Sound On

Alfie Kohn writes:

“There’s something perversely fascinating about educational policies that are clearly at odds with the available data.  Huge schools are still being built even though we know that students tend to fare better in smaller places that lend themselves to the creation of democratic caring communities.  Many children who are failed by the academic status quo are forced to repeat a grade even though research shows that this is just about the worst course of action for them.  Homework continues to be assigned – in ever greater quantities – despite the absence of evidence that it’s necessary or even helpful in most cases.”

Beyond Homework

Alfie Kohn isn’t just writing about homework, he’s writing about how decisions are made in education. The first sentence nails it: policies in education are not being influenced by available data. Decisions are made on whims. Someone tried something, and it seemed to be ok, so they kept doing it. Or it is simply considered “conventional wisdom” that a given practice is the best approach. But actual research is being done in the field of education; it’s just that, for some reason, people aren’t letting the research guide their practice.

Research In Education

Granted, research in education isn’t perfect. It’s not appropriate to raise children up in an isolated chamber only to expose them to a certain thing at a certain age. But you can assess two groups, try something one way with group A, a different way with group B, and see which group has better achievement in the end. It’s the best we can do, and it’s leaps and bounds above “but we’ve always done this way.”

Research In Music Education

Dear Music Education Professionals: please check out the work of Dr. Edwin Gordon, especially the tome Learning Sequences in Music.

The Data Is Out There

It is my hope that parents, teachers, and especially policy-makers in education seek out research, and not just know it, but let it influence their feelings, their thoughts, and their actions.

The past two weeks I have had the pleasure of achieving Level 1 Mastership Certification in Early Childhood Music through the Gordon Institute of Music Learning and the University at Buffalo. The two courses addressed the theory and practice of music learning.

Lectures By Dr. Edwin Gordon

Each morning featured lectures on Music Learning Theory right from the horse’s mouth. It was great to hear Dr. Gordon speak live and in person, and experience the physical manifestation of his voice and sense of humor, which comes through so clearly in his writing.

The most valuable aspect of the experience was Dr. Gordon’s regular demonstrations of the results of his research. It’s easy to read words like “continuous flowing movement,” but to see it demonstrated can be quite striking.

Dr. Gordon’s enthusiasm for research in music education and fervor for the practical applications derived thereof (and likewise, his overt antipathy for traditional beliefs and practice in the music education world) were an especially memorable component of his talks.

Although I approached class as a fan of Dr. Gordon’s work, it is clear that many of my classmates have become “converts,” as they were forced to confront stupidity latent in their thoughts and conventions.

Now I Know How To Flow

Jennifer Bailey and Natasha Sigmund led a class on the practical applications of Music Learning Theory in an early childhood environment. It’s something that cannot be learned from a book, or even a video, because it is such a visceral experience.

Applying Music Learning Theory is very challenging, because there is so much to know and do. You need to know many songs and chants which serve as a vehicle for a variety of meters and tonalities. You need to assess children’s responses, understand what level their brain is functioning at musically, and use that knowledge to respond back appropriately. The entire session must flow. You expect nothing from students, but go to them and bring them along with you musically if they are ready. Taking all this into consideration can be a paralyzing experience!

More Challenges

Having class each day was difficult. Normally, as a student I like to take my time reading, carefully organize my notes and review them before class, and in general, take my time – that is a critical mantra for me in my own experience of learning. Unfortunately, with class going on each day, I found myself struggling to complete assignments, practice, and really comprehend what was going on. But I know that the philosophy of the class was just to feed me enough information to keep me going on my own.

Another challenge was embracing simplicity in the construction of songs and chants. Sophistication is the natural result of a culture that embraces it.

Finally, I have a new appreciation for having gone to college away from home. As I attended my first graduate classes while living at home, I found “everyday life” interfering with class on a regular basis. Going to school out of state and living in dorms fostered an environment where I could really leave everything behind and focus on academics. While of course I made time for friends, they too were immersed in an academic life experience.

People

My classmates came from Frankfurt am Main, Deutschland to Searcy, Arkansas, USA, and everywhere in between. What a turnout! Time with the “dormies” was fun, musical, and overall well spent. Come on back to Buffalo any time! And of course, class would be incomplete without the illustrious Dan Reitz, whose musicianship and depth of thought never fail to incite.

Deception

While the certification and practical applications focus on early childhood with occasional ventures into classroom and even instrumental music education, the class was actually about how people learn music from the beginning. It is not chronological age, but musical age that matters. Thus, the knowledge gained through class is (for better or worse) applicable to even chronologically mature students. This class is appropriate for everyone, even if early childhood isn’t your “thing.”

Conclusion

The certification workshop, with all its ups and downs, was an overall excellent experience that I recommend to anyone. The concepts I learned will be developed into methods and applied to whatever sort of music learning environment I decide to become involved with. Also, class counted as the first six of 33 credits towards a master’s degree, so I am on my way towards a formal application to the program by February, 2008. Lastly, classmates: please keep in touch, and best wishes to you all!

Some musical ensembles sit or stand while they perform. Others, like marching bands and drum and bugle corps move while they play. While I support both kinds, I do so in different settings.

Why Music In Motion

Moving while playing can be a very satisfying and rewarding experience, not to mention the best exercise program around. Young people may find solace in the discipline and regimen that a moving musical ensemble demands. Physical exertion offers the pleasure of endorphins, and a roaring crowd is quick to warm the heart of any ensemble member. It feels like they’re all cheering for you, personally.

Mental Stamina

But does a moving ensemble prepare young musicians for a more traditional professional environment? Christopher Martin, principal trumpet of the prestigious Chicago Symphony Orchestra thinks so. He cites his drum and bugle corps experience as having prepared him for the exhausting schedule of a performing professional, relentlessly requiring exquisite mental focus. So far, music in motion seems like an excellent way for a young person to spend their time.

Why Not Music In Motion

In economics, there exists a concept that the potential for earning money should be a calculated expense. For example, if I put $100 into a savings account for one year yielding 5% interest instead of an account yielding 10% interest, it’s like spending $5, because my money is not doing as much work for me as it could. This is called opportunity cost.

Opportunity Cost

In a moving ensemble, there are extra expenses, including specialized equipment which must bear outdoor use and frequent transportation. But most importantly, in a moving ensemble, an enormous amount of time and expertise is devoted to things like learning how to march and learning a drill, which have nothing to do with learning music. There is an opportunity cost for spending time learning things that are not music, instead of music itself. This is the primary reason I cannot support music in motion at a public institution where time and funds are especially limited. Every available resource for music, especially a student’s time, should be spent on musical learning, not on other things like uniforms and drills.

Creativity And Improvisation

The highest form of participation in music is to create it freely (creativity), and to create it in conjunction with an existing form (improvisation). These experiences are hard to come by in any large ensemble, but especially in a moving ensemble, where the prevailing culture is one of conformity. A hallmark of moving ensembles is getting everyone to do the same thing at the same time: an icon of the need for reform in modern educational practice.

Artistic Integrity

The artistic integrity of music in motion is sometimes called into question, as all moving ensembles (in terms of opportunity cost) sacrifice musicianship to motion in some degree. Composer Eric Whitacre encourages moving ensembles to perform his music if they feel they are genuinely experiencing beauty through their art. However, he does reserve one tune, When David Heard, which he asks to only be performed in its original choral setting.

Former Marching Member

I admit that I get a kick out of music in motion. Having spent four years with the Ohio University Marching 110, I joined to make some friends and stayed for the leadership opportunities and the members’ unwavering attitude and dedication to excellence. Also, the pageantry, kaleidoscopic intrigue of a well designed and executed drill, and sounds of a choir of bell-front brass instruments never fail to create an enjoyable experience for me as an audience member.

Current Music Education Professional

However, as a music education professional, my primary commitment is for students to develop the ability to think in music just like they can think in language. This unconscious process is called audiation. For this reason, I must invest all resources not in drills and marching skills, but rather directly in music learning, and especially in opportunities for creativity and improvisation. Though I appreciate the prospects for students to make meaningful creative decisions in a musical ensemble, music understanding is not a means to an end, but rather an end in and of itself, worthy of time, attention, and financial resources. Marching band makes a great physical education class, but not a great music class, because so much time, attention, and financial resources are diverted away from music learning. I hope this helps explain why I consistently turn down employment openings in music education where music in motion is a major or primary component of the program.

But Music In Motion Is Fun

Although there is nothing quite as much fun as understanding music through audiation, music in motion can be fun as well. To summarize my position: music in motion is an enjoyable, legitimate activity, which I encourage young people to participate in during college or in their spare time. However, especially when public funds are involved, the young musician’s time is best invested all in learning to think musically, rather than learning to march a drill. You can learn to march in a couple days, but learning music is a life-long pursuit.

DCI

Drum Corps International coordinates performances and competitions for moving ensembles. Young people spend their time in these groups during the summer, when it does not otherwise interfere with their regularly scheduled music learning. Check out the schedule for an experience near you. If you really enjoy a particular ensemble, consider supporting them by purchasing a t-shirt or cd, and happy marching!

This book was recommended to me by my high school band director, Matthew Cool, when I was a collegiate student in music education. I finally got around to reading it. It’s designed to start the reader on a personal path towards greater achievement in music.

Kenosis

James Jordan makes reference to the Greek theological term kenosis, which literally means emptiness; the reader should empty themselves of love to all the people around them. Most appropriately for music, this should happen by an ensemble conductor to the performers. Like many themes in the book, it’s not only a great approach to musicianship, but to life.

Mimetic Envy

In a musician’s brain there is a “perfect sound.” When a performing ensemble inevitably fails to achieve this, the musician can either turn to anger and envy of the perfect sound, or they can choose to accept and love the reality of the sound the ensemble is creating.

Stillness

The case for spending quiet time alone is made because this peace is a source of joy in music. How can we love others if we do not love ourselves? How can we love ourselves if we do not know ourselves?

Metaphysical

While the book references deity and is generally composed through a lens of Christianity, this element should not detract from the value of the material. I would encourage any musician, and especially directors of performing ensembles to read this. Though the ideas presented here are simple in nature – to know yourself, to love yourself and others, to choose love over idolatry and envy – to practice them is another challenge entirely.

James Jordan

Dr. James Jordan is a writer, conductor, and professor at Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, New Jersey. The Musician’s Soul and many other works are available through GIA Publications, Inc.

This blog would do a great disservice to educators if I failed to highlight Kathy Sierra’s outstanding resource of a blog, Creating Passionate Users.

What Kathy Does

Kathy is the co-creator of the bestselling Head First books (the brain-friendly series from O’Reilly) which helps people develop skills and expertise in computer programming.

What does this have to do with education? Consider: [the readers of Kathy’s blog are] all passionate about the brain and metacognition, most especially–how the brain works and how to exploit it for better learning and memory. Doesn’t this sound like our goals as education professionals?

Kathy teaches people how to program through books. But in order to do this, she draws from the same pool of knowledge on brain learning that we education professionals use when designing lessons and instruction.

Crash Course In Learning Theory

One of my favorite entries on Kathy’s site is Crash Course In Learning Theory. While all educators studied learning theory in college, it never hurts to have a brush-up reminder on the principals of how the brain works.

In this article, Kathy emphasizes appealing to attention, constructivism, necessity, using visuals, redundancy, variety, conversational language, mistakes, showing more than telling, chunking, relaxation, charm, levels, knowing what to include, context, emotion, fun, stories, pacing, and “walks the walk” by employing the very principals she describes in order to help you understand how people learn.

Lastly, Kathy reminds us that it’s never about you. It’s about how the learner feels about him[or her]self as a result of the learning experience.

Marketing Should Be Education, Education Should Be Marketing

In her article Marketing Should Be Education, Education Should Be Marketing, Kathy points out that The tragedy is this: the amount of money spent in the US each year on marketing research is orders of magnitude more than the amount spent on learning theory research. Big business probably spends more in a week on brain research than the US Department of Education spends in a year. Thus Kathy encourages us education professionals to pay attention to marketing tactics and trends, and incorporate them into our educational practice.

Following an address on the state of affairs is a discussion of what marketers could do for teachers and what teachers could do for marketers.

User Participation

Every story ends in user-posted comments. Kathy is always very active in the ensuing discussion. You can begin to participate now – by reading Kathy’s Blog and posting in the comments. See you there!

An article on Kuro5hin titled If We Taught English the Way We Teach Mathematics… starts out:

Imagine that your only contact with “English” as a subject was through classes in school. Suppose that those classes, from elementary school right through to high school, amounted to nothing more than reading dictionaries, getting drilled in spelling and formal grammatical construction, and memorizing vast vocabulary lists — you never read a novel, nor a poem; never had contact with anything beyond the pedantic complexity of English spelling and formal grammar, and precise definitions for an endless array of words. You would probably hate the subject.

This got me thinking. Using language learning as a model for “how things should be done” is very common in the field of music education.

How people learn language…

1. You listen to a lot of language being spoken.

2. You babble.

3. You start to speak some words and eventually sentences, with meaning.

4. You learn to improvise a conversation.

5. You learn to read by matching symbols with words you already know.

6. You learn to write by transcribing symbols for words you already know.

You go on to be able to improvise writing, etc. Notice how notational symbols aren’t even involved until step 5, as they have no inherent meaning - they are given meaning by the person.

If language was taught like music is taught…

1. You look at some simple words and sentences.

2. You learn to decode the symbols for words and sentences.

3. You learn to pronounce the words and sentences while looking at them (”reading music!”).

Most music programs in the states stop there. Notice how meaning is no where in the picture. Imagine how someone who learned language like this would sound when “reading aloud” - probably dull, lifeless, and mechanical, as they wouldn’t know what the words meant, so they wouldn’t know where to put emphasis or how to phrase to convey meaning. They would probably not be able to improvise a conversation. They might be able to write some words, but they probably wouldn’t know such basics as “sentences start with capital letters and end with periods.”

Music Education

While music is not a language - it does not have a grammar, it DOES have syntax; the order of “words” (chords) and rhythms in the context of meter and tonality is what gives music meaning.

Math Education

Math education in the states is a lot like music education in that children spend all their time learning to manipulate and decode symbolic notation without actually gaining any insight or meaning into the mental process of math (or music). Math students rarely learn to mathematically “visualize,” and music students rarely learn to audiate (the mental process by which people give meaning to music).

The Fix

Both fields need a serious overhaul! This can take place at the teacher education level. I know of some music educators (Dr. Edwin Gordon, Dr. Christopher Azzara to name two) who are committed to reforming music education.

There must be some major math researchers out there who are studying how people learn math and are committed to reforming our education practices. Does anyone know who they are?

Teacher Education programs – that is, when someone goes to college to become a teacher, are relatively successful in the United States. Students attend classes on learning theory and educational psychology, which are strongly geared towards how people develop language and analytical skills. So everything’s cool… right?

Enter Music Education

The problem with Music Education college programs is that they “outsource” their educational psychology learning to the college of education. Unfortunately, the way people learn music is very different from the way people learn language and analytical skills. So most people who go to college in a Music Education program never gain insight into how people learn music. They may learn some techniques in so-called “methods” classes, but a sequence of learning objectives wholly appropriate for musical environments is rarely found.

What I Got

My Bachelor of Music in Music Education degree is actually 75% of a music performance degree + 75% of a non-music degree in education. The only “purely” music education classes I took all fell under the guise of techniques for teaching early childhood/beginning band/jazz ensemble/clarinet/etc. A comprehensive examination of Music Learning Theory was more than sorely absent. Music Learning Theory should have been the core of my studies.

What Needs To Happen

Music Education programs in colleges need to stop outsourcing their learning theory studies to the college of education. They need to bring all of their learning theory instruction “in house,” and make Music Learning Theory the core of every degree in Music Education. So called “methods” classes need to be exchanged for real methods classes, emphasizing above all the order of instruction; not just what to do, but most importantly, when to do it. Lastly, all teacher education programs (not just music) need to focus on bridging the gap between theory and practice.

People have become complacent with the idea that college cannot prepare a student to be successful in “the real world” of music education. Why should we settle for this? Music Education professionals need to work hard to improve the quality of their teacher education programs.

Heal The Wound

Even if Music Learning Theory wasn’t the core of your collegiate studies in music education, you can make it the focus of your studies now. Take professional development classes and courses from (links go to their GIA event calendars) Dr. Edwin Gordon, Dr. Christopher Azzara, and Dr. Richard Grunow, or get your administration to bring one of these educators to your facility for professional development. Share the cost and knowledge with neighboring school districts and music programs. Browse and ask questions on the forums at the Gordon Institute for Music Learning. Check out Jump Right In, a music education method, to see Music Learning Theory applied in practical ways. Read Eric Bluestine’s book The Ways Children Learn Music for a palatable written introduction to Music Learning Theory. After you have become acquainted with the elements of Music Learning Theory, read Dr. Gordon’s book Learning Sequences in Music.

Now get busy!

Here I must confess that I find “organized sounds and silence” to be a bit limiting so far as the definition of music. Also I cannot call art “the experience of beauty,” because a tree that falls in a forest makes a sound no matter if anyone hears it or not.

Hung Up On Lyrics

Dyske Suematsu’s blog on Why Americans Don’t Like Jazz stirred up some comments on reddit. Suematsu argues that most Americans only listen to lyrics and cannot grasp the abstraction of melody. Someone on reddit commented that lyrics are the meaning of a song, and another that art has meaning or is otherwise inspired. Chiming in, I noted that many people seem to get hung up on the meaning of art just as they get hung up on the lyrics of music. There is more to music than lyrics, and there is more to art than meaning.

Hung Up On Meaning

If art does not need to be meaningful in order to be art, and it does not need to be inspired, skillfully authored, or framed in a museum, then what, pray tell, is art? Simply, art is everything, everywhere, all the time. What do I mean by that? Take one of my favorite quotes from John Cage: “Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory, or a truck passing by a music school?”

People are afraid to accept this simplistic definition of art. They are afraid that it removes things which are great from their pedestals and throws them down into the mud with the mundane grind of daily existence. The reality is that if you can sensitize yourself to something as strange and unnatural as a band playing, then certainly you can become sensitive to the sounds around you every day, and further, every experience. (Consider how strange a band is: highly complex modern instruments producing otherworldly tones, parting the huge expanse of pitch possibilities into a narrowly distinct 12 divisions per octave.) Imagine the joy of life in appreciation of the art that surrounds you every day. However, art is not burdened with the weight of human experience. Art is still art, no matter if anyone experiences it or not.

The Artist’s Job

The artist’s job is simply to create. The artist need not interpret their own work; a philosopher may do that job. The artist may also simply draw people’s attention to the art which otherwise surrounds them. There can also be a meta-artist, who provides opportunities for other artists to create art (e.g., a jazz composer who writes for improvisation).

“Modern” Art

While it is true that art is often created by art historians for art historians, no one should fear modern, or post-modern (if you believe in such a thing) art. Aside from historical context, there is nothing to “get.” There are no secrets. If you like it, enjoy it; if not, move along.

People who have narrow views of what constitutes art probably do not spend a lot of time with their art. After you have seen one thousand portraits, portraits become less interesting. After you have seen one thousand still-lifes, still-lifes lose their edge. While the artist who can be creative within their historical context is thoroughly appreciated (see Cyrus Chestnut and Kevin Mahogany), after you have seen enough of one thing, you want to see something new and fresh. Photography freed artists from the need to merely record, and allowed more abstract creativity to take center stage.

What you see in a modern art gallery is simply the result of hundreds of years of people looking for something new and fresh, reacting to the art the came before them, and discovering life.

To Persuade Or To Inform

Though I hope this blog entry has informed you of my views regarding the definition of art, it is not my role to push my views upon you. Even if you do not agree with me, please ask yourself: what is art?

Humans choose and cultivate their sensitivities. You can develop sensitivity to absolutely anything. Why not choose to appreciate the beauty that surrounds you every day, all the time? If you enjoy listening to music, and every sound could be music, how happy would you be?