First Lesson Reflection

This first lesson was an eye-opener.  Especially since I have done this kind of thing before in an individual setting, but a group setting is almost more like a performance in a way.  Routine, routine, keep it simple: with one or two goals at most.  Also, I would like to ask more questions, should have thought of that before.  “How many pieces do you see?”  Oh, about fifteen.  Then perhaps “What do they look like?”  Another thing that Brandt suggested that struck me was explaining things from the kid’s prospective, like "Here's a piece of the instrument with three holes on one side, hold it like this, with three fingers on the three holes. “  This makes a lot of sense in hind sight.  I also got some good suggestions from my fellow students.   Yes, I do need to loosen up a bit.  I also thought of just putting the reed on the mouthpiece, practice making an embouchure, and make some sounds.  At the suggestion of my daughter’s band teacher here in New Haven I thought twice about that, though.  She doesn’t allow her students to take the instruments home until the second week of lessons, until she is sure all students can properly assemble the instrument without damaging it.  In the first week of lessons they work on instrument assembly, then making the first sound on the mouthpiece/barrel combination.  Only once they have accomplished these tasks can the students take the instruments home.  I realize this policy has complications, although I imagine these are issues one establishes more firmly when one has some experience building a program.

Post #4: Responding to the Kohn article on rubrics

Rubrics seem to me to be an element that comes out of the “product” oriented way of learning so common in schools today.  Students are trained to “produce” according to a strict set of standards, and in terms of assessment the product that comes from the students is the only thing that counts.  In this mode students don’t have to think very much about what they are producing as long as the product they come up with complies with the appropriate standards spelled out in the rubric.  In instrumental music instruction the focus on product gives rise to the “churning out” of performances that Brandt Schneider mentions as the malaise of today’s music programs.  Unfortunately I think the need to placate an administrator’s hunger for data may mean that occasionally we music educators have to package what we do with students in terms of a product.  However, let’s not lose sight of what is really important: the process of learning music, learning to speak the musical language and actually have something to say.  This means providing our students with a meaningful vehicle to improve their musicianship as well as their technique, and most importantly have some fun doing it.

Blog Prompt #3

Blog Prompt #3

• Should music educators be experts in jazz or American folk music?
• What American songs should all students know?

I have a certain hesitancy in responding to this prompt that I hope will be met with some understanding on the part of the reader.  Let me first state that I believe music educators should find whatever means necessary to build their student’s aural understanding of music, and if this endeavor can be met through the teacher’s use of American popular music, traditional or otherwise, I applaud such an endeavor.  We, as music educators, should be able to involve students musically on a level that students can relate to, and with many of our students American popular music will provide such a medium.  However, as music educators we need to engage all our students, no matter what their nationality, in a musically meaningful manner.  In this endeavor I believe that the nationalities of each of our students should be put on equal footing, and be explored in such a manner.  I relate passionately to a performance I took part in last fall (October 2013) at the Worthington-Hooker School in New Haven, where folk-songs, stories, and dances from nations all across the seven continents of the world, each represented by students in the various classes, were presented on stage.  One of the songs all students learned for the performance was the German round Froh zu sein, which they first sung in solfege with hand syllables, and then with the German text in canon.  This is just one of the songs I believe the students benefited from learning, not just musically, but culturally in general.

I bring this situation up because I believe that “American” music definitely has something special to offer the music classroom, however for certain students Indian folk music, or Italian folk music, or Chinese folk music, or Brazilian folk music, might have equal meaning in that it provides the vehicle for those students to become better musicians.  Finally I must relate the story of my wife, a music educator born in Germany, who took a job as a string teacher in a relatively rural community in Connecticut with a string program of twenty students at the time, and has built it to a program with well over two hundred.  Some of her most devoted students can tell the story of her listening to a recording of the Indian national anthem on YOU-TUBE and then writing a four-part version for her orchestra to play.  The strength of her program definitely comes from her sensitivity to cultural diversity, as well as her plain passion for music.  

Blog Post #2

Brandt Schneider "Creating Musical Flexibility Through the Ensemble"

• Critique the article.  
• How do we determine that someone is a good musician?

I enjoyed this article very much because it challenged me to create a curriculum where my students are building an aural understanding of music rather than mere key pushing skills.  Bach chorales are one good vehicle for such a style of learning because the voices tend to develop linearly, i.e. primarily through stepwise motion, and are thus are comprehended and absorbed in an aural fashion more easily.  Having students learn each of the four chorale voices in a variety of keys not only supports their mastery of the melodic content of the chorale (horizontal comprehension), it lays the groundwork for them to understand the harmonic structure as well (comprehension of vertical progression).  This is a skill I am always stressing to my theory students: to develop an aural comprehension of the theory topics we are covering, and then apply these concepts to music they are working on.  The model Schneider creates allows the instrumental (or vocal) ensemble to become a laboratory for learning theory concepts in an applied setting, thus bridging the divide between “theory class” and the ensemble setting.  While not all theoretical concepts may lend themselves to this model just yet, I believe that this style of learning is invaluable for students as they increase their instrumental-vocal skills.  How do we determine if someone is a “good” musician?  Perhaps one yardstick of such a value designation is if an instrumentalist can get beyond the mere technical necessities of their instrument while playing music to a true aural understanding of the music being played.  Do they have an understanding of the vocabulary and grammar of their music, or as Ken Trapp said “are they merely barking the notes?”

Ideas on the Boonshaft reading

My Credo in Relation to the Boonshaft Reading

 

Oliver Homann

 

 

I am a musician who enjoys sharing my knowledge and skills with others.  My primary instruments are oboe and English horn, and these are the instruments I perform on, although I enjoy exploring other instruments as well, and use some of these for teaching purposes.  These secondary instruments include clarinet, saxophone, recorder, and keyboard.  For some years now I have coached woodwinds and taught music theory at the Educational Center for the Arts, an inter-district arts magnet school in New Haven, CT.  Previously I studied at Northwestern University, the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati, Yale University, and finally at the City University of New York, where I received a D.M.A. in oboe performance.  I have also studied at the Hochschule fuer Musik in Mannheim, Germany, and played professionally with orchestras in Mexico for several years.

I believe that something I have to offer to students through my teaching comes from my passion for music, my knowledge of music both theoretical and historical, as well as my years of performance experience at the professional level.  Peter Boonshaft quotes George Carlin: “It’s not enough to know which notes to play, you have to know why they need to be played.”  While Boonshaft relates Carlin’s comments to the art of conducting and really knowing a score, I believe we can extend these ideas to music-making in general, especially for students.  Music is, after all, a language, and in order to communicate successfully, students need to know “why [notes] need to be played”, which has a lot to do with the when, where, who, and how of the music as well.

I believe that music can enrich people’s lives in a unique manner.  While music can be studied on a theoretical and historical level, it is first and foremost an activity, it’s something we do.  Yes knowing is important, but this act of doing, of making music seems to be the glue that holds things together for my students.  We can see the importance of doing in Boonshaft’s observations on percussionists, who in certain circumstances have the potential to not be fully engaged in the rehearsal.  In order to engage percussionists that may not have a part to play Boonshaft creates “air drums” to keep the players focused on the music making at hand.  This concept of engagement goes well beyond the realm of rehearsals, of course.  Especially in areas such as music theory, where learning has a tendency to get bogged down in heady concepts, involving as much “doing” as possible can make the class more successful.  In covering counterpoint, for example, I try to have my students sing as many of the examples as possible before we start talking about intervallic relationships between the counterpoint lines.

In the end I value good music.  I value guiding students to achieve more in the pursuit of good music.  I believe that every student can achieve something positive when engaged in this pursuit.  I really enjoyed Boonshaft’s words about his mother, an artist who had framed the following passage in her studio:  “The bearer of these presents is Michelangelo, the sculptor.  His nature is such that he requires to be drawn out by kindness and encouragement.  But if love be shown him and he is well treated, he will accomplish things that will make the whole world wonder.”  My goal with my teaching is to provide each student with the support they need to more fully realize their potential.