Alan Coady’s Musical Blog

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.

New Pupil Performance mp3s have been added to the Knox Academy page.

Thanks to Ewan McIntosh for pointing me in the direction of this post by Donald Clark. Citing 1976 research by A. H Johnstone and F. Percival into attention span in 90 Chemistry lectures, with 12 different lecturers, it describes the highs and lows of attention in a 60-minute lecture.

• 2-3 minutes to settle down
• 10-18 minutes of attention
• progressively shorter attention periods, dropping to 3-4 minutes towards end

These conclusions were not formed by an impression of attention but by the subjects’ ability to recall content.

The reason this grabbed my attention is that, following a long period of evolution, all my lessons across a 5-school orbit, last 30 minutes. Allowing time for pupils to travel from the previous class, unpack and then reverse these features in order to return punctually, the hands on instrument time must be around 22 minutes. For many pupils, this feels about the right time.

All Guitar Group rehearsals, except those of the East Lothian Guitar Ensemble*, last 30 minutes. If pupils arrive on time, set up quickly, engage and play well it’s not unknown for them to be released in 15-20 minutes – particularly as the concert approaches and the spectre of staleness taps at the window (where the luxury of a window exists).

Yet, curiously, the reason we migrated from 35- or 40-minute lessons to 30 minutes, is that general school timetabling has gone in the opposite direction – all periods in the secondary schools I visit are now 60 minutes long. Apart from this simply being too long for an instrumental lesson and too long for pupils to be out of class, this would permit only six instrumental lessons per day and so it seemed natural to opt for 12 x 30-minute lessons-per-day – so natural in fact that I can’t recall discussion seeming necessary in any school.

Does this mean that we have been blessed with the ideal length by virtue of our colleagues veering blindly in the wrong direction? Well, only if it was still 1976 and if school teaching resembled the kind of university lecture where one person was active while the others listened in reverential silence, their most dynamic input being the taking of notes**.

Donald Clark writes interestingly about Tyrannies of Time one of which rings a bell with me – the dip in performance which some pupils seem to experience when their lesson immediately follows lunch. In such cases, I ask the pupils if they’d mind my asking what they had for lunch, and my fears that a matrix of E-numbers has brought about the cognitive dip are usually groundless.

* Contrastingly, and for purely practical reasons the six annual East Lothian Guitar Ensemble rehearsals take place from 1:30 – 3:30 – minus time for pupils, transported from distant schools to walk from the drop-off point to the venue – minus tidying up time – minus a break in the middle – well it is a Friday afternoon, after all.

** During my five years at music college, my note-taking habits changed from the frenzied assembly of a wretched, illegible and barely revisited scrawl, to simply listening, empty-handed. In the end, I could no longer see the point in inaccurately recreating what already existed in the library, at the cost of my ability to concentrate and enjoy the lecture.

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.

New Pupil Performance mp3s have been added to the North Berwick High School page.

Despite having been a pupil at Knox for 5 years and having taught there at least one day-per-week for 25.5 years, the first time I sat through an entire concert in the school hall was last Friday. Normally, I’m on stage or backstage with pupils or en route between the two.

So it was a real pleasure to sit, free of duties, through a Lamp of Lothian concert featuring the O Duo. The duo comprises former Knox lad, Oliver Cox and musical partner, Owen Gunnell, on percussion – yes, it’s a percussion duo.

The presentation and the patter of duo was very inviting and the playing both entertaining and virtuosic. With the boys’ blessing, I recorded the concert as an aide memoir to writing a review which the Lamp of Lothian will submit to The East Lothian Courier.

It then occurred to me that posting a couple of samples here might benefit:

• The O Duo – encouraging people to check out the concert dates & CD on their website
• The Lamp of Lothian – an example of one of the many concerts they put on throughout the year – entry to which is free for pupils
• Knox Academy – perhaps an under-rated and over-looked venue – these mp3 samples were recorded on a Zoom H2 at the back of the hall

Hopefully these short samples will prove that there’s more to a percussion duo than hitting things with sticks.

Bongo Fury (composed by O Duo); Bongo Fury Alborada del Gracioso (Ravel); Alborada Courante Courante & Gigue Gigue from French Suite No. 5 in G BWV 816 (Bach); Etude in C# minor, Op. 10 No. 4; Chopin Sonata No. 90 (Soler); Soler Flight of the Bumblebee; (Rimsky-Korsakov); Flight of BB

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?

What constitutes the perfect voice? Is it totally subjective or can the ingredients be isolated and described objectively?

According to research carried out on behalf of Post Office Telecom it is possible to be very precise about this. Perhaps not surprisingly, the research was carried by two people who can count music among the many strings on their bows:

• Andrew Linn – lecturer in linguistics and phonetics at Sheffield University, and accomplished organist
• Shannon Harris -sound engineer and keyboard player with, among others, Lily Allen and Rod Stewart.

Shannon Harris, speaking to James Naughtie on Radio 4’s Today described the research procedure. Fifty unknown voices were played to participants and the common traits of favoured voices noted:

1. good bass frequency response – between 35.5Hz and 12.2 KHz
2. a delivery speed 160 words per minute – with a gap of 0.5 sec between phrases
3. an intonation contour which goes downwards! (take note, fans of AQI/HRT – no not that one, the other one*)

This information proved sufficient to synthesise the perfect male and female voice, both of which can be heard here.

Presumably to give these findings some popular meaning, well known voices featuring some or all of these were listed. They included:

• Judi Dench
• Michael Gambon
• Mariella Frostrup
• Alan Rickman
• Jeremy Irons

You’ll note the complete absence of national/regional accents and also of context. Would dozens of orators using RP or SBS be suitable in the Scottish Parliament or Welsh Assembly? Would Alan Rickman make a convincing drill sergeant? Could Juni Dench comfortably MC a Hip-Hop festival?

James Naughtie asserted - correctly in my view - that what people were looking for was a voice, reading with understanding and meaning. In the context of teaching, an individual teacher’s delivery would surely change depending on where in the 3-18 continuum they were placed.

It seems clear that the voice was being regarded as an de-contextualised instrument. No composer would cite any single instrument as the perfect one without knowing the setting and the emotional intention. The harpsichord is not a great instrument for marching to war and bagpipes are rarely booked for dinner jazz.

*Stephen Fry consigned Australian Questioning Intonation aka High Rising Terminal to Room 101 on BBC 2. Interestingly the researchers report that this sound suggests a lack of confidence. Viewed thus, it is not surprising that is is mainly the domain of teenagers for whom fitting in and confidence are big issues. Contrastingly, David Crystal, a prolific writer on language, considers that AQI is favoured by young people as it sounds inviting and inclusive and because, generally, young people are more interested in meeting new people and making new friends than older people whose family and social networks are perhaps happily in place.

Everyone in Scottish education will now be aware of the four capacities of A Curriculum for Excellence. The thing is barely off the ground yet but today, having seen it in action, I felt the need for a fifth – Ambassadors.

I was invited by Erika MacLaughlan, DHT of Musselburgh Burgh PS, to bring a couple of guitarists from Wallyford PS to provide a support act for the Krakow Youth Jazz Band who were visiting their school. The KYJB comprised students and staff from Krakowska Szkoła Jazzu i Muzyki Rozrywkowej (Krakow School of Jazz and Contemporary Music).

Being a hands across the sea event, the pupils, Andrew & Connor, bravely agreed to bi-lingual introductions and took turns at announcing and translating in Polish and English. They played a morning and afternoon concert to pupils from Burgh, Wallyford, Pinkie, Campie & Stoneyhill and also some Polish pupils from Musselburgh Grammar School. I think it’s not stretching things to say that the boys were great ambassadors for their school, their town and their country. They really enjoyed being around the band. It was a stroke of luck that their guitarist, Arek, was a live wire, a virtuoso player and a friendly guy.

I received a gift from Poland as a gesture of thanks from the band and it was nice to be able to offer them something in return – mp3 recordings of this afternoon’s concert which I have emailed to the Dyrektor of the Krakowska Szkoła, Grzegorz Motyka – another guitarist! I hope the recordings will bring back memories of their trip to Scotland. Unfortunately there was no-one to hand to record Connor & Andrew but you can hear them here.

Before returning to Krakow, the band will making an appearance at The Jazz Bar, Chambers St., Edinburgh, this Sunday at 3.00. This event is free of charge and I’d recommend anyone keen on jazz to get along if they can. Accompanied 14-18 yr old young people are welcome. Here’s a little taster of what you can expect: Sample

A combination of Activities Week, Study Leave and several trips allowed me time to get wired in about reports for one of two primary schools. The format of these is more like free prose than your online Filemaker/Freemis set-up. As they were to be emailed to the school for proof-reading (by the fastest proof-reader I’ve ever met) I merged 22 of them into one attached document. This allowed me to have an idea of the total word count. Allowing for headings, sub-headings etc. it weighed in at 5,040.

When I was a student, that would have been considered a dissertation and would have been the work of a term - or longer. Writing, merging, formatting and emailing was more a matter of hours. It’s funny how technology, combined with the simple fact of getting older can raise your game.

What’s also interesting is how problematic situations can help to hone your prose style. Praise can be quick and compact. It seems to me that highlighting a problem requires you to describe: problem; consequence; solution – in less than three times the space.

Stravinsky put it much better. (you may need to opt for full screen if you are using a feed reader)