(Part 4 of “The Teacher-Student Relationship”)

What “qualifies” one to teach? Well, no one wrote a rule book on it, and in very real ways we are all teachers. So there’s no definitive way to answer the question. But if you’d like to be teaching and aren’t sure if you’re qualified, perhaps a few of these checklist items can help you decide:

1. Do you know that you play reasonably well by regional and perhaps national standards?
2. Can you teach all levels from beginning to advanced?
3. If you’re self-taught, do you honestly feel that your homespun technique allows you to play as skillfully (or more so) than others who play the same instrument?
4. Do you have a good reputation for performances you have done?
5. Do you have any teaching experience in another field?
6. Do you have a method or plan that you know is viable?
7. Are you willing to be flexible with your method, modifying it for individual needs?
8. Are you familiar with more than one technique?
9. Are you confident that you can handle students’ insecurities, stubbornness, fear, over-confidence, parents, or whatever challenges they may present?
10. Are you patient and cheerful?
11. Can you advise students on effective practice habits?
12. Are you good at motivating people to practice and to do their best?
13. Are you willing to be cooperative with other teachers in your community?
14. It helps to be over-qualified; to have extensive experience, education, and practice.

If you’ve been asked to teach and can answer the above items positively, you probably won’t fall prey to the “impostor syndrome” (the nagging sensation many professionals have that we’re not qualified to be doing what we’re doing).

After that, how do you know when you’re doing a good job? Think about your favorite teachers, the ones who have qualities we should all strive for as teachers. You probably like them for a reason. Chances are they:

• Are good role models musically
• Engage students  in discussion and activities
• Respect what students say and ask, and answer questions thoroughly and politely
• Have good command of musical terminology appropriate for your style of music
• Have a sense of humor
• Know basic music theory
• Smile a lot, have a good sense of humor, welcome and encourage laughter
• Don’t skip or gloss over basic material, make no assumptions about what students already know
• Teach by sharing rather than showing

How you approach teaching will affect your reputation, and more importantly, can affect people’s lives. Music is such a deeply felt medium of expression that every musical experience a student has affects their self esteem. As teachers, our responsibility is to make lessons enjoyable, productive and inspiring.

Every teacher needs to be aware that no individual can teach every style and every skill on any given instrument. Be sure that your method is appropriate for the styles your students want to learn! A classical musician can’t presume to teach folk, traditional or ethnic music (and vice versa) unless you have specifically immersed yourself in those styles; a pop musician may not have a complete understanding of progressive jazz; a bluegrass musician is farther from an old time musician than one might realize; and so on. If you don’t have a good working knowledge and plenty of experience in a particular style, be prepared to refer some students on to other teachers.

Regardless of the instrument and the style of music being taught, teacher and student have a 50-50 responsibility to make lessons work. If a student cannot (that’s different from “will not”) learn using a particular method, it’s the responsibility of the teacher to change the method. No two students learn the same way. By “method” I mean, for instance, with or without music notation, with one or another hand position, with or without picks or fingernails, and also whether the emphasis is on aural, visual or tactile learning. (People are roughly divided into one of three learning strengths: aural, visual, or tactile; and will do best if taught accordingly, and often even better if taught all three.)

Additionally, you can find out, as you get to know each student, what goals mean the most to them. Those who want to become professionals, and have what it takes to do so, will show this by their behavior, attitude, and progress. Those who want to play for themselves in the privacy of their living rooms will thrive on a totally different approach. Some would like to be able to play in an ensemble but not solo, and some just want to hold their own in a jam session. You will encounter all kinds of reasons why people want to play music. All are valid.

If you have very young students, you’ll want to determine whether a child is taking lessons because he or she wants to, or because the parents have decreed it. In the latter case, the student may not be very interested, and you may suggest to the parents that they wait a little longer before requiring lessons, or encourage them to ask the child which instrument he or she really wants to play. However, a child who is eager to learn must not be held back just because he or she is very young. Very young children learn quickly! My youngest student was three years old. Teaching children is a specialty, though, as they require special nurturing and the teacher has to motivate the parents as well as the child.

On the other end of the scale, some adult students may come to you asking, “Am I too old?” I think the best answer is, “Of course not!” My oldest student was 93, and she did well. The ability to learn is usually only limited by attitude and belief. Although the neural pathways of an older adult form more slowly than those of a young person, one is never too old to learn (unless dementia is present).

Rarely, you may encounter “low musical I.Q.”, in which someone is perfectly functional in other areas but doesn’t respond to musical education, and they just can’t get beyond a very elementary level of musicality. Even though such students may not make the teacher feel useful, very often they really enjoy what they do learn, and for that reason, I think they deserve as much effort from the teacher as he or she might give to a more able student. After all, teaching music is about sharing the joy it brings, and who are we to decide that one person gets less joy out of it than another?

 

Next time… Part 5 on The Teacher Student Relationship

 

 

 

First, many thanks to my readers for all your supportive comments! I’m glad you enjoy reading my posts as much as I enjoy writing them.

I’d like to diverge from the current series on the teacher-student relationship (will resume with next post), to comment on the tempos at which we play our music.

The tempo you choose can make or break a piece, but maybe not in the ways you might think! How fast is “upbeat”? Does it differ for various styles? And why do those pyrotechnic folks play so darn fast, anyway?

Whether you play from notation or by ear, every musician makes a choice about how fast or slow each piece is played.  If you use music notation, there is often a tempo indicated. (For those unfamiliar with it, the number that usually appears  at the top  of the page (such as 98 or 120 or whatever)is the suggested setting for a metronome. If you learn by ear, the tempo on a recording or video is probably what you’ll aim for. If you have a teacher or mentor, he or she will probably advise you.

Many new musicians try to play pieces “up to tempo” as soon as possible, long before they are ready to do so. The result is sloppiness and frustration. It’s better to practice every new tune SLOWLY for a LONG TIME. It will come up to speed on its own as your accuracy and kinesthetic sense improves.

Some people play too fast because they’re afraid of playing too slow, as if someone would scold them. That’s self-defeating. It usually results in sloppiness, which isn’t enjoyable for either the player or the listener. Better to play slower and accurately. If anyone gives you any guff, just tell them to show you their Music Police badge.

Another reason you might play too fast is because, as you learn a tune, the brain automatically wants to maintain the status quo; if you’re a bit tense as you learn, your brain maintains the tension by speeding up the tune so it’s always just over the edge of control. Practice should allow you to relax more and more, so if you notice that you’re not making progress on a tune, slow it down and you might be surprised that you can actually play it much better when it’s slower. (When you’re tense, the brain interprets that there must be a threat of some kind, so that tune becomes associated subconsciously with threat.)

It’s also common to play too fast when we’re nervous, which can happen in a lesson or a performance. The most common reason for messing up on stage is because we’re playing much faster than we do in practice, due to the effects of adrenalin, and the fingers can’t keep up because it’s much faster than you realize. When on stage, I play everything slower than I think I should, so it actually comes out just right.

Some musicians think playing fast shows off their skill. But upbeat music should have character and finesse, and the musical quality of a tune should not be sacrificed for speed. Playing really fast is not the most important skill.

All that said, many musicians would like to know how to at least get their tunes up to the tempos they should be played at. So how do you learn to play “fast” and accurately? Easy. Play slow for a long, long time. Honest. Surely you’ve heard musicians who play fast but you can’t really tell what all the notes were supposed to be, because they’re sloppy; those are the ones who practice fast. And you’ve heard musicians who play fast but you can hear every single note becasue they’re clean and accurate players; these are the ones who practice their tunes slowly and patiently, and focus on details. When the tune is finally committed to muscle memory and can accurately and cleanly be played faster than the brain can think and the eye can move, one can practice it that way sometimes. But it won’t stay that way if you don’t also go back and play it slowly just as often as you play it fast.

So, how fast is too fast? I’ll comment mostly about Old Time, Bluegrass and Celtic music here, but the same principles apply to most styles.

A good rule of thumb for, say, dance tunes is that they should be played no faster than a dancer can dance. And any “fast” music should be played in such a way that all the notes can be heard, the melodies are recognizable, and you can still play expressively.

I used to attend an annual festival at which groups of Old Time fiddlers jammed all day and all night. I was a vendor, and my booth was in earshot of them, so I had many hours of captive listening. Over time I was able to recognize many of the tunes by name. Later when I began to learn some of the tunes on banjo, I was amazed that the melodies I knew in my head from listening to the fiddlers bore little resemblance, except for the chord structure, to the ones I was learning by the same names! The melodies I “knew” were comprised of only the downbeat notes! There were a lot of notes in between that I had never heard. Why? Because the fiddlers had played them so darn fast. I learned that the actual melodies were a lot more interesting and complex.

Playing over the speed limit does the music no favors. The only exception I know of is playing Bluegrass, if it’s played well. The whole purpose of the faster bluegrass tunes is to show off the exceptional skills of the players who can fit a million notes into a split second  –  but cleanly, so you can hear every note. Celtic and Old Time music are not meant to be played as fast and furious as Bluegrass. Yes, Bluegrass evolved from Old Time music, and Old Time music evolved from Celtic music. But the three styles are quite distinct in character and execution.

Old Time music evolved and is still played in the rural Southeastern U.S., played by hard-working farmers and laid-back country folk who enjoy a long afternoon sittin’ in the front porch swing. It’s zone-out music, not meant to be entertaining for the listener, and it’s almost trance-enducing for the player. Don’t get me wrong; it’s nothing like the slow and unstructured music of the New Age genre; quite the opposite, with its often sprightly tempos and complex melodies. But if you know them well, you can just let your fingers dance on the strings using muscle memory while your conscious brain isn’t heavily engaged. You can’t play them overly fast and still relax, because you’d have to concentrate too hard.

Celtic music contains several types of tunes. Below is a list with the time signatures for each type. Don’t mistake time signature for tempo!*  I’ve given suggested tempos (beats per minute or “bpm”) as well.

Strathspeys: skipping set dances, with many Scottish snaps or cuts (Scottish ornaments); tempos should be moderate, and emphasis should be on the backbeat to catch the dancers in the air. (Too much emphasis on the downbeat makes the dance sound like elephants stomping.) Suggested tempo: 120 bpm.

Jigs: 6/8 time, lively, emphasis on first and/or fourth beat, with a lilt. Jigs can have different personalities, so tempo can vary from about 100 to 126 bpm.

Reels: 4/4 time, lively but smooth, emphasis on second and fourth beats, to catch the dancers in the air. About 160 bpm is good for dancing.

Marches: 2/4 or 6/8 time, strident, a walking rhythm, stately. Play it no faster than you can imagine an army marching. Suggested tempo:  80 to 84 bpm.

Polkas: 2/4 time, lively. About 126 bpm.

Hornpipes: 4/4 time, with a lilt or dotted rhythm that often is not written into the music; many triplets for ornamentation. Slower than a reel.  About 126 bpm.

Slide:12/8 time, lively, fourth and tenth beats emphasized. About 116 bpm.

Waltzes: 3/4 time, with a lilt; Irish waltzes are faster than American ones. About 138 bpm.

Airs: slow, moody, pretty, attention to dynamics and phrasing, can be quite slow.

Laments: very slow, moody, sad, often no particular time signature

Sean Nos: a capella vocal music which is slow; no time signature (free-form)

Piobroch: starts simple and slow, and works up to a highly ornamented finish with variations; time signature is irrelevant as it is a free-form style.

 

*Regarding the difference between a tempo and a time signature, the time signature just tells you how many beats there are in each measure and which kind of note gets one beat, but it doesn’t tell you the rate of speed of the beats. (A measure is not a measurement of a rate of speed.) For instance, a piece in 4/4 might be a march or a reel; those are two different tempi.

The Five Ways of Learning

It’s well known that individuals learn in at least one of five ways:

• Aural
• Verbal
• Visual
• Experiential
• Tactile

Aural learners retain what they have heard. If they have only read it, they may not retain it. I had a history teacher who was wise enough to have us read a chapter each night, and the next day he would verbally reiterate the material in the chapter. I read the chapters, but I learned from his telling. I guarantee there were others who learned not from his telling, but from reading the chapters.

Verbal learners retain what they themselves have spoken. They need to repeat or discuss what they are learning (not just hear it) to set it in their memory.

Visual learners retain what they have seen; they may learn from watching videos, demonstrations or procedures. I’ve heard some students say that watching videos is a waste of time, but those are usually the ones who learn best some other way.

Experiential learners have to do a specific activity to retain information, rather than just being told about, watching, or reading about it.  Role-playing is a good tool for experiential learners.

Tactile learners are similar to experiential learners with the addition that the experience must involve touch. For instance, some people can’t remember telephone numbers verbally, but can dial them because their fingers know the patterns. Tactile earners often learn to play musical instruments well if not made to concentrate on the printed music as much as on the kinesthetic patterns of the music.

Good teaching uses all these elements, not just the one the teacher learned with, and not just the one that a particular student best relates to, but all of them for every student. Although each student will have a favored way of learning, all benefit using all the senses in the learning process. The tactile and experiential elements are covered by playing the instruments; the verbal part is what you say, ask, and discuss; the aural part is the music they hear; and the visual part is what is in books as well as the melodic and harmonic patterns they see.

Defining Expectations

Many students come to their first few lessons not knowing what to expect of the teacher or what the teacher expects of them. They may have had experiences with other teachers that are very different, or they may have never had lessons before. It helps a student relax and learn more easily if the teacher communicates specific formats and guidelines in the first lesson. These can be printed and handed to the student and/or parent. Here are some suggestions:

 A Student’s Responsibilities:

• To arrive on time, and stay until the scheduled ending time

• To be attentive

• To respect the teacher and the material being presented, and consider the efficacy of the material offered

• To do all the work as requested, and to practice at home between lessons

• To treat other students with respect

• To participate, not just observe

• To wear no perfumes or heavily scented products to lessons or classes

• To speak up / ask questions when clarification is needed

• To voice any and all concerns, and to do so politely and respectfully

• To let the teacher know more than 24 hours in advance if you must miss a lesson

• Never come to a lesson when you or someone in your family is sick with or coming down with a contagious illness, even a cold. If you’re getting over an illness but are still coughing or sneezing, please stay home.

• If you haven’t been able to practice since your last lesson, come to your lesson anyway  –  there is always something to learn. However, chronic lack of practice should be discussed with the teacher.

The Teacher’s Responsibilities:

• Think of yourself less as a disseminator of information and more as a facilitator of learning.

• All Students have within them the ability to which they aspire. Each individual will recognize and allow it to blossom to whatever degree they believe they are capable. Show them their capability.

• Most people are more creative than they think they are. Bring out that creativity in each student.

• People enjoy good leadership. Be a confident leader, yet be humble. Remember that any one of your students may know more that you do.

• A great teacher has a good sense of humor. Don’t take yourself too seriously.

• People remember best what they have been led to discover for themselves. They remember least what they’ve merely been told. Make learning experiential. Discussion, questions, participation, and activity are all part of the experience.

• Every student learns differently. No one formula works for all. Flexibility and creativity are a teacher’s best tools. Use aural, written, tactile, and experiential teaching techniques so all individuals’ learning abilities are addressed.

• A real teacher is compassionate  –  recognizing, acknowledging, and honoring individuality.

• A true teacher learns from teaching. If you knew all there is to know, there would be little reason to teach.

• Show respect for, and encouragement to, every student.

• Answer students’ questions respectfully.

• Consider complaints fairly.

• Smile a lot!

• Require no more and no less of each student than they are capable of reasonably doing, accomplishing, or learning.

• Provide breaks, rests, and opportunities for refreshment regularly.

• Foster students’ respect for each other.

• Present all available viewpoints on the subject material, not just that which matches your opinions.

• Provide information for further study and additional sources of the subject material.

 

This is the second of a series of posts on the teacher-student relationship. If you haven’t seen Part 1, it’s below.

Your Energy Level 

It’s been said that a performer uses as many calories on stage in an hour-long concert as a runner does in ten miles. Any performer can tell you this must be true. What about teachers? Many people don’t realize that prolonged concentration and speaking will burn calories. That means teachers do well to prepare as though they were training for marathons; not only eat right and always get enough rest, but exercise regularly. The stamina and the mental clarity you’ll gain will make you a better teacher.

I used to joke about getting all my exercise hauling my instruments and baggage through airports, but it was actually true. It was hard work and it was aerobic, and it made me physically strong. I did it often enough to equal regular workouts at a gym.  Also, for a few years I lived about three blocks from the grocery store, bank and post office, and walked to them almost every day, carrying home my groceries without the aid of a cart. I did this on purpose because it was great exercise. If your usual activities don’t include some form of strenuous exercise, invent one!

I don’t schedule students during the hours when I am least bright (for me, that’s late afternoon and evening) because they deserve my best. It’s no fun to teach when you’re tired, hungry, or worn out. And it’s unfair to your students when you’re not at your best.

The same is true for students; it’s respectful to your teacher to be awake and aware at your lesson. Also, never, never, go to a lesson if you’re sick or think you might be coming down with something, or if someone in your family has a contagious illness (you can carry germs even if you’re not sick yourself). Exposing your teacher to any illness, even a cold, is terribly unfair; private music teachers are self-employed and don’t get paid sick days, so when they’re sick, they can’t make a living, and you can deprive your teacher of substantial income if you pass your illness along to him or her. Teachers, likewise, should respect their students enough to refrain from teaching when sick. Sure, you need the income, but it’s just plain mean to pass illness to anyone.

 

Technical Terminology 

Teachers need to know and use our technical terminology correctly and comfortably. We have to be able to spell and pronounce all terms correctly. This makes our teaching credible. But beware of using technical terminology to sound like you “know a lot”. It’s much more kind to your students to use language they already understand than to use technical terms when they aren’t necessary. One cannot teach a subject using language that is part of the material to be learned (just as the dictionary definition of a word never uses the word itself). You can explain key words and terms that are important, but constantly using unfamiliar technical terminology can cause eyes to glaze over.

Students, if your teacher uses any term you don’t fully understand, ask what it means. There’s no such thing as a dumb question. It does make you look dumb, though, if you can’t follow an instruction or grasp an idea because you’re missing a definition. Don’t let a teacher make assumptions about how much you know. No one is smart enough to understand lingo they’ve never heard before.

Many people make the mistake of assuming that everyone should already know what we know, and that if they don’t they are ignorant. This is our own self-esteem issue. Most of us have a tendency to think that the sum total of what we know isn’t much beyond what any normal person knows. That’s a mistake. Everyone knows different things. Assuming that everyone should already know, for instance, what a diminished chord is, would be like believing everyone speaks Sanskrit.

When I was new at my very first job, I learned how prevalent the above attitude is. I had been a college-prep student in High School, but found myself working temporarily at a lunch counter at Woolworth’s. I had no idea how to make fries or how to fill the coke machine. The other employees thought I had no brain whatsoever, and treated me like an idiot. They didn’t remember that at one time they had to learn those things, too. The pain of that experience has led me to be very careful to never treat anyone that way.

 

 Be Prepared but Flexible

For private lessons, I found out early in my career that planning each student’s lesson in advance doesn’t actually work very well. And that when teaching adult students, requiring a specific amount of work to be mastered between lessons is unrealistic. Young students make progress at different rates, and this not only varies from person to person but from week to week, depending on what else is going on in their lives. Adult students require even more flexibility, as they often have more responsibilities that supersede practice time.

It’s good to have specific goals and assignments, but since you can’t guess how much practice someone has actually had between lessons, it works well to allow them to continue from wherever they are. I simply say at the beginning of each lesson, “Play for me what you’ve been practicing.” Then we take it from there. Progress happens at their speed. Of course, if no progress is made for a long time, I might have a talk with them about the benefits of regular practice, or perhaps ask if they need a break from lessons. But there have only been a handful of students (in over 30 years of teaching) with whom I’ve had to have those discussions.

Continued next time…

We are all teachers and we are all students, whether or not we realize it. We are each an example to others whenever we play, and whatever we say. And we are constantly learning. Sometimes we teach or learn on purpose; sometimes just by being who we are. Learning requires as much integrity as teaching.

A bit of background on my perspective: I grew up with several influences, listening to many kinds of music including classical, pop, folk and ethnic styles. Each has its own way of being passed from player to student. In the folk tradition, a person learns their skills from as many people as possible, and pretty much everyone is willing to share their knowledge with newer musicians. In the classical world, a master teacher bestows technique and the knowledge of music-reading. In traditional and ethnic music, children grow up constantly (daily) exposed to the music of their culture and participates from earliest childhood.

I learned a great deal from people who weren’t formal teachers, and picked up a huge amount through observation and “osmosis”. For various substantive reasons I could not study formally until I was an adult. I was already a professional musician by the time I finally had access to professional instruction, which was immensely satisfying.

As a child whose family automatically followed certain cultural traditions, I was exposed to music all day every day, except when I was at school. In older cultures in almost every country of the world, most people grow up with good music as the atmosphere, the sound-track, the background and the foreground of their lives. We modern Americans may be the only ones who don’t  –  we get ads and MTV and AM radio. Without the high-quality and live music influence, it can be harder to develop a musical brain.

Because of this, many musicians who are completely self-taught often lack important skills and are unaware that they do. How can you know that you lack something you don’t know exists? There are exceptions, of course; I think, for instance, acoustic fingerstyle guitarist Steve Baughman is an example of a self-taught musician who, because he wasn’t influenced by limits, and was willing to spend all his free time practicing as he was growing up, and who had good musical influences to develop his musical brain, became an amazing musician. In fact, since he was self-taught, he didn’t know how good he was until he started playing in public and quickly became famous. But this is very rare!

There are many ways to learn and many ways to teach, and the person in a teaching role can influence the learner profoundly. As I’ve said before, I think all musicians do best when they learn both aurally and formally. It’s a teacher’s responsibility to see that their students are aware of that, and to teach ear-learning and music-reading skills, or at least refer to other teachers so the student has access to both. Learning from as many teachers as possible is optimally beneficial, and if any teacher says theirs is the only way to learn, they are mistaken. I’ve met students who have been told that playing without sheet music in front of them is “cheating”, and I’ve met new musicians who get upset when sheet music isn’t handed out at folk or traditional jam sessions. What a shame that they didn’t have the influence of responsible teachers.

In addition to the above, every teacher has a style all their own, related to their personality. Among the variants of teaching styles, let’s look at a few:

1. Sharing or Showing?

We’ve all had teachers who gave us a sense that their subject material or their instrument required special talent to learn, and we have emerged from the classroom or lesson thinking, “I may never be able to do that”. Hopefully, we have also had teachers who easily took us to new heights, and we emerged saying, “I can do that!” and we felt eager to deepen our skills.

What is the difference between these teaching attitudes? The former is show; the latter is share. When the teacher is in his/her head instead of his/her heart, you get show. When the teacher is fully present in the moment, connecting with the students, and coming from his/her heart, you get share, the inspired and inspiring kind of teaching that is full of life. If we are to assist students in touching souls with their music, their own souls must be touched first.

It has been said that a teacher can only verbalize 50% of what he or she knows, that a student can only understand 50% of what he or she hears, and can use only 50% of what he or she understands. I think this is a fair assessment. Given this dynamic, a teacher’s job is challenging; one must put forth a great deal of energy to present the material in a way that is exciting enough to capture the imaginations of students with different personalities, abilities, and attitudes.

I’ve had some brilliant teachers and some dull ones  –  the dull ones taught me how not to teach. I always wondered why they were teaching at all; if they didn’t enjoy it, how could the student? Perhaps they thought knowledge was not for enjoying. But the brilliant teachers were full of life, genuinely cared about my learning experience, and presented the material in interesting ways.

2. Aloofness vs. Making Friends With Your Students

IMHO, being aloof and unreachable does our students no favors. I think one of the most helpful things a teacher can do for a student is to become a friend. The student-teacher relationship is based on trust and respect, and what better way to gain it than to be a good friend? As you develop a friendship with a student, you come to see aspects of their lives and personalities that help you to teach them better. And of course these friendships are rewarding on a personal level. Being friends doesn’t mean your students will have less respect for you. It means they will enjoy their learning experience more, and that you, like the music they are learning, will be a part of their lives in deeper ways than just the notes they play. A student’s relationship with music is intimately linked with their relationship to their teacher. If you don’t connect with the student on deeper levels, they may never connect deeply with their music. Being a friend to your students can actually make them better musicians.

     3. “Coyote Teaching”

Among the wise teachers in American Indian traditions, there is a style of teaching referred to as Coyote Teaching. Coyote is a character who is considered clever yet fun-loving, and one does not always understand his actions until one sees the results. Coyote Teaching means leading the student to learn through their own innate wisdom, bringing that which is intuitively known to the forefront of their awareness to be recognized, so that learning can take place easily.

I once attended a workshop with Jon Young, a master naturalist who runs the famous Wilderness Awareness School in Washington State. He took our group to a field on the edge of a woodland, instructed us to listen quietly, and asked us what we heard. “A bird”, said one man. “What is the bird saying?” asked Jon. “He sounds agitated”, said the man. “Yes. Why?” asked Jon. “Because we are here”, guessed the man; and as Jon’s questions went on, we realized that the bird was warning other birds and animals of our presence. Jon could have told us that, but instead he asked us. He asked us a lot of questions that day, and as a result, we learned a great deal, and it was easy, exciting, and not at all a lecture.

Jon could have put us in a classroom and just told us what he knew. But he made it real for us by pulling it out of us, by putting us in the environment, by letting us have successes right from the first minute of our class. He is a Coyote Teacher.

Have you ever noticed that many people think that if they know about something, they know it? Have you ever experienced the difference between reading a cookbook and the reality of what really can happen in your kitchen? How can people really absorb something, rather than just intellectualize it, if not experiencing it while learning? Teaching by asking is a skill that makes students think, absorb, and remember.

How does one teach by asking? We don’t need to ask trick questions or begin with esoterica that no one has a clue about. We can, however, ask questions that lead the student into the subject material in a thoughtful way. Let’s say you are teaching, for example, music theory. I like to start by saying there are no wrong answers, and asking, “What is music?” After a bit of discussion, groups usually decide it is a combination of tones with specific pitches. Through that process, they get to discuss what tones and pitches are, and whether or not the combination must contain rhythm, melody, and harmony. Then we move on to “What is harmony?”, “What is an interval?”, “What is a chord?”, and so on until we have covered basic theory. I always have them do whatever we talk about on their instruments. Through continual discussion and application, they see all the relationships and aspects of music theory. It’s great to see the lights turn on, the “Aha” happen again and again. And they never forget their theory.

Continued next post…

What exactly is excellence? Webster’s Dictionary gives these synonyms: “distinction, greatness, perfection, preeminence, superiority”. But these definitions seem unfair, since one can achieve excellence without being “the best”, or greater than, or preeminent. Excellence really is being the best you can be.

We do, however, need the inspiration of good example so we can strive to reach certain levels of ability according to what we know is possible. How we choose to relate to examples of excellence makes a difference; comparing is beneficial if you use it as inspiration and accept that excellence takes time and dedication to achieve, while comparing doesn’t work if you use it to bemoan your perceived inadequacies. In other words, saying “I don’t yet play as well as (whoever)” can give you the impetus to move forward, while saying “I never will play as well as (whoever),” is not at all productive and can prevent you from moving toward your personal best.

I am often surprised at how many aspiring, or even semi-professional, musicians have no idea how skilled they could be. Sometimes it’s just difficult to imagine what you have not yet experienced, but perhaps too many of us don’t give ourselves permission to imagine. It’s a neurologic fact that we can’t create what we can’t (or won’t) imagine. Therefore, using the imagination is important because what we vividly and consistently imagine becomes an integrated goal that automatically directs our actions.

If you have no idea what your potential is, please… don’t aim low. We all have pretty much the same capabilities unless we’re physically or mentally handicapped, and even then we can usually do a lot more than we assume we can. Those who accomplish much are those who don’t buy into smallness.

It’s essential to be genuine and passionate about developing skill. Some people just take up music or art because it will give them an intriguing persona. Years ago, someone I knew bought a beautiful instrument and assumed that simply owning it made her a musician. She learned only a few skills, thinking she would soon be “discovered” and made famous. She’s still waiting. That was the wrong kind of imagining. Had she dedicated herself to learning, there might have been a different outcome by now.

There are some societal paradigms that tell us we must not be “too big for our britches”, we must not excel, and that the nail that stands up gets hammered down. What does this belief accomplish? Lots of unhappy, mediocre people who assume that no one of any consequence can possibly come from their town or their family. Yet when some highly  successful person comes to town from elsewhere, they are put on a pedestal. How strange is the belief that excellence is inborn and therefore the successful person is somehow superhuman. Such beliefs only hold us back from being the best we can be.

Excellence is not superhuman or magic. It doesn’t happen by osmosis or even just by “talent”. It happens by working on it. When we deeply believe ourselves capable of excellence, our actions automatically fall in line to make it a reality. We don’t get side-tracked or distracted from the goal, and we make no excuses.

“If I became very successful, I might have to change my lifestyle,” or “I don’t want to be different from other people,” or “Someone might think I’m a fraud”, or “My mother didn’t encourage me,” or “I don’t have time,” are passion-killing thoughts. Making excuses is how we give ourselves permission to be mediocre. It’s much easier to wallow in mediocrity, and perhaps even to blame something or someone for it, than to do what it takes to achieve our dreams. But do you really want to wake up some morning when you’re very old and realize you wasted your life making excuses instead of doing what you were capable of?

A friend of mine who was born with one arm became a very fine professional harper. She had a prosthesis made with one finger curved just so, with which she plucked bass notes while she played melody and chords with the other hand, which had to be very agile to make up the difference. She never advertised herself as a one-handed harper; she demanded of herself the same excellence a two-handed harper. And she succeeded. (Now how do your excuses look?)

In the famous words of Marianne Williamson, quoted by Nelson Mandela in his inauguration speech, “… We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? …Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine… And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same…”

Being the best you can be at music or anything else raises the level of excellence, enjoyment, and self esteem in everyone around you.

It’s been requested that I write about how to understand, find and use harmony. First, let’s look at what it is: how do we define harmony? Essentially, it’s the simultaneous sounding of two or more notes that sound pleasing together. Of course, what sounds good to one person can differ from what another finds pleasing. Aside from cultural differences in what is familiar to certain people, there’s also the fact that any interval creates some kind of harmony, though we may have to redefine what we think of as “harmonious”. But for this article we’ll stick with the concept of notes that sound well together.

Harmony is, obviously, used in musical accompaniment to melodies. Combined with tempo and rhythm, it gives a piece of music its mood. You could use different harmonies in different arrangements of the same melody and come up with completely different moods. To demonstrate this, use harmonious but unexpected chords with any familiar tune and see what happens.

When I was about four years old, my siblings and I were riding in the car one day with my parents, singing songs in unison. My mother’s ears were probably hurting (although we had good pitch, unison gets old after a while), so she said to me, “Laurie, why don’t you sing harmony?” I asked, “What’s harmony?” She replied, “Notes that sound good with the melody.” She demonstrated. I tried it. From then on I was the harmony singer in the family. She never said it would be hard to find harmonies, so for me it never was, nor should it be for any musician; there’s nothing esoteric about it. I had no concept of music theory; few four-year-olds do. Much later when I did learn theory it helped me understand why harmonies work as they do, but the technical knowledge didn’t enhance the hearing and using of them. I think that if you have an accurate sense of pitch and can hear melody, you can hear harmony; you just have to trust your innate ability. (“But how do I know if it’s right?” you might ask. Well, if you’re the one arranging the piece, and it sounds right to you, it’s right.)

As I was growing up, whenever there were sing-alongs at festivals and get-togethers, people sang harmonies in pretty much the same way I did. It’s what folk and traditional musicians do. And we all made up the instrumental parts to go with our songs. Soloists composed or arranged their own music. Almost no one played tunes exactly the way they had been played by someone else  –  what would be the point? You’ve probably noticed that very few well known musicians do “cover tunes” (play songs or pieces exactly as originally recorded by someone else); they do their own songs or they change the arrangements of familiar ones. A great example, IMHO, of making tunes one’s own in a skillful way is Willie Nelson’s ability to take some old turkey of a song and make it wonderful.

In the ‘70’s I sang with a band called Frostwater (www.frostwater.com). We toured around the East Coast. Our style was sort of a cross between Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Robin Williamson and His Merry Band. We composed and arranged all of our songs, most of which had four-part harmonies. As we created our arrangements it was often my job to find those harmonies. I had studied music theory in college but didn’t remember much because it had been taught on a blackboard rather than in actual practice. So I still depended on my ear. I noticed that for any melody note, there are always four notes that can be sung harmoniously with it; three that harmonize and one that is an octave from the original note. If you duplicate any note in another octave, you get more than four parts. If you change one harmony note up or down a step or a half-step, the mood of the harmony changes.

In the language of very simple music theory: if you call any note “1”, the notes 3 and 5 will always harmonize with it to create a major chord , and you can also add the octave (8). Three-part harmony creates triad chords or inversions thereof, and four-part harmony creates full chords. You can move the 3 note down a half step if you want a minor chord. You can move the 8 note down a step for a jazzy 7^th chord, or to 6, or to 9 (the octave of 2) or even 10 (the octave of 3).

Additionally, to find chords to go with a note: for any note there are three basic chord choices to go with it because they that contain that note; it will be at the top, in the middle, or at the bottom of the chord. (i.e. for the note C, the basic chord choices are CEG, ACE, and FAC.)

Of course it’s easy to teach harmony by teaching theory, but if you teach it on paper or on a blackboard, the person you’ve taught may forever only see the harmony relationships instead of primarily hearing them. IMHO, it’s better to learn to hear and integrate them before seeing them. I’ll repeat what I said a few posts ago: if a child were not allowed to speak before he could read and write, he would never learn to speak well. Music is a language, and language is learned first by ear.

One can learn to sing harmony by learning to sing major chords by choosing a note, calling it “1” and then singing 1,3,5,8, ascending and then 5,3,1 descending; starting on, say C and then repeating the pattern starting on D, and so on. Then you can do the same making the chords minor by dropping the 3 note a half step, and maybe then make them into 7^th chords, 6^th chords, and 9^th chords. It’s really fun to get together with a group and sing sustained notes while taking turns changing one note at a time, so the chords morph.

Bobby McFerrin did a marvelous participation demonstration to show an audience that they could intuitively sing harmony. See this site:  http://www.ted.com/talks/bobby_mcferrin_hacks_your_brain_with_music.html

There are billions of people around the globe who create harmonies without consciously knowing anything about music theory. Some of the most beautiful harmonies I can think of are sung by women in certain tribal cultures in Africa. (If you’ve ever seen “The Gods Must be Crazy”, you’ll remember the gorgeous greeting song sung in multi-part harmony by village women upon the arrival of visitors. I can assure you that such traditional songs are learned “by heart” rather than from a choral director.)

If you can hear melody, you can hear harmony. If you can hear harmony, you can play it or sing it. It may take a little practice, but the brain loves harmonious sound and is willing to integrate it.

 

 

Margi wrote: ” I have one further question. For me there is a big difference between what I can memorize for my left and right hands (I am right handed, mostly). Whereas I can easily memorize the melody I play with my right hand, I am totally hesitant and unsure about what I play with my left hand, even if it’s just chords. Any hints or clues on why this might be so and how I can compensate for it?”

(Margie, I don’t want to make assumptions, since my blog posts are for all traditional and folk instruments, but I’m assuming from what you’ve written that you play the harp. However, the answer I’m providing can also apply to piano. )

There can be a few reasons for it to be less obvious how to memorize left hand parts.

First, the right hand plays the melody, which is easily remembered because it’s “sing-able”; even if you don’t actually hum or sing it out loud, you can “hear it in your head” as melody. The left hand accompaniment is not as melodic and also usually contains more complexity of note combinations. So you simply have to work harder to remember left hand parts, since they don’t come as automatically.

Secondly, you might not be recognizing patterns. Left hand parts often contain patterns and should be memorized as such rather than thinking of them as a sequence of unrelated notes.

Thirdly, if you don’t know your music theory well, you won’t know why the left hand part is arranged the way it is. Ask your teacher for lessons in music theory; it will help you  understand and therefore more easily remember left hand parts. Music theory isn’t just “how to read music”  –  not at all.  It’s a complete overview of how music is structured. Music notation is based on music theory, not the other way around (and it’s best to learn your theory on the instrument you play rather than from a blackboard or just reading about it).

Fourth, any chord you play in an arrangement will almost always contain the melody note that falls on the same beat as the chord. That makes the chords easier to remember.

Lastly, if you learn the left hand part first, you’ll probably never forget it. The left hand on harp is the foundation on which the melody is placed. So it makes sense to learn it first.

Cherie said,

“I like your suggestion to practice “known” songs on a rotating basis (1, 2, 3 on day 1; 2, 3, 4 on day 2; and so on). How many times do you recommend playing each one? I find that when I play a tune I haven’t played in a week or so, often the first time through goes great, but the second time through, it falls apart. I usually play each 3 or 4 times, or until it’s back to being as good as it was the 1st time…”

Cherie, it sounds like the first time you play it you’re going on autopilot and muscle memory, and then on subsequent play-throughs you’re using conscious memory. Since you need both, it’s good to do what you’re doing: play it again and again until it comes back.

For the tunes that you lose in the middle and can’t pick up again, your idea that “Maybe learning the song in shorter chunks… would give me more ‘starting places’ throughout the tune where I could pick it up after getting lost.”

Yes, tunes should always be learned in little chunks, rather than playing them all the way through when learning them, for exactly the reason you state above.

Always play a new tune daily for at least 21 days. Research has shown that’s how long it takes for a new skill or tune to be permanently set in memory. Chances are that the reason you’re forgetting tunes and parts of tunes is because you didn’t play them every day for the requisite 21 days when you learned them.

Laurie

To build a repertoire, two things are obvious: first, it helps to learn your music in the easiest and most efficient way; secondly, to maintain the repertoire you’ve learned, one must find a way to remember it reliably. Needless to say, practice is key in both cases, but let’s look at some nuances of both learning and remembering, in detail.

It may be a relief to know that musically there is no such thing as “cheating”; that’s a word used by those who for some reason have an investment in one and only one way of doing things. Any way that works for you is fine as long as it produces optimal results: as much repertoire as you can reasonably expect to build, all of it played well, and a reliable memory for all of it.

Learning:

Two ways of learning music are from the page (notation or tablature) or by ear. Both are equally valuable, and a well rounded musician uses both skills well.

Learning from notation is important if you want to be able to play a piece as it is written or arranged, note for note. It is also very useful in ensembles if you don’t do your arranging aurally. As I’ve said before, the written music is a tool  –  if you want to change it, you can, unless it’s a classical piece, or a composition (in any style) by a living composer, in which case you need to get the composer’s permission to if you change the arrangement. Those who can read and write music notation can also pass pieces on to others accurately on paper. One simply has to be careful not to let the paper be The Law when it’s acceptable or preferable to be creative.

If you can read notation, why bother playing by ear? Because sometimes the notation or tablature isn’t available at the time, sometimes your aural source is the only one, sometimes you’ll want to arrange the piece yourself, and because for some styles of music it’s traditional to learn by ear. Learning “by ear” means learning by listening (not, as is a common misconception, by rote).

Some view the ability to play by ear as awesome and esoteric. Some see it as inferior to note reading, the “lazy musician’s way”, or “cheating”. Those attitudes are not based in reality, and such intimidation is unfair. In truth, those who can play by ear often have an easier time learning, composing, arranging, and improvising, and … the sophistication of the music is dependent on the ability of the individual musician, not the method they use to learn, arrange or compose it.

To learn by ear, there are four easy steps:

1. Listen to a tune over and over until you get it in your head and can hum it to yourself. You can listen while you are doing other things; it will sink in.

2. Remember:  Hum the melody to yourself until you are sure you know it. (If there are lyrics, sing them to remember them.)

3. Find the Notes : On your instruments, find the notes to the tune as you remember them. When you are fairly certain you have found a full section of melody, check it against your source. Then continue in sections, until you have done the whole tune. Then you can create your own arrangement to go with the melody, or you can learn the arrangement you’ve heard.

4. Practice: Play it until your fingers stop asking questions.

 

Remembering:

Professional musicians are sometimes asked, “How do you remember all those tunes?”

It would be easy to say that the answer is never to stop practicing the tunes or songs you know. But that would be impractical; if you have a sizable repertoire, there’s no way to practice every piece every day.

I practice the tunes I enjoy most or that I need for upcoming gigs (which change from week to week or month to month). The rest of my repertoire can be played reasonably well on short notice for informal situations, but requires a bit of practice for serious gigs.

Actually, there’s a difference between being able to play your music well because it’s in practice, and being able to remember it. There are countless paper-trained (no insult intended!) musicians who play extremely well while reading their music. but put the paper away and often they think they can’t remember it. Usually they’re mistaken; I’ve seen many paper-trained folks play through entire pieces without looking at their music at all, yet they freeze when it’s not there. It’s psychological.  (However, for very long orchestral pieces it is often a necessity to read the music no matter how well you know it.)

IMHO, the paper gets in the way of the three-way communication between you, your instrument and your audience. It adds a distraction both psychologically and visually. If for no other reason, I believe most music should be memorized. This is so easy, yet I sometimes hear people say they have trouble memorizing. Unless you’re having significant aging issues or a neurologic disorder, the inability to memorize is usually just from never having been taught how. Can you remember “Twinkle Twinkle”? Of course! Because when you were a toddler you sang it again and again and again. Even though you were just singing for fun, repetition is an important element for memory. Any piece of music can be remembered with adequate repetition and focus on the aural and kinesthetic qualities of the music and/or the way the finger patterns look on the strings or keys. Memorizing can, by the way, be done whether you learn from notation or by ear.

To memorize, play just a phrase at a time over and over, and when you know each phrase well, put them all togather. If memorizing from notation, don’t try to play the whole tune all the way through; take it in very small increments and repeat them until you remember them. Start to memorize every piece the very first time you play it. By the way, memorizing becomes easier with each consecutive piece you learn.

Pitfalls for those who believe they can’t memorize are: trying to remember how the notes look on the page, and/or trying to remember the names of each note in the piece. Instead, remember how your finger movement patterns look and feel, while paying attention to the sound of each pattern/phrase. Almost all music consists of patterns. For instance, melodic phrases and rhythmic accompaniment parts will often be repeated several times in a piece, sometimes with variations.

In ages past, a Bard could recite from memory, word by exact word, incredibly long odes and poems, and also an aural history of his people, and play memorized music pieces as much as six hours long. Needless to say, audiences back then had longer attention spans. Actually in Africa, the Griots of certain tribes still do this and their listeners still have long attention spans.

Although I can remember the lyrics to about 400 songs and play maybe 300 instrumental arrangements, compared to a Bard that’s pitiful. Most professional musicians have at least as much committed to memory. Some old-time musicians know thousands of tunes; can sit around playing maybe eight or ten hours and never repeat a tune, and do it again the next day with all different tunes. (How they do that without getting carpal tunnel syndrome, I don’t know.) It’s a no-brainer that they’ve done their requisite 10,000 hours of playing (the amount of playing-time said to be requisite for musical success), and it has probably not been drudgery for most of them  –  they’re doing what that love. They, and the ancient Bards, are and were simply human, which means that you, too, can memorize a lot of music.

Building Your Repertoire

Let’s talk about just developing and maintaining a repertoire sizable enough to do a full-length concert. That’s about 16 tunes. First, try not to abandon any of the tunes you’ve learned (except the ones you don’t enjoy playing). Many students make the mistake of practicing something until the teacher assigns a new piece, then dropping the old one. If you do that, your repertoire will always be limited to the pieces you’re currently working on, and usually what one is currently working on isn’t yet well enough practiced to play for an audience.

You can keep a full repertoire in practice by separating your performance-ready pieces from the ones you don’t yet know as well, and rotate those daily. If you know, say, ten pieces really well, you could play pieces 1, 2 and 3 on Monday; pieces 2, 3, and 4 on Tuesday; pieces 3, 4 and 5 on Wednesday, pieces 4, 5 and 6 on Thursday, and so on. Notice I didn’t say “pieces 1, 2 and 3 on Monday; pieces 4, 5 and 6 on Tuesday…” because playing a tune more than one day in a row keeps it in memory better.

To add new repertoire, it’s a good idea to learn no more than two pieces at a time. Play the two you’re learning every day until they are firmly in muscle memory and are performance-ready. Then put them into rotation with your other known pieces.

Using the above practice formula, a good practice session might look like this: play through three pieces you know well, followed by working on the two pieces you’re learning.

Many folks expect to learn too fast. Give yourself time! It can take several months for a new piece to become part of your repertoire. There are no shortcuts.