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?

There can be no more inauspicious a return to rural peripateticary than an exploding engine on Day One. When a water pump redirects its attention to cleaning the A1 instead of cooling the engine, terminal over-heating is not far off.

However, full marks to the member of the 4^th Emergency Service who, already more than an hour past his finishing time, towed me from perilous parking to Automobile A&E where a now inert Corsa sits patiently in triage. I often joke that I only bought it for the excellent sound system. Perhaps that’s all that remains of it.

I cannot recommend highly enough Alain de Botton’s The Consolations of Philosophy (particularly the chapter on Seneca) for enabling the embracing of such situations with Zen-like sanguinity.

I’m pleased to report that this happened on the way home from our In Service, where my belief that I work alongside some of the funniest people in the business was renewed.

Slightly more than one year after the idea was mooted, I managed to visit Robert Jones class in NBHS to observe a whiteboard in action*. A Credit Maths class was tightening its grip on the law of indices. Not only was I impressed with the effortless and effective use of the many functions of the whiteboard, but also with the Activote apparatus. This handheld, wireless tool enabled the class to vote on a multiple choice answer – the results being instantly called up in bar-chart form. My first thought on seeing this was that it would encourage uncertain pupils to engage, as it seemed anonymous. I say seemed as the stats are available to the teacher, enabling him/her to see if anyone is struggling or excelling. They are, it turns out, also available to the class if they so vote.

All the observation I’ve done to date has been serendipitous and usually takes the form of over-hearing/eavesdropping while printing from a computer in a Music classroom. What I tend to notice, possibly more than content, is language – not only the words but the tune. What appears to me to be best practice involves simple language**, quietly expressed. And this seems as true of classroom management as of delivery of lesson content. And it was certainly true yesterday. Drifting individuals were swiftly spotted and nudged back on task - sotto voce; the balance of praise, encouragement and prompting felt just right.

There is no formal mechanism for instrumental instructors to engage in observation. As far as I know, there is no formal mechanism for teachers to observe one another once probationary years have passed. However, based on yesterday’s experience, I feel it to be valuable for several reasons:

• there seem to me to be more common principles than significant differences across the curriculum - any primary teacher would tell you that teaching is teaching
• when you’ve taught your own subject for some years, there is perhaps more to be learned from observing the teaching of other subjects – any inspired moments I’ve experienced in the last few years have had their origins in fields other than music
• it’s unusual to see your pupils in another learning situation and, given our in loco parentis status, this strikes me as a little odd

* What was nice about this visit was that the idea came round again after we’d played through a few mandolin and guitar tunes at lunchtime

** While the pupils were engaged in a few exercises, I took the opportunity to pick up a book I’d spotted on Robert’s desk entitled The Physics of Sailing Explained, and read a few pages of the chapter on the weather and why it exists. This impressive read was the perfect compliment to the situation – concise, unambiguous sentences in the right order. It seemed so easy you felt you could have written it yourself.

One of the advantages of Google Reader is that it can draw your attention to something you’d otherwise have missed – such as Tom Rudolph’s Berklee Music Blog entitled Making The Most of Music Notation. To date there are seven posts – all very informative and intelligently set out with many useful hyperlinks. I’d recommend this blog – especially to those starting out in the the field of music notation technology.

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.

I was reminded of this quote today:

“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826); 3rd president of US.

The reason it came to mind was that while thinking about apparent serendipity, an alternative perception occurred to me which might best be summed up by a paraphrasing of the above quote as follows:

“I’m a great believer in serendipity, and I find the more connected I become the more frequently it occurs.”

While reading one of my favourite language blogs I was referred to a site entitled The Mnemosyne Project which aims, not only to provide a sophisticated free flash-card tool, but also to research into the nature of long-term memory. A few seconds earlier, I had been referred by Ewan McIntosh to Quizlet - another free vocabulary training tool. Both seem very impressive.

However, something about the url of The Mnemosyne Project rang a bell, and it soon came to me that it appears to be the work of the same talented, open-handed people who offer the free sound editing program, Audacity.

Audacity is loaded on many PCs in East Lothian schools. It was that program which I used to extract, amplify, bass boost and eventually fade out the short mp3 sample in this post. It sounds like a lot, but it was the work of seconds really.

I would imagine that any organisation offering this much to learning communities of whatever kind should be eligible for an award of some kind, at some point. Any ideas?

Today’s In Service featured a session on preparing for Associated Board exams - including a mock exam. A very courageous clarinet pupil called Emma - very well taught by Alison Loneski - stepped into the lion’s den and was put through her paces by our visiting speaker Margaret Murray McLeod. This live element enlivened the subsequent discussions, providing us with real rather than abstract considerations. A seasoned examiner both here and overseas, Ms Murray McLeod furnished many tips on preparation and presentation which resonated with the assembled staff.

In an attempt to refresh mind and body between school and a twilight Parents’ Evening, I recently spent an hour in the pool and health suite of North Berwick Sports Centre. In the steam room I found myself, inexplicably whistling*. Apart from the fantastic acoustic and the apparent contribution of the steam to the quality of sound, I wondered, “why is this so easy?” I’ve never been inclined to whistle and have probably whistled fewer than 40 seconds worth of music in as many years. Intrigued, I decided to push the envelope and put myself through a mock Grade 8 Whistling exam. I tested myself on ascending and descending scales (major, harmonic minor, melodic minor, whole tone & chromatic both forms of diminished & augmented) and then the remaining modes (dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian, aeolian, & locrian). Then came the turn of arpeggios (major, minor, dominant 7^th, minor 7^th, major 7^th, minor with major 7^th, diminished 7^th, major 6^th, minor 6^th). There were some tricky moments - notably the descending form of the augmented scale - but the vast majority seemed simply to be lying in wait, pret a siffler.

“Wait a minute,” I hear you cry, “you know the sound of these through your musical explorations over the years and have the benefit of a practised ear.” This is true but what is also true is that I’d have struggled to sing them. What intrigues me is that the entire musculature of whistling seemed in place, benefiting from neither interest nor training and must therefore be hard wired. Was there a time when it was commonly used for communication than today? Many will already have come across Silbo-Gomero, the whistling language used mainly by shepherds communicating with one another across the valleys of La Gomera Silbo. Does anyone out there know if this practice was once more widespread?

…interesting article on studies of brain patterns decoding whistling here suggesting that those who perceive music as a language process it using different brain regions.

Test your aural recognition of scales and modes here.

* I was the only person using the steam room at this point.

Thanks to Ewan McIntosh for a link to a Times Online article I’d otherwise have missed concerning Leonard Sax’s book Boys Adrift: The Five Factors* Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young MenThis is a massive field and one upon which I do not feel qualified authoritatively to comment. However, one claim in the article (not indicated as being a direct quote from the book) stopped me in my tracks and that was that boys do not hear as well as girls. My initial reaction was one of disbelief as my my experience of the playing by ear vs. playing from written music divide suggests that boys massively outnumber girls in preferring the former. There are side-effects: their reading suffers, but their memory improves. For a while the feeling of incongruity was ameliorated by the realisation that there is a world of difference between simply having a musical ear and being disposed to listening to instructions in class. However, the more I thought about this, the more omnipresent listening skills appeared to be:

• part of the selection process for instrumental instruction involves a multiple choice listening test
• much further down the line, Listening forms 1/3 of SQA Music courses and exams
• all external exam bodies include some kind of aural testing
• ensemble skills rely on a mixture of reading and taking cues through listening to the other parts
• although written parts convey expressive ideas, many decisions are arrived in rehearsal without further writing - the participants simply listen and remember

Instrumental instruction requires such a level of listening that, were that statement in the article to be true, girls would simply outnumber boys when it comes to lasting the course. I looked at the statistics for the five schools in my orbit and compiled the following:

Primary School 1 Boys 8.7%  Girls 91.3%

Primary School 2 Boys 50% Girls 50%

Secondary School 1 Boys 62.5% Girls 37.5%

Secondary School 2 Boys 47.5% Girls 52.5%

Secondary School 3 Boys 50% Girls 50%

N.B. No pupil was sawn into fractions in the compiling of these statistics. If anyone can advise me on how to insert a table into Wordpress, I’d be very gratful.

I’d be very interested to see a breakdown of statistics for other instruments taught by either gender. It should be borne in mind that other factors come into play e.g. which instruments have been taught in feeder primaries and how many musicians of either gender are already in the system when they arrive in secondary school, where the full compliment is on offer.

* Dr. Sax lists the The Five Factors Driving the Decline of Boys as:

Video Games. Studies show that some of the most popular video games are disengaging boys from real-world pursuits.

Teaching Methods. Profound changes in the way children are educated have had the unintended consequence of turning many boys off school.

Prescription Drugs. Overuse of medication for ADHD may be causing irreversible damage to the motivational centers in boys’ brains.

Endocrine Disruptors. Environmental estrogens from plastic bottles and food sources may be lowering boys’ testosterone levels, making their bones more brittle and throwing their endocrine systems out of whack.

Devaluation of Masculinity. Shifts in popular culture have transformed the role models of manhood. Forty years ago we had Father Knows Best; today we have The Simpsons.

One of my favourite destinations in the world is Dundee - no really! I’m referring specifically to the Dundee Guitar Festival (director - Allan Neave) where many a happy hour of CPD has been spent. This year, I’m pleased to see that former Knox Academy pupil Simon Thacker is giving a recital. There are also appearances by The Katona Twins from Hungary and Pavel Steidl from Czech Republic.

Download a brochure here (Dundee Guitar Festival 2008) or from the website where you can also access details of: artists appearing; details of teaching; location and travel details and the box office.