Soundworlds

I first heard Balinese gamelan in January this year, at Gondwana National Choral School. I was struck by the ethereal quality of the music, the way the interlocking parts didn’t adhere to Western ideas of pitch or tonality, but created a vibration that lingered in my ears long after the last note died away.

Today, I had the opportunity to play it myself, and it was honestly life-changing. Firstly, gamelan music isn’t notated – it’s learnt completely through imitation. My strong sense of pitch, usually such a mainstay for me, was no help here. As my brain struggled to get used to a new tonal system, my hands and eyes were trying to follow the instructor’s movements. Repetition once again proved a friend, as the pattern was eventually committed to memory.

I was struck by the symbol of the tree: how the interlocking patterns were represented by roots, trunk, branches and flowers. This connection between music and botanical imagery has a basis in Hindu literature, such as the cosmic tree of the Bhagavad-Gita (DeVale & Dibia, 1991). As an educator, I hope to introduce my students to these cultural elements in music with the same respect with which it was taught to me.

Bibliography:
DeVale, S., & Dibia, I. (1991). Sekar Anyar: An Exploration of Meaning in Balinese “gamelan”. The World of Music,33(1), 5-51. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/43562776

The end of our five-week Orff Schulwerk journey is an opportunity for reflection. Today, we learnt how to teach a melody, as well as two sets of body percussion ostinati, to a class, in preparation for our teaching assessment. The process I will use is a simple one:

1. Sing the whole melody.
2. Chunk the melody.
3. Demonstrate ostinato 1.
4. Split the class, adding melody on top of ostinato 1.
5. Demonstrate ostinato 2.
6. Split the class into three parts, so melody and both ostinati are covered.
7. Rotate, so each student has performed each part.

I wrote my own melody, as shown below, setting the Ogden Nash poem “The Shrimp” to music and adding some entertaining ostinati.

Concluding Thoughts

Orff Schulwerk embodies the two aspects of music education I value most: creativity and collaboration. The emphasis on group work and composition stands out the most for me. Repetition as a teaching technique is extremely effective, and provides solid foundation ideas of tonality and rhythm, the basis upon which students can create their own material. All in all, I can definitely see myself using this method, or at least utilising the principles of interactivity, composition and project-based learning, in my career. Five stars!

I’ll admit it: I’m no dancer.

It’s odd, because I love music more than anything, and the two often come hand-in-hand. As a child, the rhythmic awareness and control I had as a musician just seemed to disappear on the dance floor. Even today, imitating simple dance steps, I felt like a primary school kid in aerobics again, my body not quite getting the message at the same time as my brain.

But Richard Gill’s do-it-yourself philosophy won out, as it always does. After the dance had been chunked and performed in various formations (lines, circles, an almost-successful serpentine), we developed our own dances in groups. It turns out I, for one, learn best through composition, especially collaborative composition. Working with other students, developing our own movements, without the anxiety of trying to imitate an instructor correctly, I felt much more in control.

This seminar, as well as teaching connections between music and movement, was a valuable lesson in perseverance and versatility: that if one teaching technique doesn’t work, it’s likely another will.

Bibliography:
[Shenanigans – Topic]. (2015, Oct 26). Clog Branle [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7OKYMzLvvU

When I encountered this class task in today’s seminar, I was surprised. Among the many things the AMEB system didn’t prepare me for – creativity, teamwork, et cetera – were polyrhythms. I’ve always found complex rhythmic elements far more challenging than their pitch-based counterparts.

Turns out, it’s all just pineapple and butter.

My mathematical brain knows that every whole number, 4 and above, can be divided into 2s and 3s, and that’s how simple, compound and irregular time signatures work, and I shouldn’t be so amazed.

Looking at complicated rhythms reduced to laminated cards, “pineapple” and “butter”, laid out in patterns on the floor, my musical brain is amazed anyway.

Before today, I would have said transcribing such complex rhythms would be ambitious for me, let alone as a classroom task for my students. Yet, having rearranged the cards to make our own patterns, complete with actions, the task suddenly became – if still difficult – possible. Pineapple butter pineapple butter butter. Clapping along to the track, I could feel it, embedded in the pulse of the music.

Maybe that’s what education is about: making the difficult possible.

Bibliography:
[Pat Metheny]. (2018, Oct 31). The First Circle [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUADFPqsx0g

Funga Alafia: a West African welcome song and an Orff classic.

Melody and actions chunked, the students divide into concentric circles (2, 3, then 4), performing in canon (at 4 beats and 2). Borduns on C and G, plus two sets of ostinati, are added on melodic percussion. As a classroom activity, it’s a perfect example.

But speaking culturally?

Orff himself was a thief – he took folk melodies from other cultures and used them in his pedagogy. I do believe that culture should be shared, but the keyword is shared, not stolen.

The above is a performance taught by Sista Adama Jewel, as part of an initiative to pass on West African music and dance to the next generation.

This is a performance in Cobb County, USA.

Musically speaking, aside from the European choral sensibility of the vocal tone, it’s not all that different. But it was hard not to feel as though what I was watching wasn’t African, but a Caucasian performance of “African-ness.”

As a music educator, teaching world music and Orff songs, a level of cultural appropriation is something I cannot escape. What I can do, then, is do my research, and when I can, seek out musicians with genuine cultural connections to the music, so I can teach it with the sensibility and respect it deserves.

Bibliography:
[A. S. I.]. (2015, Jul 15). Teaching the basics…Funga Alafia! [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFflnr2Y2g4
[Kathryn Nobles]. (2009, Jun 14).Funga Alafia [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnju7nD5cR8

For most of my life, my relationship with classroom music was complicated. Neither of my primary schools had specialised music teachers. I had, however, taken private music lessons since age 5. The result? I was a Grade 8 pianist before I had my first Orff-style lesson in Year Seven.

Throughout primary and early high school, I separated private and classroom music in my mind. I was playing Debussy in one, and two-note ostinati in the other. To my twelve-year-old self, working towards his AMusA exam, the latter felt mind-numbing, almost demeaning.

My twelve-year-old self was wrong about many things.

Making this flowchart of today’s seminar, coding composition activities in green and group activities in red, I reflected on what classroom music taught me that nine years of AMEB grades didn’t: creativity and cooperation. By encouraging students to create their own actions, percussion parts, as well as “playing the room” – inventing their own sound sources – in a group setting, the act of creating something new, which can seem so daunting, becomes easy and fun. In all my years of rote-learning piano pieces, I’d almost forgotten there was more to music than practising in a room alone.

Until classroom music reminded me.

What sort of teacher will I be?

A good one, I hope. But what makes a good teacher?

Today, we reflected on the concept of best practice, a strong research base being one of its hallmarks. One study showed that Orff-based music learning developed bimanual coordination in children more effectively than basketball (Martins et al, 2018). This made me reflect, for the first time, on the importance of continued research for educators. When I’d pictured my future, I’d thought of classrooms, lesson plans, co-curricular ensembles; the act of teaching, but not the continued learning behind it.

I dove into further research. I am a big proponent of collaboration, and the idea that a teacher should be “not an instructor but a co-creator” (Burnard, 2017, p.10) resonated with me. Music is not a list of facts to be rote-taught; it is an ever-changing discipline, in which the creation and development of ideas are at the forefront. We must learn from each other, as educators, and from our students, for our shared base of knowledge to continue to grow.

So, what sort of teacher will I be?

A teacher who works alongside students, who fosters creativity and collaboration; who is knowledgeable, but never stops seeking to learn.

A good one.

I hope so.

Bibliography:
Burnard, P. (2017). Teaching music creatively. (R. Murphy, Ed.) (Second edition.). Abingdon, Oxon ; Routledge.
Martins, M., Neves, L., Rodrigues, P., Vasconcelos, O., & Castro, S. (2018). Orff-Based Music Training Enhances Children’s Manual Dexterity and Bimanual Coordination. Frontiers in Psychology, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02616

When Richard Gill passed away in 2018, I didn’t fully grasp what the music world had lost. I didn’t know the value he placed on interactivity, on improvisation, until I watched him teach kindergarteners at MLC in this week’s reading.

And it struck a chord. Since I was a child, I’ve improvised on the piano, but I never knew how to teach this. I’ve sat with AMus-level pianists, urging them to just make it up, but they hit one dissonant note, and freeze, afraid to continue.

Today we were taught The Peanut Song, Orff-style.

Jim Coyle added claps on “Toot! Toot!”, then asked me what I could do differently.

I tentatively clicked my fingers.

“He’s changed the tone colour,” Jim said. “This is how composers work.”

And it clicked. That’s how you teach music. Not rote-learning pieces to pass AMEB exams, regurgitating notes without understanding them. When you let kids make it up, you get more than composers – you get musicians with an intuitive grasp of the elements of music, who can manipulate them with aplomb; who are versatile, unafraid to experiment, who take challenges and uncertainties in their stride. The musicians of the future.

Richard Gill said it best: “To understand music is to do it yourself, to make it, and then make it up yourself.” (Gill, 2003, 1:09)

Improvisation in memoriam Richard Gill
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vFSyLCCdlR9JBSkN9x57j3TOglvsh8Yr/view?usp=sharing

Bibliography:
Gill, R. (2003). The Creative Classroom with Richard Gill. [DVD] Sydney: MLC School.
Kong, J. (2019). Improvisation in memoriam Richard Gill [Audio File].
[Music Man]. (2013, May 23). A Peanut Sat On A Railroad Track – instrumental [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFflnr2Y2g4

Kids love music. Whether it’s punk rock or Taylor Swift, a young person’s music taste shapes their identity. But only 5-7% of Australian students take music through to the end of Year 12 (Humberstone, 2016, 15:16).

One could argue that formal music education fails to engage, and there may be truth to that. But it’s not the whole story. Today, we were taught Bring Me Little Water, Silvy using the Orff method: movements, chunked, then the melody.

I’ve performed Silvy twice before: with Gondwana Choirs, where most kids are musically trained, and my school choir, where most kids can barely read music. Yet they responded the same way: the joy of performing together, the infectious enthusiasm of the educators, the satisfaction of finally nailing it – yes, music education needs to value the diversity of musical cultures, instead of solely pushing the Western art music tradition (Humberstone, 2016, 15:52). Yes, there is a pervasive notion that music is a lesser subject – that, despite teaching craft, collaboration and creativity, it’s less applicable to our children’s lives than maths or science.

But kids get a lot out of music education the way it is. And the sooner society realises that, the better.

Bibliography:
Smiley, M. [moiraVOCO]. (2009, March 6). Bring Me Little Water, Silvy (teaching demo) [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkHGhGpaW5k
TEDx Talks. (2016, May 2). The Science of Dubstep | James Humberstone | TEDxOxford [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8s8e8JdGCc