Wednesday’s edition of All In The Mind featured a study on the effect of rudeness (in the workplace) on creativity and productivity. The study by Amir Erez of the University of Florida and Christine Porath of the University of Southern California, discovered that even witnessing rudeness can affect cognitive performance, memory and incliantion to help out.
This discovery is at odds with our culture of humiliation as seen in Britain’s Got Talent; X Factor; The Weakest Link; Dragons’ Den; The Apprentice. The first two of these are extremely popular with pupils and, before hearing of this study, I often used to wonder what message was being conveyed when the response to ambition was often mere cruelty.
Listen again here, or else! The article is the second of three in the programme.
The depth in which a new musical concept is explained varies greatly depending on the age of the pupils. Often, the first encounter of a concept contains little in the way of technical data, the main concern being to see whether or not the pupils can hear the concept.
One such concept is tonality – or the idea of a piece of music being in a certain key. In the first instance I mention no more than the fact that in most pieces have there exists one note which is the leader, the centre and the foundation of the piece. This seems to do the trick. I play a short extract and pupils then rummage around the fingerboard until they locate the centre of the piece. The gravitational pull is usually sufficiently strong to ensure that most will eventually get there. In fact, the pull is so strong that the key note does not even have to be present in the tune. If you play this extract, you will hear what the key note (aka tonic) should be and that, in fact, should have been present as the final note: click
This fact bewilders most pupils. An implied planet cannot exert a gravitational pull, so how can a note do it? Normally an analogy would be pulled out here to illustrate the point. The problem is that I can’t think of a convincing one. The nearest I can get is that in certain sentences, a missing verb is so obvious that it feels more or less present:
He ****** the ball so hard that it broke the crossbar
But even this sentence has room for doubt.
Can anyone out there think of a parallel situation in another subject?
How many countries are there in the world? How many of these have a musical culture of which you’ve never heard a note? Would it strike you as odd if one of these countries was Iraq – a place with which we have been heavily involved? I had never heard any Iraqi music live and so was delighted to discover that Reel Festivals was putting on an evening of Music of Iraq at the Roxy Art House on Saturday. This formed part of their Reel Iraq Festival.
The evening featured Farida with the Iraqi Maqam Ensemble, supported by the Babylon Arabic Band. Both groups were very affectionately received and there was an engagingly enthusiastic, participatory feel. This video will give you some idea of Farida and the Iraqi Maqam Ensemble:
If you’ve never heard any Sufi music from Afghanistan you might like to catch a return visit to Edinburgh of the Ahmad Sham Sufi Qawali Group at the Roxy Art House on Tue 26th May. I saw this group in a fantastic performance in The Queens Hall last year. Here is an excerpt of the email which alerted me to the upcoming event:
The Ahmad Sham Sufi Qawali group is the most famous Qawali group in Afghanistan at the moment. They will be performing at the Roxy Art House on Tuesday, May 26th. The doors will open at 6.30 and music should begin around 7.30. We aim to convert the Roxy into as close an approximation of an Afghan Sufi house as possible for this. As such we won’t have a fixed price for entry, but will ask for £5 suggested donation. More of course will be much appreciated by the sufi group, all money will go towards covering their costs and any left over will be donated to an Afghan Charity. Last year the group raised £7000, which they donated to widows and children disabled by war.
And here is a taster:
David Byrne writes eloquently, resonantly and, in one sense, optimistically about the future of the recording industry in the indented paragraph contained here.
If I feel as nimble as he appears to when I’m 56, I’ll be chuffed:
It’s always special to take part in concerts in a school you attended as a child - one obvious element is that you bump into people you’ve known for quite a long time.
I was especially happy with the performance of the Knox Academy Guitar Group this evening’s Spring Concert. The piece was rhytmically tricky, relying upon fierce concentration but, once on stage, it felt more as though the group had secured the right feeling for the piece. Not only had many of the members performed 6 pages of music on Friday night as members of the East Lothian Guitar Ensemble, but several of them were instrumental (and/or vocal) in many other ensembles this evening.
Here is a clip of us during our rehearsal this morning: pick-up-the-pieces
If ever there were a good reason for a Homecoming it would be to hear this beautiful rendition of Burns’ Ca The Yowes, sung by Zoe in S5 along with some of North Berwick High School’s guitarists: ca-the-yowes
You’d imagine that a job which entails 52 practical lessons and three rehearsals per week would feel repetitive. Well, I suppose it does in the same way that breathing feels repetitive but, as Burns might say, the deil’s in the detail. Timing is everything, resulting in some days feeling qualitatively different from others. Yesterday was a case in point. To paraphrase a sporting cliché, it was a game of three thirds.
Morning
Teaching in a school with the biggest variety of experience possible – S1 players who began in S1 and S6 players who began in P5. Practical exams behind us, more experienced pupils* could concentrate on repertoire for the East Lothian Guitar Ensemble (ELGE).
Afternoon
Final rehearsal of ELGE before next Friday’s Showcase Concert. The tiredness often seen at these Friday afternoon rehearsals was nowhere to be seen and, to coin an inelegant but accurate phrase, the pupils were really knocking hell out of the music – where appropriate, of course 
There was no discussion about where to put fingers, technique etc. It was all about balance, articulation, mood, feeling – about enjoying the experience and conveying that enjoyment to the audience.
Evening
2nd of three performances of Guys & Dolls at NBHS. My role in this is simply to play bass guitar and, as I become more familiar with the part and the cues, I can begin to enjoy the on-stage action more and more. Last night the worrying spectre of illness haunted the cast and the possibility of leading characters simply not being well enough to make their next cue was palpable. Given the commitment and teamwork this really has to be the most unfair piece of luck possible. However, I would defy anyone in the audience to have noticed. This really was the most inspirational illustration of the word trouper I’m aware of having witnessed.
* some of these experienced pupils are in S1
Listening to the latest edition of Leading Edge on the topic of the unreliability of memory, I was prompted to wonder how accurate my own memory is and some of the assumptions which rest upon these memories.
Specifically, I don’t recall being frequently tired as a teenager. Looking into a sea of pale, tired, distracted faces at yesterday’s East Lothian Guitar Ensemble rehearsal, I found myself wondering if, in my high expectations, I have conveniently forgotten exactly what feels like to be that age. In the end, a productive and encouraging rehearsal emerged from an underwhelming beginning. However, early in the rehearsal, I found myself wondering if we are going about this in the right way. Is Friday* afternoon the best time for a 2-hour rehearsal sandwiched by 30-minute bus journeys?
The edition of Leading Edge can be heard here until Thu 26th at 21.30 – scroll forward to 9:00 for memory articles featuring Karl Sabbagh, Martin Conway and a consideration of the effect of high blood sugar and memory, along with links between memory and attention.
* many instructors are not employed on a Friday
These few thoughts began as a reply to a comment of David Gilmour’s on a post. As is often the case, the search for one illustrative link unearthed enough to necessitate a discrete post. The initial aim had been simply to launch one more ingredient into the mix of reflections on literacy currently taking place in the profession. In essence, the question was which, if either, is more literate: reading fingerings off the page or reading the movements of a hand on a video?
Although an ardent fan of traditional musical literacy I’ve lately begun to wonder if pupils might benefit from a supplementary option - watching the hands in a close-up video performance of pieces they are preparing – specifically ensemble material, where the moves they are required to internalise account for only a fraction of the overall sound. Preliminary canvassing of a few pupils suggest that they feel that this might be helpful.
I began to wonder about the role that mirror neurons might play in this and, in my search, stumbled upon this explanatory video. In the year of Darwin’s bicentenary, the question would seem to be, “why look an evolutionary gift-horse in the mouth?”
This train of thought is something of a slow burner, as this letter to New Scientist about this article in Feb 2001 might suggest.
While searching for links for the YouTube links – general page, I stumbled upon this fascinating video entitled The Sounds of the Alphabet depicting one synaesthete’s perception of the alphabet.
One might imagine that the mixing of sense which constitutes synaesthesia could act as an impediment to focus and achievement. However, one look at this Who’s Who of synaesthetes should soon dispel that notion.
