Hear, listen, play: how to free your students' aural, improvisation and performance skills (original) (raw)

How can instrumental, ensemble and classroom music teachers incorporate informal learning practices into their music learning settings? In this new book, Green attempts to answer this question by presenting practical strategies drawn from her extensive research on the subject. Green aims to introduce 'classically trained instrumental and classroom music teachers' (xvii) to a music learning approach built on informal learning practices and playing by earstrategies that may be useful not only for the students with whom teachers work, but also for their own music making. Green draws on her prior publications, including the ethnographic How Popular Musicians Learn (2001) and its pedagogical companion Music, Informal Learning and the School (2008), as well as her work with Musical Futures (D'Amore 2008) to suggest an approach to learning music informed by the practices of popular musicians. This approach incorporates what Green claims are five characteristics of informal learning: student-selected repertoire, learning by listening and copying (ear-playing), working alone and in self-selected peer groupings, a recursive learning process that starts from a musical whole, and a view of performing, improvising, composing and listening as integrated skills. In the introduction to this book, Green references a pilot test of the approaches and suggests a positive relationship between using these strategies and students learning and performing music by ear (Baker and Green 2013). The text is organised into three main parts, each discussing the use of Green's approach in different music learning settings. Part 1 focuses on individual instrumental tuition, Part 2 centres on ensemble settings and Part 3 details the approach in classroom music (what some consider general music). Each part begins with an introductory section outlining Green's setting-specific aims, followed by a section in which she discusses planning considerations such as time, space and equipment needs. Green provides suggestions about how to use the book's companion website: a resource that includes recordings of pop-style songs composed by Green and classical works, each presented as whole-ensemble tracks and instrument/part solo tracks. The three main parts also contain a presentation of the pedagogical steps, which Green calls stages. Green provides flow charts that suggest the content and ordering of each stage. Following this, Green offers information about how students may respond to the experiences by articulating four student learning styles: impulsive, practical, shotin-the-dark and theoretical. Green then discusses the role of the educator in her