A few days ago I attended a fantastic discussion panel session at The Hub, Westminster, entitled “The Future of Musicianship”. It was the first event put on by the newly-launched “Loving and Living Music” project, brainchild of Ben Hillyard and Heli Rajasalo.
The goal of the initiative is outlined in detail here but to give you an idea:
What we are looking for in the Loving & Living Music project is a definition or a description of musicianship that includes all aspects of musicianship across all genres and instruments. Having this definition will enable discussion of musicianship to take place on a wider scale than is possible today.
We see a gap in the way that music in commonly taught. With the Loving & Living Music project we are looking to provoke awareness and discussion among the music education sector about how Musicianship is and could be taught.
The future of musicianship is a subject close to my heart due to my work with Easy Ear Training, where we try to use modern technology to make learning music more fun, easy and effective.
The event was fascinating, and the discussion broad and interesting. I won’t try to recount the discussion (not least because the entire panel session is now available online) but the event was eye-opening for me in a number of ways.
Musicianship is not what I thought.
In my work at Easy Ear Training I live immersed in a world of aural skills and over time (more…)
After two stellar nights at the London A Cappella Festival (Thursday, Friday), I was excited to get stuck into the jam-packed Saturday agenda: three full concerts, plenty more foyer performances, an improvisation workshop, a panel talk and a music education discussion group.
Improvisation Workshop
I started the day by attending one of the three vocal workshops – the topic was improvisation, taught by Pete Churchill, whose London Vocal Project choir were performing later in the day.
I hadn’t been sure what to expect from a vocal improvisation workshop, but Pete quickly explained he wouldn’t just be spending an hour teaching us to sing scat! Instead he focused on how to manipulate a melody and play around with the rhythm to create your own improvised performance versions. The core message was on keeping a rock solid sense of the beat and auralising the standard melody in your head so you could improvise freely around it with a reliable rhythmic accuracy. It definitely stretched my ears in a good way – and being reminded of the importance of rhythmic discipline is never a bad thing. His suggestion that we kick back some evening, crack open a bottle of wine and spend some quality time with our metronome was heard loud and clear!
Pete Churchill teaches with a natural ease and the kind of clear, relaxed explanations that only come of real musical mastery. The workshop was a great experience, gave me lots to go away and think more about, and made me even more excited to see the London Vocal Project later in the day.
The workshop ended just in time to catch the tail-end of (more…)
“How to teach music… in perfect harmony” at the London A Cappella Festival 2012 14:50-15:30 in The Wenlock Room Saturday 14th January, Kings Place, London
The last few years have seen a sharp increase in people’s interest in singing. From X-Factor and Pop Idol, to SingStar and Rock Band, to High School Musical and Glee, it’s clear there is massive public interest in singing and vocal groups.
Unfortunately it seems so far like the message of each of those franchises is centered squarely on celebrityism and pop star success – rather than developing real musical ability.
Can this widespread enthusiasm be harnessed to really drive music education forwards and encourage a new generation of truly talented musicians to emerge?
I’m proposing an informal discussion group as an #LACFextra, on the topic of a cappella for music education, tentatively entitled “How to teach music… in perfect harmony”. Not so much “How can we teach a cappella music?” as “How can we use a cappella to teach music?”
Some initial suggestions for discussion topics:
Why use a cappella for music education?
What areas of teaching music could a cappella be relevant to?
What specific benefits are there to using a cappella music for teaching?
Why isn’t it already more used?
How has it been used? Any successful experiences?
How can technology bolster a cappella in music ed?
What can we do to accelerate music education using a cappella music?
What potential collaborations between music ed. professionals/companies and a cappella groups are there?
The discussion will be open to everyone, and we’re hoping we might even entice a few of the festival performers to join us.
Details of time and location will be announced later this week, but the discussion will be at Kings Place during the day on Saturday and run for 30-40 minutes.
UPDATE: The discussion will take place in The Wenlock Room of Kings Place, from 14:50-15:30 on Saturday 14th.
If you’re interested in this topic, please:
Leave a comment below to say you’ll come along (and suggest any further discussion points)
Help spread the word using the social media buttons below, or by linking to this post and using hashtag #LACFextra.
The startup world loves “bootstrapping”: the idea that you get a business off the ground not by seeking investment and outside funding, but by starting to sell products or services and then gradually growing the business using your own income. It comes from the expression “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” and just means that you’re using whatever resources you have to hand to get yourself going. I’m a bootstrapping fan myself; it’s how I’m running Easy Ear Training so far.
Lately I’ve been thinking about bootstrapping in music learning, and specifically ear training.
There may not be an obvious connection to you, but if you’re a musician you’re probably doing this to some extent already – just without realising it!
There’s a huge wealth of history to music tuition, and no shortage of teachers to tell you “this is how you learn X”, “this is how you practise Y”. And I wouldn’t for a second want to dismiss the value there.
But there’s another way too. This is the attitude of bootstrapping. Of “do whatever works”.
Bootstrapping your music education
If you want to be a concert pianist or reach the top of the profession in your chosen instrument or talent, you need to be careful. You don’t want to learn the wrong fingering for a scale, or develop poor embouchure early on – because the more you practise the wrong method, the more ingrained it becomes, and the harder you have to work later on to fix it. As a saying I recently came across puts it: “Practise makes permanent”.
That suggests that a “do whatever works” mentality is wrong-headed, and will only cause you pain later on.
But I think that attitude is far too motivated by fear. (more…)
This week I was introduced to a fantastic new website for learning songs on the piano, by a blog post over at Music Matters. It’s called OnlinePianist.com and the idea is to teach you songs visually by showing the keyboard fingering on screen while a MIDI version of the song plays.
Now the graphics and sound quality may be a little ’90s, but put aside any snooty reactions – because there’s real value here. The focus is on pop music, songs that are in the charts at the moment (which, sadly, makes me realise once again how little I pay attention to chart music!) But I managed to find some Nirvana, and some Green Day. Check out this example video of Green Day’s “When September Ends” for a glimpse of what the site’s all about:
An example song tutorial at OnlinePianist.com: Green Day's 'When September Ends'
Learn by seeing, learn by doing
As you’ll see from the video, the arrangement (marked “Intermediate” difficulty) is fairly simple, but clearly recognisable. The options to adjust tempo and isolate each hand’s part make it easy to dissect any tricky sections and break down learning into manageable chunks.
Every student learns differently, but I’d say there are two main camps of instrumentalist: (more…)
About Me
My name's Christopher Sutton and this is my personal blog. You can learn more about me here.
My name's Christopher Sutton and this is my personal blog. You can learn more about me