Soundworlds

I have a confession to make: my guitar Taylor’s namesake is not, in fact, James Taylor, but Taylor Swift. And you know what? I’m not apologising. Sure, I was classically trained in piano since the age of five. Sure, I go to a university that largely prioritises art music – “music of unquestionable quality,” I believe, is how Kodály puts it, which I could write a whole other blog post on – above such genres as musical theatre or hip hop or god forbid, pop. But Taylor Swift’s music has impacted my life more than Mozart ever has. So what do we really prioritise in music? A subjective values judgement of different genres based on one’s own (privileged) perspective and upbringing? Or how people actually feel about the music? I know what my answer is, that’s for sure.

But I digress. This week’s cover is Daylight, the final song from Taylor Swift’s latest album, Lover, and for me it’s become a sort of love letter to music education, as ironic as that may be. The spoken last words especially resonate with me: “I want to be defined by the things that I love. Not the things I hate, not the things I’m afraid of, not the things that haunt me in the middle of the night. I just think that – you are what you love.”

And that’s how I feel about music education. I want to define my philosophy through my love of music. Not hatred or dismissal of the genres I personally resonate less with, or that I’ve been brought up to consider inferior, but a philosophy of pluralism, embracing different genres for what they mean to different people. I don’t want to define myself by my fears: that I will fall short as an educator; that I’m not cut out for this; that after all I’ve done to channel my energy into what I finally believe is my calling, I will get out into the field and realise I’m terrible. Maybe these worries will haunt me for a while, but in the end, what I value most is the drive: the core of passion and wonder, the genuine belief in education’s transformative power, that arises from a deep, unshakeable love for people and for music – in that order. That’s what I want to define myself by. That’s what I’m willing to fight for.

Anyway. This week’s chords are A7 and Em7, and because the song is so significant to me I decided to film myself performing it. So yes, it’s time for round two of overenthusiastic facial expressions. I’m happy with how smooth the chord changes are, and I’m happier with what I’ve put into it. Let’s never forget, in the midst of focusing on technique and detail, why we do the thing in the first place.

Daylight:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1csUrY8jm8d02MLhwtV0Z7fiIIP51udpw/view?usp=sharing
Chords used: D, A7, Em7, G

This week, we plunge headfirst into the wonderful world of sevenths! There are fourteen new chords to learn, so I’m planning to tackle two or three each week, which leaves some time at the end of semester to consolidate my skills.

First up, in a reversal of the usual process, the song actually dictates the chords this week. I recently heard a song over shop speakers that I fell instantly in love with, so I searched it up and listened to it on repeat for a few days, figured out the chords by ear, and replaced regular chords with nice-sounding minor seventh chords where I figured they would make sense.

My voice has not been great this week, unfortunately, but that hasn’t stopped me from recording. Without further ado, here is True Blue by Mark Ronson, featuring the chords Am7 and D7.

True Blue:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wMfFv2qErbCRjQ36Jq9zrrGgvgnNrZsL/view?usp=sharing
Chords used: G, Am7, D7, Cmaj7, C

Now, Cmaj7 is not one of the assessed chords, but I just happen to know it already – it’s in one of my favourite songs, Circles by Prairie Empire. It’s present in True Blue as well, and I think it adds a lovely bit of dissonance and tension. Plus, why not push myself a little further, and incorporate an extra chord or two? As music educators, we should always be willing to go the extra mile. As the weeks progress, I’ll be including more and more non-assessed chords in the covers, the goal being to progress as a guitarist, not just as a student taking an assessment.

This week I’ve been tackling the remaining minor chords: Bbm, Cm, Fm and Gm. Usefully enough, the chord shapes I use for each pair (Bbm – Cm, Fm – Gm) are the same, just two frets apart. I played through each of the four chords several times, and settled on a song for each pair. It was quite tricky finding songs that used these chords without also using chords such as Eb major and Ab major, but I did eventually find two good ones.

For F minor and G minor, I used Troye Sivan’s Seventeen. Despite only having three chords, this proved to be one of the most difficult songs to date. I have trouble with the Bb major chord particularly, which made this song good practice. I still definitely need to work on getting the chords clean and resonant, but it was a good exercise all the same.

Seventeen:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1I_sE_fsKQi9imGAMz2rk8rqkqFphZwJ6
Chords used: F, Gm, Bb

For Bb minor and C minor, I used the classic Radiohead hit, Creep. The Bb minor chords tended to be less resonant than the other chords, but I put that down to unfamiliarity. I was fairly happy with the smoothness of the chord switching, and all in all, I think I’m making good progress.

Creep:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cwkzhKlSsDh8nl6Pidxut2109GA0Sm-f
Chords used: F, A, Dm, Bbm

This week, I decided to take a break from chord-bashing to focus on something just as important: musicality. Through the years, I’ve had many instrumental teachers tell me to focus on getting the notes right first, and then think about making it musical; adding in such “trivial” things such as dynamics, articulation, and expression later, like icing on a cake.

Then in high school I joined a choir. We sight-read a piece, and halfway through our conductor stopped us.

“Very good,” she said, “but could you make it more musical?”

So that’s what I did this week. To me, making music sound – well, like music – is not an optional extra, and I believe it should be incorporated as early into the process as possible. To do so, I decided to cover one of my favourite songs, Flame Trees by Cold Chisel.

The song uses all the sharp chords I know at this point, plus C and Am; thus, it’s a step up in difficulty from the four-chord songs of the last few weeks. I didn’t choose the song so much for its relative harmonic complexity, however, as for its emotional peaks and troughs. My challenge was to play the different sections of the song expressively and contrastingly, with strumming that was rhythmically accurate and consistent. To make sure I was putting in adequate emotion, I filmed the performance instead of simply recording the audio, thus resulting in some excellent facial expressions being recorded for all time.

Flame Trees:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L0Z0cJ6BKO3qFHyjcqGyRv2xqBq63Inj/view?usp=sharing
Chords used: Em, C, D, G, Am, A, E

After watching the video, I was happy with the contrast and the evenness of the strumming. I did notice some buzzing, however, which I intend to work on removing in the coming weeks. It’ll be back to learning chords after this, but I thought this was a much needed exercise, and I’m excited to see how much more musical my covers are from this point onward.

As happy as I would be to stay in the realm of major keys forever, there must be darkness along with the light. This week, Taylor and I delved straight into the first of the unknown minor chords, D minor, with a Florence + the Machine song, No Light, No Light.

I chose this song because D minor is the only new chord – the others are familiar major chords – and I thought it would be a good way to ease myself into what will be a barrage of new chords over the coming weeks. I think the chord changes are relatively smooth, but I had some difficulties with the strumming pattern, and the overall musicality of the guitar accompaniment, which I will need to work on.

No Light, No Light:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GrVp-u-42UZbtl52SqETtPgVe3trBQ-c/view?usp=sharing
Chords used: Dm, F, C, G

And then I decided one new chord a week wasn’t enough. I’d never get to the end of the chart at this rate. So I decided to do an extra cover, with another new chord – B flat major, the last of the major chords I didn’t know. The song is a traditional Irish folk tune, The Parting Glass, which I’ve sung before with my school choir. It’s a beautiful, understated piece, and I adjusted the strumming accordingly, making for a quieter performance. It took a lot of practice to get it right, and the final product still has some issues with “cleanness” of the chords, but the slower tempo allowed me to get the chord changes in time. Next week, I aim to work on musicality – making the chords sound good as well as technically correct.

The Parting Glass:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1MDHRpgyMJ5PK45ACjIecIb3MsoqvRFTy
Chords used: Dm, Bb, F, C, Am

Today we had our first seminar on the Kodály method of music pedagogy. It’s much more rigid than the Orff Schulwerk – meticulously structured, with different levels of complexity clearly geared towards different year levels, and an emphasis on singing as a baseline for musicality, as well as the quality of musical examples used in teaching.

And to be honest, I don’t know if I like it.

My blog posts from Semester 1 will show that I loved Orff – its emphasis on creativity and improvisation completely gelled with how I approach music, both in my own life and as a subject for teaching. The Kodály method shares many similarities, to be sure; for example, the focus on singing as a base skill for musical training is important in both, and one I absolutely agree with. But in other respects, it’s noticeably different. One seminar in, we were being trained in the Curwen hand signs and solfa that would be taught to a kindergarten class. We also received a step-by-step outline of the teaching process: hearing, singing, discovering and deriving, reading, writing, creating. Notably, creating is last.

Far be it for me to write off a method after one seminar, and I’m interested to see where the next few seminars take me, and whether my thinking is transformed as a result. But having been introduced to the method, I can say with conviction, that rigidity – that adherence to multiple (traditional Western) systems of notation and thought, the requirement that students both read and write (traditional Western) musical notation before they even think about creating music themselves – runs largely counter to how I approach music.

And that’s not even taking into consideration Kodály’s insistence on the quality of musical examples: “good” music over “bad” music. Not that bad music doesn’t exist, of course, but I’m curious as to what, exactly, constitutes “good” music. How does one judge one piece as definitively superior to another? To what extent is that judgement based on one’s own musical upbringing and opinions? Kodály was raised in the classical and folk tradition. Today, would he consider other subcultures, born out of traditions, both racially and contextually very different from his own – such as hip hop, rap, and punk – “bad” music? Because many today do, and call “taste” what I consider to be good old-fashioned classical music elitism.

But forget what I think – more importantly, what do the students think? Well, as it happens, we know what they think, by the sheer percentage of students who drop music as a subject in high school. When 100% of students say they love music, but only 5-7% keep it until the end of high school, something is wrong. Clearly, the vast majority of students don’t consider music classes relevant to their lives, despite the fact that music is a vital part of their cultures and identities. Would that be because they aren’t being taught music that they personally find engaging or relevant, or in an engaging or relevant way? As someone who saw his classmates drop music throughout high school, not because they weren’t capable, not because they didn’t love music, but because the way music was taught just didn’t connect with them and their goals as musicians, until out of his year group of over a hundred, two students took Music 2 in the HSC, I can give you my answer to that.

There are two solutions to this problem. One is the Kodály approach: training children from a young age in a certain way, to understand and appreciate a certain type or “calibre” of music. And the other? Pluralism: incorporating a diversity of musical sources and cultures, from non-Western traditions such as African, Asian and Indigenous Australian music, to modern popular genres such as pop, rock and electronica. Elements of Kodály – the simple steps, the use of singing, the belief that all children can be musical – remain as important cornerstones, but to me, the rigidity should be loosened, and creativity and diversity should come in its place. Less focus on hand signs and solfa, more focus on improvisation and collaboration. Sure, some technical excellence might be lost, but if in its place comes a willingness to be inventive, to take risks, and to experience and appreciate the magnificent variety of musical traditions in the world, then and now?

Maybe the kids would actually keep music for a change.

This is Taylor.

I used to own a classical guitar named Astrid, but we had a difference of opinions and I obtained Taylor, while Astrid was sent to a farm upstate.*

I was already handy with a few guitar chords before the start of semester, but, as it transpired, not nearly enough. I could play C, D, E, F, G and A major, as well as A minor and E minor, but that was about it. I decided to spend the first week refamiliarising myself with the major chords.

Great! Almost one quarter of the assessment down. But I wasn’t satisfied with simply learning the chords. So what now?

Here’s a seemingly unrelated tangent: I went on testosterone in early June, and two months on, at the age of eighteen, my voice is finally breaking. As a Gondwana Choirs alumnus, singing is extremely important to me, and I want to keep singing through this change.

So I thought – why not cover a song or two every week, using the chords I learned? I could utilise my new guitar skills in a musical way, while also exercising my new voice. And so I did. This week, I decided to honour my choral past, and cover a Gondwana classic: Our Song by Kate Miller-Heidke. In addition to refamiliarising myself with the chords themselves, it was an exercise in changing chords smoothly, and expressing them in musical ways (using different strumming patterns, pauses, etc) – as well as singing a song I love.

Our Song: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1i7SeoD7oBp-Tq-pyU0NhuPKfl-NKCwwE
Chords used: G, C, D, Em

*donated to a disadvantaged students’ music program. I wouldn’t throw away a guitar.

After a brilliant, immersive – and exhausting – week at Gondwana World Choral Festival (more on that later), Soundworlds is back for another semester! This time, this blog will be about more than just seminar content. I’m going to reflect on various musical and educational experiences as they occur, as well as documenting my learning process for an instrument I’ve always loved, but never had time to learn properly: guitar. Armed with my trusty steel-string, Taylor, I’m navigating my way through a (rather formidable, at first glance) chart of chords:

My journey will be documented under the heading “James and Taylor’s Excellent Adventure” (insert James Taylor pun here) and will update week by week. The first entry will be up in a few hours.

But first, Gondwana!

I was in Sydney Children’s Choir for two years, Gondwana Voices for three, and have attended four National Choral Schools. I sang in Latitude 34, one of Gondwana’s young adult SATB choirs, at the World Choral Festival in July this year, performing in the Opening Gala and two further concerts. It was an honour and a pleasure to perform with such wonderful musicians, an experience I will never forget – but this blog post is not about that. In fact, the most valuable things I learnt from World Choral Festival occurred after the rest of my choir had gone home.

Left for the better part of a week with nothing to do, I went to every workshop I could. I attended open rehearsals for SCC and international choirs, learnt about Torres Strait Island dances from Gerib Sik, acapella technique from Naomi Crellin, Indigenous musical traditions from Matthew Doyle, navigating the changing voice from Sam Allchurch, and the importance of singing in music education from Dr Anita Collins.

And what a revelation! Instead of thinking like a chorister, I watched Liz Vierboom explain how she conducted the SCC Advanced Training Choir, and scribbled notes for when I might conduct my own children’s ensemble one day. Listening to Matthew Doyle, I thought deeply about how, as a music teacher, I could best develop a respectful and collaborative approach to Indigenous music. For the first time, I was approaching music not as a student, but as an educator. And I loved it.

When the Closing Gala came around, I wasn’t ready for the week to end. Finally, I knew for certain what my path forward would be. I would join this great tradition of music education, to share this thing that I love with generations of young people. As educators, we have the power to inform, to inspire, and also to unify: to create something bigger than the sum of its parts. From my seat in the Opera House, I watched as hundreds of children from around the world lifted up their voices to the final words of Christopher Gordon’s Peace on Earth: “Peace on earth, goodwill to all!”

Kids love music.

I began this KIME journey with those same words. Over the course of this unit, I’ve explained multiple times why I think music, particularly classroom music, is important to young people. It’s one of the core beliefs of my life. I’ve been advocating for it before I knew I had to.

But Maths and English teachers never have to defend the legitimacy of their subject, and I’ve had to defend mine since I chose Elective Music in Year Eight. Something about that strikes me as unfair.

In today’s seminar, James Humberstone asked us why we teach music, why we believe in its importance. In that instant, all my reasons: project-based learning, creativity, collaboration, perseverance, problem-solving, improvisation – flew from my mind.

Because I love it, I thought numbly.

Hallam’s study shows that music can improve literacy and memory skills, spatial awareness, executive functioning, discipline and self-control, creativity, and general academic prowess (2010). Any one of them is reason enough. But at the end of the day, kids don’t do music because of them.

They do it because they love music.

There shouldn’t need to be a better reason than that.

Bibliography:
Hallam, S. (2010). The power of music: Its impact on the intellectual, social and personal development of children and young people. International Journal of Music Education. 28. 269-289. DOI: 10.1177/0255761410370658.

Soundworlds is a little meta this week, as I write an ePortfolio entry about ePortfolios.

In all seriousness, this blog has been hugely valuable. I’ve had quite a few epiphanies this semester – Richard Gill’s “make it up” philosophy, breaking down complex patterns into their building blocks in The First Circle, and the challenging and rewarding experience of playing gamelan. Thanks to Soundworlds, I was able to consolidate these experiences into lessons on which I can continue to reflect.

And it was rewarding in itself. As someone who hated the portfolio component of HSC composition tasks, I wasn’t expecting writing down my thoughts and discoveries to be so enjoyable. Then again, it is established that reflection helps develop a sense of “becoming” in one’s professional identity (Rowley, 2019), and this semester has genuinely challenged and reshaped my worldview. The reflections are thus more than just a record of my progress, but also a space in which I could tie together my thoughts and come to conclusions – about what I believe, what I consider important, what kind of educator I want to be.

Bibliography:
Rowley, J. (2019). Leadership of Pedagogy and Curriculum in Higher Music Education. New York, NY: Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9780429022418