Alan Coady’s Musical Blog

Today saw the culmination of an experiment whose purpose was to reduce the agonising wait between applying for guitar instruction and getting the results. The beneficiaries were several classes of P5 pupils in two primary schools and, to make this possible, pupils from P6 to S6 sacrificed their first lesson of the session. Consequently, no P5 pupil had to wait more than 48 hours to find if they were able to squeeze into the limited spaces. In previous years, the wait has been more like 8 weeks because the testing time lasted only as long as the P5 teaching time – 2 x 30mins per school per week.

Overall, I’d say it was a success. From the point of view of the pupils this seems clear. From the point of view of their class teachers, they traded in low-level, lasting disruption for a constant but shorter variety. From my own point of view, I feel that the testing process was much quicker for not being a stop/start affair: the room and instruments were laid out, ready to go; one group of pupils followed hot on the heels of another; the vocabulary was fresh in the mind and the whole thing seemed to race along. From the point of view of those who missed a lesson, all I can say is that, if you have to miss one, the first one after summer is the one to choose. Pupils are instructed to have a rest from playing in the summer in the hope of returning refreshed and eager. This rest usually lasts right up until the first lesson so let’s hope the process of refamiliarisation with the instrument has been blossoming this week.

On an anecdotal note, it was nice to spend so much time in primary schools – the norm is only one day per week. I may be imagining this but primary schools feel more cohesive than their secondary counterparts – perhaps by necessity and very possibly due to size. There are also more spontaneous and smiley “hellos” in the corridor from pupils one doesn’t teach - and more engagement from pupils you don’t know. Primary pupils seem to feel that any member of staff is fair game to ask for and offer help - and somehow that feels right.

Thanks to Random Acts of Reality (an ambulance drivers blog) for the link to this story of mind-boggling extensions to copyright law in Canada.

Like buses, synchronicity comes in threes. John Connell recently led me to an article in which Nicholas Carr asks Is Google Making Us Stupid? This Sunday, I came across Brian Appleyard’s piece in The Times, Stoooopid….why the Google generation isn’t as smart as it thinks. The next concentration-based piece I spotted, in a section called Emily’s News on the site of Scotland’s Centre for Confidence and Well-being, was entitled You may not see it, but TV is affecting children.

The last of these three articles, which deals specifically with very young children, is relatively straightforward. The previous two contain so many variables that it’s difficult to see this debate coming to an end any time soon – but it is surely a very good thing that it is taking place. My own view is that, before worrying too much about difficulty of reading lengthy articles online, a few parameters need to be set. I skim through a great deal on the net, often in the living room with the TV or radio on (sometimes both); my email & feed-reader sit open along with a correspondence-chess website. However, I consider this to be searching as opposed to reading. I would no more sit with my laptop, struggling to read an in-depth piece in a distraction-filled environment, than I would with a book. I’d retire to somewhere quieter, having set aside the time to concentrate. If that weren’t possible, I’d send the url to myself in an email, paste the text into a word processing application, or bookmark the page with del.ici.ous and read it later.

I spend more time online than many people I know and, to the best of my knowledge, my concentration is no worse than before. With books easer to track down, and reviews easier to garner online than off, I probably read more books now than at any time in my life. In school, I teach 52 lessons-per-week and don’t find myself suddenly wondering what I was saying, or who these people are in front of me. However, at 48 years old, my formative years were over long before the internet began to impact on my modus operandi. Has enough time elapsed to tell what effect, if any, has been wrought on young people’s concentration? Currently, they spend as long as I do in class; they sit in silent exam halls for as long as ever; as far as I’m aware, a football match still lasts 90 minutes….

The synchronicity was kept alive when I came to a captivating story this morning entitled The Last Channel by Italo Calvino – from an outstanding collection of stories entitled Numbers In The Dark. Without spoiling this almost Kafkaesque tale, I can reveal that the protagonist allows his habit of channel-hopping with the remote to escalate to monumental proportions. However, even he appears to be searching and not watching. If your brain is not e-addled, you may be up to reading it in parallel text.

Thanks to Ewan for flagging up this inspirational talk on education and change by Sir Ken Robinson. It coincided with his being presented with the Benjamin Franklin Medal on Monday. Sponsored by Edge (not that one, the other one), the talk, given at the RSA is available in mp3 format for the moment, with a video to follow here soon. Although slides are referred to in the talk, you can get by without visuals - with the possible exception of the moment where Earth is compared to other stars & planets.

If you haven’t already seen it, I can’t recommend highly enough Ken Robinson’s TED talk. His book Out Of Our Minds: Learning To Be Creative, is on my reading list.

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.

Got a spare 15 minutes? Would you like to take part in a national, online survey about how people listen to music? The mission of Feeling Sound Musiclab is to test how we perceive music – and also to gauge the nation’s favourite chord – the result of which will be used to commission a new piece of music.

Why not read about the project, about the staff involved or take the test?

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.”

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.

The goal of polyrhythmic drummers is four way independence. Horacio Hernandez seems to have mastered five way independence - his left foot doubling up on hi hat and cowbell: