Alan Coady’s Musical Blog

From the impressive Open Culture Blog - this huge list of free, online language resources.

I’m not sure how true it is, but this is a great sentence:

“The definition of a lecture has become the process in which the notes of the teacher go to the notes of the student without going through the brains of either.”

More here.

Increasingly, differences between some aspects of the real and virtual worlds feel virtually negligible – with one notable exception. Walking past the bookshelves in the hall, my eye is frequently caught by the spines of books I hope soon to read or re-read. Undeservedly neglected blogs seem to reach out less and I often return to one to find a treasure trove of fascinating reading/watching/listening/testing matter. One such is Music Matters* – a music cognition blog put together by Henkjan Honing of the University of Amsterdam.

This morning’s visit threw up the following topics:

How well would you do as an expert?

Can music cognition save your life?

Gene for music?

Although apparently published last week, this study was thrown my way by Hilery Williams last term!

Can you point at it?

Is beat induction special? (Part 5)

Does rhythm make our bodies move?

Infant-direct speech

* somewhat confusingly, this is also the name of weekly podcast in my feed-reader from the Radio 3 programme of the same name.

Thursday, being World Book Day, I took my current read into school, as suggested – Proust And The Squid by Maryanne Wolf. Although it is pure coincidence of timing, it seemed to me that there could be no book more fitting. Aware that the title did not automatically yield clues to content, I said simply, “it’s about reading and the brain.” Most pupils had a quick look at the front cover. Only one, a girl in S1, read the back cover – and then said, “cool.”

I thought that this would be the ideal opportunity to conduct a short survey on reading habits. The aim was to have four straightforward questions and for the entire process to last 30 seconds, so as not to intrude on lesson time. The sample group represent, I would contend, the motivated pupil – people prepared to carry an instrument to school at least once-a-week; prepared to practise 5 days-a-week at home; prepared to catch up on work missed while at their instrumental lesson; prepared to spend lunchtimes and Friday afternoons rehearsing in school and local authority ensembles; prepared to represent the school in several concerts each year.

The sample comprised 23 pupils – 13 boys and 10 girls – the age range S1 – S6. Percentages have been rounded up/down to the nearest whole number.

Question 1:   Apart from school reading, are you reading anything else – for interest or pleasure?

Whole group - 48%      Boys - 38%      Girls - 80%

Question 2:   Is there a book which you plan to get round to reading?

Whole group - 65%      Boys - 54%      Girls - 80%

Question 3:   Do you ever read a book more than once?

Whole group - 48%      Boys - 23%      Girls - 80%

Question 4:   Do you enjoy writing – anything at all – even funny emails to friends?

Whole group - 52%      Boys - 31%      Girls - 80%

The difference is those currently reading for pleasure and those planning to read could be explained by the timing of the survey – various SQA folios were due in by the end of the week; the SQA Music practical exams were imminent. The interest in re-reading seemed the most straightforward way of trying to distinguish those who read to find out what happened next from those who experienced some joy in the language or created world within any given book. Almost without exception, the response to being asked about enjoying writing was, “school stuff?” The tone implied horror at the very suggestion that this could be enjoyable. Perhaps this conveyed a feeling of being beset by deadlines.

Assuming that we all believe reading and writing to be good things, it seems clear that boys are missing out somewhat.

Had the survey been about dance, the statistics would have been more stark. It seems that almost all girls on my timetables are involved in some kind of dance activity in or out of school. To the best of my knowledge no boys are.

I spent Friday afternoon at NBHS in a very enjoyable, whole school CAT/CPD event on Literacy. One of the features I especially enjoyed was the cross-curricular nature. I often find myself questioning the wisdom of our discrete Instrumental Instructor In Service days, wondering if so much micro at the expense of macro is a good thing, given the direction in which Scottish Education is currently heading.

The event comprised two sections:

• all staff - randomly grouped - discussing and sharing what we considered literacy to mean at various age groups from 0 to 25 – led by Karen Haspolat (QIO) and Mary Howie (Literacy Adviser).

• a chosen workshop from a list of five – I chose How We Learn To Read presented by Hilery Williams

Within a few minutes of discussing our given age group (13-16) it became clear that the definition of literacy was becoming boundless and our post-its included the following literacies: traditional; digital/web; musical; physical; social; inter/intra personal; foreign language; political; sexual (meaning - sense of appropriate behaviour); moral; economic. Many of these quickly necessitated sub categories. Language, for example, distinguished between reading, writing, listening & talking, while Music featured playing, listening, composing/arranging/improvising. Both also contain higher order skills such as critical commentary/review; pastiche; a sense of appropriate register e.g. is this level of irony suitable for a wedding ceremony?; or is a pipe band the best medium for this lullaby? I was very impressed with the presentation of each group’s findings which, without exception, seemed comprehensive – even although the given age range may have fallen quite far outside the area of professional expertise.

How We Learn To Read was entirely hands-on and practical - and fun. Hilery guided us through them with a gentle hand, which sustained a sense of challenge, and an infectious joie de vivre which belied the time of the week and the previous day’s house move! The activities had been very well designed and selected to allow us to discover, often by stealth, how we may have accrued the various literacy skills which we now take for granted. A vital part of that discovery necessitated discussing the strategies that we had used to arrive at our answers. Having turned 49 that day it struck me that my formal introduction to reading had begun 44 years before and that I had very few memories of the process – although I can recall sounding out and seem to remember using a book mark to discourage the eye from wandering into the wrong line. Again, I felt that the cross curricular nature of the teams accelerated rather than impeded effective team-work. Our table featured Art; Modern Languages; Computing; Guidance & Instrumental Teaching.

Throughout the tasks, I tried to keep a corner of my mind free to consider the parallels (no matter how inchoate) between traditional and musical literacy. The first activity involved concentrating on syllabification by means of a jigsaw whose individual pieces contained only one syllable. Within seconds of the pieces being spilled out, I found myself gravitating towards syllables which could only be found at the end of words. Why this should be I remain unsure – particularly as the capitalised beginnings ought to have stood out more. Fortunately our mercurial Modern Languages teacher had already identified and lined up the beginnings and pretty soon we were all able to predict the syllables we needed to find to complete the four words. It was interesting to note how prediction played as much a part as identification in this task. This is certainly a feature of musical sight-reading. Perhaps my fascination with endings constitutes one of the parallels with musical literacy. I would contend that one of the first steps in playing a phrase musically is to make the ending sound like an ending. It is an easier notion to grasp than making the middle sound like a middle or the beginning like a beginning. This has implication for interpretation, performance, composing/arranging. One level of listening would be for pupils to consider what it is about the content of a particular passage that makes it sound like an ending. A slightly more tricky one could include the question, “what is it about the content here which makes it seem that the ending is just around the corner?”

I won’t divulge here the contents of every activity undertaken, lest there remain readers who have yet to undergo them. Suffice to say that there were many more than time allowed and I’d have enjoyed doing several more.

I hope to engage in further consideration with Hilery of the parallels between our respective literacies as I have an intuition that the similarities may well outweigh the differences. More immediately, I’d say I have been inspired to devise more games for lessons as the animation they bring to learning is undeniable.

Games already in use can be seen here:

1    2    3    4    5

I decided to spend the last day of this week off attending a CPD event laid on by ELC. Delivered by Park Sims Associates, the course was entitled Read Faster, Read Smarter and its stated aim was to help “all who want to get through their reading at work faster and smarter.”

I was hoping that there would be some straightforward ocular content as this would surely be transferable (to some degree) to the reading of music. I was not disappointed in this respect and hope to share that (and this) with colleagues at Monday’s In Service.

I’ve no wish here merely to post online the content of a course honed over years by fellow professionals, so let it suffice to say that it was as good an example of active learning as I’ve seen. Many of the tasks had been cleverly designed to highlight a particular point by stealth, so that the habits of a lifetime, which often conspire to impede us, might be circumvented.

Well presented handouts were abundant, allowing us to concentrate on the task at hand which, I think the 16 delegates would agree, was at times very challenging. However, no-one in their right mind, would expect a physical skill to fall into place in a matter of hours. Like most skills, speed reading consists of a variety of strategies and an intuitive application of the appropriate one comes only with experience.

I look forward to developing what I learned today and, hopefully, to exploring further the parallels with written music. Having had some intensive concentration on visual intake, I feel now may be the time to seek out a book written by one of the presenters of Tune-In: Music with the Brain in Mind - “The Eye: A Natural History” by Simon Ings.

On a day where news broadcasts debate the disengagement of some young people from science (scroll down to 0720), I was heartened to receive an email alerting me to the publication of an article entitled The Rhythmic Brain by Katie Overy & Robert Turner. Both contributed to a fascinating conference I attended at Edinburgh University in December*. Put simply, the article touches upon connections between music – specifically rhythm – and language, evolution, neuroscience, psychology, learning, memory & genetics.

What disappoints me in some attempts to convince young people of the relevance of science is the all too easy citation of computer games. I tend to agree more with Quentin Cooper who opines that “science is a perspective.” There is a scientific aspect to everything. That’s why I applaud the efforts of organisations like The Wellcome Collection and Edge to heal the rift between sciences and the humanities and pursue The Third Culture. I am strengthened in this belief that some of the best writing on music is the work of scientists – a great many of whom are musicians.

Consider this extract from the aforementioned article:

Rhythm is a basic organising principle of music, providing a strict temporal framework for an infinite variety of playful and expressive musical behaviours, from clapping and dancing in a group to a virtuosic violin solo. This temporal organisation exists on a number of hierarchical levels (the pulse, the bar, the phrase), allowing for the simplest forms of synchronisation and prediction as well as highly complex, large-scale musical structures.

Music is a difficult topic on which to write – precisely because it conveys in seconds what words would take minutes to describe. I would argue that the distillation of content in the short paragraph above is nothing short of poetic.

* My intention had been to write up the conference but, as it was built around a book entitled Communicative Musicality, I think it would be better to write on the book once I’ve read it.

So, how was it for you? I’m referring to Blue Monday the day of the year we are meant to feel as despondent as it’s possible to be. Frankly, I didn’t find it too bad. Of course the flurry of snow, cleverly referred to as sleet or even rain by some teachers, caused lasting distraction for many young pupils. I find it quite touching to see such elemental animation. In years to come, these same children will look out of the window and utter inspiringly, “and I’ve just washed the car, as well,” or “that washing’s never going to dry now!”

I also managed to book myself onto a course in speed reading, generously put on by ELC. I’ll post more about that, at frightening speed, when it’s over. I imagine that almost all of it will be to do specifically with words but I wonder if there will be any general ocular facts which would be relevant to music reading.

Speaking of reading – allow me to scatter, for your delectation, links to a cauldron of contentious miscellany, loosely relevant to education, internet, the mind and moods.

A. C. Grayling calls for universities to endorse trustworthy websites and flag up the erroneous

Contributors to Wikipedia are thought to be closed and disagreeable

Misery can be good for you

The mind may not exist solely in the brain. What?! I can’t get my own one around that

p.s. the title of this post comes from one of the finest jazz/blues/big band albums of all time by Oliver Nelson

One of the joys of reading and writing blogs is the feeling of things linking together. The apparent link between ideas, topics, resources etc. may be ephemeral or even illusory, but who cares? If it sparks some vaguely creative thinking then its half-life has not been in vain. The following paperless-chase occurred within the space of a few hours:

Alex Ross, award winning author of The Rest Is Noise, flagged up two interesting videos on minimalist composer Steve Reich. These were housed courtesy of Pitchfork who also have an archive of music videos, including this creative piece entitled Furr by Blitzen Trapper. The video style reminded me somewhat of Terry Gilliam and The Mighty Boosh – but also of the excellent explanatory videos offered up by Common Craft. What I feel these three sources of video have in common (no pun intended) has to do with the following phrase:

“you make it look so easy!”

This phrase, depending on inflection, can point in two opposing directions:

• you have made this look so easy that I feel inspired to have a go

• it’s easy for you – there’s no way I’ll ever be able to do that

Now, it’s difficult to say how much of this is in the mindset of the beholder as opposed to the intention of the practitioner, but the collage-based, low-budget (in the most positive sense of the word) work of the above people seems, to me at any rate, to embody the spirit of the former interpretation.

That’s why, a few hours later, I was inspired to see this post on the blog of David Gilmour – the technical brains* behind eduBuzz. What struck me particularly were the plans to use Flip video in primary schools. It’s clear that the aforementioned, collage-based videos are the fruit of skillful, painstaking and artistic editing as opposed merely to point-and-shoot but, nevertheless, I feel that the mood and spirit of them is what is being hoped for. It’s certainly what I imagine in my hope that primary school instrumentalists (and those responsible for them) can be convinced to film their definitions of musical concepts for wordia.

Those who have winced at the awful and forced puns I’ve contrived to use as blog post titles over the last couple of years will hopefully share my admiration for the titular imagination of this fantastic film, directed by Erik Werner. The song, by Christian Kiefer, comes from the album Of Great and Mortal Men – 43 Songs for 43 U.S. Presidents and the song is called Washington Dreams of the Hippopotamus.

* it is possible that being known as “the technical brains” can suggest that the bearer is at one remove from the inspiration, ideology and artistry of a project – in the case of David Gilmour and eduBuzz, nothing could be further from the truth.

Members of the public rarely see the orchestral score of a symphony - certainly not before its premier. In what must be a first, Universal Edition have published an e-score of Symphony No. 4 by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, which receives its premier by the LA Philharmonic next month.

The score contains no audio facility and is tricky to navigate but that is to look a gift horse in the mouth. To see on e-paper the inner-workings of the distinctive sound of Pärt’s music feels like some kind of privilege.

Chasing the links for this post turned into a joyous example of what I earlier referred to as pinball reading. I first came across the story on the blog of Alex Ross – winner of the Guardian First Book Award for The Rest Is Noise. He rightly cites Tom Service of Radio 3’s Music Matters as his source. In my search for a link to the LA Philharmonic I came across this 13-minute video from CBS News (the only news site to advertise Viagra??) on the orchestra’s new conductor Gustavo Dudamel. In the film he describes his gratitude for El Sistema in which he was tutored, along with plans for a similar programme in LA.  Will El Sistema continue to grow beyond Caracas, Los Angeles & Stirling?