Hear, listen, play: how to free your students' aural, improvisation and performance skills (original) (raw)
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Preface The publication of Green’s text entitled How Popular Musicians Learn: A Way Ahead for
2015
This article explores the work of Lucy Green in terms of the application of her research to practice in music education classrooms. Three specific topics are explored including: student centered learning, teachers and formal music education, and the organic nature of music learning. The author calls for a critical examination of Greens ’ work in terms of application and suggests that multiple models or modes of implementation and further experimentation may led to a more viable approach to musical learning as it is found in many musical communities.
Teaching the way we learnt: a study in popular music education
Popular music education in the UK, and worldwide, has seen significant expansion in the last two decades. As this new subject matures, scholars are beginning to fashion a new and more student-centred approach to learning and teaching: drawing on the informal learning practice found in popular music. Green (2006) defined the key characteristics of informal learning: allowing learners to choose the music; learning by listening and copying recordings; learning in friendship groups, with minimum adult guidance; learning in personal, often-haphazard ways; and integrating listening, playing, singing, improvising and composing. Informal musical learning is also facilitated through the use of recording as a technique for reflecting on, and improving one’s own performance. These novel approaches to music education have begun to be applied by music educators, in a diverse range of contexts. Karlsen (2010) has correspondingly linked informal learning with ideas of authenticity, and communities of practice: social networks that provide individuals with access to learning through interaction with experienced ‘old-timers’ as described by Lave and Wenger (1991). This thesis examines the way that seven musicians, teaching in one private UK Higher Education popular music institution, learnt their craft: firstly as musicians and subsequently as teachers. It asks how the way that these individuals acquired their skills and beliefs might impact on the way that they teach their students, and if this impact might be more effective if teachers were encouraged to reflect on their own learning, using that reflection to research, inform, and modify their own teaching practice. This work is particularly situated in small and medium size group teaching rather than the one to one teaching model found in classical music programmes, or in peripatetic music teaching. Furthermore, my work takes a structural-constructivist approach using the ideas of Bourdieu (1977, 1990a, 1993) as a theoretical lens, and drawing on the constructivist learning theory developed from the principles established by Vygotsky in the 1920’s and 1930’s (1930/1978). I argue that a hybrid approach to Bourdieu’s notion of habitus (1990a, p.53) or the dispositions we adopt to the social world is crucial to understanding the way that we become musicians. Moreover, that the situatedness of musical and educational practice and the identity practices of learners and teachers are fundamental to the process of learning as a process of becoming (Lave and Wenger, 1991). Ergo, by recognising this process of learning as situated in social, cultural, historical, and technological contexts we may also facilitate metacognition (Flavell, 1979). By metacognition, I mean the ability to be reflexive as a learner or teacher; understanding the way that learning works, our beliefs about learning, and how those beliefs affect one’s own learning and thus agency. Additionally, that notions of authenticity and creativity are vital to the effectiveness of musical learning practices, and the accumulation of social and cultural capital for popular musicians. My research methods include the use of open ‘semi structured’ interviews (Leech, 2002) alongside observation in the classroom to generate empirical data. The primary research presented here is an Action Research Study: enabling the teachers in the study to retrieve their own experience of informal learning in order to facilitate informal learning practice in the music classroom. I suggest that these individuals recognise the importance of their own experience and are able to utilise, and learn from those experiences in developing approaches that are relevant, creative, and also authentic to their students. What this work also aims to do is establish links between theory and practice, and to identify potential mechanisms for engaging with our students’ entire learning experience, whilst allowing them to understand the social and cultural process of musical learning.
Informal learning: new ways of thinking and learning in contemporary music education.
Music teaching in schools and conservatories often suffers from being too formal; it often focuses on the outcome rather than the process itself, on the tasks that the teacher sets for his class rather than the needs of the students, on teaching rather than learning. In that way many qualities may get underdeveloped or lost. We are in need of a type of music education that cares for the needs, qualities and expertise of the learner and leads to the personal and musical growth and fulfillment of the learner and the teacher. In this framework new ways of teaching and learning are rising. Informal learning is a different style of teaching that offers an alternative model in mainstream music education. This paper explores informal learning in contemporary literature and gives examples of a project that explored folk music teaching and learning in the secondary music schools of Greece. The research discusses a) what informal learning offers to music students and b) if and how informal learning can work in formal institutional settings.
Seventy-five audio recordings of learners attempting to copy a melody by ear were transcribed and analysed. Thematic analysis through NVivo was carried out and combined with judgements from four independent experts using a criteria grid. Overall, the learners' spontaneous responses to the ear-playing task, termed here 'learning styles', were classified into four main categories, termed impulsive, shot-in-the-dark, practical and theoretical. Learners who showed evidence of possible Absolute Pitch (AP) were categorized across all the first three learning styles, suggesting that the ability to play back by ear from a recording may not be aided by AP. After the initial spontaneous response, the learners' most common learning approaches, termed here 'learning strategies', included listening without playing, playing isolated notes, asking questions, listening and playing along with the recording, and experimenting. The findings suggest that the practice of playing along to a recording can reveal a range of spontaneous learning styles amongst students, of which teachers may otherwise remain unaware, and a range of further learning strategies that may provide new insights for music teachers. James Mainwaring (1951b, p. 201) stressed that playing an instrument 'should be based as in speech on the mechanization of the sound-action relation.' He explained that playing by ear is the most fundamental of all the performance skills and should be the first stage towards the