Common Core Teaching

I've been completely underwater these past few months pursuing an education certification at Brooklyn College. A portion of my work on this degree involves classroom observations of music teachers in New York City.

Yesterday I observed a 6th grade music enrichment class at a public school in Manhattan. The teacher was presenting Willie Nelson as a songwriter in an ongoing discussion of various composers known for their songwriting skills. He told the students about how no one liked Willie's voice in his early career although his songs were excellent.

He played the Patsy Cline recording of Crazy and went around the room asking for comments. He didn't force any kids to speak, but asked each one individually if they had anything to say. Some kids liked the song. Most kids hated it. But he didn't let them just say, "I hate it." He made them come up with specific reasons and details as to why they felt the way they did. I was blown away by the intelligent and insightful observations made by these 6th graders.

One girl said, "it sounds more like jazz than country."

When asked what about the song makes it sound like jazz, one boy said, "it has an acoustic bass."

In 6th grade I wouldn't have known an acoustic bass from a tuna fish.

One boy said he didn't like it because the vibe of the song is opposite of the title. He was expecting it to be crazy, and it's actually quite calm. A girl said she liked it for the exact same reason.

Their ease in discussing these advanced concepts let me know that they do this in every class with this teacher.

I asked the teacher if he purposefully incorporates Common Core into his curriculum and he said that no, he doesn't. He is familiar with all the terminology and can put it into a formal lesson plan. But he just wants to get the kids, who are not musicians, to think critically about music.

This provides evidence to a theory I have that Common Core teaching is nothing new, and that good teachers have been getting their students to think deeply about whatever subject they teach for generations.

There is plenty to discuss regarding the Common Core, including the assessments, by which teachers are being judged, based on their students' performance on a standardized test. But I'll save that for another post. I have to go write a paper.

Dichotomies in music

Music is fun. It's fun to play and fun to listen to and fun to think about. Like in other creative pursuits, composers often like to juxtapose concepts to creative effect. I'm referring specifically to melody and harmony.

It's going to get jazzy in here.

Melody can be complex or simple. Harmony can also be both complex or simple. There are clear examples of simple melody and simple harmony existing in the same tune - think "Happy Birthday." It's also possible for both melody and harmony to be very complex in the same composition. For example, listen to John Coltrane's composition 26-2. 

But music can also be very interesting when one of the elements is simple and the other complex. Bebop is the perfect example of this. Bebop composers and improvisors like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie often wrote or improvised very complex melodies over harmony to popular songs or broadway show tunes. Check out the Tadd Dameron composition Hot House, played here by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Bug Powell and Max Roach at the Greatest Jazz Concert Ever. 

This tune is written over the same harmony to the standard What Is This Thing Called Love, composed by Cole Porter and performed here by Ella Fitzgerald. Although Ella's interpretation is of the highest sophistication, the bare bones of this tune could fall into the "simple melody, simple harmony" category. 

It can go the other way, too. For example, Listen to the chord changes (harmony) to Charles Mingus' Goodbye Porkpie Hat in relation to the melody. The harmony is very complex compared to the simple, pentatonic scale-based melody. 

Some Brazilian composers are masters of this concept. Listen to Toninho Horta's tune, Diana. The melody is childlike and totally singable, but his harmonic concept is beyond complex. The result is stunning beauty. 

I tried to capture this concept in my tune BH, which I wrote sitting in a backyard in Belo Horizonte, Toninho Horta's home town and the center of the musical culture of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais.

What is some of your favorite music that sets one concept against another? It could be any concept: rhythmic, lyrics, density, instrumentation, etc. Feel free to respond in the comments. 

Thanks for reading!

Music Education Apps - July 2013

Since my early days of teaching, I have used technology in guitar lessons. Years ago I was making students exercise and practice material in the lesson with Finale and Siblelius and printing it for them right there. Now, with the iPad and apps, there are many ways to engage students and convey important musical information. Here's a list of apps I use almost everyday. Since I found most of these by reading other lists just like this, please feel free to post any I may be missing in the comments. I've dated the title of this post as the technology is continually evolving, so I'm sure there will be more as time goes by.

iNote Trainer - I've used this app since the early days of mobile technology. For beginning readers I have them play the beginning levels as is. For students who know how to read some notes, I create custom levels based on the notes they know (strings 1-4, for example) and then have them "say and play" the notes while I tap the button to progress to the next level. 

ReadRhythm - This is a great app for kids (and adults) to learn how to read, count and play rhythms. Intuitive and deep, this app is also updated frequently.

Tenuto - Compiling exercises from musictheory.net, this app is great for things like note recognition, key signatures and fretboard knowledge. I especially like the ability to email your score to someone, like your teacher, and have a certificate of achievement created. 

Wild Chords - This app is simply great for getting kids excited about learning chords. Students play their actual guitar to interact with the game. Kids are captivated by the story of the app, and I've used it to inspire a few students while in a practicing slump. 

DoReMe 1-2-3 - I have some younger students who are really too young to hold a guitar for more than a couple minutes. This game teaches them valuable musical concepts in a fun and challenging environment. I always use the "DoReMe" setting when kids are creating their own songs, so they can be familiar with those terms later in life if they ever come up. 

Flashnote Derby - Who doesn't like a good horse racing game? Even though it might skew a little young for students 10 or older, I find they still enjoy winning the game, and it's good to make the student actually play the note on their guitar before tapping the note name on the screen. 

There are others, including some I'm just getting into, and I'll post more later. I also want to do a post on apps that I use to organize my students and lessons, like Evernote and either Music Teacher's Helper or Moosic Studio. As I'm just now getting into the latter two, I'll report back when I know more. Thanks for reading!

Night Music

This version of Stevie Ray Vaughn's Crossfire nearly brought tears to my eyes.

It's some of the best musicians on the planet playing at the top of their game. Tom Barney, Omar Hakim, and Hiram Bullock are a fantastic rhythm section, and inspire Stevie, who was sober by this time in his life, to play at his absolute best. Watching this makes the pain of losing Stevie and Hiram too soon sting even more. 

Night Music didn't air in MN when it was on in the late 80s. My brother, who lived in New York would talk about it all the time. If it had aired and I had seen it, I probably would have been inspired to become a musician and move to New York. 

I mean, move to New York at age 18, instead of 34.

I wish network TV would bring back shows like this. Instead we have American Idol and Dancing With the Stars. (sigh)

I am...

The other day I said to the father of a guitar student, "I used to be a performer who teaches. As the years have progressed I have become a teacher who occasionally performs, and happily so."

I'm enrolled at Brooklyn College taking courses to learn how to do what I've been doing for 20 years. It's fantastic. 

This blog will evolve, I predict, to be primarily about teaching and education. Please respond in the comments to let me know what you think, or what you'd like to read about. 

"...ain't never heard a horse sing..."

This week I attended a seminar on music education. An esteemed academic had a big quotation on his PowerPoint presentation from the early 90s, I think, stating "All music is folk music." He went on to say, "We are beginning to see the potential in American popular music for teaching kids." (italics mine.)

Beginning to see the potential? I almost fell off my chair. Clearly this man is not a guitar player.

Also, Louis Armstrong said it long ago.

Hurtzel

Elizabeth Wurtzel and I are cut from the same cloth.

I remember when her book, Prozac Nation, came out. I was 24 and living in Chicago. The 90s raged and whined. I didn't read the book as I had plenty of attractive self-obsessed depressed women in my life, thankyouverymuch.

A few days ago I read her piece in NY Mag. Although not someone I could probably bear an afternoon coffee with, much less a "carafe of Italian wine," or a session of googling ourselves on our iPads, the fact is she is a startlingly good writer. And while I'm not really a fan (anymore) of the confessional essay, there are things in this article that resonate deeply with me.

I also had a wretched 2012. It was the kind of year that brings you to your knees for the sheer brutality of its offenses. Mercy. You win. Uncle and I give. Jesus Christ.

But then how many lost connections make up a life?

Trent Reznor really was the voice of our generation when he sang, "I hurt myself today to see if I still feel." Millennials, take this, please. By this I mean everything - the trajectory of our lives, our country, our politic, our planet, our existence. Generations X and Y (was there a Z?) blew it. We can't handle it. In 3rd grade we stopped school because we watched the space shuttle land. In 8th grade we stopped because it blew up. We suffered Iran-Contra, Donna Rice, Clinton and Lewinsky. Kurt Cobain spoke the truth and then shot himself in the head. Before I start sounding too much like that Billy Joel song, just know that it's all yours. You and your president, your internet, your optimism.

I never wanted to be a millionaire or a billionaire or anything at all like that, because the happiest thing would be doing what I love. Which is how it turned out, and so it goes with talented and thoughtful people who move to places like New York and L.A. and Chicago and Austin and wherever else you take your wits these days. It isn’t just creative types, also public­-interest lawyers and public-­intellectual academics and political thinkers—collectively, the professional class. In a city, these are the people who make the place vital and fun.

But these are people who soon won’t exist anymore. Soon New York will be nothing but a metropolis of the very rich and those who serve them—and the lucky and desperate still hanging on. All of the fun jobs are disappearing.

Walking down the street in Manhattan, if you can find a quiet spot, and listen very closely, you can almost hear it. It's a high-pitched hissisng whine. It's the sound of an island losing its soul.

Look at how we live: We communicate in text messages and e-mails; even those of us old enough to have lived in a world where landline was not a word because it’s all there was have fallen into this lazy substitute for human contact. I have. When I was young...if I needed to tell a friend, an acquaintance, or the customer-service person from AT&T the smallest thing, I had to talk to him. Every day, many times a day, whether I felt like it or not, I spoke to people, lots of people. It is as obvious from a voice as it is not from print if all is well. Now...I may speak with people I care about only in type. When you add the mistake of Facebook and Twitter into this equation, very bad things can happen: The illusion of friendship defeats the real thing. Someone who people believe they care about and cannot live without could end up dead.

If you're still reading this, call your mom and tell her that you love her. 

As much as I hate to admit it - and there's plenty of hate out there, Wurtzel's rambling mess of an essay touched me. It's not empathy - my god, you live in Chelsea east of 8th Avenue yet consider yourself homeless...hang in there, Lizzy - but rather a recognition of that voice. The one that refuses to grow up. The one that gets an advanced degree on a lark. (I got one on a lark, with a Lark, and will be paying for it until I'm 53, by Sallie Mae's calculation.) I know that shrill, annoying, whiny self-self-self voice. It lives in my head.