Following on from Let’s Make Music… the article Demonstration, Imitation, Improvisation then Notation, suggests some alternative ways of getting your students to play musically from the start – without getting tied up reading notation. It goes on to suggest ways of introducing notation when the time is right.
A ‘part two’ to this article will be online soon to develop this further.
Thanks to those who have made positive comments about the articles. Please do keep your feedback coming.
Here is a short article about the thorny issue of music practice – how the teacher’s guidance during the lesson can make it more meaningful and desirable to the student, and how careful a choice of words can make a big difference to attitudes to practice. All very important because of course, the majority of the learning takes place away from the lessons and the teacher! Excuse me…
It is so often taken for granted (students, parents and teachers) that early music lessons will involve learning to read music. After all it’s essential isn’t it? Well, I’m not so sure it is.
In this article, I discuss some of the pitfalls of insisting that beginners – particularly children – read music before they can play with a degree of fluency. Let’s Make Music…
This is my way of sharing ideas about contemporary music (which for this purpose, means ‘classical’ music of the 20th & 21st centuries) and about preparing the next generation of musicians.
When talking about the next generation I mean ‘musicians’ very much with a ‘small m’, because one of the things I feel very strongly about is that for too long, music education has been based on the conservatory model, with teachers often dismissing students as lacking in promise, talent, potential or whatever, in a system that often insists on ‘ear tests’ before admitting students to lessons at all! This means that the innumerable benefits of musical activity are denied those who do not fit the conservatory model. More later.
Likewise, I want to share ideas about where contemporary musical thinking is going. I know where mine is going, and it’s in the opposite direction to those who want to go back to tonal structures and write in styles called ‘neo’ this, that or the other! Issues such as this, and others, will be explored in time.
I look forward to some interesting discussion as a result of my posts over a period … possibly an extended period, because, in view of all the things I have to do, I think this blog might take some time to develop!
Robert Lennon Musician & Educator 