Rachel Harney

MUS 354
April 14, 2009

Teaching Musicianship

As read in a previous article by Reynolds, our goal as teachers is to

educate our students musically. Great, now what does that mean? Should we

just have a checklist of the national standards on our desk and try to get to every

one of them by the end of the day, week, semester, or year? Should our focus be

on performance skills guiding students towards an understanding and

appreciation of music? I would have to say that we need to incorporate as much

musical teaching we can into our rehearsals and develop creative ways to teach

so that we cover the national standards. Do I think we should eliminate the large

ensemble and replace it with technology? Absolutely not! The large ensemble

may seem outdated by some, but this profession is constantly growing and

providing opportunities to help our students grow as well.

The Williams article was a good article for one reason; it made us think

about what we are really teaching in the large ensemble setting. It is true that

most of us were taught through two maybe three of the national standards. I think

he wanted to point out that technology is a major part of society and for us to

ignore technology completely shrinks our opportunities. I definitely do not agree

with him about doing away with the large ensemble. While the standards may not

include this, I think it is very important for students to experience the aesthetic

connection to the music, the joy of playing. I know many classes assign group

projects, but the large ensemble is a group project every day. There’s a great
amount of teamwork and accountability involved in performing a piece of music

and if students cant not play in band, then they really miss out on an experience.

Battisti’s article was actually very similar to the Williams article in that it

challenged what we teach. At the time, it seems as though they had slightly

different goals. This was written before the publication of the national standards.

He believes that the “role of the band program is to assist every student in the

development of his or her potential to create, understand, and appreciate music.”

One can see how these developed into the national standards. The Dodson

article also refers to teaching comprehensive musicianship. Both articles discuss

how directors are emphasizing the performance skills aspect. Directors are not

guiding students to musical understanding. Battisti points out that we need to and

must choose quality music. If we choose quality music for them to play, they will

grow an appreciation for listening to quality music in the future. I agree that

marching band usually does not consist a good musical diet. Most high schools

choose three pop songs and call it a day. I do not think we will ever be able to

completely disregard marching, however, because this is the ensemble that

attracts most of our students. I do agree that it is unfortunate that emphasis is

taken away from the concert bands during this time.

Dodson makes a couple good points in his article. As mentioned before,

he believes in this comprehensive musicianship. He also mentioned that most

directors believe in this form of education and want to bring it their rehearsals,

but that the pressure for a good performance at a concert still overrides a

comprehensive education for most. I think he makes a very good point.

 So, after reading and thinking about all three of the articles, I have tried to

come up with ways to incorporate them when I have a classroom. I think the

technology aspect is very important and I think it sad that most of us do not even

know how use most of recording equipment out there. Just think, recording music

has been around for ages and as a future music educator I do not know how to

operate anything like it. Even though I am a student who is part of this age of

technology, I am still kind of scared to use most music software. I have Sibelius

and know how to use it, but there are still many programs that remain a mystery

to me. As teachers, we should try to understand and know how to use as many

of these programs as possible. The truth is, that even my younger brother and

sister use technology more than I do, so I know my students will have an even

greater understanding of technology.

Once we know how to use new technology and are not afraid of new

ideas, I think we can figure out ways to incorporate it in our classrooms. If there

is a theory class, this would be the ideal place for most to utilize this new idea.

Adding technology to a theory class could boost its numbers and get more

students, even students outside of band, learning about music. Once they learn

about chord progressions, they could write something up in Sibelius, record a

student or small ensemble playing it, and then present it to the class for

feedback. Those who are in our band, orchestra, and choir programs can bring

what they learn in theory to the large ensemble and in the end become better

musicians. If the school offers some kind of keyboard class, this would also be a

way to branch out to other students as well. I do not think any keyboard class will
ever amount to that of a large ensemble, but if we want to get more students

making music and using technology, this class could be an answer.

I do think it would be difficult to bring a lot of technology to the large

ensemble classroom. There are usually over 60 students and sometime over 100

students in one classroom. Without having some kind of computer lab or laptops,

it would be nearly impossible. There are ways to bring other kinds of technology

to the classroom. This is not a new concept, but teachers can record rehearsals

and can publish a podcast. Students can then listen to it and analyze it. We

should bring in videos or presentations about the composers of our works and

explain historical information. I know some directors compile binders for students

containing much of this information. It might be better, if we are moving towards

this standards based learning, to have students find this information out on their

own. I don’t want to assign papers in class, because I think their focus should be

on their instrument, but I do want to foster an environment that will challenge

students to find information out on their own and bring what they know to class. I

could collaborate with one of the technology professors and if they have a bunch

of my students in one of their classes, ask that teacher to help them put a

presentation together as a group. This obviously all depends on the

circumstances, but I do think music teachers should step out of the music

department more often. If we see individual students with an interest in arranging

or composing, we should find ways to get that student familiar with music writing

software, even if we do not have a class for it. The possibilities are endless, but

we need to be familiar with them ourselves and not be afraid to use not only
music software, but any software. Some of the best teachers I know are loved by

their students because of how much they keep in contact with them. They have

really nice website with blogs and picture albums and announcements. While this

does not have much to do with teaching actual music, the point is that we should

just open ourselves up to more technology so that we know about the possible

opportunities.

Now away from the technology bit. How do we teach our students a

musically and comprehensively? I know how many people hate the idea of block

scheduling, but this could be the answer. Many teachers now have over an hour

with their students everyday. Do we need all that time to get ready for a concert?

Maybe if we picked too challenging music, but really, we could spend more time

on actually teaching concepts and exploring different national standards. The

warm-up is a great time to do this. One of the best observations I had was when

a band director was having a problem with intonation between the flutes and

oboes and stopped and asked one of the flute players to tell him what the

problem was. These types of questions make students think critically which is

something all classrooms need more of. Maybe one day a month, some

members of the jazz band present something about improvisation and jazz

theory. We could ask students to break into small ensembles and try to write

something to present to the class. I know these a little far fetched, but I think we

need to brainstorm some of these outlandish ideas and then tailor them down to

fit the individual situation. Block scheduling can be a big help in this push towards

comprehensive musicianship and national standards-based teaching.

 Chamber music is also important. Not every student needs to get involved,

but there should be an opportunity for all students to participate in a chamber

group. Going along with this, there needs to be enough staff to help coach these

groups. While I think it’s great that schools like Lakota make all of their students

go to solo and ensemble contest, hearing a medley of music from Carmen five

times throughout the day was not a great experience. The students were tuning

and one was playing a Bb while the others were playing an A. There was no

teacher with them in the room, for most of these groups. So while the chamber

music is a great idea, we need to make sure the students will actually have a

quality musical experience. If there is not enough staff, we could ask older

members of our wind ensemble to help do coaching after school with small

ensembles from the freshman band. There are ways to get around to doing these

things, but as I have mentioned before, we must be flexible and creative in our

approaches.

It our jobs to educate students musically, but we cannot do away with the

large ensemble. This is where most of the teaching is going to take place and

through thoughtful preparation on our parts, we can teach the students many

concepts right in the moment of the rehearsal. Take bitonality as an example.

Group 1 plays their notes in the chord, normal. Group 2 plays their notes in the

chord, normal. Put it together and it creates a bitonal sonority. The student will

have experienced this, not just looked it up on the web. Things like this cannot be

replaced by technology. As mentioned before, the aesthetic education that

students receive from being the large ensemble is also important. They can’t
learn about expression from a website, they have to experience it. Yes, I think we

should find ways to fulfill these national standards, but it would be a huge

mistake to do away with the large ensemble.