Alan Coady’s Musical Blog

I recently read something in Steven Mithen’s excellently written and thought provoking book The Singing Neanderthals which stopped me in my tracks. The passage concerned the research, by Professor Willi Steinke of Queens University in Kingston, Canada, into the melodic recall of a subject with amusia, following a stroke at the age of 64. The subject was unable to identify many well-known instrumental themes. However, when themes with lyrics were played, recall was normal – even although the lyrics were not present! Steinke and his colleagues concluded that melody and lyrics were stored in different parts of the brain – the prosody of the lyrics helping to summon up the tune, and the rhythms of the tune aiding the reverse.

Suddenly my mind jumped back 42 years to my first piano tutor book, in which every melody featured lyrics – added after the event by the author, John W. Schaum. At the time I regarded them as a slightly annoying irrelevance because I was six years old and knew everything. Now the aspiration behind them seems clear. I began to think that, although the beginners’ materials I use have no lyrics, there may be an argument for adding some – more particularly for asking the pupils to add their own.

By an amazing coincidence of timing, this topic was brought up at our in service on Thursday, by one of my colleagues who was keen to discover similarities and differences in our approaches to teaching rhythm. Recommendations and reservations were expressed – the latter concerning examples where words had been forced to fit rhythms in an unnatural way, and possible confusion arising from the differing prosody of varying accents and dialects.

Still – it’s something interesting to think about. Any experiences, views, recommendations to offer?

My ears pricked up this morning at the mention of the Street Vibe Festival of Sound which takes place today in London’s The Scoop. The idea of the event is to highlight the appeal of science through music and other arts. The short report on Radio 4’s Today included efforts by Stephen Mesure (Director of The Creative Science Consultancy) and South African percussionist and composer, Eugene Skeef to produce music from carved instruments. The most convincing of these was a carrot built on the whole tone scale.

The report grabbed my attention, not because I plan to race down to London to take part, but because I have been thinking along similar lines. Discussions are to be opened up in a school I visit with a view to pupils and staff playing a more active role in assemblies. The possibilities for cross curricular links seem huge and I see music as being able to play a big part e.g. music & maths; music & science; music & languages – in addition to the more obvious pairings like words & music or music and dance.

The idea which immediately sprang to mind is a piece based on the harmonic series – the physical and mathematical reality which underpins the evolution of Western harmony and instruments over the last 1,000 years. Yes, start small – that’s my motto.

One of the bonuses of keeping this blog is that searching for useful hyperlinks – such as the one for the whole tone scale (above) leads me to interesting resources for pupils. From the same source come this short, interesting video about chord construction.

Sadly, an able pupil is moving away to another part of the UK. I was asked for a reference in order that, once there, full musical entitlement might continue. Happy to oblige, I wrote a short history of achievement and was keen to point out that a detailed musical portrait of the pupil already existed in the form of mp3 recordings of:

• solo performing
• participation in the school Guitar Group
• participation in the East Lothian Guitar Ensemble

I contacted the school concerned and arranged to send the reference electronically. The hyperlinks have been passed onto the Music Department.

I hadn’t really considered this aspect of evidence before. The benefits of such a learning space for the stationary pupil, parents and staff seem obvious. For a pupil changing schools, a portrait seems better a better way to convey information than a descritpion - and a self-portrait better still.

Interested in language? Shouldn’t every teacher be? Got a spare 8 minutes? Ever wondered what Forensic Linguistics is all about? You can hear a very interesting interview from Radio 4’s Word of Mouth about how language (including texting style) can betray incongruities with the claimed age, gender, social class & native language of the user and how evidence for real life cases (much more serious than copying homework) was gathered. Dr. Tim Grant, Senior Lecturer in Forensic Linguistics at Aston University explains how here (until Tue 13th at 16:00).

Very similar skills and processes are used to determine the composer of an unidentified instrumental piece of music. Details of instrumentation, national style, harmonic & rhythmic language, division of octave etc. are often unconsciously processed, allowing the listener to pin down the historical period, country of origin and, in many cases, the individual musical signature(s).

Guess who got me into etymology. Perhaps surprisingly, it was Malcolm X, in his autobiography. Rather than looking up definitions, it soon seemed preferable to attempt to divine them through familiarity with the constituent parts of the word – making it nearly impossible to forget.

In a subject like music, the bulk of whose vocabulary consists in old and foreign words, an etymological outlook can offer a key to these baffling terms and associations. With this in mind, I’ve created a new Lesson Support Page entitled Music & Etymology. I must stress here that this is not really my own work but simply a series of links to a fantastic online etymological resource. At the moment the work is at the brain-storming stage and I feel that further developments (and perhaps suggestions from users) will help me decide which of the following options to choose:

• alphabetical – favouring those looking for a specific term
• thematic – grouping together related words e.g. interval; triad; chord – favouring browsing

I’ve also yet to decide what to do about words which do not appear on www.etymonline.com. Should I provide my own pointers? Leave them blank – encouraging reader research? Omit them from the list altogether?

Clearly, this will an ongoing project requiring constant updating. However, there’s no rush and it’s important to bear in mind the following proverb of Lao Tzu at the outset of a seemingly huge task:

“ A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Asked to cite an example of a situation where IT had made a radical contribution to learning and teaching, the temptation might be to conjure up visions of extreme hi-tech at the expense of the basics – specifically email.

Consider the logistical ingredients of this dilema:

• the final guitar lesson of the term on Monday 17th March
• some pupils unable to attend due to other fixtures
• the next lesson not due until Monday 14^th April
• this to be followed by a concert 3 days later
• the 22 pupils in the ensemble form six 30-minute lesson groups, drawn from nine P5-P7 classes
• the pupils had not yet played as a large group
• the likelihood was that familiarity with the music, and how the various parts fit together, was going to diminish as the concert approached – particularly for those playing an accompanying part as opposed to the melody

An insoluble problem? Without the necessity of an unscheduled visit to the school between the quoted dates I was delighted to see all 22 pupils breeze into the hall first thing this morning, well prepared for a final rehearsal/recording session. Thanks to the endless cooperation of the admin, management and teaching staff of the school in question, the privileges afforded me through this eduBuzz blog and the school email system, things fell into place in a way which would have been inconceivable a few short years ago. All it took was:

• to create play-along midi files for pupil practice and post them on the blog
• to send an email with details of where to find and how to use the files, asking that it be distributed to the pupils concerned
• to ask, in a second email, for today’s normal lesson routine to be suspended in favour of a rehearsal of the full ensemble

Thanks to everyone concerned!

I frequently refer to the many advantages which keeping this blog has conferred – upon pupils and myself. Out of the blue, I recently received a very generous gift thanks entirely to the existence of this blog. The gift was from the Dutch guitarist, composer and teacher, Eugène den Hoed and took the form of a mountain of sheet music of original compositions for guitar along with a CD.

Eugène teaches in the Centrum voor de Kunsten in Bergen op Zoom and, from time to time, appears as a panel member in competitions run by the European Guitar Teachers Association (EGTA*).

You can hear Eugène playing excerpts from his compositions here

Many thanks, Eugène.

* The president of EGTA is John Williams

Apologies to Dorothy (who tagged me) for the delay in responding. What I hope this picture (oringally uploaded by Lorelei Ranveig) represents is connectivity in its widest sense. This is the element about which I am most passionate in teaching. On a superficial level, this refers to the apparent ability of the practical study of music to enhance other areas. More symbolically, it represents striving to overcome:

• the imaginary primary/secondary/tertiary divisions
• those divisions which, for practical reasons, stress the separateness of subjects over the shared principles

Wherever possible,often through analogy, I like to flag up connections and shared ideas, principles, techniques, concepts between music and, say, language, science, maths, sport. The following posts, written around 18 months ago, might serve to illustrate:

Connect 1 - Connect 2 - Connect 3 - Connect 4 - Connect 5 - Connect 6 - Connect 7 - Connect 8 - Connect 9

In turn, I’d like to tag David Gilmour, Don Ledingham, Donald McDonald, John Connel, & Ollie Bray.  These are the guidelines which have been passed on:

1. Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
2. Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
3. Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
4. Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

Ewan has come up with an interesting invitaion to cite examples of inspirational talks, lectures etc on video. The background to the idea is an initiative at LTS to watch, reflect upon and discuss the content. Among others, Ewan cited Ken Robinson’s outstanding 2006 TED talk, “Do schools kill creativity?”

My own suggestion is Professor Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture” at Carnegie Mellon University in Sept 2007. The title of the lecture is, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” At 76 mins, brevity is not its forte, but I’d defy anyone to remain uninspired or unaffected by this. Like Ken Robinson’s talk, the subject matter is serious but the tone is extremely humorous.

Why should religious music be of interest to our largely secular society? BBC 4’s Sacred Music, presented by Simon Russel Beale, visited Notre Dame de Paris to show how two innovations of the 12^th Century Notre Dame School underpin what has since come to be known as western classical music.

Members of early music specialist choir, The Sixteen and their director Harry Christophers, demonstrated music’s journey from homophonic (Int 2 concept) plainchant (H Music concept) to polyphony (Int 2 concept). Their lively, committed performances, which maximised the acoustics of Notre Dame’s Gothic architecture made it possible to believe that contemporary listeners would have experienced something of the vitality of the Punk revolution in the 1970s. This fresh approach was pioneered by Léonin and developed by his successor Pérotin.

Aside from the obvious connectivity between music and architecture, the links between music and science (notably physics) were explored. Composers, deciding which notes would best fit those already present in the setting of the plainchant would choose intervals (an Int 2 concept), in order, from the harmonic series i.e. 8ve, 5th & 4^th. Although the triad had not yet become the building block of Western harmony, the foundations of the genre had been laid.

Musicologist, Helen Deeming, enthusiastically outlined the possibilities afforded by the second innovation of the time, the development of musical notation. Although the words of the liturgy were written, the associated music was taught by rote and memorised. This meant that, were a new setting to be sent to another cathedral city, a singer, familiar with the music, would have to tag along to coach the choir. Now, the music could be sent and realised from afar.

There remain three more episodes of this promising series. Here are links to details of all episodes, an overview of the series and a reflection on the place of sacred music in a secular world.

Overview of the series

The four episodes: The Gothic Revolution; Palestrina And The Popes; Tallis, Byrd and The Tudors; Bach And The Lutheran Legacy

Richard Langham Smith, Head of Music at the Open University, writes eloquently on Sacred Music in a Secular World.