te-de. The actual sounds tu-te-de versus du-te-ta, there's nothing there that makes the whole thing different from the other whole thing. Whereas if you're working with mnemonic things like cherry pie or pineapple, they have a very different sound from the first moment in a way that these... The Takadimi, du-ta-de-ta, 1-e-&-a don't have a different sound from that first syllable for each pattern.
0:53:06.9 DN: Although I noticed that within the analytical systems, there's also some that are stronger in that department and some that are weaker. It's always bothered me that that's one of the weaknesses of Gordon, is that all of the syllable sound so similar. But it was only recently that I had read and I don't know if this is true or not, that it was actually designed to help young students articulate well and that's why they all have that same sharp consonant at the beginning. So, it's a flaw, but it's also an advantage, so it just depends on what you feel is important to reinforce.
0:53:49.6 GR: Great, well, this has been a great discussion and have we... Would you agree we've covered everything we wanted to cover, have we missed anything?
0:53:57.4 DN: I think we got to a lot of things. [chuckle]
0:54:00.6 GR: Yeah, great. So lots of resources to be found in the show notes also our sheets on rhythmic counting systems at utheory.com/teach/resources. Great, well, David, Leah, thanks and for all our listeners, if you've enjoyed this episode, if you wanna hear more things like this, let us know what you'd like to hear, write us at notes@utheory.com.
[music]
0:54:28.5 DN: Subscribe to notes from the staff on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts and check us out at utheory.com/notes.
0:54:36.4 LS: Notes from the staff is produced by utheory.com.
0:54:38.7 GR: UTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
0:54:42.6 LS: With video lessons, individualized practice and proficiency testing, uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world master the fundamentals of music theory, rhythm and ear training.
0:54:52.9 GR: Create your own free teacher account at utheory.com/teach.
What is perfect pitch and why do some people have it when others don't? How does it work and is it possible to learn it? In this episode, Dr. Elizabeth West Marvin (Eastman School of Music, and an author of the Musician's Guide series of textbooks) answers these questions and more.
Links: Elizabeth West Marvin's Faculty Page at Eastman
Musician’s Guide to Theory and Analysis
Marvin, Elizabeth West. Absolute Pitch Perception and the Pedagogy of Relative Pitch
Ross, Gore and Marks. Absolute pitch: music and beyond
Van Hedger, Heald and Nusbaum. Absolute Pitch May Not Be So Absolute
Show Notes: 00:20 Introductions
00:50 Guest introduction: Dr. Elizabeth West Marvin
03:20 What is perfect pitch?
04:28 Is absolute pitch (AP) the same thing as perfect pitch?
05:20 How did you become interested in studying absolute pitch?
06:55 Working with students with absolute pitch in an aural skills classes
08:40 How do people acquire absolute pitch?
10:25 Do animals have absolute pitch?
11:10 Can you train young children to acquire perfect pitch? (Eguchi Chord Identification Method)
13:04 Vowel colors/overtones and absolute pitch
14:40 What's the relationship between absolute pitch and timbre? Are there people who have absolute pitch for only a particular instrument?
16:18 Can I acquire absolute pitch as an adult?
19:28 How common is it to have a musician who has absolute pitch who did not begin study at a young age?
22:27 To what degree is AP valuable as a musician?
24:53 What is relative pitch (RP)?
26:33 Is there a relationship between AP/RP and choosing a solfege system (relative vs phenomenological systems)?
29:56 Why does absolute pitch change with age?
31:00 Ross, Gore & Marks's research on two kinds of AP: Heightened Tonal Memory (HTM) vs Ability to Perceptually Encode (APE)
33:27 How do people with AP and RP hear differently from each other?
36:50 What can people with AP and RP learn from each other?
40:08 Latent AP/AP without musical training
41:45 AP as a continuum and not a binary
43:50 What research is being done now on AP?
46:55 Van Hedger, et. al., research on flexibility of AP
48:57 Can you talk a bit about the Musician's Guide series of textbooks that you've authored?
55:35 Thank you and wrap-up
Transcript 0:00:21.9 David Newman: Welcome to Notes from the Staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.
0:00:35.1 Gregory Ristow: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and Associate Professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory.
0:00:41.5 DN: And I'm David Newman, and I teach voice and music theory at James Madison University, and I do programming and content creation for uTheory.
0:00:50.1 GR: Our topic for today is perfect pitch, and joining us to help demystify it, is special guest, Dr. Elizabeth West Marvin, professor of music theory at the Eastman School of Music. Dr. Marvin's research interests are broad and encompass especially the areas of Music Cognition and Music Theory Pedagogy. She's known to many of us as a leading author for the popular Musician's Guide series of theory and ear training textbooks, now in its fourth edition. Betsy, thanks for joining us.
0:01:18.1 Elizabeth West Marvin: You are absolutely welcome. It's a pleasure to be here.
0:01:21.4 GR: It's great to have you. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
0:01:25.6 EWM: Well, as you said, I'm a professor at the Eastman School of Music in the Department of Music Theory. I was also a student there, so I've been at Eastman for a very long time. I grew up as a choir kid, I played piano and organ and sang, but I do not have perfect pitch, so that's important to know going into this conversation. I always knew that I wanted to do music of some kind, but I flirted with all different majors until I got to Eastman and found Music Theory, and then I was really sort of hooked. And flash forward to today, I've been on the theory faculty at Eastman for over 30 years, and I have a textbook that's been out for 15 years in its fourth edition, as you said. But the Music Cognition part came right at the end of my graduate studies. I became very interested in how we perceive music, and I started taking courses over at the University of Rochester's River campus, and again, I was sort of hooked, I found the whole thing really fascinating, and it's developed into that whole area of music cognition that was sort of in its infancy when I was a student, but now is really a big part of music theory.
0:02:35.1 GR: And the University of Rochester, Eastman is part of the University of Rochester, which some of our listeners may not know. And you now have a connection there, you do research together with the Brain and Cognition department over there. Is that right?
0:02:48.6 EWM: Yes, Brain and Cognitive sciences, I have a secondary appointment over there. For many years, I taught a course called Music and the Mind, which was attractive both to Eastman students and to Brain and Cognitive Science students, and linguists and audio engineers, and it was a really, really diverse group of students. I'm not teaching it anymore, I've handed it over to a new hire that they have in their department, but that was a very interesting and fruitful teaching experience.
0:03:18.2 GR: Great. Well, shall we dive into our topic for the day?
0:03:21.4 EWM: Absolutely.
0:03:24.8 GR: So...
0:03:24.8 DN: Let's get into the nitty-gritty.
0:03:27.8 GR: Yeah.
0:03:28.8 DN: What is perfect pitch?
0:03:28.8 GR: I feel like this is... None of us really knows, because we either have it or we don't, and we can't know what it's like to be the opposite, so yeah, so Betsy... Yeah, sorry, what is it?
0:03:41.1 EWM: Yeah, so I'll try to demystify some of that. Some of my recent research actually involves interviewing people with absolute pitch. I've interviewed about 50 kids between Eastman and some work I've done in Hong Kong, so I can tell you a little bit about their stories, but the official definition of absolute pitch is that it's the ability to recognize and name a pitch that's heard, or to produce a pitch when it's named, without any reference to an external standard like an instrument. And I would say, Greg, you were saying either you have it or you don't, but I actually believe that AP is on a continuum, and that people can have degrees of absolute pitch, so that's one of the more recent findings in research.
0:04:29.7 GR: You talked a little bit about the music cognition side, how did you get interested specifically in absolute pitch? And also maybe... You've been saying absolute pitch. What's absolute pitch versus perfect pitch? Is there a difference?
0:04:40.6 EWM: Oh yeah, I use absolute pitch partly because of my experience with students. If I ask them, "Do you have perfect pitch?" They'll hesitate and they'll say, "Well, it's not always perfect," they'll have good days or bad days, or it's not perfect enough for them, they can't tell the difference between A442 and A440, so it's not perfect. But absolute pitch is the term used in Music Psychology, so I tend to use that more. But my interest came out of teaching, so when I was first hired at Eastman, I was hired to run the RR Skills program, and I did a big re-write of the whole curriculum. I got in there and started teaching, and realized that in the same classroom, I would have two kids with absolute pitch, and all the rest with relative pitch. And from my own experience of having been a student myself, I remembered that teachers would do things like have the absolute pitch kids take all the melodic dictation in alto clef or tenor clef, or they would hear it in F-major and have to write it in C-sharp Major, things like that.
0:05:57.4 EWM: So as a new teacher, I started doing the same stuff, and I realized that the kids were feeling persecuted or punished for having absolute pitch, and I also realized that there were some things that they actually could not do very well, not as well as the relative pitch kids, like naming intervals. You play a perfect fourth, and they would write F, B-flat, and then they would sit and figure out, "Oh, that's a perfect fourth." It wasn't an immediate relational thing. And similar with dictation. So I started spending time thinking about ways to teach function instead of just absolute identification, and I can get more into that later if you want.
0:06:47.2 DN: I do, I want. [laughter] I have made it a... I don't think that my perfect pitch students feel persecuted, although some of them may, but I never play any melodic or harmonic example in the key that it says.
0:07:07.0 EWM: Well, do you wanna talk about that now? I could tell you what I do.
0:07:09.9 DN: Sure.
0:07:11.7 EWM: What I do, I try to not single out the AP kids, and so what I do is I try to avoid announcing a key or writing on the staff at all. So I do a little bit like what Gary Karpinski does with protonotation. So say for a melodic dictation, they would write out... They would take dictation of the rhythm, and then they hang on to that rhythm, so scale degree numbers. Everybody, not just the AP kids, so that you're forced to think in a relational way. And I'll wander around the classroom, if I see those AP kids writing down letter names or notes or anything, I stop them, and I say, "I want scale degree numbers." And then at the end, you can have them transcribe it onto the staff, which helps the relative pitch kids gain facility with dictation, but it also forces the AP kids to think in a relational way. And I do that with harmonic dictation too, soprano, scale degrees, base scale degrees, Roman numerals.
0:08:13.4 DN: I love that. Yeah.
0:08:14.9 EWM: I think it works really well, and it's good... As I say, it's good for the RP kids too, relative pitch kids.
0:08:21.0 GR: And for any of our listeners who don't know, Gary Karpinski is the author of Acquiring Aural... Or Aural Skills Acquisition, I guess is the easy title?
0:08:26.5 EWM: Yeah.
0:08:28.3 GR: And also has a sight-singing text manual for sight-singing and ear training. So absolute pitch, I don't have absolute pitch. I maybe have the ever slightest shade of it, where I can usually tell if I'm hearing a white note or a black note. How is... How do people...
0:08:47.7 EWM: That's a thing.
0:08:49.3 GR: Yeah, how do people get absolute pitch?
0:08:54.9 EWM: There are many theories of how people acquire absolute pitch, and I think that... I can run through various theories, but one has to do with heredity, so maybe you are born with it. Another theory is that you're taught music at a very young age, say you began at age four to six, and somehow you have what's called a critical period, similar thing for language acquisition, where your brain is perfectly tuned to learn this association of letter names with pitches. So if you begin your music lessons at that early age, you're more likely to have absolute pitch. There's even a theory that all babies are born with absolute pitch, and that as we learn relational processing, we discard that strategy and take on the relative pitch processing. And then the question is, why do some people keep the AP whereas others discard it? And in cognitive science, it's kind of interesting that development of relational processing is true in many domains, not just pitch, so little babies recognize faces by recognizing a mouth, or the hairline, or the eye, and it's not till they get older that they put all that together in a relationship to make a face. [chuckle] So, it's an interesting thing.
0:10:25.7 GR: I was re-reading your, I guess, your 2007 article in Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy this morning, Absolute Pitch Perception and the Pedagogy of Relative Pitch. Was it there that, I think, actually it was mentioned that maybe some animals have forms of absolute pitch?
0:10:42.2 EWM: Yeah, birds. There are certain birds... Well, there are certain animals that have what's called vocal learning, which means they learn their... Like a bird learns its song from its parents, and vocal learning is necessary for things like rhythmic entrainment and so on. But some of these animals, or birds in particular, I'm thinking, sing their songs at an absolute pitch, rather than a relative pitch, so sort of always in the same key. I wanted to say something else about the early learning hypothesis. You would think that if starting music lessons at age four is all it takes to get AP, why not just take a bunch of little kids and train them up, and then you would have shown that. And in fact, there is a researcher who did that. Her name is Sakakibara, she's a Japanese researcher, published in The Psychology of Music. She took 24 little kids, ages 2 to 6, so these are toddlers, and trained their parents in something called the Eguchi chord identification method, and it's sort of a game for little children in which they'll hear a chord... This chord is, you raise the red flag. And when you hear this chord, you raise the green flag, and when you hear this chord, you raise the blue flag.
0:12:01.2 EWM: And then after they're good at the chords, you narrow it down to single pitches, raise the flags, and then after you're good at the single pitches, you take away the flags and add note names. So these parents trained their two-year-olds, two, three, four-year-olds, every day, multiple times a day for about two years. Okay. So this is like maybe bordering on child abuse, but maybe it was also... Maybe it was gamified and fun. But these kids, two kids dropped out of the 24. At the end of the experiment, all 22 of them had absolute pitch.
0:12:37.0 DN: Wow.
0:12:37.6 GR: Wow.
0:12:37.7 EWM: So that's kind of interesting. Yeah.
0:12:42.8 DN: I'm curious...
0:12:44.4 EWM: But is it worth doing that?
0:12:45.8 DN: Yeah, I wonder why she started with chords before notes.
0:12:52.4 EWM: It's apparently easier, because maybe there's more overtone information or something like that, but the chords for little children are easier to discriminate between.
0:13:03.6 DN: I have... I don't know if you've seen the work that Ian Howell has been doing around vowel... Picking out vowel colors. And as he has refined his ability to identify specific vowel colors, he has also developed a kind of absolute pitch where he can recognize it by the vowel color that it inspires in his...
0:13:28.6 EWM: Well, that's interesting. No, I haven't followed that, but it's similar to synesthesia maybe, where there's a pretty high incidence of synesthesia in people with absolute pitch, that being an association between most commonly color and pitch. So I could see vowel sound in pitch. But the color and pitch is interesting because it's not just a color, but it's often a color and a texture, like brown corduroy or red velvet, or something that you see. So I would believe what you're telling me about the vowel sounds.
0:14:09.5 GR: From a physics perspective, it makes sense, because the overtones that give the vowels their color tend to be at a relatively fixed pitch level across different voices, regardless of what note you're singing. So it could just be that Ian started to actually hear the kind of interval between the fundamental and the fixed vowel formants above it. For those who don't know, Ian Howell's a Professor at the New England Conservatory, who leads their voice pedagogy, voice sciences area there.
0:14:43.3 DN: But it kinda led me, what you were saying, to wonder about the relationship between absolute pitch and... There are some students who seem to have absolute pitch related only to one instrument color. Is that something that you've seen, or is that... Am I making that up?
[laughter]
0:15:01.8 EWM: Nope. That's very common, actually. And it has to do with that early learning hypothesis that I was talking about, so if a student acquires AP through lessons on a piano, or lessons on a violin, say, they're better and faster at identifying pitches on that piano or on that violin, and in the range of their instrument. So, like a violinist has trouble in the low registers because their instrument doesn't go down that far. So that is in fact very common, and it's continent with this early learning hypothesis. And also what Greg said before about white keys and black keys, that is also consistent with the early learning hypothesis, because if you think about your piano lessons when you're a little kid, you're mostly playing those little five-finger patterns, C-major, G-major, white keys, and that's when your critical period is maximally available to you. But as you get older and the black keys come into play, then that window is closed and you're doing quick half-step displacements from the more familiar white keys into the less familiar black keys, and so it's slower and more prone to errors.
0:16:17.5 GR: So you've been talking about this early learning critical period hypothesis theory. I sort of, I think as many of us, have often thought, wouldn't it be great to have absolute pitch? Wouldn't it just be super handy to know, "Oh yeah, I'm hearing this and this and this and this," without having reference to anything else? YouTube, I think, targets me on this, 'cause I can't tell you how often I see promoted courses to teach me perfect pitch. Can I at this point learn perfect pitch? Or is it too late?
0:16:53.9 EWM: This is an active area of research. There was a time when I would have said, "No, it's too late, time has passed you by." But there are some researchers now who are developing training regimens, probably different from the ones that are on the internet for you, but we'll see, in which the AP drills are gamified so that it's fun and you're trying to beat levels and... Just like some kind of video game. And it inspires people to spend many, many hours at it, and I think it does take many, many hours to acquire any new skill. That said, this is new research, and I'm still a little bit skeptical about it. I wonder whether that kind of adult acquisition is really as fast and immediate and effortless as the true absolute pitch of people who've had it since childhood. For them, some of them, they can't turn it off, it's just completely immediate and always accessible, whereas, I suspect that the adult-trained people have more cogitation that goes into it. Have you ever clicked on those things? Do you know what the courses are like?
0:18:14.5 GR: They tend to be like, "F-sharp is red. Listen to this and imagine that F-sharp is red."
0:18:21.4 EWM: Exactly, I... Before there was clicking on the internet, I sent off for the David Burge method, David L. Burge method, and it was... It started with F-sharp and E-flat, and it said... And you only had to tell those two apart, and E-flat was mellow and full and rich, and F-sharp is brittle and biting, and so it was teaching affective qualities of each note, and then once you got those two under control, then you'd add a third note and then a fourth note, and each one had a little affective character to it. So it's interesting, but I'm skeptical. And I think, again, for true AP people, it is just instantaneous, like you would see the color red and say red, or the color green and say green, it's instantaneous, and no effort for AP people. And I imagine that there's effort to it, if you've had adult training.
0:19:25.0 GR: Some of your research has looked at the correlation between the age that someone begins study and whether they have absolute pitch or not. What is that correlation?
0:19:38.0 EWM: I don't know the answer to that, Greg. [laughter]
0:19:39.0 GR: Sorry, that was a really specific question. Or I guess I should say, how common is it to have a musician with absolute pitch who didn't begin study at a young age? Say before age six.
0:19:53.0 EWM: Yes. Let me back up and just say that I think that there is... AP exists on a continuum, as I said at the beginning, and I think there is something like good pitch memory that people have, that's not AP or not fully AP because they don't have the labeling function there. So this is a roundabout way of answering your question, I realize. But somebody with really good pitch memory might be able to acquire AP later in life because they already had that good pitch memory, and there are ways of testing that that don't involve naming. So they might, for example, play you a pitch and then do all kinds of interference noise, music, words, etcetera, and then you have to remember that pitch.
0:20:44.2 EWM: Some people are very good at that, so perhaps they could learn AP later in life, whereas other people might not be able to. And there are also people who can sing pop tunes in the right key without prompting, it's a different kind of AP 'cause it doesn't have the labeling, but I'll just say, going back to the choir kid thing, when I am in church and open a hymnal, I will look at the hymn and I'll often imagine it in the right key. The organist comes in and there I am right with them. So I think I have some kind of long-term pitch memory associated with familiar repertoire, and that's been shown in experimental settings too. There's an experiment in which pianists are played movements of the Well-Tempered Clavier, which are in every key possible, each prelude and fugue.
0:21:42.8 EWM: And if they're played the C-major prelude in C-sharp major, they don't see notation, but they can tell the difference, so they have some kind of long-term memory for these pieces without actually having AP. So in terms of your question about age, I think there's so many factors involved, like do they have this kind of inherent enhanced pitch memory? If so, maybe they can acquire AP later in life. Or were they born with some kind of genetic predisposition for AP? In which case maybe they have it right from the get-go. So it's a difficult question to answer.
0:22:26.5 DN: I have a couple of questions related to the value of acquiring, or the value of having AP. Because I think my thinking changed on this at that first Music Theory Pedagogy conference when... I can't remember who gave the talk on meditation as a way of helping AP students get through oral skills, and I thought, "Why would AP students need help getting through oral skills?" But of course, it's a different kind of challenge, it's a different way of interpreting sounds coming at you. I guess my question is, to what degree is AP valuable as a musician? Does it make you a better musician? Should we... Is it something worth acquiring?
0:23:14.5 EWM: I don't think that AP makes you a better musician. I think a kind of mythology has arisen around absolute pitch, because there are famous musicians who are said to have had AP, like Mozart, like you can go hear a piece, and because you've got absolute pitch, you can go home and write it down, and then this is a great mark of musicianship, or you can go home and play it. But in fact, there are many fabulous musicians who don't have AP, but we just don't talk about that, so I don't think that it is a mark of the child prodigy or the great, great musician. It's just that there are certain things that they can do, they can give the pitch for the choir or they can play really well in tune, or they can take dictation easily unless their teacher is punishing them. [chuckle]
0:24:13.3 EWM: But I do think that there's a kind of mythology, and that's why we have this persistent idea that the person with AP is a better musician, but as I said earlier on, there are some tasks that AP musicians are not very good at, and those have to do with relational hearing. And I think that if they are able to acquire both the absolute hearing and the relational hearing, then they've really got a good toolbox as a musician.
0:24:48.1 GR: Maybe we should just take a moment. You use the term RP, relative pitch person. Can you just talk about relational hearing and relative pitch a little bit?
0:24:57.8 EWM: Yeah. It's interesting, I'm actually on a team of researchers right now who are doing a study on relative pitch, 'cause there's so much research out there about absolute pitch and people just automatically say, "Oh, relative pitch is the other thing." [chuckle] It's not very well-defined. So, some people... And so I guess I'll say that there are different definitions floating around out there. For me, relative pitch is relational hearing, so that you hear dominant to tonic function, you hear leading-tone to tonic, you hear intervals as opposed to pitches, so it's all about relationships of notes. Every key sort of sounds the same. So it doesn't matter. For people who have difficulty with white keys and black keys, AP listeners, it might be harder for them to process music in F-sharp major than C major, but for a relative pitch person, it's all relationships, so it doesn't really matter which is which.
0:26:00.2 EWM: But there are some people who have very different definitions of relative pitch. For example, some people think that relative pitch is having good pitch memory for one note, like A or C, those are the two most common ones, and then everything else is a relationship from that, and I would say that's sort of on that AP continuum. If you can always remember A or always remember C, then you've got one level, one degree of absolute pitch and then you're using relative pitch skills to figure everything else out.
0:26:32.2 GR: This brings back to mind a previous episode we did on Solfège systems, and it makes me think a little bit about movable "Do" versus fixed "Do" and functional systems versus phenomenological systems. Maybe can you talk a little bit about that and how AP, RP influence one's choice of a Solfège system, and... Yeah.
0:26:53.6 EWM: Yup. So, in the broadest possible terms, fixed "Do" is a... Advantages people with perfect pitch, and in some ways it sort of helps to develop perfect pitch. Relative pitch is more facilitated by movable "Do", where the tonic of the key is always "Do". Fixed "Do" means the C is always "Do". So if C is always "Do", and every time you hear or sing an A, it's "La", and every time you hear or sing an E, it's "Me", then that reinforces a kind of absolute pitch way of hearing. As you said, a phenomenological system which focuses on associating a name for a note. If you have a relative pitch system, it's bringing to the fore that relationship T to "Do" is always a half step ascent functionally resolving to "Do" no matter what key, so it could be F-sharp to G and G-major, D to E-flat, and E-flat major so you're thinking functionally.
0:28:08.4 EWM: So the message I want to convey is, that I think it's not a good idea if you end up with a student in your class who has perfect pitch and has had fixed "Do". I think it's not a good idea to try to convert them to movable "Do", because it's very hard for them to have one system in their head, where Do is C and another system in their head where Do is all kinds of things depending on the key. So in that case, I would try to get that student to think, to keep the fixed "Do" for the note names, and to learn movable numbers of scale degree one, scale degree five. So Karpinski, whom we've just mentioned, says that it's a good idea for all students to have two systems, one that is note identification and one that is functional, so some people prefer fixed "Do" plus numbers, that gives you the note naming and the function. Other people prefer movable "Do" and note names, so the note names give you the naming function and the movable "Do" gives you the relational function.
0:29:21.0 DN: Yeah. That provides a challenge when we get students from countries where Solfège is the note names. [chuckle]
0:29:31.7 EWM: Exactly, and that's why I think they really have to go to numbers at that point because it's really confusing for them. And again, they feel punished in another way, "Here I have to learn something completely nonsensical to me," it's very, very hard. And their perfect pitch is kind of turned against them.
0:29:48.3 DN: And they're already trying to learn a new language maybe... [chuckle]
0:29:51.9 EWM: Yeah, yeah, it's hard.
0:29:55.2 GR: So I've also heard that absolute pitch can change with age, that the pitches can seem to sag. Is that true? And do we know why that happens?
0:30:05.6 EWM: It has to do with your basilar membrane, which curls around in the cochlea in your inner ear. As you age, it becomes less flexible, so it's interesting, sometimes you hear that the pitch creeps sharp, and sometimes you hear that it falls flat, but at any rate, is no longer true, and it has to do with your basilar membrane, which is where the pitches are sort of located in the inner ear, and then that sends a signal to the brain to identify the pitch. So it could be that that has to do with the kind of test that's being given, whether it's a produce the pitch or an identify the pitch, but at any rate, it's very common with aging. I'm sorry to say, for our listeners with absolute pitch, it's probably coming. And it drives some people crazy.
0:30:58.3 EWM: Now that we're talking a little bit about physiology, I'll say something else about theories of absolute pitch, which is that there are these researchers named Ross, Gore and Marks, who have the theory that there are actually two kinds of absolute pitch, one they call HTM and one they call APE. An HTM is heightened tonal memory. An APE is ability to perceptually encode. So HTM, heightened tonal memory, is what I was talking about this enhanced pitch memory with a template from early childhood, so people with HTM, they have AP, but it's associated with a template that's clarinet timbre in a particular range. So they have trouble with high and low, they have trouble changing timbre, they have trouble with none A-440 tunings, like people who learned on piano, if you get into Baroque tuning or some other kind of tuning system, it can throw them for a real loop.
0:32:06.0 EWM: People with APE, ability to perceptually encode, the theory is that they actually are encoding pitch in a different way in their brains, and that they have the ability to encode all frequencies, not just the A-440 template that they learned in childhood, and so they're more flexible, they can do all kinds of timbres, they can do really high, really low, they can do different, they can quickly adjust to other temperaments and tunings, because they're processing it in a little bit different way.
0:32:36.4 DN: That explains so much about several people that I know. [laughter]
0:32:42.0 EWM: It does, and it explains why there are conflicting findings in the literature too. You read something in one article and something different in another article, and you say, "Well, how can that be?" Well, it could be that they just have two different flavors of absolute pitch. They're processing it slightly differently and they learned it in a different way. One of them, the APE is the hereditary inborn one, those kids can't ever remember learning AP. They just kind of always had it. In fact, they think that everybody has it, sometimes it's not till they get to college and they're in some ear training class and the teacher says, "Oh, you must have perfect pitch." And they say, "What's that?" They just thought, everybody heard music that way. It's interesting.
0:33:25.0 GR: So I guess that actually leads to a question of... We've talked about a bit how people with AP and RP hear music differently. What can we learn from each other?
0:33:36.5 EWM: Let me go back to the hear differently first, because there are a couple of things I'll just throw in that I haven't said yet. One of them, I mentioned that I had been doing some research in Hong Kong with a Eastman alumna who teaches there now, Su Yin Mak, and we interviewed a lot of AP listeners there who specifically spoke to listening to Western music and listening to traditional Chinese music. And they have a real hard time with the traditional Chinese music, because it's not in the same temperament and tuning as Western music, and so some of them are able to adjust, so one or two of them even play a traditional Chinese instrument, but some of them are really turned off by it and cannot listen to it, or really cope with that music at all, they just find it really aversive. And the same, as I mentioned, Baroque tuning, instead of A-440, it's often A-415.
0:34:38.4 EWM: Now, some kids can adjust to that, it's almost like being bilingual, they have one way of being in the world of A-440 and one way of being in the world of A-415, but others cannot abide it, and we heard story after story of people having to take melodic dictation from a Baroque recording and just freaking out, going into sweats and crying and just... It's like their AP has been taken away from them, and it's part of their identity and suddenly it fails them, it's really difficult. It's kind of funny, but it's really difficult and challenging for them. So that's one way in which AP listeners are different from RP listeners. Another way is that some of them told us that they have a constant string of Solfège syllables going through their head as they listen to music or note names. So one of them sort of illustrated a melody singing it on this really fast Solfège, and he says he can't turn it off, it's just constantly these little syllables going in his head, and again, I think that's probably an early learning thing, just like we attach a timbre or...
0:35:47.9 EWM: Well, in your case, that sound, but he's attached Solfège syllables, and so he was talking really eloquently about having problems with phrasing and musicality and large-scale gestures, because everything is very note-y to him, because all these little words are going through his head, so that's another way of hearing differently. And then the synesthesia, the people who are hearing colors as music goes by, that's almost hard to conceptualize for somebody with relative pitch. And some of them, in addition to colors, will have emotions associated, the E-flat heroic and the different emotions that might be associated with keys. We read about that in history of theory, but key color and affect and so on, but for people with absolute pitch, for some of them, it's a very real thing, these different affects associated with keys.
0:36:50.0 EWM: So what can we learn from each other? I think that, as I said before, the relative pitch skills can really add to the absolute pitch student's experience of music, if they get both the affect and the key and the precise tuning and all the things that AP gives them, but then if they also learn to hear the function and the harmonic progression and so on, I think that just gives them a 360 degrees or something of how to perceive music. It's more challenging the other direction to think about what can AP listeners teach RP listeners. I was thinking about that a little bit, and it's a hard one because for relative pitch listeners, absolute pitch seems so unattainable and it's kind of mysterious about whether you want it or not and does it make you a better musician and so on. So, I don't know whether... I don't know exactly what we, relative pitch listeners learn from AP listeners. I don't know. Do you guys have thoughts about that?
0:38:07.3 DN: Well, I just did a gig in December where I really wished that I could have a tuning fork, an A tuning fork just implanted [chuckle] in my skull, just above my ear so that I could stay on pitch through long, long acapella sections.
0:38:28.9 EWM: Yeah, absolutely, and singing atonal music too, for another thing. That's a different thing, that's a relative pitch person just wishing they had AP, but in terms of...
[laughter]
0:38:39.9 EWM: In terms of what can RP listeners learn from AP. Maybe precision of tuning is one of them, but I think relative pitch listeners tune via relative pitch, they're tuning in relation to the piano, or in relation to the choir around them, rather than to some absolute sense of where A is or C-sharp is.
0:39:07.5 GR: I was gonna say, I've done some gigs with people with very, shall we say, precise absolute pitch. Singing gigs where they could be inflexible about, "No, no, no, A is here." But if that A is the third of the chord, maybe it needs to be a little bit somewhere else, so yeah, I can see...
0:39:28.4 EWM: Yes, I agree, there's some AP listeners have inflexibility about pitch, and so they sometimes have trouble with ensemble music, chamber music, because they have a sense that I'm right and you're wrong with regard to tuning and intonation. But then again...
0:39:48.9 GR: Definitely not, definitely not all AP listeners, right? It's...
0:39:52.0 EWM: Correct, and maybe that's part APE versus HTM, part just personality, part socialization and how they were brought up, and all kinds of factors probably play into that.
0:40:07.6 DN: So I have a student, this is a tangent, but it's totally relevant. I have a student who does not have, at least typical AP. But if he learns a song in one key and then I say, "Hey, you know, I think this is a little high, let's transpose it down a step," he has to completely relearn the song, he can't name the pitches out of the blue, but once he's learned a song, it's in that key, has to be in that key, and learning it in a new key is a totally new thing. Do we have a name for that?
0:40:48.8 EWM: I think that's part of AP on a continuum thing, so I think he has probably some kind of AP without labeling, that idea that you're singing the hymn in the right key, or singing the pop tune and the right key, you've learned it in a particular place in your mind and your voice, and for these, especially kids without a lot of musical training, he does... He's in your program, but it may be that he has not learned to... The relational bit though, and so he's learning in an absolute way, so that a new key is a new thing, that's really interesting. But I think it's probably that AP without labeling kind of thing.
0:41:33.4 DN: If you want another subject to study, I can connect you.
[laughter]
0:41:39.3 EWM: There are so many incarnations.
0:41:44.3 GR: It's just fascinating for me to hear about these varieties of absolute pitch and these sort of different kinds and the different ways that, something for so long I thought of as just being like a binary, you have it or you don't. It's one thing and it's not. It sounds like there's really a lot of variety there. It's very individual.
0:42:00.9 EWM: Yes, and I thought the same thing, Greg. I don't know if I was taught it, but I really thought it was an on or off switch. Either you have this or you don't, but just even from my own personal experience, I know I don't have absolute pitch, I can't pull any pitch out of the air with a letter name or whatever, but I do have this good long-term memory for keys of pieces I've sung or played. If I sit down to sing something that I've sung a million times, it just comes out in the right key, or music notation is sometimes that way too. I remember once when I was running the sight-singing Program and I was singing a lot... Lots of Otman tunes. I would audition people to be a teaching assistant, and if I would start a tune like I was asking them to coach me or something, I would just start it in some random key that was comfortable for me, and I had people say to me, "Well, don't you know that's the right key? You're singing in the key in the book." But I had not given myself a pitch or planned on it, it's just... I don't know, I think I had some kind of long-term memory for it, or a long-term memory for queer notation, and the stuff sits in my voice or something like that. But I don't have the out of the blue, acontextual labeling, a note kind of AP at all.
0:43:21.0 GR: Yeah, I had to experience... Re-reading your 2007 article this morning. There was a harmonic dictation example in there written in A-major, and I just started listening to it in my head, and I was like, "No, that's the wrong key, and I just stopped, and then I was like, "Oh there," and then I listened to it in my head, and I was like... And I just know that's the right key, and I went over to the piano, I was like... And sure enough it was, and it's just, it's so weird and fleeting and bizarre, and yeah. So, you mentioned a little bit when talking about, can I acquire absolute pitch at this age? Some current research, what research is being done now on absolute pitch, what might we know more about in the future?
0:44:03.0 EWM: Yeah, one thing I haven't talked about very much, but there are people doing it, is not the cognitive side, but the physiological side, so there are people who do that genetics. Is there a gene for absolute pitch? And in fact, I worked for a little while with a genetics researcher and he was very excited because they were finding some similarities between synesthesia genes and AP genes, but that is such a huge field and genetics is so complex, that there has not yet been found an AP gene though AP runs in families. So there probably is some kind of genetic component, there are people who do brain imaging with absolute pitch, so pretty robust findings. A number of people have reported that people with absolute pitch have asymmetry between the two hemispheres of their brain, so we don't know whether people born with asymmetrical brains are more likely to acquire AP or whether the process of acquiring absolute pitch somehow creates an asymmetry as your brain is growing, but that's there. So those sort of physiological and brain imaging kinds of studies, I think there's also more connectivity in certain parts of the brain for AP listeners, maybe different things are connected up.
0:45:31.2 EWM: One area that hasn't been studied very much at all is cross-cultural aspects of AP, so we are so attuned to Western classical music or western pop music too, which has that A-440 standard, but what of other cultures in which there is no standard in which maybe every ensemble has its own tuning, or every village has its own tuning, or something like that. Can AP exist in that environment? And if you have the genetic part of AP, like you have this predisposition to acquire AP, can you without a consistent [chuckle] tuning system? So that's interesting. And then the work that I've been doing recently is this qualitative research where we collect the personal stories of people with AP. Do you remember when you first discovered it? Do you remember being taught AP? When is AP difficult for you? Those kinds of things that we've been talking about today, those personal stories, they are interesting, really interesting and entertaining, but they also tell us some clues about AP, and then we might develop more experiments to follow up on those, like the intonation and tuning part.
0:46:56.7 EWM: Oh, incidentally, I meant to tell you about this interesting study by a researcher named Van Hedger et al. He has shown that AP can be kind of flexible, so that he played a bunch of listeners who have absolute pitch a Brahms Symphony, but unbeknownst to them, the Symphony was being slowly, slowly, slowly lowered, so slowly that you could not tell the difference that it was being lowered, it was over the whole course of a movement, and at the end of it... So they tested AP, sorry at the beginning for truly tuned pitches, A-440, and then quarter tone sharp, quarter tone flat. Then they lowered this whole Brahms Symphony and once it reached the new standard, you heard the other movements, and then they re-tested them for AP and they discovered that people had adjusted where A was, now it was a quarter step flat.
0:47:57.0 EWM: So maybe absolute pitch isn't so absolute, maybe we are constantly having that AP reinforced by using pianos and A-440 tuning, so every day you hear that A-440 over and over and over again, it's reinforcing and re-learning and so on. But if everything in the world were slowly detuned, I think they would adjust to that. [laughter] It's kind of an interesting experiment. So there's lots still being done. I think it's an endlessly fascinating topic for teachers and for musicians and for lay audiences, there's a whole new area of public musicology where people go out and speak to non-musicians about music, and I've done this several times with absolute pitch talks, and they find it absolutely fascinating. So there's still lots to be done, I think.
0:48:56.4 GR: Yeah, so turning the page a little bit, as many of our listeners know, you're also an author for the Musician's Guide series of textbooks. I wonder, could you just talk a little bit about that side of your life, maybe tell us about the series, who it's target audience is, and what's unique about its approach?
0:49:15.9 EWM: Target audience is everybody. [laughter] When I teach my theory pedagogy class, I often talk about a sort of dichotomy in theory teaching between horizontal approaches and vertical approaches. So a vertical approach is one that sort of salami slices music into verticalities, then you can slap a Roman numeral on each verticality. And a horizontal one is one that deals more with counterpoint between lines and prolongations of harmonic areas and so on, so sort of Shankar influenced, and we tried to position our book in the middle. So that we use a phrase model approach where harmonic progression is taught tonic, predominant, dominant tonic, and that each of those areas can be expanded, so the expansion idea is the linear approach, but we also do things like complement that with teaching about progression by root motion, ascending fifths, descending fifths, descending thirds and ascending seconds and so on, which is a more vertical approach. Then the idea is that if a teacher on either side of that divide is dissatisfied with how things are going with their textbook, it's kind of an easy journey to us in the middle, and we try to help teachers through that adjustment with lots of online materials and like our textbook workbook has a complete answer key.
0:50:52.0 EWM: Every single exercise has been part written for you, every single interval spelled, every bar line put in a rhythm, so that teachers who are making an adjustment have an answer key, there they have kind of authoritative response, and so that it can help the situation in many schools where the choir director or the flute teacher or someone else's teaching theory, and it may not be that these are professional theorists, but there are other musicians who are teaching theory. So we try to help supply materials, also recording, so now we have the internet, thank goodness, but once upon a time we had to run to the library in the morning and find recordings of everything you were gonna use in class, we have a really robust... Every single thing in the book is recorded, we have an anthology that goes with it, all recorded mostly by Eastman musicians. The entire book is also an electronic book, so during that quick switch to remote teaching that happened in 2020, it was pretty seamless for users of our book because the whole thing, when you buy the text, you also get access to the electronic book, which is all click and play every example, you can hear it, and it's exactly formatted like the textbook. It has a note slide-enabled workbook, so they could do all their homework online and turned it in online.
0:52:23.1 EWM: So all of that I think is really helpful for teachers. The other thing we've tried do since the very beginning is to have diverse repertoire. Since the beginning, we've had black composers and women composers in there, we also tried to diversify to have band music in there, choir music in there, and solo flute and solo cello, and so that every student can see himself or herself in the book in the instrumentation and so on. But we've really ramped that up in the fourth edition, so now every single chapter has at least one piece by a woman featured, that's 40 chapters of pieces by women, and we've increased the number of black and Hispanic composers in the book and the anthology. We have art songs in Spanish as well as French and German.
0:53:13.7 EWM: So we're really trying to be more inclusive, I guess, is the way we say that. And not to forget, it's all coordinated with aural skills books, so our colleague, Joel Phillips and Paul Murphy are the primary authors on that, but chapter by chapter, each concept in the textbook is reinforced with a sight-singing and dictation book that I think is just wonderful, and it uses a lot of these techniques we've been talking about like writing out scale degrees or Solfège instead of going straight to the staff. And those books too have lots and lots of music by underrepresented composers and women. So we're very excited about the fourth edition, you would think that after going through revising a textbook multiple times, it would get old. It is a lot of work, but it's exciting each time, because we solicit input from teachers across the country, we have things in our own minds that we want to change, like in this edition, we have two full chapters on popular music analysis, that's different for most books. So a lot of books sprinkle popular music throughout, and we do that too, but we have two focus chapters on popular music. So again, it's exciting to be able to keep tinkering with a product and make it better and better each time, so that's exciting for us. Thanks for asking.
[laughter]
0:54:43.6 GR: As in yeah.
0:54:44.6 DN: Well, I used your fundamentals book right into the pandemic, so... [laughter]
0:54:50.0 EWM: Oh, good. Yeah, and the fundamentals book has self-grading homework too, so you can assign these things that the computer will grade for you, which is nice.
0:55:01.7 DN: It's vital.
0:55:02.9 EWM: Yeah. We're about to do, not a new revision of the fundamentals book, but a re-working that pulls out some controversial repertoire. There's been a lot of talk in the Music Theory discipline about using music by Stephen Foster who started out in the minstrelsy tradition, so we're doing a new reprint edition now that pulls all the Stephen Foster out and replaces it with music mostly by women and minority composers. So look for that. [chuckle] Next year I hope.
0:55:34.4 GR: Great. Look, Betsy, this has been just an absolute delight. I've learned so much from this. Thank you for joining us.
0:55:42.8 EWM: Oh, you're welcome. You've asked great and probing questions, it was fun for me to think about answers, and to think about applications to teaching and to future research. So thanks for inviting me.
[music]
0:56:00.2 DN: Subscribe to Notes from the Staff on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. And check us out at utheory.com/notes.
0:56:07.3 GR: Notes from the staff is produced by utheory.com. uTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory, with video lessons, individualized practice and proficiency testing. uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world master the fundamentals of Music Theory, Rhythm and Ear Training. Create your own free teacher account at utheory.com/teach.
Veteran music educator Denise Eaton shares a plethora of tips on how to teach sight singing in choral rehearsals, gleaned from her nearly thirty years of leading high school choirs. She's written down this approach in her SMART, STEPS, and InSIGHT sight singing books, which she created to help high school choral conductors like herself overcome the challenges of building independent musicians.
Links:
Denise Eaton's website: www.deniseeaton.com
SMART, STEPS, InSight series, and choral textbooks: https://www.deniseeaton.com/media.html
Show Notes:
00:20 Introductions: For nearly thirty years, Denise Eaton taught high school choirs, including building one of the top choral programs in the country at Spring High School, north of Houston, Texas. Her approach to teaching complete musicians is remarkable, and it’s one she’s shared with the world in her SMART, InSIGHT and STEPS series of sight singing books. She’s also taught choral methods on the faculty of Sam Houston State University, served as president of the Texas Music Educators Association, and is choral editor for Carl Fischer Music.
02:00 How do you build an ensemble of singers who read well? It takes an intentional, systematic approach. It can't be done at the last minute. The beginning of learning skills is glacially slow, and it takes time.
03:00 What does that look like in rehearsal? Clear objectives for the rehearsal, and a precise lesson plan. An "Order of Events" on the board helps students to buy into just how much we have to accomplish.
04:00 A rehearsal should be a crescendo, not a checklist. I avoid the term warmup, and prefer to say vocal technique. From vocal technique training, to sight singing or singing the repertoire, everything is reinforcing what happened during the vocal technique time.
05:30 Moving from solfege to the page, from sound to sight. The importance of building in visual orientation to singing in different keys.
07:50 The SMART and STEPS books are broken up into chapters by key, and arranged by difficulty within each chapter. What's the philosophy behind that? A lot of people feel compelled to start at the beginning of a book and go in order. But, what if you don't need to sight sing in F-sharp major? The idea is to see a scale and a tonic triad in the key, and to sing through some fundamental exercises to get visually acclimated to what you'll see in the music, and then to sight sing. The fundamental skills are singing steps and thirds, and singing intervals from the tonic triad, and that's what you get in the SMART books and STEPS books. If students can do that they can do anything. Every key is a new language for young singers, it just looks different.
12:50 This approach was purely practical. If I'm going to teach a piece in A-flat, then three weeks before we start that piece we're going to start sight singing fundamental drills in that key, we're going to sight sing in that key so that students can be successful when they eventually get to the piece we're singing. InSIGHT Singing has fundamental drills around I, IV and V chords, they can see how those chords look.
15:30 If I'm working on a piece with a choir, and I want to help prepare students in advance by pulling out basics. What else, besides key, should I look at as I study the score, and how do I turn those into basic practice? This is what score study is about: identifying melodic patterns, harmonic patterns, and rhythmic patterns in addition to form. My sight reading will be the melodic contour of the patterns throughout the piece.
With some of these sub-non varsity treble pieces, there are only really three melodic patterns in it. Instead of looking at the music right away with students, write these out in whole notes and practice the pitch content first, after they've seen a scale and a tonic triad. And write out the most common rhythm patterns on the other side of the page.
17:35 Can you talk about the philosophy behind each of the books? The SMART books started off as a tool that I needed for my teaching. Each melody is written in both treble and bass clef. It was written for key orientation, so that teachers could give students material to sight sing in the keys of the music they're singing. SMART minor was self-serving, because when you go to contest with your varsity groups in Texas, the form will be Major-minor-Major, so this will help prepare. Minor's challenging because you have the altered notes to deal with. You have to teach it from a diatonic standpoint, I'll have them sing "Mi-Fi-Si-La is the Sol-La-Ti-Do of the minor key."
22:45 What are the fundamental exercises? A scale based on the range of melodies in that level, a tonic triad, and written out patterns (like Do-Re-Mi-Do) that move through the scale. The tonic triad should reflect the range of the melodies, if you don't have a low Sol you don't need to sing that. But you might need to sing a high Do. The books have each key in two chapters, a level 1 and level 2 chapter. The fundamental drills get harder, as do the melodies.
27:00 Should students write their solfege in music? Not in their sight singing work, because then it's not sight singing, it's letter reading. It depends on the level of your students. Maybe from time to time in repertoire, especially at pivot points of key changes. It depends on the level of the group, with a varsity group, for instance, I might say, "Ok, it's the third time through, if you're still making the same mistakes mark your solfege." Or, with a more beginner group, when I'm working with another section I might say, "Ok, write in your solfege, use your SMART book p. __ for the scale if you have questions on what a note is." It all depends on their skill level, your skill level as a teacher, where they are in the learning process, how much time you have, and how fast they learn.
29:00 How do get from a rehearsal plan that's about checking off the boxes--warmup, check! sight singing, check! etc...--to something more organic? We have to reinforce good singing--including vowel shape, posture, tone, breath--through the warmup into the sight singing. We have to let creating a beautiful sound be a unifying thread throughout the rehearsal. Not all warmups have to be at the beginning of class. And sight singing can be closer to the repertoire it's preparing students for in the rehearsal process, not necessarily at the start of rehearsal. And build the warmup patterns around the musical challenges they'll see in the rehearsal. Integrate one idea in the vocal technique that comes from something you're singing in repertoire. I like to keep exercises for at least a few days, not just once in a rehearsal. And I ask them, "Do you know why we're doing this warmup?"
34:05 How do you make sight-singing fun? It's a mindset. They love to be successful, and whenever they go to contest, festival or all-state auditions, there's always a sight-reading element, and they love working towards a competition. Turn patterns into a game: sing a fundamental drill, but audiate the note on the third beat instead of singing it. Or I'll sing measure 1, and you sing measure 2. It teaches audiation, but also rhythmic breathing. I like to play "ping-pong" with them, back and forth. Your only limit is your own creativity. Sing backwards! For middle school (and some non-varsity high school) choir directors, the hardest thing is to actually get them to just look at their music instead of looking at the director and memorizing by rote.
And there are books out there too, like Making Sight Reading Fun! or SOS Sight Reading by Mary Jane Phillips or the Snap Cards by Theresa Pritchard. You don't have to reinvent the wheel, go steel ideas from other people!
39:15 Tell us about the STEPS book. In the STEPS book the focus is intervals from the tonic triad, Do-Mi-Sol. Everything is tonic based, and there are flash cards that all begin on a note of the triad, you can make games out of the flash card by rearranging them. These are unison because this elevates the skills of the weakest singer. And in the STEPS book the two 4/4 melodies on each page can be combined to be sung at the same time in parts. Plus there are "Read Ahead Funs," two measure patterns written at various places on the page. You can call them a number to jump quickly to go between them. Let someone else be a caller, etc...
45:00 Read the preface to any sight reading book you buy. They'll tell you how to use the book, why the book is arranged the way it is.
46:00 What about rhythm? They need to isolate pitch and rhythm. I start with any sight reading melody by having them chant the rhythm. Then I have them sing the rhythm on counts. Students are less precise rhythmically when singing, so, they need that step to bridge the gap to singing the notes in time. Make it a game: count-sing an eight-measure melody, every time you cross a bar-line, go up a scale degree. Or sing it on a pattern of thirds. If it's easy, up the ante. Then finally let's sing it.
49:50 Why prioritize the teaching of reading in music education? My dog can speak for her treat. But do I want a choir like that? Did they learn twelve songs this year and get a I at contest? Maybe, but I want them to have a thought, an understanding, to see how it all ties in at the end when they look back on their musical career. Maybe high school will be the pinnacle of that, or maybe they'll go on to sing in church, community, or barbershop choirs. I want them to look back and know they learned something about music in this music education class, not just how to sit and bark.
52:13 What else should we talk about? If you're a teacher that's struggling with sight singing, find a process, find a mentor who does it well, find out what they do and how they do it. Have a plan, there's no winging it. Have 17 ways to skin that cat, depending on the level of the ensemble in front of you. Have a barometer, and know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. It's choir, not cancer. It should be fun, joyful, and we can laugh and have fun when we sight read. Get help if you need it, find a mentor.
Transcript:
Theme Song: These are the notes from the staff where we talk about our point of view, and we share the things we're going to do, and we hope you're learning something too, cause the path to matering theory begins with you.
Leah Sheldon: Welcome to Notes From the Staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.
Greg Ristow: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and Associate Professor of Conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory.
Leah Sheldon: And I'm Leah Sheldon, Head of Teacher Engagement for uTheory.
Greg Ristow: With us today to talk about coral sight singing is music educator, extraordinaire, Denise Eaton. For nearly 30 years, Denise taught high school choirs, including building one of the top choral programs in the country at Spring High School, north of Houston, Texas. I learned of Denise when I started teaching at Lone Star College–Montgomery, a nearby community college where I got to work with many of her former students, all of whom were solfege masters. Her approach to teaching complete musicians is remarkable. And it's one she's shared with the world in her SMART InSight and STEPS series of sight-singing books. She's also taught choral methods on the faculty of Sam Houston State University, served as president of the Texas Music Educators Association and is choral editor for Carl Fischer Music. Denise, thanks so much for joining us today.
Denise Eaton: Well, thank you. I'm honored to be with you all. That's a very, very nice introduction. I think we could sum it up in just a few words. I just simply love the act of teaching. I love the grind of teaching, which is something I think a lot of people don't, but part of that is successful sight reading can really build strong musicians. So I'm very passionate about that, but thank you for having me today.
Greg Ristow: So I think what we all really want to know is can you teach us how to build an ensemble of singers who read well?
Denise Eaton: I think it's possible. But sight singing and reading and rhythm readiness are all skills and skills are only developed if they are practiced daily and with intentional systematic approach to them. I think people that wait till the last minute have choirs that site read like they've waited to the last minute. I think the beginning of learning is incredibly, it is glacially slow. And the same as with skills. Pianists did not just start off playing scales in time, and sight singing is a skill. So yes, it can be done, but it must be really well thought out. I don't think there's one book. I don't think there's one method. I think it's knowing what works with your students.
Leah Sheldon: So what does that look like in a rehearsal for you? Let's say I'm a singer. I walk into the rehearsal and then what happens?
Denise Eaton: Well in my rehearsals, gosh, and I was thinking about it. It's been 11 years since I was the head choir director, but I certainly am in rehearsals all the time. In fact, I just left a rehearsal this morning. I always had objectives on the board. I'm a big lesson planner. I used to not be, but from frustration and winging it, it led to very precise lesson plans. And I learned that when I was not the only person in the room that knew what was expected of them, rehearsals were much more productive. So objectives are on the board and I used to call them the order of events, not just objectives. This is what we're doing today. I think there's something psychological about seeing number one through 17 on the board, like, oh my gosh, we've got a lot to get done.
Denise Eaton: Each activity is not something that you want to just check off the list. We warmed up, check. We did fundamentals, check. The whole idea to me is that a rehearsal, and I hate the word organic, maybe it's not organic. Everything is crescendoing throughout the rehearsal. Everything from the beginning of the rehearsal has a function as it takes you towards your repertoire. I don't call warmup, warmup. I call it vocal technique. I think that's one of the most important parts of the rehearsal, even if it's not very long, but to get kids engaged with their mind, their body, their vocal mechanism. And that, then, as you go on to, say, sight reading or singing the repertoire, you're still reinforcing what you did during the vocal technique.
Denise Eaton: I think warm up is an overused term. It is used in academics, usually for the teacher to check role. In math, there's a warmup activity and it's just something to keep the kids from talking. Or, and I think that too many teachers teach, treat warmup like it's that. Same with sight reading. They go through drills, perhaps they're teaching a third drill and the kids sound fabulous on it and they can do it ascending, descending, in thirds, whatever, but the problem is if you give them that same drill written out in a key, they can't sing it. So I agree with sound before sight. I agree with rhythm sound before sight. I agree with teaching everything sound before sight, but sight is the next level of proficiency.
Greg Ristow: Could you give us an example of, maybe, take the classic Do Mi Re Fa Mi Sol that people just rattle off?
Denise Eaton: That's it. That's the one.
Greg Ristow: How would you go from that to the page?
Denise Eaton: I would write it out in whatever key that they were going. Let's say it's my treble choir and we're singing in the key of E. E is not a common key to them. F, G and C are the most common to, I'm thinking of middle school trebles, F, G, and C. They see that the most. Middle school boys, oh gosh, that's just, you know what that is. But high school, they get to high school and they feel good about F, G and C and then you give them something like E or B♭. You write that out in the key of E and they're befuddled. So I like to do things like Do Mi line line, Re Fa space space Mi Sol line line Fa La space space, for the key of E because it's a visual orientation into what that key looks like, and they haven't seen that before.
Denise Eaton: They've seen G on the line, but it's on the second line. I think they need to see it. And I'll write out solfege letters on the board to introduce, like a warmup. I would always teach it on solfege before I'd go to the vowel sequence. But then a lot of times I would write those patterns out just on a sheet of paper, it'd be warmups, but they would have to sight read the patterns first. Anything to integrate it into what we were going to do. So sound before sight, but then sight. And then the sight has to be talked about. They have to make the visual connection that Do Mi and Sol live here, so high Do and low Sol live here. And it has to always be driven home.
Greg Ristow: One of the things that I've noticed about your books that I think is really wonderful and interesting. If you take this SMART Series, each chapter is in its own key. And then within each chapter, things progress from easier to more difficult. And you've kind of already been talking a little about the philosophy behind this, but it's very different from, for instance, a lot of the sight singing texts that I've taught with at the college level are arranged from beginning to end, easiest to hardest. And the keys are put in, I don't want to say willy-nilly, but it almost seems like the goal is to have lots of keys throughout the book. Can you talk maybe a bit more about the philosophy of the sight element of separating keys like that?
Denise Eaton: Well, for one thing, I think that, because, like the books you're referring to, a lot of people feel compelled to start with the book and go in order. Well, what if you don't need to sight read in the key of F# major? Of course, that can also work for F major. I used to always say, "Cover up the key signature. What key could it be in?" You can certainly make your sight-reading materials non-disposable. You can be very creative with them, but the keys that are in the SMART book and the Steps book and Insight Singing are the keys that you can most likely integrate using your repertoire.
Denise Eaton: But the idea behind them is to see a scale, an atonic triad in the key, and to sing through some fundamentals, fundamental exercises. Again, it's a visualization, in order to acclimate what you're going to see in the music. I learned from a masterful teacher, Norris Blevins. I was his assistant for 12 years. He was a guru of sight reading and he used to say, "If they can identify steps and thirds, know what to call them and know what they sound like, they can sing any interval." Because what's a fourth? It's a third and a step. What's a fifth? It's two thirds.
Denise Eaton: So the fundamental drills all came about, and I'm not kidding you, when I first went to Spring High School... Well, actually it was before then. I'm going to back up. I was teaching non-varsity treble, mainly freshmen. I threw at them a Nacht Lied. It's Beethoven. I know it's in B♭. I think it's acapella. Very sight singable, SSA.
Denise Eaton: They were really struggling. And again, these were mainly freshmen. So I stopped and said, "Can you tell me why you're struggling?" And of course, an alto, it's always an alto, isn't it? I'm an alto, raised her hand and said, "Every time I get to Sol, which is F in the key of B♭, I want to call it Do." I said, "You know what? Put that up."
Denise Eaton: So I went home and I wrote out intervals from the tonic triad in B♭, and that's the fundamental in the Steps book, is intervals from the notes of the tonic triad. Well, the fundamentals from the SMART book are steps and thirds with varying degrees of rhythm difficulty between level one and level two. Because it's another visual, for lack of a better term, drill and kill for what you're going to see, but the more you're aware of every time I come to this, this is Do, this is Mi, this is Sol, you don't have any Slas. I used to have Slas all the time. That was a cross between Sol and La. What do you call that? Sla.
Denise Eaton: I used to say, "Are we going to have barbecue?" It was a joke, but everyone knew what I was talking about. I'm like, "How can you call that Sla, because we've just been singing all these lines?" So it takes time. Every key is a new language for young singers. And, by young, that's their senior in high school. And some college, I'll just be real honest with you. It just looks different. The intervals don't change, but where they live do.
Greg Ristow: I have an interest in historical solfege pedagogy and when I first saw your SMART Series, which I think were the first of your books that came out, I remember thinking back to the old French solfege des solfege system that was used at the Paris Conservatory for many years, which, like many sight singing books from the late 1800s, early 1900s, works key by key. So you start with just C major and then you get F major and then you get some D minor, right? It just gradually brings them in. I think it was really insightful of you to bring back that kind of structure, which I haven't seen much elsewhere.
Denise Eaton: Well, I really did it from a practical standpoint. Like, I'm going to teach a piece in the key of A♭, well, we're going to start looking at that scale. We're going to look at those fundamental drills, some of the fundamental drill. I can play all kinds of games with those fundamental drills. I can teach audiation through the fundamental drills. We can play ping pong. We can do all kinds of things and have fun while we're learning and visualizing.
Denise Eaton: So I kind of did it self-servingly, because, like I say, when I went to Spring, I was teaching the Palestrina: Alma Redemptoris Mater. It was in E♭. I had very weak young SATB choir. So I would hear every morning the band kids outside of my room, practicing off their... They would have to do their marching stuff and play their little scale patterns. And they go [sings classic brass warmup pattern: 1231 2342 3453 1231 2342 7127 1321 2432 1]
Denise Eaton: And I went, "That steps and thirds." So I was starting to write out fundamental exercises in E♭ that we could sing in class before we looked at the Palestrina. And then my friend Sally Schott said, "We've got to make this a book." And then it was born. So I have sheets and sheets of all this kind of stuff that I would use for teaching before I would introduce a piece. So they're successful, then. We want our students to be successful. And if we're going to sing something an E♭, well, three weeks before we start introducing it, we start sight reading in E♭.
Denise Eaton: And they start getting the feel of what that looks like. The InSight singing has one, four and five chords. They can see why the key is the key, how the one, four and five chords look for the more advanced singers. You can do all kinds of things that way. See, I'm more pedagogical about sight reading, I think, as I'm talking, aren't I?
Greg Ristow: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Which is great. How many of us really learned, were ever taught the whys and hows of teaching sight singing? Very few.
Denise Eaton: Well, you know, you really can't. You have to be in the classroom and go, "Okay, they don't know anything. Where do I start?" Sometimes you use the music for sight reading. It just all depends on where they are. First you teach them by rote, a lot of times, and then get them to start reading. But they have to make the connection from pitch to pitch in the interval. And that's what sight reading is.
Leah Sheldon: So you just talked about key as an example. Let's say I'm working on a piece with a choir and I want to help prepare the students, like you mentioned, in advance by pulling out some of the basics. What else should I look at as I study the score so that I can use those in advance and how do I turn those into more focused practice?
Denise Eaton: Well, you're really talking about score study, which is sometimes a very dirty word for people because they always say, "I don't have enough time." And I always say, "How can you not make the time? Because, with score study, you are going to find all of your melodic patterns. You're going to find your harmonic patterns. You're going to find your rhythmic patterns. And that's, of course, after you determine your form."
Denise Eaton: Many times my sight reading is the melodic contour of the different patterns throughout the song. I mean, you teach some of these sub non-varsity treble pieces, it's three melodic patterns, is all it is. So instead of looking at the music and looking at all those rhythms, I write them out in what I call place markers, whole notes. And I control the rate of speed. So we'll say two snaps per pitch. And just sing from note to note, after they've seen a scale and a tonic triad, and use that for sight reading before we ever look at the music.
Denise Eaton: And perhaps on the other side of that sheet, I would have some of the rhythm patterns or breakdowns to get them ready for the rhythm patterns. So score study to me is everything. And that's why I would use three and four sight-reading books when I was teaching. It would just depend on the song and the needs of the class, so I have class sets of everything.
Greg Ristow: That's great. And we've started getting into a bit, sort of the philosophy behind pedagogical approach to sight singing. In particular, you mentioned, if they can sing steps and thirds, and if they can find all the notes of the tonic triad, then they can basically do everything. Certainly, I see that in your SMART books, and you started talking about your InSight books, as well, working largely from tonic triad. Maybe, do you want to just talk a little bit about the philosophy behind each of your books?
Denise Eaton: Well, yes, I'm very happy to. The SMART books started off, like I say, as a tool, I think, more than anything, for teachers that they could integrate it in their teaching and build fundamental skills. It's written in octaves.
Greg Ristow: And just to clarify for our listeners, when you say it's written in octaves, actually every melody in there is written in treble clef and bass clef, so that... Yeah.
Denise Eaton: And bass clef, exactly, so that a mixed choir can use it. A tenor bass choir can use it or a treble choir can use it. I know that the ranges don't work well. They don't work well for middle school boys, but again, that's kind of its own animal. That's a whole nother inservice, as far as that goes. But the SMART book was there for the key orientation. And a lot of teachers use it where they go through each key, all of C major level one, all of C major level two. And they go through each key like that and they don't tie it into their music. And to me, they're really missing a bonus round for their music. And someone said, "Well, the minor book's too hard and you don't have anything in F minor."
Denise Eaton: I say, read the F major melodies in F minor. The only thing you don't have is altered notes. Do still lives on the same place, you know? That's how those came about. So the fundamentals are really good exercises that they can get better and better at, at identifying. Then, out of that, came SMART Minor, and I'll tell you, it was self-serving for my colleagues in the State of Texas, because in Texas, when you go to a festival or contest or assessment, whatever it's called out there, the sight reading process for the varsity groups is major, minor, major. So you're going to sight read in minor, and a lot of repertoire is in minor.
Denise Eaton: So how do you get to minor? The Minor book is hard. The visualization is hard because students, I mean, it's great for them to learn the scales and then they can put the altered notes into context. But I think, to teach kids altered notes, you've got to teach them from a diatonic standpoint so that they already have in their ear something they can relate to.
Denise Eaton: My first day of my varsity mixed choir, these are kids that sang Whitaker and Palestrina. We would sing Mi Fi Si La is the Sol La Ti Do of the minor key, first day of class. I would make up these stupid La Si La is the Do Ti Do of the minor key. Why? Because, otherwise, they would see something go Mi Fi. They would just go into orbit. Do Ti. So we'd sing, like, Sol Fa Sol sounds like Do Te Do.
Denise Eaton: Something diatonic that they know they can sing Sol Do Sol in their sleep. They can wake up and sing it. But they can't necessarily sing Do Do Te because they're not pianists. They don't see that interval. They don't see a C to a B♭ relationship as a whole step, but they know what Sol Da Fa sounds like. So again, this is kind of a sound before sight thing. And if you do that, then the SMART Minor might be a little easier for you, but I'm telling you, the visualization after singing three minor scales feels like you've run a marathon.
Denise Eaton: I remember one night with a varsity tenor bass choir, we sang all the scales and the visual orientation. And I felt like I had been sucker punched. I was exhausted, getting them through that. And I was like, "We don't need to read any melody. We need to do this again later and then we'll go onto the melodies." Because everyone, their brains were just churning because of that. So the SMART Minor, and something I used to do is we'd have our SMART book and our SMART Minor out, and we'd read two melodies in the major and then one melody in the relative minor, and then go back to two melodies in the major, just to see how they were making that association.
Greg Ristow: That's great. You've been talking about the fundamental exercises that are in these books. Can you maybe just, for people who haven't seen the books, like when I open a chapter, what are the first things I see in that chapter?
Denise Eaton: Well, for each key center, you're going to see a scale based on the range of the melodies in that level. So let's say the key of F, you're going to see your scale because level one F goes from Do up to La and Do down to Fa. So the melodies in level one of the key of F major have a range of a sixth up or a fifth down, maybe not all of them go up to high La and down to Fa, but that's what you're going to see in level one.
Greg Ristow: We didn't talk about that earlier when we were talking about key, but that's such a huge thing, right?
Denise Eaton: It is.
Greg Ristow: That the different keys sort of have a different natural solfege range, that F major tends to live between that low Sol and the high Sol. Whereas, A♭ major is going to tend to live between a low Mi and a high Mi.
Denise Eaton: Oh yeah, exactly. And that was something I was talking about to a colleague of mine that wrote the sight reading for the Allstate Choir audition in the key of D. And I said, "Well, they're used to hearing Do Mi Sol Mi Do Sol Do, and their starting pitch." Well, they didn't get to hear, Do Do Do Do Do Do Do [1 3 5 8 5 3 1]. They didn't need a low Sol, they needed a high Do. So the range of the melodies, I always think, needs to be reflected in the scale and the tonic triad. Of course, I could always tell if my kids were looking at the scale, as well, because someone wouldn't go up high enough or someone wouldn't go up low enough. And I'd go, "Let's do it again and let's look at our music."
Greg Ristow: Because most of the scales in the chapters go up to a high Re or down to a low Ti, for instance.
Denise Eaton: It just depends. Yes. So what the scales are based on is the range of all the melodies in that. So the key of F, level one, if you look at all the melodies, you're going to find at least one that goes up to La and at least one that goes down to Fa. That's why the scale is written that way. It's the same with the InSight Singing book, as well. And the tonic triad should reflect the range of the melodies. If you don't have a low Sol, there's no reason to sing low Sol. If you have a high Do, though, you need to sing high Do.
Denise Eaton: So, yes, every key is that way. That's how it's set up. And then the fundamental drills of level one for each key center are easier rhythmically than level two. Level one, a lot of them are just stepwise motion. Level one might have a third, but it'd be a quarter note third. Level two, it might have Do Re Mi Do Mi Re Mi Fa Re Fa, a fast third, which is hard to sing and tune. A third's hard to sing and tune anyway.
Denise Eaton: So that's kind of the premise behind just the SMART Major book. The SMART Minor introduces, it's got, I think, five or six keys, but it introduces the natural harmonic and melodic minor for every key that it has. So they're starting to see those accidentals and then of course it outlines the tonic triad, but what's hard is the visual orientation. The visual orientation, you're going to see everything, every sharp or natural, and the naturals mess up kids, too. They don't know what to do with them sometimes.
Denise Eaton: So everything that you're going to see in those melodies, in that key center section, level one or level two, that's what you're going to see in the visual orientation of that. That's why I think the visual orientation is so hard, because it's crammed with all the hard stuff, all the visual things you're going to see. So that was the premise behind that.
Greg Ristow: So, along those lines, a quick question aside, how do you feel about students writing their solfege into their music?
Denise Eaton: Well, I don't like it in their sight-reading books ever, because then it's not sight reading. Then it's letter reading. They're seeing the Sol. They see the S so they sing a Sol. I think, in classes, it depends on the level of the degree of music and it depends on the students that are in front of you. With a varsity group, a lot of times I would have them third pass through. If you're still making the same mistakes, mark it.
Denise Eaton: I might mark a few places. Like if I'm going to pivot to a new key, I might put Do equals Ti and then write in a few solfege syllables. Or sometimes, just for ease of learning, I would say, "If I'm not working with your section today, right in your solfege, use SMART book, page, blah, blah, blah, for your scale. So if you have any question, you can write it in." It just depends on how much time you have for each given piece and where they are in the learning process.
Denise Eaton: Gosh, we all just want these clear-cut answers and there really isn't one, because it depends on their skill level, your skill level as a teacher, the materials you have at hand and how fast they learn. Some kids can just sight read through everything and they only have to make a couple of reminders to themselves. Some kids can't do that at all. They can't do anything unless they've written it in. But you have to start somewhere and I'm not saying there's a right or wrong to anything. It's what's right for your kids to learn and be successful. But never in books would I allow them to write in anything.
Leah Sheldon: Our conversation just a bit ago brought back some memories for me. Although I'm a band director, in my first few years of teaching, I directed an elementary children's choir and I felt very limited by their range and the keys that I had to choose from because they were young learners. It definitely turned into, like we talked about, a situation where we have a warmup and then, okay, that's done. We check that box. Now we're going to go to the real music. And, thinking about this now, we've also talked about score study and pulling from skills right from the music to use instead. So how do we get from that idea of, I have a warmup, I check the box, how do we move beyond that? Or do we need to?
Denise Eaton: Well, I think it depends on the level of the singer, like for an elementary group you're teaching them to stand still. You're teaching them to stand with good posture and, I don't care, if you're still doing high school, you're still doing those reminders, but talking about where the breath comes from, where it should be centered. You're doing a lot of other things in the vocal technique/warm up portion. You're working on vowel shapes. To me, everything comes from the vowel shapes.
Denise Eaton: Sadly, there's not an ooh vowel in sight reading in the Do Re Mi system. There's not an ooh vowel. And I wish there was because my vocal tone has two strands and they both begin with ooh, but ooh to oh is my big one. We can reinforce good vowels through the sight reading. So sometimes, I mean, I've watched choirs warm up and I thought it was the biggest waste of time because no one was engaged until the teacher got to the sight reading. And then all of a sudden they were going, "I need your best oh. Do." I'm going, "Well, why weren't you asking for that during the technique part of the warmup?"
Denise Eaton: So, back to your original question, what do you do? I like to take something from the warmup, and now I'm going to be a rebel here. Not all warmups are at the beginning of class. You might just do something to get the voice going and then just go straight into sight reading, because then you have a fabulous exercise you want to use that they can visually see. Say it's a song that's laden with fourths. So you sing exercises, you write them on the board, you write them out so they can see them on the staff, or they see what a fourth looks like.
Denise Eaton: Like the Koepke, "I will praise the name of God with a song," is a fourth-fest. "I will praise the name of God with a song." It starts off with all these fourths. So what does a fourth look like? Well, it's a space to a space with a space to align with a space in between, or aligned to a space with a line in between. They need to see what that looks like, as opposed to a fifth, which is two spaces or two lines. You can always integrate one idea in the vocal technique that's going to apply to something you're going to sing. Always. It could be a pattern. It could be a vowel glide.
Denise Eaton: You have a lot of E vowels in something and you're trying to avoid this bright spread eee. Well, you sing something that goes ooh to eee to ooh to eee to ooh to eee, and then, all of a sudden, hopefully they're not going to go ooh-eee [with an overly bright eee[ and Do Re Mi [sung with the same bright eee]. They're not going to do that, hopefully. Hopefully. And of course nothing happens overnight. It's a day-to-day thing. And I like to keep things for at least a couple days, if not the whole week, for young singers. Say you're doing this concept from song, you don't just do it one time because, as we know, in a large group of young learners, the first time you say something, if 30% of them got it, it's time to celebrate.
Denise Eaton: Hopefully, by the end of the week, everybody's hooked into the concept of what we're doing. And to tell them or ask them, "Do you know why we're doing this?" Because I think, as educators, it's real easy, like I said earlier, to be the only person in the room that knows the game plan and the why, but they're the singers. So I think them knowing... You say, "Does anyone know why we're doing this warmup?" "Yeah. Because there's that section of that song that has all those thirds and da, da, da." Good. Good. So now let's get out that song and let's see how we can apply that.
Greg Ristow: You talked earlier, you said, "I have tons of games for teaching these things." How do you make all this fun? So often I think, okay, let's do our sight reading, and I fear the choir going, "Oh, do we have to do that?" How do we make it fun?
Denise Eaton: Well, when they say that, I go, "Let's try that again. [Very cheerfully:] Let's do our sight reading," and they go, "Yay." Because that is a mindset because they do understand. Here's the thing, they love to be successful. And when they go to festivals or assessment or contest, whatever it's called in whatever state you live in, there's always some component of reading. And a lot of all state auditions consist of reading. So it's part of the game, I like to call it, but it's also part of your mind going.
Denise Eaton: I like to play things like, we'll audiate. I like to audiate, of course, but you have to teach them how to audiate. So if I go back to, let's go to an easy, fundamental drill in the SMART book. The very first level one C major is Do Re Mi Do Re Mi Fa Re Mi Fa Sol Mi. So it's mi step step step third step step step third. Okay. Well maybe we just sing beats one, two and three and I'll sing beat four. So they'll go Do Re Mi Do Re Mi Fa Re Mi Fa.
Denise Eaton: They're leaving out something so they have to start using their inner ear to hear where it is, to go to the next note. Or I'll sing measure one and they sing measure two. What is that teaching? Well, it's teaching audiation, but it's also teaching rhythmic breathing, because they have to breathe on beat four. If I sing Do Re Mi Do, they have to breathe when I sing Do. And that's a whole nother inservice, rhythmic breathing, onset of sound. These things that they just kind of go "Bah," just open their mouth and sing, but they have to learn they have to breathe in time, as well.
Denise Eaton: And I like to play ping pong with them. And you can do it between sections depending on how you can split. You can count off one two, one two. You can count a me versus you. Sopranos versus altos. Bass tenors versus soprano altos. You're limited to your own creativity as to what you can do, but I like to go backwards. I love to go backwards. It teaches them to think and look ahead in a different way. The STEPS book that I hope to talk about has a reading ahead fun exercises.
Denise Eaton: First of all, if you talk to any middle school choir director and probably a high school, non-varsity choir director, the bane of their existence is getting kids to look at their music. They look at the teacher and the teacher's talking about the music and they are not looking at the music. And I used to say, "I know I look really good today and I'm having a great makeup day, but would you look at your music please?"
Denise Eaton: It was ridiculous. And I know it's gotten worse over the years because I'm in classrooms all the time. And I can do that now as a joke, because the kids think I'm funny and cute because they don't see me every day, but I'll go, "I mean, I know I look good today, but can you look at your music since we're talking about it?" "Oh my gosh." And I am not above having students track. "Put your finger on measure one and I want you to track. And when I stop, tell me which measure and which beat I'm on." See if they're even following along. Because when you take a sixth grader, you're probably using an Elmo or an overhead for them to look at the music before they get to music.
Denise Eaton: So a lot of middle school teachers are the best at that. I never taught middle school and there's a reason why. But they are the best at getting them from making that transition from the overhead and just all by rote to actually reading. But I'm not against it with high schoolers at all. But fun, I mean, there's some great books out there. Mary Jane Phillips has written some on sight-reading fun games. The SOS Sight-Reading book, the snap cards. They have the flashcards. There's all kinds of games that are listed. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. Go find out what other people have done and steal it, baby. That's the art of good teaching is being a good thief.
Greg Ristow: That's great. I love those Read Ahead exercises in the STEPS book where basically it's you have these little couple of measure or even one measure cells, a bunch of them, spread out across the page. And, related to that, the STEPS books also have cards that you can get. Can you tell us about those?
Denise Eaton: Yeah. So the STEP book is kind of like the SMART book, except... Of course, I was teaching when I wrote the STEPS book and then I went to work for Carl Fisher and I said, "How can..." I couldn't promote the SMART book anywhere I went with Carl Fisher because we didn't publish it. So they said, "Well, write one." And I went, "Okay," but I wanted it to be different and I wanted it to offer something different than the SMART book for people that were ready for maybe an additional book.
Denise Eaton: And the fundamentals in the STEPS book are intervals from the notes of the tonic triad from Do, Mi and Sol. So everything is tonic based, so the STEP Further flashcards all begin on a note of the tonic triad, but of course nothing's written out. So you could literally have five kids standing there with two cards and get them in order or put them on the board on a sleeve or however you visually do that, depending on the sizes of your room, or an Elmo, however you do it. You can make games out of the flashcards and they're sight reading, but they're just saying all those intervals from Mi. So maybe you pull all the cards that start on a Mi and you do something, and so you make it a sight-reading exercise.
Denise Eaton: The STEPS book, I was constantly asked, with the SMART melodies, "Why don't you write parts?" Well, I'm going to go back to what I said at the beginning. I don't believe in sight reading in parts until the second semester. Because, if you're elevating the skills of your weakest singer, and that's what unison singing does, it elevates the weakest singers to get better because they're hearing just that one part. It also helps teachers here. Young teachers sometimes can't tell if things are out of tune or what's wrong. I couldn't hear the tenor part for five years in an SATB choir as a young teacher. I was like, I can hear the alto because I am one. But the tenor part eluded me.
Denise Eaton: So, if you're singing in unison, you can hear everything. You can work on vowel unification and you can elevate weaker singers to get better. That was the premise behind that. So the STEPS book has two four-four melodies on every page, and one three-four melody on every page. The SMART book has no melodies in three- four. There are a ton of songs out there in three-four. And, if I'm teaching to my curriculum, my song, it would be nice to have something in three-four to sight read with so I could teach them to sing strong, weak, weak, strong.
Denise Eaton: Because a lot of times in three-four young kids have a very, very, very hard time learning three-four, to sing musically three-four. Because they end up always kicking beat three. So there was that. There was three-four melodies. But each of the four-four melodies on each page can be combined, they're duets. If they're ready for it. If they can't read both melodies really well, you don't want to put them together, but if they can, you could.
Denise Eaton: And one of them is a little bit more rhythmically active than the other. So there's a little bit of a challenge, more challenge in one of the two four-fours. So that was the idea behind that. And then the Read Ahead Funs so that you could play some games with them, because it is fun. My kids used to love to do Read Ahead Funs.
Greg Ristow: What are some of the ways that you use those Read Ahead Funs?
Denise Eaton: Well, you can go column, down each column, which would be one, three, five, seven, nine, odds, evens. You could go in numerical order. But the favorite game we used to play is when they get to measure two, so it's just two-measure patterns, and all of them end in either a whole note or a half note. So when they would get to measure two, whatever the long note is, and I loved it when it's a half note, because then I would call out the next number and then they'd have to hold the first pitch of the next one. So if they're on one and I said 12, they would have to find 12 first and then they're identifying what is it? What is it? What is it? Hold it. And then they would sing. Then I'd say, "Ready, set, go," and they'd sing 12 and they'd get to the second measure and I'd go, "Five," and then they'd hold that one.
Denise Eaton: And then when they really got good, I'd say, "Five," they would sing all of five and we'd play games. Stand up, sit down when you make a mistake. And then I'd let someone else be the caller and it would be fun. They would just love it. And if they weren't very challenging, then I would photocopy it and add in some altered notes and pass it out and we'd do some altered notes in there. What the Fa. What the Fi. That kind of stuff.
Denise Eaton: And the book has challenge Read Ahead Funs. You can download the common keys of F, G and C, and we put D and B♭ in there, the challenge exercise. There's also some other teaching materials in there, as well. So it's a good resource. It has a lot to offer. But, along those lines, I'm going to just encourage any teacher out there that is listening, and thank you for listening, to make sure that you read the preface to any textbook, sight-reading book that you buy. I can't tell you how many classrooms I've been in, they're using my materials and they're not using them properly.
Denise Eaton: It says, "The effective guide for the use of this book," and it tells you what to do. That means there was an intention behind it, if you're working with beginning singers, to increase their skills, make sure you know the intention behind it. I think that's very important. I know this is shocking, but teachers don't always read or follow directions, but we do expect our students to.
Greg Ristow: We can all get so busy, right? It's sometimes like-
Denise Eaton: I know. Faculty meetings, whatever. We're as guilty as they are.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. We've talked a ton about sight-reading pitch. I wonder, rhythm. Where do we even begin to help students learn rhythm?
Denise Eaton: Well, I think that they need to isolate pitch and rhythm. The very first thing I do with any sight-reading melody is chant the rhythm. And then I changed a lot, years before I retired. We would sing the rhythm because I found that students are very percussive when they're chanting. They'll go, "One and a two and Ti and four." And then you say, "Now sing that," and they go, "One and a two and Ti and four." They're not rhythmic. So I like to chant and I like to sing the rhythm. "One and two, Ti, four."
Denise Eaton: And I like to play games with that. That's kind of boring. So you've got an eight-measure melody. Every time you cross a bar line, you go up a scale degree. One and two Ti four, one, two and Ti four." Or you do thirds, "Do do do do do do do." I mean, I used to play all kinds of games like that. And so for those smart kids that go, "I can do this," you're like, "Okay, well try this then. I'll up the ante." Make it challenging yet functional for them so they don't feel like it's so baby, but it's amazing how just singing numbers, and you have to teach them how to sing one, which is through an ooh, ooh ahh. One. One. One and two and Ti and four." With the tall vowels that you want, and then to be precise.
Denise Eaton: So I like to chant the rhythm first and then, my kids, we audiate it. I said, "You get to cheat." Hum Do. Think your starting pitch. Here we go. And I just snap the quarter note or, if it's a dotted quarter note, three-eight snaps, and I'm just keeping the beat and they're hand signing and lip syncing. To me, audiation must be hand signing and lip syncing because it's like they're singing and any time they could just break forth into song. So I like to do that. We've already covered the rhythm, we've audiated the solfege, and then let's sing it. So very systematic in that regard.
Greg Ristow: I love how you just-
Denise Eaton: So a system, yeah.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. One of the things that you said is how these ways that it sounds like you're constantly listening to your ensemble and saying, "This is too easy for them. This is too hard." And it's not that you're changing what you're working on, but you're immediately changing the way you're working on it to match their level.
Denise Eaton: Exactly. So you have to know your target audience. I did a session years ago and that title has stuck with me, Through The Lens of the Learner. Who are you teaching? And to always have a barometer in your class. You're watching that sophomore tenor that has a great throat, that's in the varsity choir, but he labeled the piccolo syllables of a piece. That's how much he knows about where his part is. I mean, "Are you tracking with me on that? Great throat." And that's all I can say.
Denise Eaton: So I'm watching him to see if he is negotiating it, having success. If he's not, I've got to bump it back a little bit, but I've got to also challenge the other kids that maybe are better. And that is the beauty and the challenge of being a good teacher, all those learning styles and all those abilities and try to hit the mark with everybody at least once or twice a week.
Greg Ristow: Music is so all encompassing, recognizing that we couldn't possibly learn, let alone teach, everything that we want to, why do you personally feel it's important to prioritize teaching reading?
Denise Eaton: Well, I think about my dog, Pebbles. She's adorable and she sits and she can speak for her treat. Do I want a choir of people that sit and speak for their treat? Did they learn 12 songs this year? Did they get a one at contest? Yeah, I want to get a one at contest, but I don't want them just to sit and bark. I want them to have a thought. I want them to have an understanding. I want them to see how it all ties in, in the end, when they look back on their musical career. And it might just be the pinnacle might be high school. But let's say they go on and they're singing in church choirs, community choirs, ensembles, barbershop quartets, whatever, I want them to understand that they learned something in this choir class that was music education, not just how to sit and bark.
Denise Eaton: And so that's a philosophical thing for me. I want them to have an understanding of how 16th notes work. I want them to tie in math to music, because you can and they can, and they can get better. Some of the weakest math students can be some of your best rhythm readers, but maybe no one ever explained it to them in a way that made sense. I don't know.
Denise Eaton: But they can be successful and they can be a part of something that is so much bigger than themselves. And the only way they can really do that is to learn along the way. And I want to learn. I learn every time I do anything. So that's my philosophical thing. That's how I feel. I want them to walk away, having an understanding of what they did for four years in that high school choir program. And reading's part of that, for me.
Greg Ristow: So let's see. Yeah, it's beautifully said. Anything else you want to talk about? We have just a couple of minutes left. I feel like we've covered a lot of ground.
Denise Eaton: Well, we have. I just think if you are a teacher that is struggling with teaching sight reading, that you find a process, find a mentor, find someone that does it well, find out what they do, how they do it, have a plan. There is no winging it. That never works well for anybody. That's what I used to do. And then I changed, and I really started doing more score study and that led to even better teaching of sight reading because I was seeing how it could all tie in together. But have a plan, have 17 ways to skin that cat, depending on the level of the choir, that ensemble in front of you. Have a barometer and know when to hold them and know when to fold them. Some things won't work one day and they'll work another day.
Denise Eaton: I used to say, "Clearly, I'm not getting through to you today or you're not trying hard. I don't know which one it is, but we're going to come back to this tomorrow and I'm going to think about it, and maybe you think about it." It's choir, it's not cancer. It's fun. It should be engaging. It should be joyful. And we can laugh and have fun when we sight read. We can. Especially when we know it's going to be tying into the song we're going to do. It's like, "Woo-hoo, we're going to knock this song out of the park and be successful."
Denise Eaton: But get help. Help is the best prayer I know. And don't be an island. And if you want to email me, email me. My website will be in the notes and there's a way to contact me. I'm a mentor to many and I just don't think we need to ever feel like we're alone in this profession. There's too many fabulous people out there that can help. And they might just say that one thing that triggers you to make a little bit of a change and that one change could make a change with your students' learning. So that's about it. I'm very honored to have been here with you today and I appreciate you including me.
Greg Ristow: What a treat. Yeah. Really, it's been a delight. As we wrap up, you mentioned your website. What's your website? Where can people learn more about you?
Denise Eaton: It's www.deniseeaton.com.
Greg Ristow: Great.
Denise Eaton: The publications are there and there's also a way to contact me, so feel free to. I'd love to hear from you if you have questions or if I can help in any anyway.
Greg Ristow: Excellent. Well, thank you so much.
Denise Eaton: And if you're a Fixed Do person, two of the books that we mentioned today are for Fixed Do.
Greg Ristow: Yeah, that's great.
Denise Eaton: Because a lot of colleges do Fixed Do, so that's helpful, as well.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. I'm a Fixed Do plus scale degrees person, myself. That's what I think and hear in.
Denise Eaton: Well, I think when our ears are more refined, we can move on in those areas. But I think, for the non-varsity tenor bass choir, I can't even imagine them saying, "We're in the key of Fa." I just can't even go down that path. Or Me. "Okay, we're in the key of Me," and you sound Me. So anyway, I don't know.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. I will say, Denise, that I use your SMART books with my students at Oberlin in our one-on-one sight-singing work because they're so good for... When you're working in Fixed Do, you have to learn your tonic triad and all the keys, and it has different words in every key and those SMART books are so good because they give the students a chance to get used to what that tonic triad feels like in all the different keys.
Denise Eaton: You should see the STEPS book in Fixed Do. It's all the fundamentals from the tonic... So you're in the key of Te and you see Te Do Te Te Re Te Te Me Te. Oh my gosh. I did that because my friends that teach in Hurst-Euless-Bedford in Texas, it's in the Fort Worth Dallas area. I was doing a workshop for them and I said something and they said, "Well, we don't have to worry about that because we're Fixed Do." And I went, "What sight-reading materials do you use?" And they said, "Well, it's hard to find them." So we made that happen for them.
Greg Ristow: That's great. That's really great.
Denise Eaton: But colleges use them, too, so that's good.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks so much. For our listeners, join us next time when Dr. Elizabeth West Marvin from the Eastman School of Music joins us to demystify perfect pitch. Until then, we'd love to hear from you. Send us your questions, comments or show ideas at notes@utheory.com.
Leah Sheldon: Notes From the Staff is produced by uTheory.com.
Greg Ristow: uTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
Leah Sheldon: With video lessons, individualized practice and proficiency testing, uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world master the fundamentals of music theory, rhythm and ear training.
Greg Ristow: Create your own free teacher account at utheory.com/teach.
Dr. Andrew Machamer joins us to talk about how to teach and build the skills students need to be successful sight readers, not just for contest, but for life.
Show Notes 00:00 Intro
0:26 Welcome/Introductions
0:30 Introducing Andrew Machamer, Asst. Prof. of Music Education at Baldwin Wallace
1:45 What do you teach at BW? Band music ed. faculty, teach instrumental methods, woodwind methods, oversee student teaching placements and supervision. Great opportunity to be connected to teachers in the area and how everyone's managing in this time of the pandemic.
2:30 Preparing for Contest Sight Reading. What is contest?
Opportunity to get outside perspective on how your ensembles are progressing, important to do because otherwise you might just be getting feedback from administrators who aren't necessarily well-versed in musical arts. Great way to create a goal and motivation for students, as well.
3:50 Why do we do sight reading at contest?
Because it's fun! (Haha.) It deepens the experience of context, certainly. And it gives us a baseline measure of where our musicianship is. When else are you going to do sight reading and have it be as meaningful as it is when it's at contest?
5:10 Why is sight reading specific to contest? Should it be?
You can't wait to last minute to start getting ready for it. It has to be a part of your daily routine, whether that's teaching students a counting system, teaching them to break down the and's and ee's, etc... Sight reading at contest is not the end, it's a point of reference along a journey.
7:00 What does sight reading at contest look like, compared to a normal day in band rehearsal?
New music, new space, new outfits, everything will feel new. And there are time limits, 3-4 minutes of silence where everyone works on their own music. 3-4 minutes where the conductor gets to go over things, you can't play, but you can sing, etc... So, that process needs to be practiced before the day of contest.
Teach students what to look for when they first see a piece, what to do in those 3-4 minutes of silence:
- Look for key signatures
- Look for time signature changes
- Find difficult rhythms
- Expression markings: Do we know what this word means?
Always good to invite people to come in and adjudicate or clinic before contest.
And the environment may be totally different -- students might normally rehearse in a cafetoriumnasium, and at contest they're in a performing arts center, and suddenly everything sounds different. So anything we can do to get them ready for all of the other things ahead of time, the better.
9:37 And how can you prepare students for the logistics of coming into the sight reading room, getting music distributed, etc...?
That's part of the process to work on in rehearsal. Section leaders distribute parts. Especially percussion: one person responsible for assigning the different percussion parts, and getting the instruments setup so you're ready to go.
10:40 Greg: When I was a student in HS band, we practiced rep for a really long time, and worked much less on reading skills. Has that changed in the 20+ years since I was in high school?
Andrew: You've got your prepared pieces, which you want to be extremely polished. Sometimes sight reading is more of an afterthought. Plus, it takes a lot of work to get sight reading pieces ready to play for an ensemble. Practicing 3 hours before a concert isn't gonna do it, but if you spread those out, it can make a big difference.
12:30 Why teach sight reading in general?
Creates independence. They feel confident, they can get a sense of what it sounds like through audiation, or dissect the rhythms, or look at the terms and know I'll be able to perform it. The general musicianship of the player comes up through this.
13:40 What tools and skills are needed for students to be successful at sight reading?
You can think of building a heirarchy of skills, from most basic to subtle:
- Counting
- Notes and fingerings
- Blend and balance: who has the melody?
- Intonation
And these all affect each other. So, for instance, with intonation, can you hear the beats when you're out of tune? Do you know how to fix it? What do you do with your embouchure, on your instrument?
15:17 Can you talk about counting systems?
Whether it's the Gordon du dude, the Kodaly, or Takadimi, or 1e&a these systems are really useful for dissecting rhythms.
16:04 Long term strategies
There are lists of what types of meters you'll see in the sight reading, depending on what class you are, then you can plan to expose students to those rhythms, that music, etc...
The Gordon method is so great because you get the 2/4 and 6/8 right away, recognizing the difference between macro and micro beats, helping students feel the difference of the subdivision between the two.
19:20 And working on ties, take the ties out, then add them back in to help students master those rhythms.
Rhythm is the most important thing, it's paramount.
20:20 How do you build fluency in the fingering/notes side of sight reading?
Scales. They're the building blocks of music. Then it's not just a fingering, but part of a scale, part of something else. All the major scales, start to get into the minors. It will also help you identify where the fingering deficiencies are.
21:55 Where can directors turn to find resources for teaching sight reading?
If you're working with high school, pull from the middle school library. Use state lists, if you're playing grade 4 repertoire, look at the lists and get some grade 2 and 3 pieces to practice.
23:05 What is sizzling? It's performing the rhythm on ss-ss-ss. It forces musicians to engage their abdominal muscles, which prepares them nicely for playing. Also helps them to get the front of the note to sound, which, in the band world, is where we need to line things up.
That silent time, it can be so easily overlooked, but the students need to know what to do before they experience it: accidentals, key changes, tempo changes, ritardandos, dynamics. They won't know to look for those unless you practice it.
25:10 Singing with bands. As a conductor it's often the best way to model. Having students sing their own parts is such a powerful things. Working with drones: put a drone on and sing a pitch, bend down or up to manipulate the beats. Singing is great because in band we all make sound such different ways, reeds, buzzing, percussion -- but singing we all produce sound the same way, makes a base for working on pitch and melody, then applying it to the instrument. If you can sing it, you can play it.
To get students comfortable with singing, play it first, then sing what they just played. Give them a chance to hear it, then echo it. Then gradually, let's try to sing this without playing it. Now let's play it. Were you close? With or without solfege.
I've heard so many times, "I'm not in choir I'm in band, why are we singing in band?" It's huge, it's such an important part, even at the very highest level.
Singing as an instrumentalist is about being able to hear what the music should sound like without having to resort to an instrument to create that sound. Can you audiate this?
28:30 Intonation of notes within chords and pitch bending for tuning practice
30:00 How do you get from tuning with a drone to a point of knowing where I am in a chord in real music?
Match pitch first to a drone singing. Then build chords from scales, each person singing their part of the chord. Then alter them chromatically, to gradually lead them into feeling how quality can shift and how roles change with different harmonies. And, you can even talk about just intonation and put the different cents on the board for the different parts of a chord. And take whatever we do in singing then straight to our instruments.
31:45 In choir, we can see everyone's parts and what part of the chord we're on. How do you get instrumental students who are looking at only one line to know where they are in the chord?
Pick important chords in the music -- cadences, or starting chords -- and pause on it, have the students figure out where they are on the chord. If they're not getting it, everyone play the root, walk up the scale to your note.
34:50 Balancing teaching group's strengths vs individuals' strengths. You have to know your students, pick appropriate rep to work on that, maybe bringing in people to do sectionals with weaker sections. Some will take private lessons, some won't.
38:00 Solfege systems (briefly!)
43:30 Solfege, sight reading, etc... is all about giving them the skills to be able to make music independently well beyond their years in school music programs.
44:20 What are your thoughts on sight reading during a concert?
I love it. What a great way to impress your parents, administrators, audience -- it's like a magic trick, "we're going to perform this piece we've never seen before!" The weirdest thing is the four minutes of silence for the audience. But it's great, to let parents understand what we're doing. Makes it more than just an exercise.
47:30 What are great sequential resources to build up sight reading, and rhythm, especially?
Successful Habits method books for middle school and high school band especially.
Darcy Williams, Teaching Rhythm Logically and their podcast After Sectionals. Includes rhythm charts to project on the board. It's very sequential, lots to practice from.
uTheory's rhythm reading exercises -- students get immediate feedback, can work on their own.
49:20 Using Recordings -- recording and playing back to students, can be really powerful in allowing students to decided what we need to work on.
50:00 Where can listeners find you, Andrew? BW faculty page.
51:02 Wrap-up.
Transcript Theme Song: These are the Notes from the Staff where we talk about our point of view, and we share the things we're going to do, and we hope you're learning something new cause the path to mastering theory begins with you.
Greg Ristow: Welcome to Notes from the Staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about teaching music, music theory, ear training, music technology and more to students of all ages. I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and a professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
Leah Sheldon: And I'm Leah Sheldon, head of teacher engagement for uTheory. And with us today is a special guest, Dr. Andrew Machamer, who is assistant professor of music education at Baldwin Wallace University. He's here to talk with us about preparing band and orchestra students for contest sight-reading. Andrew, welcome.
Andrew Machamer: Thank you so much, happy to be here.
Leah Sheldon: And, why don't you tell us just a little bit more about yourself?
Andrew Machamer: Sure. I'm from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. And I went to my undergraduate degree at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, which is a small state school outside of Pittsburgh and there I earned my bachelor's in music education. And then for graduate school, traveled to University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities, and I earned my master's and doctorate in bassoon performance. During that time, I taught many different marching bands, pet bands, concert bands, private lessons, anything to just stay in the education world and kind of hone my skills. And then moving here to Berea with my wife, starting at Baldwin Wallace about five years ago, have really enjoyed being a part of the community here.
Greg Ristow: So, tell us a bit more about your role there at Baldwin Wallace. What do you teach?
Andrew Machamer: So, I am the band music education faculty member. And so, I instruct the woodwind class. I also teach Instrumental Music Methods, which is an upper level method course for our music education majors on how to be a band or orchestra director. So I co-teach that with my string colleague, it's a really fantastic class. And then, I also oversee student teaching placements and supervision.
Andrew Machamer: So, I get a really great opportunity to go out into the schools and meet directors, and watch our students interact with their students, and kind of see what is going on in the area, and how people are managing the pandemic and their programs and where the trajectory of things are going here in Ohio.
Greg Ristow: So we're going to talk specifically about preparing students for contest sight-reading, and being the one person in this conversation who hasn't taught in the public schools and isn't so connected to that. I wonder, Andrew, could you just start us off with what in the world is contest, and when is it and just give us some background?
Andrew Machamer: Yeah. Contest is an opportunity for directors to take their ensembles to a place to be adjudicated. I think just to get some outside perspective on how their ensembles are progressing to get some objective numbers from experts in the field that they can use to then inform their instruction as they move forward with their program. I think that's such an important thing to do. Otherwise, you're just getting kind of feedback from administrators who might not be as well versed in the musical arts.
Andrew Machamer: So to get really specific surgical feedback about blended balance, and intonation and things like that from people that know, I think can be really valuable. So, I think that's why we do it. I think it's also a great way to kind of have something to work towards with an ensemble, to get the students excited and engaged and hey, we're going to work towards this goal, we're going to go play in front of some really great people and we're going to get some feedback. So, I think those things all combined can make contest a really valuable thing for both the students and the instructor.
Leah Sheldon: So, I think a lot of teachers would probably like to know why do we do sight-reading at a contest?
Andrew Machamer: Because, it's fun. Why not, right? Because it's enjoyable, and everybody loves to be put on the spot and try something brand new in front of new people. Right. I mean, I really do think we do it at contest because I feel like it deepens the experience for the players. We're already there, we're in our uniforms, in our outfits and we're playing already, like why not do something that is going to kind of give us a baseline idea of where our musicianship is as an ensemble? And, let's play some music that we've never seen before and let's put our musicianship to the test.
Andrew Machamer: And so, I think at contest, it's a really great time to do that. And then again, to get that feedback from the experts. I mean, when else are you going to do sight-reading and have it be meaningful in that way? Like, you're not going to do site reading in a concert, although we'll come back to that, I have an idea, but I guess, when else are you going to do site reading and have it be as meaningful as it is when it's at contest?
Leah Sheldon: Yeah. Let's talk a little bit more about that. So I mean, why is it specific to contest? Should it be specific to contest? I think back to when I was in the classroom and it became so important at that time of year, but it could also be important the whole year round.
Andrew Machamer: Absolutely. Yeah. You can't wait until the last minute to start getting ready for sight-reading right before you do it. It has to be a holistic approach. I think what you do in rehearsal every day should then be applied to a sight-reading exercise. So if you're rehearsing and breaking down notes and rhythms, and you have a counting system that you have your students use, maybe put the rhythm on the board and break it down the ands, and the e's, and the ahs and have them participate in that. Kind of teach them to teach themselves almost, so that when they're confronted with a new rhythm in the sight-reading, they can then apply that. But that needs to happen year round, like every day in rehearsal, maybe you have a warmup routine where you put a difficult rhythm on the board and you break it down and then you play it as part of a scale.
Andrew Machamer: Or in rehearsal, you ask the question who has the melody here? Who should we be hearing? Who should we be listening to? Who's the most important part? Like, those are things that I think should just be part of your rehearsals every day. And then again, the sight-reading will then test your musicianship and the ability to make decisions as an ensemble, but you have to give them permission to do it and rehearsal and you need to let them try it multiple times before they have to do it for a contest. Which is just like a point on the path, sight-reading at contest is not the end, it's just like a point of reference to get some feedback to then move on to the next part of your growth as an ensemble. But I agree with you, it can't just be right beforehand. I think it has to be baked into everything that you do in your rehearsals.
Greg Ristow: So just coming back to my naivete, imagine that I'm a ninth grader and I've never been to contest, what's the day going to look like? And, how is that site reading going to be maybe different than site reading we do in the band room normally?
Andrew Machamer: Right. Yeah. So, what is going to be different? And, I think that's the big thing. When things are new and different, it shakes our confidence a bit. And especially in the wind world, when we don't feel confident, we don't take a good breath and we don't take a good breath, it's going to be hard to create a good sound. So, how can we make that newness or those things that are different commonplace? And, we can train them to do that. And so, they're going to be wearing their outfits, their tuxes or whatever concert attire. They're going to have new music in front of them for the first time. They're going to be in a new space, so it's going to sound different and look different. And, they're going to be playing in front of somebody new. Okay, so all of that, and we're not even talking about the music, all of that is new. So, how can we get them comfortable with that?
Greg Ristow: And there's going to be a time limit probably, right and sort of various rules around that?
Andrew Machamer: Yeah. There's usually, I mean, in Ohio, it says three to four minutes, where there's a silence and everyone's working on their own music. And then three to four minutes, where the conductor gets to go over things. Nobody plays, which you can sing, you can clap, you can... So, that process needs to be practiced. So again, like that can't be a new experience on the day of site reading. So, we need to go through that process. What is the process of getting ready to play a piece for the first time? And so, you need to say you were going to open your music, let's look for key signatures changes. Difficult rhythms, expression markings. Do we know what this word means?
Andrew Machamer: I mean, all of those things need to be addressed in our practice sessions, so that when they sit down and they open their music for the first time, they can start to look at those things and they're comfortable doing and dissecting those things right off the bat.
Andrew Machamer: But I think with this newness, like having people come in and adjudicate or clinic before that, like getting comfortable playing in front of new people is going to be such a huge help. The thing that's really interesting out here is there is some cafetorianasium, like some schools don't even have auditoriums, so they go to a performing arts center for an adjudication event, and everything sounds different, and it looks different and it's very intimidating. So, anything that we can do to make them feel more comfortable is going to translate to a better performance. And so, realizing and identifying what those things are and giving them a chance to try it out beforehand is going to be key.
Leah Sheldon: So thinking about the logistics of sight-reading, Andrew, how do you make sure that the students know exactly how they're going to get that music passed out and divided up without eating into that preparation time?
Andrew Machamer: Right. I think that's part of the process as you're rehearsing it in rehearsals. And so, "Okay, can we identify this is the section leader who's going to hand out the parts to the other members of the section." And particularly percussion in the back of the room, who is going to be in charge of assigning the different percussion parts to the different musicians in the back? And getting those instruments set up, so that you're ready to go when the time comes, that can't be a day of decision. That needs to be something that's baked into the experience of practicing site reading in a rehearsal. So, I think having some student leadership set up and having those responsibilities clearly define before that moment, that's going to lead to some success there.
Leah Sheldon: And, letting them practice it.
Andrew Machamer: Absolutely.
Greg Ristow: I remember thinking way back to like middle school, high school band myself, playing French horn. I remember just being so shocked by the sight-reading experience, because generally in our band program, we would work on the same pieces of music for a really, really, really long time. And it was pretty rare that we worked on reading skills, and I wonder if that is something that's changed in the 20 plus years since I've been in high school, or if that's something that is still the case in a lot of band programs. I know certainly in a lot of chorale programs that many teachers choose to focus more on certain pieces of rep, rather than sight-reading. Is it true in the band world as well?
Andrew Machamer: Yeah. I mean, you have your selection that is from the list that you are going to be adjudicated. You want those pieces to be extremely polished, so you're sweating it. You want to make sure that those notes and rhythms, that everything is right there. And sometimes, sight-reading is more of an afterthought. And so, we just don't do it very often. And plus, it takes a lot of work to get sight-reading pieces together for the group to play. I mean, to make sure that all the folders have all the pieces and it just, it's time intensive.
Andrew Machamer: So, I think it is something that definitely gets kind of pushed to the back of the mind or swept under the carpet. But again, if we can just like practicing in-general, like practicing three hours before a concert is not going to do it, but if you take that three hours and spread it out, it's going to be much more fruitful. So to your point, I think, yes, it still happens. A lot of directors either don't have the time or the energy to do more sight-reading exercises. But if we want to be successful at it, we got to do it, we got to do it more often.
Greg Ristow: And I mean, I have to think, the point of doing sight-reading at contest surely is isn't just to do sight-reading at contest. But it says that as a community, we value those skills and we want to reinforce the importance of teaching those skills.
Andrew Machamer: Sure, absolutely.
Greg Ristow: And so, I wonder if you might talk a little bit to the value of sight-reading and why we just teach sight-reading in general.
Andrew Machamer: Yeah. I think it creates independence in the players, that they feel confident that they can look at a piece of music and get a sense of what it sounds like through ideation, or be able to dissect the rhythms or to look at the terms on the piece of paper and just know that I'm going to be able to perform this music. There's nothing here that I haven't seen before, and I feel comfortable and I'm going to be able to play this. So, I think it's just the general musicianship of the player that we're nurturing when it comes to preparing them to sight-read, so that they feel confident and they're able to perform the music.
Leah Sheldon: Yeah. That's really great insight on the sight-reading as a whole, not just as a specific part of contest, you mentioned something a while back though that I want to kind of circle back to. So you said that, you mentioned a counting system, and this is pertinent because last week we actually were talking about solfege systems and the importance of having one for teaching new music. So, I think that kind of goes right along those lines. Do you have anything else to add on to that about what other tools or skills are really necessary that we need to intentionally give to the students, so that they are able to be good sight-readers?
Andrew Machamer: Right. Yeah. That's a great question. And I think outside of rhythm, I mean, notes and fingerings are going to have to be on that list too. Right? If we-
Leah Sheldon: Sure.
Andrew Machamer: ... aren't addressing that in rehearsal, if we aren't giving them the tools they need, the fingering charts to so they can find fingerings themselves. So when we think about the hierarchy of music making, like notes and rhythms, and then phrasing, blend and balance, intonation and all of that affects one another. So when we talk about specific skills, like how can you hear the beats of intonation, that you're out of tune? And, how do you fix it? How do you do it with your armature? What do you move on your instrument? Those are tangible skills that you can absolutely address in rehearsal that will then directly affect the sight-reading performance. But the counting, fingerings, intonation, identifying who has the melody. When you have a long tone, that's probably not the melody, so let's turn our listening ears on and try to find the moving part, things like that, that can be ingrained. But to your point, those tangible skills can absolutely be useful when it comes to the sight-reading portion.
Greg Ristow: Can you talk a little bit about counting systems?
Andrew Machamer: Sure. And, I think it's different... It's what your comfort level is, whether it's the Gordon method, and you're doing Du's/Du De's, or the Kodaly, the Takadimi, that's a little outside my comfort zone, but the one and two, and 1 e and a 2 e and a. Like those counting systems, although maybe not the most musical thing are really clear and you can put them on the board and you can have the students, count and clap and dissect. And this is beat one and beat two starts here, then what part of this beat is this note? I think those can be really helpful and having the students write it in their own music, so that they get comfortable with dissecting rhythms in their own parts can be really helpful too.
Greg Ristow: So maybe let's just think about long-term strategies, so let's say I want to be sure that by the time we get to contest, my students are ready to read whatever rhythm happens to appear in their part. So, what does that look like over the course of the school year in the classroom?
Andrew Machamer: Yeah. I think depending on what that rhythm is, you kind of integrate it into your warmup routine, where you have that rhythm, they're exposed to that rhythm.
Greg Ristow: Or I guess specifically, because we won't know necessarily what the rhythms will be, right? Or are there-
Andrew Machamer: True. Yeah.
Greg Ristow: So, where do you start? How do you build up those skills long-term?
Andrew Machamer: Well, there is a list of what types of meters that you're going to see in the site reading portion of contest, depending on what class you are. So if you're going to be dealing with 6/8, or 3/4, the more the students are exposed to those meters, the more comfortable they're they're going to be, obviously that makes sense. So I guess, just knowing what you're in store for and making sure that you perform, or rehearse music that have those meters in, so that the students are more comfortable when the time comes. I think that's got to be key.
Andrew Machamer: People like, "Well, 6/8 is so difficult." It's like, is it really difficult or is it just different from what we normally play? And, we just need to expose them to that triple feel more, and then they'll be able to do it. So, that's why the Gordon method is so great, because when they're in your jump right in method book, it's like you do duple meter and triple meter at the same time. So you do 2/4 and 6/8, so we're dealing with two macro beats, and then the microbes change, but the macro beats are the same, and understanding that differentiation and the feel and the subdivision of the beat is so great. And, we need to make sure that the students instill that in their rehearsing and in their practicing as well.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. I think that's such a great point, especially with compound meter. How often do we find students who, somewhere along the line, got in their head that the number on the bottom of the time signature tells me how many beats there are. And so, I am going to count it one, two, three, four, five, six, one, two, three, four, five, six. And, it's such a different feel, than when you have those two, as you said, macro beats and the subdivided pulse within them.
Greg Ristow: Statistically, I'm going to fall back on my very nerdy music theory-ness, when we look at music written in 6/8, 9/8, 12/8, there's a much smaller number of rhythmic patterns that are used, than there are in music written in 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, etc. Generally, a huge portion of it is just those basic patterns of the 3/8 notes da, da, da, da, da, da. Or the long shorts da, da, or the full beat length. And really, any other pattern is pretty unusual, so.
Andrew Machamer: Yeah, that makes sense.
Greg Ristow: I think, sorry, just to dive off, but we do, I think we get a bit freaked out about 6/8 when we start, because if we're counting it at the eighth note level, we won't notice those macro beat length patterns, there aren't all that many of them.
Andrew Machamer: Absolutely. You know what else throws musicians for a loop is ties, where we have a rhythm and we introduce a tie. And all of a sudden, there's an obscureness to the beats, or we lose the subdivision and their heads just kind of implode there for a minute. And when we're rehearsing, if we can take those ties out and let them experience what's happening underneath the tie, and then you put the tie back in. So kind of like simplifying the rhythm, giving them a chance to experience it. And then when you add that tie back in, they have a sense of what's happening. But I mean, rhythm is just, gosh, it's so important.
Andrew Machamer: I would argue that is probably the most important thing, particularly when you have a room full of high school students trying to do something altogether. If the pulse isn't there, if the rhythm isn't right, it's going to be very difficult to do anything else on top of that. I mean, even more so than correct notes, which is probably blasphemous to say, but the rhythm is just paramount and eight's got to be there, so.
Leah Sheldon: Well, a correct note at the wrong time is still a correct note, but the rhythm is-
Andrew Machamer: Incorrect note.
Leah Sheldon: Yeah.
Andrew Machamer: Yeah.
Leah Sheldon: So, agree with you.
Andrew Machamer: Absolutely. I love that. Yeah. And you tell that to a band and they're like, "Oh yeah, I guess that's right."
Greg Ristow: You were talking about also the fingering and getting notes right aspect of things. Beyond just handing out fingering charts, what sorts of things can you do to build fluency in that?
Andrew Machamer: Scales, period. I think scale work is so important on a wind instrument. I mean, they're building blocks of music, so if you want your students to be able to play a G-flat, you need to have keys that have that note in there, and you need to practice those scales and that's how they're going to get comfortable with it. So then, it's not just a fingering, but it's part of a scale, part of thing else. And so, I think all the majors and starting getting into the minors, like that's really going to help the fingerings a lot and it will also help you identify where the fingering deficiencies are. I remember we did a hymn song of Philip Bliss, which is D-flat major. And so, it was really apparent which instrumentalists knew those fingerings and which didn't when we would warm up with that scale.
Andrew Machamer: It's like, okay, we got to work on these fingerings in the trombones, slide positions, or we need to work on this alternative fingering in the clarinets to help them overcome these difficulties. But, I just think scales has got to be it, that's got to be the answer when it comes to fingerings and finger fluency.
Leah Sheldon: And beyond scales and putting rhythms on the board, where can directors turn to find resources? I'll kick it off by saying, I had the opportunity to work with both the middle school and high school band, and so I would often pull from the middle school library to practice high school sight-reading.
Andrew Machamer: Yeah, I think that's... I mean, any music selling website is going to have lists of pieces by grade. And if you are going in as a class A and you know you going to read primarily grade four music, I would go to that list and find some threes and twos that you can put in front of them to practice their site reading. There's also just so many state lists out there of pieces that other states use for their adjudication and Ohio is no exception. So look at those lists and say, "Okay, well, what are the adjudicated pieces that are on the list for the grades below mine?" And maybe, we can practice sight-reading, some of those. But I think any list of pieces are going to be helpful, as you're kind of deciding what would be a good site reading exercise for my ensemble to use.
Greg Ristow: When you were talking about that non-playing time before are playing in contest, you mentioned a couple of things, you mentioned counting, you mentioned singing and you mentioned sizzling. Can you talk about how all of those play into things? And I don't even know what sizzling is, so.
Andrew Machamer: Yeah. I mean, it's... You basically like sizzle the rhythm. And why I like that is, it for the musicians to engage their abdomen muscles as they're playing or as they're sizzling. And, which is kind of the breathing apparatus we want to engage with as they're using their air to play their instruments. So not only that, but it kind of has them work a little bit harder to get the front of the note to sound, which in the band world is kind of where we need to line things up. So. The sizzling is a great exercise for them to kind of utilize their breathing apparatus that's going to help set them up for playing. But, I think that that silent rehearsal time, study time is, it can't be overlooked. Just, they need to know what to do. And they're not going to know what to do, unless you go over that with them and kind of give them the clues of things that they need to look for as they open up a brand new piece of music.
Andrew Machamer: Is it accidentals? I mean, the key changes obviously, but is there a tempo change? Do you see a ritardando somewhere? What about these crescendos and they crescendos? Where do they happen? How are we going to do that? All of those clues are going to help them perform the piece better, but they're not going to know to look for those unless you practice it in rehearsal. So let's open up our sight-reading folders, let's open up this brand new piece of music, who can raise their hand and tell me something that they see that we should work on, that we should look at, or that we should pay attention to as we perform this. And I think over time, they're going to be able to refine that list and they're going to get to all the things that you need them to get to.
Andrew Machamer: Yeah. And, I love that. I love that there's this individualized silent time, where they are just on their own kind of dealing with the music individually, because again, we want them to take ownership of the music making process. And, I think that's a great way to do that.
Greg Ristow: You mentioned singing also, can you talk about that a bit?
Andrew Machamer: Yeah. Singing. Singing the line, singing the melody, as the director on the podium. Oftentimes, singing in band is the best way to model, because you can't pick up all the different instruments that are going on. So if I want something a particular way, I often sing it for the ensemble, but then to have them sing their own parts. I think that would be such a powerful way for them to engage with the music without having an instrument in their mouth.
Andrew Machamer: I mean, we sing a lot with drones for intonation purposes, exercises. We'll put a drone on, and we'll sing a pitch, and we'll match and we'll bend that pitch down or up to kind of manipulate the beats, so that they can then apply that to their instrument. And I just think for us as a band with all these different ways of making sound, reads, or mouth pieces, or no reads or percussion, let's all make sound the same way. And Let's have that be our base, where we can just all kind of be on the same page and connect with this pitch, or melody or what have you. And then, we can apply it [inaudible 00:26:18]. I mean, if you can sing it, you can play it. And it's just, that's our mantra and it just really does connect you to the music.
Andrew Machamer: But they're only going to be comfortable that if you sing in rehearsals, if you practice that. And a lot of times, if they can't do it, and say, "Okay, well, let's play it first." "And okay, now let's sing that same melody." Let's give them a chance to hear what it sounds like, and then let's sing it, and you get them to get into that routine for a bit and they build their confidence up. And then you say, "Okay, now let's just try to sing this without playing it, let's just try it. There's no wrong answer here, let's just see how it goes. And then, okay. Now let's play it were you close. So not necessarily solfege syllables, but I there's a lot of benefit to that too, but we just do it on a neutral syllable just to, can you find the line, do you know how your part goes? And then, apply it to your instrument. So, it's a great exercise to [inaudible 00:27:10].
Greg Ristow: I did my master's in doctorate at Eastman. And when I started my masters, it was right at the end of the Donald Hunsberger era. And, Mark Scatterday started right there, and then of course was still there when I was doing my doctorate. And, both of them said really similar things about singing, like every band must be able to sing and would use it so constantly as a tool in rehearsal, even at that very high level. I love some of those ideas you've just shared about how to move towards that, even with an ensemble that's maybe a little scared it about singing.
Andrew Machamer: Absolutely. Yeah. I've heard so many times, "I'm not in choir, I'm in band, why are we singing in band?" It's like, because we're making music, because we're becoming better musicians because this is going to help us play better. There's no disconnect, but it's such an important part. And a lot of bands don't do it, whether someone's uncomfortable or there's not enough time, but even at the highest level like you said, it can be a really powerful tool to help get everybody on the same page.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. And I guess, it probably the reason, I mean we've said singing's great, bands have to be able to sing, everyone has to be able to sing. Probably what we're really after there is the idea that we all have to be able to actually hear in our mind what the music should sound like without resorting to an instrument to create that sound. So talking about like internal hearing really.
Andrew Machamer: Yeah. Can you audiate this line? And also, when you have your instrument, you push the buttons down and you blow and the note comes out, but it is not... What's the function of that note? Like, if I'm playing a concert F and it's F major, then that intonation is at a certain frequency. But if that F is part of a B-flat chord, well now that F needs to be just slightly higher. Or if it's a D chord and I'm playing F natural, it needs to be a little bit higher than that. And so, we need to be able to listen, and adjust and hear where we fit in, just pushing the button only gets you so close. And so, that's why we do a lot of pitch bending, the groups that I do, we sing with the pitch bending. And, what does it feel like to be out tune?
Andrew Machamer: Like, let's do it wrong on purpose or let's experience what being flat or sharp on purpose actually feels like. And then, let's bring it back into in-tune, so that we're matching pitch, so that when we're on instruments, we can do the same thing. The analogy I use is, it's like a camera lens, which is turning out to be a terrible analogy because nobody has cameras anymore, that have lenses. But when you want it to be in focus, the first thing you do is you take it out of focus, and then you bring it back in, and then you know it's in focus. And so, it's kind of the same idea when we're teaching intonation and we're using singing in the ensemble is, let's kind of take it out and then experience it, and then we can bring it back in, so that we can compare the two.
Andrew Machamer: Again, differentiation, like if we know when it's wrong, then we'll be able to know when it's right a little easier, I think. So.
Greg Ristow: You mentioned working with a drone when you do that kind of work, how do you get from just tuning that unison to a point of knowing where I am in the chord and adjusting based on where I am in a chord?
Andrew Machamer: We sing it. And so, what I typically do is we'll, you're right, matching the pitch is the first thing, and then we'll sing up the scale with the drone on the route. We'll sing as an ensemble up the scale and back down. And then when we get comfortable with that, then we'll walk up the scale, and then the third will stay put, and then the rest of the group will walk up to the fifth, and then we'll have a chord. And then, we'll take that one chord and we'll walk it to down the scale to a five chord, and then we'll start messing with the third to make it minor. And we'll say, "Okay, the people on the fifth now, we're going to take it sharp on purpose." "And, what does that do to the chord?"
Andrew Machamer: So, there is a way to gradually get them to understand their chord responsibility. And of course, you can talk about just intonation and put the sense difference on the board and all that too, which is helpful, but to get them to experience it and to do it singing, now they're not worried about... We're taking a part of the equation away. We're not dealing with instruments, different sounds like let's just sing it, what does it feel like? And then, okay, now let's apply it straight to our instruments.
Andrew Machamer: So whatever we do in the singing portion, we immediately do right on our instruments, so that we have that direct connection between the two. But it's just the groups that I do that with and the groups that I don't do that with, it's just such a stark difference that it's worth the time. And you can do it quickly once you have it set up, you don't have to talk much about it, you can just do it. But, it's just a great way to warm up and just singing, getting them comfortable with that, so that when you have them sing a piece, now they're all ready. We sing and band, that's what we do and that's going to help us be better.
Greg Ristow: So, I come from the chorale world. And so, usually when we're singing, we can see everyone's parts. And so, if I'm wondering, am I on the route fifth or third, I can always look down and usually see what the chord is.
Andrew Machamer: Sure.
Greg Ristow: But that's not the case, obviously in the band world or orchestra world, where you have just your own line. So then, how do you transfer that over to working on real music?
Andrew Machamer: Right. So, I think you pick the chords that are the most important ones and you kind of lead them to that answer. Let's sing this chord, let's play this chord. Okay, if you think you have the route, let's have you play. And let them kind of lead them to that discovery on their own, but you can't do it for every chord, you would be there all day. So let's pick maybe the first chord or the last chord, or if there's a key change or a transition, or it's the end of a movement or what have you, but I think it's comes through repetition and that type of practice. But because you've done the singing and the warmup, they have a sense of that and now, okay, let's apply it to this particular chord. And if they're still not getting it, then you can do the same process of, okay, everyone play, be flat.
Andrew Machamer: Okay. Now, we're going to walk up the scale. And when you feel like you get to your chord member, your chord tone, you're going to stop and you're going to hold that out. So, there are ways to then incorporate that warmup, and that singing and that playing, all that you did with the drone with that. So, you're right. And, I'm so jealous of the chorale world, because you have that ability to see. And as the conductor, you have all the answers in front of you now, albeit it's transposed, and all spread out and you have the percussion to worry about too. But in the chorale world, you have all the answers right in front of you and what a luxury that is. And then I think about my string colleagues, where they're all playing an instrument that basically makes the sound the same way.
Andrew Machamer: Strings and bows, and they're all concert pitch. And, the homogenous sound that they're able to produce, because they're all in instruments that make sound a certain way. And then, the band world is just completely different and wild with all the different instruments. But yeah, so to answer your question, there is a way to get them there, but you got to kind of scaffold it slowly over time. And then, they'll be able to identify, but you have the answers. And so, you can kind of help lead them to the correct answer, as they're listening to their part.
Leah Sheldon: And, the key there is slowly over time. Again, this can't be started the week before contest. These are our skills that are being practiced all year long.
Andrew Machamer: Right. Which is why sight-reading is such a unique thing. It's like a snapshot out of where you are as an ensemble. And we need to understand that, that's all it is. It's a snapshot and it's a metric that we're going to use to help make the group better. It's not like, if we get a two or a three at sight-reading, that means that we're a terrible teacher or this is a terrible group. It's just a point of reference that we can then use to help our instruction moving forward. We need to work more on 6/8, and we need to do stuff in minor. Or we had a word in our piece that we didn't know what that meant, so we need to make sure that we play pieces that have that, so that we can address it in our rehearsals.
Greg Ristow: When I think about site reading in chorale contexts, I think a lot about the intersection of the group's strength and abilities, and individuals strengths and abilities. And as you're working with students over a longer period of time, how do you balance those two?
Andrew Machamer: That's a great question. I mean, from year-to-year, you're going to have certain sections that just have stronger players than others. And I guess, just knowing where your weaknesses are and making sure that those students get extra help along the way. Picking your rep is going to help that too. Like if I know I have a weak trombone section, we're not going to do Lassus Trombone, I mean, that's just probably not. Or if my clarinets are struggling, like MMolly on the Shore is probably not the answer for this year. But, you're going to know where your strengths, weaknesses are. And I think with sight-reading, that's probably where things get a little dicey is, you can kind of stack the deck in your favor by what pieces you choose to perform. But in sight-reading, you're not choosing that piece. So I guess in rehearsals, just being aware of that and making sure that you get some extra attention to those groups, maybe bringing in someone to work with them as a section, bringing in a local professional and having a pullout sectional every now and then.
Andrew Machamer: Or if you don't have bassoonist or oboist starting in that process earlier in the middle school, see, now we're talking really thinking far ahead, but again, I just think it's just knowing your group and knowing where you are and sight-reading can certainly help give you a sense of where that is. But, individuals versus the group, it's always tricky, because some are going to take private lessons and some aren't. Some are going to be in COYO, and NOYO and... All these great groups and others just...
Greg Ristow: For those us in Ohio, we know those, but...
Andrew Machamer: Oh, I'm sorry.
Greg Ristow: ... can you tell us what [inaudible 00:36:49]...
Andrew Machamer: Yeah. Youth orchestras or youth ensembles, so Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, or Northern Ohio Youth Orchestra or Contemporary Youth Orchestra, extracurricular ensembles outside of the band room, or orchestra room or choir room, they're going to get those experiences. And so, you'll know your group and where the deficiencies are, and then you try to address them as best you can.
Greg Ristow: he other thing I think a lot about in... I'm sorry, and so much of what I know is based on the voice and choral world. Right?
Andrew Machamer: I love it.
Greg Ristow: I'm just curious to ask about these various parallels. One of the things that we do, of course, we do so much solfege work. And one of the things that a lot of us do to connect solfege work to rhythmic work is, we'll set up a pattern within a scale and we'll say, "Put a rhythm," I'll or project a rhythm using the document camera or whatever. And say, "Okay, Hey let's do the pattern, Do, Mi, Re, FA, etc., on this rhythm," and then perform them. Do you do things like that in band as well?
Andrew Machamer: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, especially in the middle school level, you would probably just play like every note of the scale, do a measure rhythm, and then do the next note of the scale on the same rhythm. But, I love that as well. I love that idea. And what I really love to do is I'll put the rhythm up, again, without any ties in it and we'll count it and we'll play it. And then, I'll add that tie and say, "Okay, now what does it sound like?"
Andrew Machamer: All right, now let's count it and play it this way too. But, it's a great way to connect the warmup to the piece.
Leah Sheldon: The music.
Andrew Machamer: And that, I think a hundred percent, that's a great way to do it. Yeah, I don't do much solfege and I love solfege, but in the band, I don't know, we just always do it on a neutral syllable. There's no particular reason why. Maybe because of the transposing instruments, like Do would be different. I mean, Do would be Do, but it would be a different note on the different instruments, and so we don't typically do that. But yeah, I love that idea.
Greg Ristow: But you do play your scales, which I think in effect is-
Andrew Machamer: Oh, certainly.
Greg Ristow: ... it's like they know where they are on the scale. And-
Andrew Machamer: True.
Greg Ristow: ... I guess, singers, we don't have buttons to push down. And so, it's really nice to have a word to kind of replace the function of the buttons a bit.
Andrew Machamer: Absolutely. Greg, how do you feel about numbers versus syllables? Do you have a preference between one or the other?
Greg Ristow: You should listen to our last episode.
Andrew Machamer: Okay, all right.
Greg Ristow: So, I love them. No, no, no, Andrew, I love them all. I am just completely...
Leah Sheldon: He's not kidding.
Greg Ristow: I've spent time in every major solfege system.
Andrew Machamer: Wow.
Greg Ristow: And, each of them has helped me to hear different things in music. Anyway, in my own teaching, at Oberlin, we use scale degree and Fixed-Do.
Andrew Machamer: Okay.
Greg Ristow: We want students at all time to be tracking both where they are within the key, and also what note they're actually singing, playing, etc.
Andrew Machamer: Makes a lot of sense.
Greg Ristow: So that if I know I'm an E-flat major and I'm singing three, then I know I'm singing a G. Or if here a four, and I know that I'm an F-sharp major, that's a B right. So, we're trying to make those things very tightly connected. In my work at Interlochen, and we use Moveable-Do with Do-based minor. When I was teaching in Texas, Moveable-Do law based minor.
Greg Ristow: So, I've really been through them all. I think they're all wonderful. I think the main thing is kind of like with what you're saying, you can't, you can't pick it up the day before sight-singing for your All-State audition, you've got to be doing it all the way along and yeah.
Andrew Machamer: Absolutely. I love all the different systems too and how they, some might work better in one situation or another or... Then you get the 21st century atonal and now like solfege syllables are really difficult numbers [inaudible 00:40:42], all of that is I find it really interesting. And we have a class at BW, it's called solfege, but we use numbers. So, you try to figure that one out, but yeah.
Greg Ristow: Numbers are kind of solfege, that's true.
Andrew Machamer: Yeah, that is true.
Greg Ristow: I have a student at Oberlin, all my life, generally when I've done Atonal sight-singing, I've worked in Fixed-Do and had a first year student, actually not a music major, was a student in the college last year. And, I do actually weekly individual sight-reading meetings with my choir students. And so, they're only like five minutes long, so really super quick meetings. And this kid came in and that first day, I'm just like, open page one of the sight-singing book, just see where they are and nails it, turn about halfway through, nails it. I turn to the end, nails it. I pull out Modus Novus atonal sight-singing, actually I started with some Wolf songs, nailed it, finally pulled out Modus Novus atonal sight-singing and opened it.
Greg Ristow: And he looked, he said, "What key is this in?" I said, "Well, it's not really in a key." And he said, "Okay, I'm just going to call the first note Do." And, just proceeded to nail every atonal melody I could throw at him using moveable-Do and just picking a note as Do.
Andrew Machamer: Wow.
Greg Ristow: And I just said, I was like, "How did you learn through this? He said, "Well, we just did sight-singing every day from elementary school through to the end of high school." And, so.
Andrew Machamer: I'm so jealous, that's...
Greg Ristow: Right.
Andrew Machamer: Yeah.
Greg Ristow: That needs to be everyone. Yeah. No, I think, I would be amazed if everyone who graduated from that choir program could do that, but I think it is a testament to where you can get students, if you do these skills. And so, this kid comes in, studying in the college and singing with the top conservatory ensemble, because you can just read down out anything. It's really...
Andrew Machamer: Yeah. That's so impressive. And I think the flip side of that is, some kids come to college without any background in solfege whatsoever, and then they struggle in the first solfege class and it's like, "Well yeah, I mean, you've never done it before, so you got to cut yourself a little bit of a break and work a little harder upfront to get what you need to do." But yeah, I'm jealous of people that can just do it, because that was never me. I had to grind it out, it was tough for me. Solfege was always a difficult class.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. I don't think anyone is born a solfege whiz kid. I mean, I think it's that like, when do you start solfege, how long have you had doing it? It's, I mean, as you said, you don't build these muscles overnight, they have to be built over the long-term. I think the other thing that what you just said triggered me to think about is, when students leave our program, whether they go on to do music in college or life, if we've help them build these sight-reading skills, they're going to be equipped to play music they want to play for the rest of their life, without needing someone to teach them how it goes and what a wonderful gift that is.
Andrew Machamer: Absolutely. Yeah. My favorite teacher would always say like, "I'm trying to put myself out of a job, like I want to teach you so well that you don't need me any more." And, I just thought that was really great. I was like, "Yeah, I appreciate that and I can respect that." And you're right, we wanted them to have the skills, so that they can enjoy music long after they are done taking lessons or studying with us. I mean, we're trying to create lifelong music appreciation people out there, that's part of our job and it's exciting, for sure.
Leah Sheldon: So although all of this conversation has been about preparing well in advance, what are your thoughts, Andrew, I've seen directors do this, on site reading during a concert? This is typically done at maybe the concert the week of, or the week before contest is happening. What are your thoughts on that?
Andrew Machamer: I've seen it done really well and I loved it. And, what a great opportunity to impress your parents and your administrators in the audience. It's almost like a magic trick, like we're going to perform this piece of music that we've never seen before. And to kind of bring them along on the journey, like they're going to get... This is what we're going to do at contest, let them know this is part of the process and they're going to get a folder that they've never seen. They're going to open it, they're going to have four or five minutes to look at it on their own. And, here are the types of things that they should be looking at to help remind the students too. And you kind of list the things, and then the weirdest part is that silent four or five minutes when no one... It's really quite...
Leah Sheldon: And the parents are just looking around at each other side eyeing like, "What's happening?"
Andrew Machamer: The candy starts to rustle. It's a really heavy moment, but it also puts the students on the spot too. Like, how do they deal with the nerves of... Now they're not just playing in front of one person, but they're playing in front of their friends and family. And so then that, the first five minutes happened, and then the second five minutes where the instructor is on the podium and they're singing, and sizzling and counting. And he's pointing things out, and then they play it and everyone is just in awe of the students.
Andrew Machamer: And as directors, the people that are with the kids all the time, we know that they can do that, but the parents don't and to let them experience that, ah, it's such a great thing. Because we have to be advocates for our program, not just in recruiting students, but in kind of convincing the parents that this is a special thing that we're doing. I mean, what math class do you know puts kids and desks in front of a bunch of people and they have to do math problems they've never seen before, like it just doesn't translate, so.
Leah Sheldon: And then, being scored on it?
Andrew Machamer: Yeah. Right. Yeah. And then, get scored. But, I just think it's a great way to prepare.
Greg Ristow: Mathletes, right?
Leah Sheldon: Well, sure.
Andrew Machamer: Mathletes. Were you a mathlete, Greg? I don't know anything about mathletes. Is that a thing?
Greg Ristow: It seems like I should have been, but I was not. But, only because our school did not have mathletes, so.
Andrew Machamer: Got you. So, I love it when that type of thing happens. It's just so much more than just an exercise. I mean, now you're involving the parents on the process and you're informing them on what you do every day in the band room. And it's a great experience for everybody, so I think it's A plus. And not to mention, the students get a chance to deal with nerves and how does it affect how they play. And yeah, it's a great thing to do. If you can, if you have time and if you can work it out, but I would definitely recommend doing that for sure.
Greg Ristow: So we've talked about using like the middle school band library as a resource or easier music. I wonder, I bet we probably all have some ideas for really good sequential resources, sort of methods to build up in particular rhythm and wonder just if we might all share some of our favorites.
Andrew Machamer: Yeah. Successful habits in the middle school band, in the high school band, there's a method book series out, it's called Successful Habits. And, that has a lot of great sequential scaffolded exercises that, not just rhythm, but corrals that students choose. There's four parts and okay, tubas, you're going to play the top part now and flutes, you're going to play the bottom part. And, to give them a chance to try the different parts of the ensemble. But, I really do like that series and I think it can be really useful in the band. So, that's the one I would plug for sure.
Leah Sheldon: And I would definitely plug Darcy Williams, Teaching Rhythm Logically. She's an educator in Texas and they're middle school department also has a podcast called After Sectionals. But a great resource that has, even to the point of having scripted out how to teach new rhythms, I should say it is rhythm specific, but it also includes these rhythm charts that are just wonderful exercises to print out and give to the students, or project on the board and perfect for sight-reading rhythm. It's very sequential, there's lots to practice from.
Andrew Machamer: Nice.
Greg Ristow: And of course, I'm going to shameless self plug uTheory, where students can actually practice rhythms, perform the rhythms, see immediate, real-time feedback on how they're doing on all of those rhythms. And you, as a teacher, can assign particular topics to them as well.
Andrew Machamer: Awesome.
Greg Ristow: Good. Well, what have we missed?
Andrew Machamer: The only thing we didn't talk about is recording the students, and then playing that recording back to them and dissecting. I think that can be a really powerful thing for them and allowing them to decide, what did you hear? What are two or three things that we need to work on. Why don't you write those things down? And then, let's discuss what we missed and what went well and what could have gone better. And now, with that new knowledge, let's play it again, not rehearsing, let's just play it one more time. And if you do that enough, then they start to apply those things on the first go around when they're sight-reading. So, the whole recording and having them hear what you're hearing on the podium can be a really powerful tool. So I would definitely make sure that we don't miss talking about that, because that could be a really powerful tool.
Greg Ristow: That's great. Excellent. Well, Andrew, if listeners want to follow you, get in touch with you, what's the best way?
Andrew Machamer: So they can find me on the Baldwin Wallace website, so bw.edu. My email is A-M-A-C-H-A-M-E@bw.edu. And I'd be happy to field any questions about Baldwin Wallace, preparing for sight-reading, music education in-general. I'm very easily reached and would be happy to converse.
Greg Ristow: Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us. It's really been a pleasure.
Leah Sheldon: Thank you, Andrew.
Andrew Machamer: Yeah, pleasures all mine. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Greg Ristow: Great. So join us next time, as we talk about repairing singers for contest sight-reading and sight-reading in-general. And in the meantime, we'd love to hear from you, send us your questions, comments or show ideas at notesatyouththeory.com
Leah Sheldon: Notes From The Staff is produced by uTheory.com.
Greg Ristow: uTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
Leah Sheldon: With video lessons, individualized practice and proficiency testing, uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world. Master the fundamentals of music theory, rhythm and ear training.
Greg Ristow: Create your own free teacher account at utheory.com/teach.
Solfege systems: why we use them, what their particular strengths are, and why you might pick one system over another. We even touch on that hot-button topic of perfect pitch. If you’ve got strong feelings on the Moveable Do vs Fixed Do debate, this is the episode for you! Join David Newman, Leah Sheldon and Greg Ristow for this lively conversation.
Show Notes 00:20 - Introductions and what is Notes from the Staff? * Greg: Notes from the Staff as a place to share ideas about how to teach music, music theory and ear training. * David: How we can leverage technology to give really practical advice for those of us teaching music who may have really pressing questions. * Leah: A music education degree comes with lots of coursework, but there's not usually a dedicated course in, say, "How do you teach intervals?" so this is just a great place for that.
02:30 - Topic of the day: Solfege Systems
02:50 - Favorite solfege method? * David: I don't initially use one for my own sight singing, but I use moveable Do with Do-based minor for my teaching * Leah: Scale degrees and moveable Do. * Greg: Scale degrees and fixed Do.
04:00 Why use a solfege system? * David: These provide a framework for hearing the music you're studying. * Leah: Without a system, you're relying on pure memorization and rote teaching, and that's very time consuming. * Greg: One goal of musical study is that students can move between sound and the page, and solfege systems are the best tools for helping us gain these skills.
06:30 "Six Stages of Solfege Mastery" 1. System gets in my way 2. Oh, yeah, the system sort of helps me, maybe there's something to this 3. Ok, I've got to go way slower when I use solfege, but I can get things right if I do. 4. I get it! I never want to sing on anything but solfege again! 5. Ack! I can't stop hearing the solfege in everything I listen to! 6. Ahhh, I know the solfege, it's there when I need it, but it doesn't dominate how I think about music.
10:00 Breaking down the systems * Scale degrees * Moveable Do, both Do Minor and La Minor variants * Fixed Do or Letter Names
10:30 Scale Degrees * Numbering the pitches of a scale from 1 to 7. * In minor, the names don't change, so we sing 3 lower, but not without a different name. * Scale degrees presuppose the environment you're living in, be that a Major scale, minor scale, etc... * It's about establishing a heirarchy of where we are in a scale, how everything relates to a central tonic. So that even if we're singing a truly modal tune, we still call the first note of the mode one. * This can even be extended to some of the more colorful modes, phrygian major, octatonic, etc... * The words you sing don't change, this really forces the understanding of the relationship between each of the notes of the scale.
14:00 Moveable Do, and its two versions of minor * Same idea as scale degrees, but we're using the solfege syllables to name the degrees of the scale. * But they also have chromatic inflections * In Major, Do is always the tonic. * 15:40 Chromatic scale in moveable Do * 16:18 The two ways of doing minor. Do minor, or La minor. * 18:00 The method we use will be more or useful depending on the repertoire you're looking at * 19:00 David improvises a Hozier tune. Is it in Major or minor? * 20:00 La minor works especially well for folk tunes that move freely between relative major and minor. * 21:00 Do minor is helpful for recognizing similar harmonic patterns across Major and minor. For example: when using Do based minor, So-Ti-Re-Fa is always a dominant seventh. (If we use La minor, we have to learn Mi-Si-Ti-Re as well as Sol-Ti-Re-Fa.)
21:40 Reasons you might choose La minor or Do minor: Is your focus on melodic reading or harmonic understanding? If on melodic reading, you might prefer La minor. If on harmonic function, might prefer scale degrees or Do minor.
23:30 Fixed Do & Letter Names * Fixed Do are the letter names for most non-English speaking countries. For instance, in Spanish, the word for the note G is Sol, regardless of what key you're in. * In this way, it's sort of a non-system, it doesn't tell us anything about the function of the note, but it does tell us where we are in pitch space. * 25:25 Greg sings "Do a Dear" (or "Re a Drop") in D Major, fixed Do. * Pedagogies of fixed Do tend to have one of two goals: + To build perfect pitch (especially pedagogies of fixed do that are designed to be started with very young children, i.e., ages 3-6), or + To gradually acquaint students with singing in different keys, so that they know instantly what the notes are associated with each scale degree in each key. * 27:30 Can also be useful when you move into less tonal, or atonal music.
28:50 If I haven't taught solfege before, how do I start, what are those first things I should do? * Pick a system and start using it * Mimicry is a great place to start: I sing it, you sing it back to me. * Students who aren't familiar with solfege become familiar with it quickly.
32:00 Kodaly and Orff approaches: Start small, add on when you're ready.
Two basic approaches to starting small 1. Begin with a subset of the scale, e.g., in Kodaly's approach the notes are introduced one by one in the order Sol, Mi, La, Do, Re, Fa, Ti. 2. Begin with primarily stepwise motion through the full scale, gradually add leaps. (How those leaps are chosen varies widely in teaching approaches, some approaches focus on the size of the leap, others on what harmonic function it has.)
35:00 The Two "Key" Skills for Sight Singing And Dictation 1. Know the sound of each solfege/scale degree within the context of a scale. This is an aural skill. 2. Translate notes to solfege/scale degrees (and vice versa) fluently. This is a theory skill.
One advantage of moveable do is that you don't have to think much about the translation between notes and solfege as you're first learning. It allows you to skip past thinking "what is this note in this key," though of course we want students to build up that skill eventually, too, even if our chosen system is moveable do.
39:00 Perfect Pitch * Once your six years old, the chances of learning it are basically nill * Three overlapping theories + 1. Critical period theory: The brain has enough plasticity up to age 6 to learn things like language and perfect pitch. + 2. Unlearning theory: We all start with absolute pitch, but as we learn that things like scale degree function are more meaningful in music than frequency, we unlearn absolute pitch. + 3. Genetic component: How do we explain students who did start before age 6 and did not acquire perfect pitch? * Perfect pitch sags with age, around age 40 things tend to start to sound lower. There may be a physical component on perfect pitch. * Some think of it as a mark of genius in the musical community, but if you talk with many professional musicians who have it, they'll often tell you it's not entirely a blessing. * Just knowing the frequency of a note doesn't tell us much of anything about what it's doing musically. But knowing where a note is in the scale tells us tons: how it moves, where it pulls, how to perform it. * Functional hearing, "Where am I in the scale?" can be taught at any age to anyone. Phenomenological (i.e., absolute pitch) hearing can only be learned up to around age 6, and it's possible that not all children can learn it anyway.
46:30 Final thoughts? * Leah: Find something you're comfortable with, and use that. * David: I've learned systems along side my students, and I've been really open w/ my own struggles learning them, and that's great too. Then they feel like you're in their camp. My first year of Takedimi was like that!
48:15 What do you want to hear from us? * Drop us a note at notes@utheory.com. * And of course subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. * And visit us at https://utheory.com/notes.
Transcript: Intro: (singing) These are the Notes from the Staff where we talk about our point of view, and we share the things we're gonna do, `cause the path to mastering theory begins with you!
Greg Ristow: Hi. Welcome to Notes From the Staff. I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and Professor of Conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory.
Leah Sheldon: I'm Leah Sheldon. I'm a former middle school band director and uTheory's Head of Teacher Engagement.
David Newman: I'm David Newman, and I teach Voice and Music Theory at James Madison University, and I do programming and content creation for uTheory.
Greg Ristow: And we're your hosts for Notes From the Staff. So, yeah. Welcome everyone to episode one. Pretty exciting for me. Maybe we should talk just a little bit about what Notes From the Staff will be or what we hope Notes From the Staff will be. Sound good?
David Newman: Yeah.
Greg Ristow: Great. So I guess the thing that I thought about ... First off, we have to give Leah credit for coming up with the brilliant name for Notes From the Staff.
Leah Sheldon: Thank you.
Greg Ristow: In my own music education training, I wasn't taught all that much about how to teach music theory, how to teach ear training. I learned a lot about how to teach performance, and there was a lot of focus on that side of things. But really there wasn't often all that much space for talking about how do we help students understand the music that they're performing or get to a point where they can create music themselves.
Greg Ristow: So I'm hoping that Notes From the Staff can be a place for us to share ideas around that, to pick each other's brains, to bring in guests and talk with them about that as well.
David Newman: And I know I'm personally really interested in the way that we can leverage technology and the reach of something like a podcast to help give really practical advice to people who may have really pressing needs.
Leah Sheldon: I think Greg nailed it. A degree in music education comes with a lot of coursework. You have your education classes, classes in psychology, method classes. And there's not usually a dedicated course in how to teach for example intervals. So this is just a great way to get the conversation going on that.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. We thought for our first episode, we'd start with a red hot topic, the topic of solfege methods. How do you choose a solfege method? What are the solfege methods? What are they good for? I know this is one that every musician I know has a strong opinion on.
Greg Ristow: So just to get the ball rolling, why don't we each just say what our favorite solfege method is? What the solfege method that we hear music in is? David, do you want to start us off?
David Newman: Well, I could ... I'm going to sabotage myself by saying that I probably don't initially use a solfege method in terms of the way I hear music. But having been teaching aural skills for over a decade, I use Moveable Do with Do-based minor.
Leah Sheldon: And I was taught in scale degrees. So I hear and think in scale degrees. But when I was teaching in the classroom, I mostly taught Moveable Do.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. I hear music in scale degrees and Fixed Do. If I know what key it's in, I hear it in Fixed Do. Otherwise, I hear it in scale degrees. And I have at this point taught just about all of the systems, Fixed Do, scale degrees, Moveable Do, Do-based minor, Moveable Do, La-based minor. And frankly, I have found in doing that, that each system has its own strengths and teaches you different things about music that makes it possible to hear music in kind of cool different ways.
Greg Ristow: Well, let's just talk a little bit about each of the systems, or even before that, why would we want to use a solfege system? What's the point?
David Newman: I know that when I'm teaching aural skills, I mean, if we don't use any system at all, there's sort of too much latitude to try and figure out how to convey ideas. So for me, I'm trying to build a framework, and I think that's what all of these provide, is a framework to think about the music that you're hearing. And the reason why I've used Moveable Do, aside from the fact that it's what we already taught at JMU, is that it creates a functional system where you're hearing how notes function in a scale.
Leah Sheldon: Yeah. I think without a system you're relying on peer memorization and rote teaching, and that's very time-consuming.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. I think for me, I want ... I think one of the prime goals of musical study is that if a student hears something, they understand what's happening in it. Or if they have imagined something in their ear, they should be able to take that to an instrument or to the page. And they should be able to look at the page and hear what they see on the page. And solfege I think is really the best tool. And when I say solfege, I mean, scale degrees or Moveable Do or Fixed Do, or letter names, ways where we're verbalizing something that you couldn't just hear from the pitch about the note.
Greg Ristow: Solfege helps get us between sound and the instrument or the page. And without it, you're kind of shooting in the dark. If you're trying to figure out how something you've heard goes on the piano, if you're just sort of guessing and hitting notes, yeah, you're eventually going to figure it out. But something, a solfege system gets you there much faster. So for me, that's why solfege.
Greg Ristow: I don't know. Have any of you had this experience of asking a student to sight sing and they do it terribly, and then you say, "Hey, have you done any solfege? Would you try it again?" And they say, "I'm terrible at solfege." But then they try it again and it goes better?
David Newman: Yes.
Leah Sheldon: Oh yes.
Greg Ristow: I feel like that's the classic. I joke with my ... I joke? I mean, it's not even a joke. I talk with my students about what I call the six levels of solfege mastery, where like, inevitably if I'm introducing solfege to a group of students that doesn't know it, the first time we're doing it, they're like, "Oh my God, this is so hard. Why can't ... " Especially if we're reading something together. "Why can't we just sing it on the words? Why can't we just sing it on La, La, La?" And that's level one. That's like, "Oh my God, the system gets in my way. I'm better off without the system."
Greg Ristow: And then level two is this like, "Oh, yeah. Okay. I can sort of tell that that sounds like a Do and that doesn't sound like a Do. And maybe there's something to it."
Greg Ristow: And then level three, is this sort of like, "Oh, okay. I've got to go way slower when I do solfege compared to just La, La, La. But, you know, I actually get things more right."
Greg Ristow: And then level four is like, when the buy-in really happens of like, "Oh yeah. I always want to sing on solfege because then I do it right. Don't make me sing on anything else."
Greg Ristow: Level five is this hideous phase where you can't not hear the solfege. You're driving your car. You've got the radio on. And the pop music is no longer text but solfege.
Greg Ristow: And then level six is fluency where when you want it, the solfege is there, but you don't have to consciously think about it. I don't know. For me, it's just such a joy to help get students from whatever level they are to a level or two farther along that continuum.
Leah Sheldon: And it gives them independence.
Greg Ristow: Totally. Yeah. Do those levels resonate with you, David? You teach so much aural skills at JMU.
David Newman: Yeah, they do. I mean, I guess what's funny is that you get ... you can have a classroom full of students and have people at all of those levels at the same time. And so differentiation becomes a challenge.
Greg Ristow: For sure.
David Newman: And inevitably, I also have experienced the reverse of what you have said, where someone comes and does a sight singing exam and does it on solfege first and then says, "Well, the solfege is messing me up." And I say, "Okay. Well, try it without," and then it's much worse.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. It's much worse, but they think it's much better. Right?
David Newman: Right. Because they don't have any system calling them into compliance.
Greg Ristow: I call it playing darts blindfolded. Or it's like walking a tight rope without a net. It's just ... If you're going to sing something without some sort of system going on, how are you going to know? It doesn't have to necessarily be a verbalized system. I mean, I think there are a lot of people who sing La, La, La just great, but they're totally aware of where they are in the scale, et cetera, so.
David Newman: Yeah. And I have actually found that I've started to use solfege much more when teaching voice, because, yeah, there where maybe the system is more commonly that people learn it on the piano or because no one told them they couldn't. And so they learn what they think they heard. Solfege is really great no matter what system you use for honing in and seeing if you really heard what you thought you heard.
Greg Ristow: Yeah, totally, totally. So shall we dive into the systems a little bit and just talk through them? I think the ones that we would call the major systems are scale degrees, Moveable Do, including Do minor and La minor, Fixed Do, and it's sort of sibling letter names, which are basically the same thing, but in different languages. So yeah, scale degrees. Leah.
Leah Sheldon: Yeah. So scale degrees, quick overview here, are just simply numbering the pitches of the scale from one to seven. So if you're thinking of a C major scale, the first note C would be one, D would be two, E is three, F is four, G five, A six, and B seven. And then instead of going to A to C we would repeat that one again and so on.
Greg Ristow: If we were to sing it, then it'd be like one, two, three, four, five, six, sev, one.
Leah Sheldon: Exactly. And what I was going to say is sometimes seven is shortened to sev, so that it's only one syllable. It's easier to sing.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. Now what do you do when you're in minor?
Leah Sheldon: The names of the scale degrees do not change. So three stays three. The challenge is differentiating that major three from minor three. So that is maybe where some teachers prefer the strength of Moveable Do and having a different pitch for a different scale, major or minor.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. David, do you want to take us through Moveable Do a bit?
David Newman: Sure. I was just going to comment on the scale degrees thing though. I mean, I love scale degrees and I think I often do think in scale degrees. And the only thing is, and the useful thing about them is that they presuppose the environment that you're living in. So if you know you're living in a minor key and one, two, three, four, five, six, sev, one, or one, two, three, four, five, six, sev, one. But you still know what ... And we kind of need to know that as one of the things that we ... if we want to advance in our music theory skills, we certainly need to know what scale degrees we're on.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. So scale degrees really is about establishing a hierarchy of where we are in the scale, of saying where all the notes are in relation to a tonic and whether that tonic be a major tonic or a minor tonic. I don't know about you all, but when I'm doing scale degrees, if I'm doing a true modal tune, I will stay with calling the fundamental note of the mode one. So if I'm in Lydian, one, two, three, four, five, six, sev, one.
David Newman: Right.
Greg Ristow: Yeah.
David Newman: And even if you're in a mode that we don't ... not one of our seven named modes, but if you're in one of those modes, it's still scale degrees, unless you're doing something octatonic or adding extra notes.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. And I mean, I think that's one of the beautiful things about scale degrees is that the words you sing don't change.
Leah Sheldon: Don't change.
David Newman: Right.
Leah Sheldon: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And I mentioned that as a challenge, but honestly it really forces the understanding behind the relationship of each pitch in the scale based on what kind of scale you're singing.
Greg Ristow: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, whether it's major, minor, one of the modes, or as David started to play the friggin' major scale. Yeah.
David Newman: So when we do Moveable Do, we're just using the same thing, but we're using the solfege syllables to name those degrees of the scale. But they also have inflections. And one of the really, one of the things that people love about them is that they're easy to sing, that they all have one syllable and they can help show us some other things.
Greg Ristow: Could you sing a major scale for us on Moveable Do solfege so just so we-
David Newman: Sure.
Greg Ristow: Maybe pick a key other than C major so that we just ...
David Newman: Right. So here's A. And so Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do. Do, Ti, La, Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, Do.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. So the Moveable Do we're calling the first note of the major scale Do?
David Newman: Right. Right. So Do is always the tonic. Well, actually it depends. It depends on which kind of Moveable Do you're using.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. But in major, but in major Do is always the tonic.
David Newman: In major, the Do is always the tonic. And that does simplify a number of things. It makes it easier to ask about key signatures. You can just say, "Where's Do?" And you don't have to clarify what mode you're in or whether you're in major or minor. It's just Do is there.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. So David, you talked a little bit about inflections. We have Do, Re, MI, Fa, Sol, Ti, Do. But then would you sing something slightly chromatic?
David Newman: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do, Di, Re, Ri, Mi, Do, Mi, Fa, Fi, Sol, Do, Sol, Si, La, Li, Ti, Do, Sol, Do. Do, Ti, Te, La, Le, Sol, Do, Sol, Se, Fa, Mi, Do, Mi, Me, Re, Ra, Do is how I do the chromatic scale.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. So that we have alterations of the vowel, the same consonant for each of the chromatic notes.
David Newman: Yeah. And so every, at least every common function that you might hear has a one syllable name that you can connect to it.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. So you mentioned already that there are kind of different ways of doing minor. What are those?
David Newman: So the most common ... Well, there are two common ways of doing minor. And one is to use Do-based minor, which means that you'll alter the other ... you'll alter the scale degrees that are different. So you have Do, Re, Me, Fa, Sol, Le, Te, Do. Or if you have melodic minor, Do, Re, Me, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do. However, many people advocate also La-based minor where you leave Do as the major tonic and use a rotation of the scale for minor, which would give you La, Ti, Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La.
Greg Ristow: Mm-hmm (affirmative). [crosstalk 00:17:20] recognizing it.
David Newman: It's sort of stop and think.
Greg Ristow: Yeah, because that's not the system that you live in most often. Yeah.
Greg Ristow: So La-based minor is a lot like ... is closely related to relative minor, right?
David Newman: Right.
Greg Ristow: We're saying that effectively, if we're in C Major and we started on A and sang from A to A, we'd have a minor scale, right? And that's effectively our La-based minor. Whereas Do-based minor kind of is much more like the parallel minor. Where in C major, if we switch to C minor, now we have three flats and we're going to alter those. We're going to alter our Mi, our La, and our Ti to be half step Le, Me, and Te.
David Newman: Yeah. And there are, in some ways I think that the method you use will be more or less useful depending on what kind of music you're looking at. We had talked earlier about how a lot of pop music, really, if it's in minor, you really should analyze it as starting on six. And ...
Greg Ristow: And also, I mean, there's so much pop music that kind of lives in this ... Are we in minor? Are we in major? That's sort of drifting between that relative major, relative minor.
David Newman: We find this phenomenon all the time with this artist, Hozier ... Hose ... How do you say his name?
Leah Sheldon: Hozier.
David Newman: Hozier. So we should write a song alla him that of how to pronounce his name, like (singing). And then we can, yeah. That way we'll remember.
Greg Ristow: And it's like, are we in Do or are we in (singing) or (singing), right?
David Newman: Right. It's this key for two chords maybe, and then you're in this key for two chords maybe, and it just goes back and forth.
Greg Ristow: And you're freely, freely flowing between those within the collection of diatonic quiet notes, yeah. Totally. This is true in a ton of folk music as well. Right? That just there are so many tunes. I think even, here we are just at the start of the new year's and so I've been hearing Christmas carols. God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen is one of (singing). David, why did you put us in A minor, which is very low for me.
David Newman: I'm sorry.
Greg Ristow: So this, right. 155, sorry, switch La minor. La, La, Mi, Mi, Re, Do, Si, La, Sol, La, Si, Do, Re, Mi. La, La, Mi, Mi, Re, Do, Si, La, Sol, La, Si, Do, Re, Mi. Mi, Fa, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Mi, Re, Do, La, Ti, Do, Re, Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Mi, Mi, Re, Do, Si, La. Right? And it's like, you hear those places in there that feel so great singing, Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Mi.
Greg Ristow: It's so clearly this little brief, major turn, and having done that in La-based minor, that little shift to the relative major is totally taken care of for us. We don't have to think about shifting to ... moving our Do to a different note or anything like that. And that's really, really lovely.
Greg Ristow: Maybe a little stranger for where we have more parallel motion. And so I think a lot of, especially Austrian-Viennese School of classical music works a lot more within parallel major and minor. And so maybe Do minor suits that better.
David Newman: You know I've advocated at times for thinking in Do-based minor with things that are, especially when things have similar patterns. I mean, for one thing, Sol, Ti, Re, Fa is always a dominant seven than in any key you're in. And I don't ... I can't even tell you what it is in La-based minor. I'd have to stop and think.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. It's ... Yeah, it's Mi, Si, Ti, Re.
David Newman: Yeah. And I'm sure that if you're fluent in La-based minor, then you already know that.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. So I think, now we're really, now we're starting to get at one of the key differences between La minor and Do minor or reasons you might choose one system or another.
Greg Ristow: And scale degrees is very much like Do minor in that, whether you're in major or minor, you're calling the tonic of the scale the same thing.
Leah Sheldon: The same thing, mm-hmm (affirmative).
Greg Ristow: So we're talking about this choice between scale degrees Do minor or La minor. Then part of the question I think is, is your focus on melodic reading or on harmonic understanding? Because David, as you point out, if your focus is on harmonic understanding, then one of your goals is going to be to acquaint students with each chord within a scale. And the words are going to stay pretty much the same in scale degrees in Do minor, but they're going to change if you're using La minor. So that's one of the things you might consider.
Greg Ristow: On the other hand, if your primary goal is quickness of site reading, then it may not be as much concern. La minor might in fact be the better choice because you don't have to worry so much about those two. And I think that's probably why in my experience talking with teachers at the middle school and high school level versus teachers at the college level, teachers at the middle school, high school, elementary level tend to refer La-based minor. And those at the college level where they're starting to work on harmony and Roman numeral and chord function tend to prefer Do minor or scale degrees.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. So we haven't talked about Fixed Do and letter names. I have to say these are two of my favorite systems. In a way they're kind of non-systems. They're just ... So basically Fixed Do is in many countries what they think of as their letter names, so that if you were in a Spanish speaking country or a French speaking country, then you don't ... they don't say C, D, E, F, G, but they say, Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, A, La, B, they actually say Si, S-I. And those are just their letter names.
Greg Ristow: So for someone who's grown up in a culture where those are their letter names, to call a note other than C Do feels really weird. Right? It's like if I said, "Okay, great. Let's all sing a C major scale starting on ... " Let's do this again. "Let's sing a D major scale starting on C." Right? Like it would just feel very weird for us to sit there and sing those C, D, E-
Leah Sheldon: Don't do that-
Greg Ristow: ... as we get to F#. Right? So yeah. So Fixed Do as a system is just a system of naming the letters, in the same way that if we were singing something on letter names, we're just saying, it's this letter, it's that letter. And generally in Fixed Do we don't sing sharp or flat when the notes are sharp or flat. We just sing. We just sing Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Sol, La or Si. David, would you play D Major just so I get the key?
Greg Ristow: Great. So if I were to sing Doe deer in Fixed Do in D major, right? Re, Mi, Fa, Re, Fa, Re, Fa. If I could do it on words, that would be really fun. Ray, a drop of golden sun, me, a name I call myself, far, a long, long way to run, sew, a needle pulling thread, La, a note to follow sew, tea, a drink with jam and bread, doe, a deer, a female deer, that will bring us back to Re. Right?
Greg Ristow: Which if you grew up in Moveable Do land feels so wrong. But you know, for me, that feels right living in Fixed Do land. And most of the pedagogies of Fixed Do, their goal is either to build perfect pitch or to gradually acquaint students with singing in the different keys one by one. So they grow familiar with what the solfege sounds like in the different keys.
Greg Ristow: So effectively, most Fixed Do pedagogies, like if you look at solfege is solfège, which is the French system, they start, you spend forever in C major and then they introduce one flat, and then you spend a time in F minor or in F major. And gradually they introduce one key after another so that it really, what you're learning is what the notes are for different scale degrees and all the different keys.
Greg Ristow: I think this is often ... when people say, "Fixed Do, that's not ... it's not a system." It's not a system if you just throw everything in right away with Fixed Do. But if you limit the introduction of keys and introduce keys one by one, then in Fixed Do effectively makes very quick that connection between scale degrees and note names.
David Newman: We've also used it at JMU. We use it in our fourth semester of aural skills when we get to non-tonal music. And then we do use inflection names. We use the same inflection names that we learned for Moveable Do. But then we're using it partly, just so that students have a way of navigating our notation system, which is tonal. And if you're navigating non-tonal materials in a tonal notation system, it really helps to have that reminder of where the half steps are on the staff.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. I mean, I think when I'm working with my students on first singing atonal music, I often have them, yeah, pick their tonic and literally sing tonic between every note of the melody before they sing the melody sequentially so that they're keeping all those tonal skills they have, those references to a home pitch as they do it. Totally. Yeah.
Greg Ristow: Okay. So those are the basic solfege systems and there are other ones. There are the Guidonian and hexachordal system, which is the old, or kind of the original Renaissance system. Yeah, I think probably not worth chatting about too much at the moment.
Leah Sheldon: Save it for another day.
Greg Ristow: Yeah, I think so. Right? Yeah. But maybe we should just talk about, let's say I've not taught solfege to my students before. How do I start? How do I introduce solfege as a concept, solfege system? What are those first things I should do?
Leah Sheldon: It's a great question.
David Newman: Wow. I mean, I suppose the first thing you have to do is pick a system or systems and start using it. And then we're talking about sequencing and how you ... Any system that you choose, I suspect you're going to find colleagues and sequences already-
Greg Ristow: Can I just toss out a crazy idea that I totally stole from a friend who heard this at a conference? Imagine that our musical alphabet started from H and it was H, I, J, K, L, M, N, right?
David Newman: Yes.
Greg Ristow: So let's ... Can we sing in H major scale together? H, H, right?
All: H, I, J, K, L, M, N, H.
Greg Ristow: And if we came down from there, H.
Leah Sheldon: Oh no.
Greg Ristow: N. Right? You see? And we all cringed.
Leah Sheldon: Go ahead. You do it.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. No, I can't. I can't. Right? But I think about ... I like to think about that idea before I start introducing a solfege system to a group of students or a student, because to me, I can't remember a time when Do, Ti, La, Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, Do felt challenging. But if you're just beginning with-
Leah Sheldon: But it will.
Greg Ristow: Absolutely. Absolutely. It'll be completely confusing. So ...
Leah Sheldon: So you're saying don't dive in and start asking your students to sing full scales?
Greg Ristow: Maybe not, or maybe not without aids. I don't know about you all, but what I like to do first is either introduce a subset of the scale to them and build it up bit by bit. Maybe that's the first few notes of the scale, or to write the scale on the board vertically in solfege from bottom to top and then pointing finger go up and down so they can actually be reading it as they do it. I don't know, what are first exercises you all use?
David Newman: Mimicry. I'm going to sing it to you. You sing it back to me. And mimicking small subsets and then expanding the subsets that you asked them to mimic.
Greg Ristow: Yeah.
David Newman: And I have to say that my experience is that, well, all right, I'm dealing with college students who got into music school. So there's that. But students who aren't familiar with it gain familiarity quickly. But that may be absolutely biased by the level of student I'm teaching.
Leah Sheldon: Right. So if I reflect on my teaching, I also have six years experience teaching elementary music. And what you're getting into are a lot of the methodologies of Kodaly or Orff. And although there are a lot of differences between the two, what's the same is that you're starting with a small subset of pitches. So in terms of Kodaly, we're looking at starting with So and Mi, introducing La, then adding Do. But not rapidly. And we're also talking about much younger learners also. So you're spending a lot of time making sure they are able to understand those before you're moving on.
Leah Sheldon: And Orff, you're starting with Do, Re, Mi, just three pitches, and then eventually adding So. So same idea, mimicry, starting with small stuff. Of course, there are so many songs and so many books and so many activities. We couldn't even possibly begin to get into that now, but the idea is the same. Start small, and then add on when your students are ready.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. And starting small, I think there are kind of two basic ways to start small. There's the sort of introduce a note at a time kind of way, which we find in both the Orff and Kodaly approaches, methodologies where you say, okay, in Kodaly, we gradually build up to the pentatonic scale. Then eventually we add Fa and Ti. Then gradually you start adding chromatics.
Greg Ristow: And then I think the other approach to starting small, which is sometimes more useful if you're working with older students, because they already know what a scale is. They want a whole scale. Why are we only seeing the pentatonic? Another way of starting small is to start by saying, "Okay, we're going to start with just steps in the scale. And then we're going to gradually learn to leap around in the scale bit by bit." And you might do that by doing small leaps first, or you might do it by leaping within particular chords, especially if you're working in a context where you're teaching harmony as well. Right?
Greg Ristow: I mean, I think about even just a lot of the great ... So if we're thinking starting small in terms of building up intervallic content, then we might do things like taking patterns up and down the scale. Like we might just go, Do, Re, Do, Re, Mi, Re, Mi, Fa, Mi, where we're getting used to the idea that the order can go forwards and backwards. And that's a pretty important concept, right?
Greg Ristow: Think about how hard it was for us to try and sing the H major scale backwards. And then building up patterns that have leaps in Do, Re, Mi, Do, Mi, Re, Mi, Fa, Re, Fa, where we're starting to learn as well what little leaps within the scale sound like. And you can gradually build up and make up those patterns to do anything. Or even in the classic one for getting comfortable going down the scale, I think, is the Do, Do, Re, Do, Do, Re, Mi, Re, Do, Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Mi, Re, Do which probably every choral director in America knows and has used at some point.
Greg Ristow: All these things to just ... Yeah, these things that as they become comfortable require almost no thought because the order of the notes has become so ingrained. We sort of defaulted to Moveable Do. But of course we could do all these on one, one, two, one, one, two, three, two, one, one, two, et cetera, right? Yeah.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. I think these are good. One of the things that I think about a lot is what are the actual skills that go into sight singing music, or aurally analyzing it or transcribing it, or playing it on an instrument by ear. They're largely two separate skills. Number one is, I've got to be able to translate what I'm hearing to a solfege system, or I've got to be able to translate to solfege system to what I'm hearing.
Greg Ristow: That's sort of the ear component of it. Was that Do, Re or Do, Mi? And then there's this mind component of, "Okay, I heard Do, Mi, and I'm in the key of D major. What notes are those? Ah, that's D/F#. Okay. Now I can play that on my instrument, write it down, whatever." But we have, we have the ear part and we have the mind part that are kind of two separate component skills to it.
Greg Ristow: One of the joys, I think, of Moveable Do a lot of the times is that you don't have to think too much about the actual pitch names as you're getting going with it, thinking more about like where you are on the staff. David, can you tell us about your brick sight singing?
David Newman: Right. So I will just go. We have cinder block walls at school, in the hallway. And I've gone out in the hallway and just said, "Okay, here's our staff. Just choose the height of a cinder block as being the height of a space on the staff. And so we're going to choose these five lines. This one is Do. You don't need to know what clef it is. You don't need to know what key you're in. All you need to know is what I'm calling Do. And then, for me, the great thing is that that reinforces not trying to translate, for example, for students whose first instinct is to look and see letter names. I can get them to bypass that a little bit and to look and see relationships to the tonics. So that they see where Do is. They know that So is going to be two spaces up or two lines up. And it's also going to be a space and a half down. I don't know how to say that. It lets me quickly show where things are within a given scale.
David Newman: And for me, that's also a very quick way to notate something, is to just know where Do is, put the other scale degrees in the right places.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. And this, we see this a lot in the Kodaly approach as well, that written notation in most Kodaly texts starts with just a two line staff where the top line is So, and the bottom line is Mi. And you just learn that So Mi is line, line, or one line, and you could have So just above the line, or just below the line. Right? And So Mi is line to line or space to space. And you're effectively learning the visual relationship of those distances on the staff without having to convert it to or from note names.
David Newman: Yeah.
Greg Ristow: So, it occurs to me, one thing we haven't talked about is ... perfect pitch.
Leah Sheldon: Oh, no.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. Oh no. Oh no is right because there's so many feelings about this.
David Newman: YouTube is-
Greg Ristow: David, looks like you were about to say-
David Newman: Well, I'm just, I'm saying YouTube is littered with people claiming that they can teach you perfect pitch. And as far as I know, virtually, every study says this can't be done. And once you're six years old or something.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. Yeah. I think the real expert on this is Elizabeth West Marvin who's on the Music Theory Faculty at the Eastman School of Music. And Betsy's worked closely with her colleagues at the University of Rochester in the Brain Sciences Department there to do just so many studies at this point on absolute pitch. Absolute pitch is the scientific name for perfect pitch. And basically there are three competing theories for why some people have absolute pitch and some people don't.
Greg Ristow: And the first theory, David, you kind of referred to is what's known as the critical period theory. So we know that as humans, if we don't learn a primary language, if we don't learn to speak before about age six, then it's pretty much impossible to actually learn to speak after that. We know that unfortunately from studies in particular of neglected children, and that in psychological terms is known as a critical period, that you've got to learn it before then or you can't learn it.
Greg Ristow: And there's a super high correlation between the age people start musical study and whether they have perfect pitch. Those who start before age six are much more likely to acquire it. And almost no one who starts after age six acquires it. So yeah, so that's the critical period theory.
Greg Ristow: The second theory is an unlearning theory, this idea that we all start with absolute pitch, but maybe we learn other ways to recognize music that teach us that absolute pitch is not important and so we gradually forget it. And you can see how that's similar to the critical period theory, right? It's a question of, are we adding a skill or are we forgetting a skill we had?
Greg Ristow: And then a third theory is that there is a genetic component to it. Because how do we explain musicians who did start training before age six and didn't acquire perfect pitch. Was that part of the nurture component or was there a nature component to it? The reality is we don't have full answers for these yet, but all three of those competing or overlapping theories basically agree that if you don't have it by about age six, you're not going to have it.
Greg Ristow: Now, what some of Betsy Marvin's recent research has shown is that there are adults who are non-musicians, who have a kind of perfect pitch, which is sort of fascinating. She refers to a study that ... not one that she did, but where this was actually done in the '90s, where in the experiment there was a room full of popular music CDs, super famous CDs. And people were instructed to go and pick their two favorite CDs and then pick their favorite song from one of the CDs, hold that CD up to their chest, think about the song and then sing it. These are non-musicians. These are actually psychology majors in the study.
Greg Ristow: And a full 25% of them sang it in the key it was on the CD. An additional 50% of them sang it within a half step of where it was on the CD. So it's kind of an interesting question. There may be more going on there, but we've talked about all these solfege methods, and we're not talking about building perfect pitch, except maybe with the case of Fixed Do when started at a very young age. And there are pedagogies that are intentionally designed using Fixed Do to train perfect pitch when you're starting at like age two or three and so on.
Greg Ristow: What we're really talking about is building, understanding of where you are in a scale and a collection, and building out from that. Yeah.
Greg Ristow: It's also worth noting that perfect pitch sags with age. Around age 40, it sort of starts ... things starts sounding lower and lower, and people learn to adjust generally and that's fine, as long as they're actively performing and practicing music. But there may be a physical, an actual physical component to perfect pitch that causes that and there are various theories on that. So, yeah.
Leah Sheldon: Interesting.
David Newman: What's sad is that it's become this kind of mark of genius in the music community. But if you ask many professional musicians who have it, they'll all often tell you that it's not a blessing.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. And we're talking about hearing a pitch, a phenomenon versus hearing function. Just knowing the name, the frequency of a note, doesn't tell us all that much about what it's doing musically. But knowing where it is in the scale, what it is harmonically, that gives us all sorts of information about how it feels, how it moves, what it means, how to perform it.
Greg Ristow: I had a friend in grad school who was also ... We were both TAs for ear training at Eastman. And Ilan, Ilan Levin, perfect pitch. I remember chatting with him. And he said, "Yeah, I got here and I had to teach on scale degrees and I hated it for a year. And I had to practice all the homework myself. And then I found at the end of the year, I was suddenly hearing music in a different way. I hadn't realized that I hadn't been hearing all those relationships."
Greg Ristow: These are different ways of hearing for sure. And the good news is that functional hearing of where am I in the scale, that can be taught at any age, but that phenomenological absolute pitch way, really only up to age six at the latest. And kind of hotly debated, should you teach that? Is that worth teaching? Probably a question for another episode.
Greg Ristow: Well, I feel like that's been a good chat about solfege systems. Have we missed anything? Any final thoughts to add Leah or David?
Leah Sheldon: Just find something that you are comfortable with, that you're comfortable singing, teaching, hearing music in, and use that because the students will pick up on it if you're not comfortable with it, or if you're learning it as they are as well. The students are going to know. So be comfortable with it.
David Newman: Although I would also throw out that I have learned systems alongside my students, and I've just been really open with my own struggles, learning them. And that's been great too, because then they feel like you're in their camp, that you ...
Leah Sheldon: Oh, yeah.
David Newman: That you understand.
Leah Sheldon: Yeah, if you're open about it.
David Newman: I can tell you that my first year of Takadimi was that way.
Greg Ristow: Yeah. I still, I tell all my students. For instance, when I teach, at the summers I teach at Interlochen, and there we use Moveable Do. And I just tell my students, "You are going to hear me accidentally switch to Fixed Do at some point. It is just going to happen. I will be in the middle of singing something, and three notes are going to come out in Fixed Do. And it just ... " They're generally really understanding about that and they tend to laugh when it happens. Like, "Ah, you called that So La-
David Newman: It humanizes you.
Greg Ristow: Of course.
David Newman: It humanizes you. It's a great thing for students to realize-
Leah Sheldon: It does-
David Newman: ... that you are in fact human.
Greg Ristow: Right. We'd love to hear from everyone who's listening, like what would you like to know about? What would you like to know about in music theory, in music pedagogy, in music technology? Let us know. We have lots of ideas ourself, but of course want this podcast to be a place where we're talking about things that teachers of music want to hear about. Yeah.
Greg Ristow: Any final thoughts before we sign off? Awesome. Well, episode one, go gang. David, Leah, thanks. And yeah, we'll chat again soon.
David Newman: All right. Thanks. Good to see you.
Greg Ristow: Bye everyone.
Leah Sheldon: Bye.
Leah Sheldon and Greg Ristow introduce a new podcast from the creators of uTheory.com.
Notes from the Staff features conversations about pedagogy, music theory, ear training, music technology and more. In our first episode, which lands Jan. 15, uTheory team member David Newman joins us to talk about solfege systems: what are they, why do we use them, and which one is best? In our second episode, Leah and Greg talk with Dr. Andrew Machamer, assistant professor of music education at the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory, to talk about preparing bands for sight reading and contest.
Tune in Jan. 15th for the launch of Notes from the Staff!
And follow us at https://utheory.com/notes, or wherever you get your podcasts.