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The first student is a victim of a relatively recent trend. That is to teach using only a form of rhythmic sylables derived from a combination of Orff and Kodaly methods. They go like this

Ta=quarter note
Ti-ti=two eights
ta-a=half note

and on with a complicated series of nonsense sylables. The point of this method is to never teach the proper names of notes, counting, or any kind of musical literacy while giving the students the basics of how to create music. This theoretically helps them in the long run. I am not thoroughly convinced either way. Maybe someone would care to explain further.

The second is a common problem that I have seen in the classes that I observed as well as with my own students. Many teachers are not aware that playing out can help a student even if it annoys you. They are also trying to minimize the noise level for the rest of the class. By the way, can you tell me what the accoustics of the band room are? That can sometimes make a difference with how loud the teacher allows them to play.

Good luck with these and your other students.

As Captain Sousie posted, your students could be victims of teachers' over-reliance upon Kodaly or Orff methodolgy. It could also be that these students were with a teacher who treated the Suzuki method as gospel.

The Suzuki method relies upon teaching by rote--listening to the recordings and mimicking.

The Suzuki method has some very positive aspects, including direct involvement, participation, and nurturing by the parent(s). But the enlightened teacher will integrate the Suzuki method with traditional pedagogy. Otherwise, a student will not only be weak in music reading skills, but may actually rebel against the notion. "I don't need the book--just let me hear the recording." As a teacher, that's what you want to avoid so that the student does develop access to the printed page.

When the Suzuki method is fully employed, it includes reading (if you teach and haven't read "Nurtured by Love," by Shinichi Suzuki, I HIGHLY recommend it). This is left out in some situations, due in part to an immediate-result-driven pedagogy. This same philosophy is, in part, leading a downward trend in education in many fields.

In many schools, children are now taught to spell how they think it might be, which results in spelling wif werdz thet r spllde r0ng. This method is intended to build confidence and support self-esteem, which is odd, because at some point someone is going to have to tell them that their spelling is horribly corrupt. In the desire to "help" the children, a step is added that eventually must be undone. Educational trends have recently been unable to separate affect from effect. Children, scratch that, PEOPLE of any age can be taught in a manner that effectively separates affect, teaching correct versus incorrect without a student feeling that "incorrect" is a judgement of their well-being. With this method, in fact, students excel at a rate exceeding expectations.

As universities push professors to publish, develop, and gain notoriety, the trend over the last 40 years has moved further away from fundamental truths. With instrumental music, very little has changed over the last 300 years, with the obvious exceptions of technology. We use the same clefs, notation, etc. Rhythmic notation hasn't changed (with the obvious exceptions of experimental notations used in "contemporary" pieces). A Bb trumpet a hundred years ago works the same as a Bb trumpet now. String instruments haven't changed. So if you're going to publish, what do you do? You come up with a new "method." Well, fundamentally, a first-space A on the tuba is going to be considered "good" if the fingering is correct, the embouchure is "correct," and the air supply is adequate. It has nothing to do with how you feel about it. The rhythms are only correct or incorrect, and it has nothing to do with how anybody feels about it. Teaching music -can- be easy and fundamental and still produce amazing results. But we have all these new "methods." How many different ways can possibly explain a quarter note? So we get "ta ta ti-ti ta." Look at a Rubank method book that hasn't changed in 40 years, then look at something "new." There are so many "methods" that are gross regurgitations of others published 20 years prior, but have added these "techniques." Music is, at its heart, INCREDIBLY simple. Its properties can be expressed only so many ways before people start getting "creative," which only leads further away from the fundamental.

I, too, have taught students who've been the product of these "methods," and have had to undo 95% of those "methods" so the student can achieve literacy.

As we all know, many people label our society as driven by the desire for immediate gratification. This is, IMHO, becoming a driving force in educational trends. Make the student achieve a result/produce a product and feel good about it. The actual product is less important. It's possible we've all had a teacher or two we hated. I've known teachers (colleagues) who I despised for the way they treated students. Negativity has no place. History has seen plenty of teachers who've berated students and have built associations between correct answers and personal value. This has no place. Students must be treated with respect, knowing they're valued as a person regardless of their performance and achievement (and, wouldn'tchaknowit, when they're treated this way, they achieve more...hmmm). But these "methods" are result-driven rather than process-driven, which fails to teach. It's the same as telling a student, "The answer is 73x. Don't worry about the algebra, the answer is 73x. Okay?" True musical literacy will not result from some of these "methods." And that, fundamentally, treats the student with disrespect and creates obstacles to their improvement, which can only damage their self-esteem in the long run. (By true musical literacy, I refer to acquisition of pitch and, basically, the ability to completely hear a piece of music on sight and never needing a piano to "get the pitch.")

Pitch and duration. Everything else is embellishment of those.

Mitch
BS, MusEd, Univ. of IL; Edmund James Scholar, Outstanding Graduating Senior in Music Education: MM, Tuba Performance, MM, Orchestral Conducting, Univ. of Mich; graduate teaching fellow: Founding Music Director, UM Life Sciences Orchestra

I was taught the basics of music by my piano teacher. She was thorough and patient. She taught all of the basics of music and tried to make the student aware of emotion or feeling from the start. She employed a lot of the positive tactics outlined by Mitch. She also taught me using a combinatin of Suzuki method and traditional reading skills.

I would have to say that this was the best approach that she could have taken with me. It taught me to not only read music, but to be able to do things by ear; to get some of the emotion displayed by other players, and to incorporate it into my playing.

Doc and Mitch have the right end of things here and I hope that others can find the great combinations or compromises like my teacher did. I truly hope that I can too.

Sousie

Yep - I come across this Kodaly stuff - even worse though is some English Music Teachers reliance on other names for rhythms -

tea - half note
coffee - eight notes
coca cola sixteenth notes

etc.etc.

There was also a french system which used a similar idea,
but was even more rtidiculous because you ended up using words like:

ta ta titty titty - (Ikid you not!!)

I really had a wake-up call my first year of teaching elementary music. I teach in two elementary schools and in one of them, the students come to me in fourth grade and had never been taught even the names of notes, much less how to count them. They didn't know what a clef was, a staff, any of the instruments. Although some sang very well, 498 of just over 500 students were starting at zero.

My job has taught me is to never assume that a talented child has the knowledge to back up the talent. Some students think that notes are read up to down or down to up. Others think they might go right to left or back and forth. Some students confuse "note" with "clef" and Bass drum with Trombone and so on.

While I was trained in the traditional style and prefer it, to get students who are about three years behind in music literacy reading rhythms fast, I employ a different system of counting. IT iS PART OF A PROCESS that one week later teaches the students the names of the notes but allowes the same system of counting.

I use syllables to teach basic one-beat rhythms

Grape (quarter)
Cherry (two 8th notes)
Strawberry (One 8th and two 16ths)
Coconut (the opposite of strawberry)
Blueberry (triplet 8ths)
Banana (one sixteenth, one eighth, one sixteenth)
Watermelon (four sixteenths)
Walnut (Dotted eighth, sixteenth)
Pecan (the opposite of walnut)

For any rest, I use the sound Shhhhh in place of the syllable but they must identify the kind of rest. For anything over one beat, they just count 12, 123 or 1234. While teaching rests and ties across bar lines is more difficult, This seems to get them reading one beat rhythms fast..in about 30 minutes in fact, and then it is easier to learn to replace it with other counting systems.

Breaking rhythm into syllables really helps students mentally picture the idea of rhythm. We all use rhythm in speech and in life, but children often don't realize how easily it can be transferred to music. I don't find that it is a creative way of doing this which impedes the learning process, but quite the opposite for MOST of my more than 500 students.

Granted, this is the fourth grade and not seventh, but there are different systems of counting just as there are different note names around the world. Just look at the Eastman system (one la li, two la li, one ta te ta, two ta te ta...obscene in a spanish speaking country and based off of one lollipop two lollipop and one potato two potato but it works very well.

I don't think that any one counting system is better than another (although some break it down past "uh") but I do think TEACHERS SHOULD AT LEAST TEACH STUDENTS TO IDENTIFY THE KINDS OF NOTES THEY ARE PLAYING! I can't imagine any student of normal mental capacity getting out of my elementary school not being able to identify a half note.

I'm primarily trained in the traditional style, and it is my preferred system of counting/teaching but I don't think Kodaly is bad for elementary students, either, especially SOLFEGE. When Kodaly is fully employed, children can understand pitch, tempo and rhythm quite well. My wife studied up on and started using Kodaly in her elementary music classroom and her students went from monatone chanting to singing in parts and reading music over the course of a year. Anything that gets children to REALLY listen and understand can't be bad.

I had a fourth grader whose father came to parent teacher conferences yesterday to ask how he was doing. I gave him a pop quiz right there and he knew all of the names of the notes on the grand staff. This was really great for me, since the 4th graders come to me without knowing what a staff is. (there is a different k-3 teacher who plunks and sings exclusively.) I don't think that it makes me any less of a teacher that the children read four sixteenth notes as "watermelon" before they read it as "one e and uh" because without that primary understanding of the idea, the alternative FOR MANY STUDENTS (not all) is not understanding rhythm at all.

Music teachers in schools have a limited amount of time with a group of students and must use what works to accomplish their goals. It is, however, frustrating to hear that those goals don't always include educating students as to music literacy. I'm a mean old teacher when it comes to music literacy, making the fifth grade recorder students do drills and worksheets on identifying note names, types and rhythms. Maybe music literacy is why my first year here the middle school band had three 6th graders sign up and my second year it had 96. Of course, it might also be why my beautiful St. Bernard was poisioned and killed on Tuesday. A good number of the students absolutely hate anyone who has high expectations and run in gangs.

In any case, from what it sounds like, this student will be on track now that you've identified this problem. While I hadn't heard of that specific counting system but it doesn't sound completly out of the ordinary. The thing that DOES really stand out to me as weird is that these students are so much older than my students and they couldn't identify eighth or half notes. Perhaps the teacher was doing some kind of remedial thing...the students were never musically literate in the first place? It doesn't make sense to me AT ALL that the student would have taken some lessons and been in band for five years without learning about eighth notes! I don't want to accuse anyone but it sounds to me like someone (student? teacher? other teacher? everyone in the system? Planet earth?) dropped the ball.

It is scary for me to think of students that age not having a clue as to what kind of notes they were playing. I'm glad that you caught it and can teach it to these students. Maybe you can convince them to spread the knowledge among their peers who also may not know eighth notes from automobilles.

Tabor

-T[/i]

I can guarantee that the smarter of your students will look back on you as a favorite teacher. I've noted that whenever students rave about a teacher, the teacher is someone who has standards and encourages the students to excel. The ones who spoon feed and worry about self-esteem don't seem to make the grade in retrospect.

I've seen adult amateurs who had played for decades who did not have a solid grasp of the basics, who could not figure out rhythms that were only moderately complex. There's a reason why musical training increases IQ, if taught correctly.

MA, whose teacher was smart enough to NOT play it for her because of knowing she would not learn to read music otherwise

MaryAnn wrote:I can guarantee that the smarter of your students will look back on you as a favorite teacher. I've noted that whenever students rave about a teacher, the teacher is someone who has standards and encourages the students to excel. The ones who spoon feed and worry about self-esteem don't seem to make the grade in retrospect.

I've seen adult amateurs who had played for decades who did not have a solid grasp of the basics, who could not figure out rhythms that were only moderately complex. There's a reason why musical training increases IQ, if taught correctly.

MA, whose teacher was smart enough to NOT play it for her because of knowing she would not learn to read music otherwise

HERE HERE! well put!

-T

Just a small point I'd like to make here:

I honestly don't think the "what" part of our teaching is nearly as important as the "how". Does it really matter what kind of counting system we use? I was taught the Eastman system, so that's what I know and teach, but I've sat in student ensembles that have used different systems and they worked perfectly. In the hands of a master teacher, any system will produce magnificent results, not because of the system itself, but because of the teacher who is wielding it.

The journey is infinitely more important than the destination.

The Impaler wrote:
I honestly don't think the "what" part of our teaching is nearly as important as the "how". Does it really matter what kind of counting system we use? I was taught the Eastman system, so that's what I know and teach, but I've sat in student ensembles that have used different systems and they worked perfectly. In the hands of a master teacher, any system will produce magnificent results, not because of the system itself, but because of the teacher who is wielding it.

I have long believed that many different systems will work. The most important thing to learn is a system which will work for the player. As The Impaler has pointed out, it certainly doesn't have to be the Eastman system. Personally, I don't care what system a student uses as long as it makes sense to them and they can then understand what is going on rhythmically.

At the same time there is a standard in American music for note names and counting. While the use different rhythmic sylables does not necessarily matter, I have seen many young players unnecessarily handicapped by their unfamiliarity with notation. Some have been dicouraged enough to quit even though they have sound that many collegiate players would die for.

Of course the same could be said for my trip to New Zealand where I was truly confused by the names of the notes. My first thought was 'What the heck is a semi-quaver or a crotchet(sp?)?'

Just my happy little mental tangents.
Sousie

Tabor wrote: Grape (quarter)
Cherry (two 8th notes)
Strawberry (One 8th and two 16ths)
Coconut (the opposite of strawberry)
Blueberry (triplet 8ths)
Banana (one sixteenth, one eighth, one sixteenth)
Watermelon (four sixteenths)
Walnut (Dotted eighth, sixteenth)
Pecan (the opposite of walnut)

Tabor, I've got to be doing something wrong, because I use exactly the same emphasis and rhythm when I say "blueberry" and "strawberry" (e.g. BLUE ber ry).

I think that while it may be useful to use words as examples, I'm reminded of a phonetic approach to learning Morse code (e.g. "L" = ._.. or "fraternity"). When I learned to drop the phonetic aids, my speed increased remarkably.

When one of my young charges doesn't get the timing of a piece, I have him (or her) march around the room reciting or singing the notes. It's amazing how quickly this clears things up. But then, Dalcroze isn't anything new, either.

TubaRay wrote:I have long believed that many different systems will work. The most important thing to learn is a system which will work for the player. As The Impaler has pointed out, it certainly doesn't have to be the Eastman system. Personally, I don't care what system a student uses as long as it makes sense to them and they can then understand what is going on rhythmically.

Sure. But they also need to be able to communicate with other musicians and understand what is being said. (Conductor: "Play that 8th note with more emphasis" Student: "Do what?")

It's the same with English and other languages. We learn how it is supposed to sound by filling our heads with good examples, but we also learn the names of letters and the difference between what is refered to as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. (Boss: "Our company's style guide requires no first or second person, and I personally prefer as few adjectives and adverbs as possible. Oh, and I prefer active voice." Employee: "Do what?")

Rick "trying to play that demihemisemiquaver with a little more emphasis" Denney

Rick Denney wrote:Rick "trying to play that demihemisemiquaver with a little more emphasis" Denney

Are you sure it isn't a hemidemisemiquaver?

Rick Denney wrote:

Sure. But they also need to be able to communicate with other musicians and understand what is being said. (Conductor: "Play that 8th note with more emphasis" Student: "Do what?")


Rick "trying to play that demihemisemiquaver with a little more emphasis" Denney

Certainly some basic, standardized vocabulary/nomenclature is necessary in order to communicate. I didn't intend to ignore or discredit that. My point was simply that one can learn to read music(or whatever) by more than one means.

(Anxiously looking forward to the Army Band Conference.)

And be sure to put that demihemisemiquaver back. You may need it later.

Chuck(G) wrote:When one of my young charges doesn't get the timing of a piece, I have him (or her) march around the room reciting or singing the notes. It's amazing how quickly this clears things up. But then, Dalcroze isn't anything new, either.

Heresy!! How dare you use Dalcroze in the modern music world. It should be Orff/Koday or nothing.

Just kidding

Sousie

[quote="
Tabor, I've got to be doing something wrong, because I use exactly the same emphasis and rhythm when I say "blueberry" and "strawberry" (e.g. BLUE ber ry).
[/quote]

There aren't too many words in English which have three syllables equally spoken without accent. I've "relearned" how to say it for music class. Yep, that is the tough part of teaching the sound of the triplet, so we clap it as we say it for practice. I like Delcroze too -good call.

I've actually been thinking of modifying the system to use local community names and slang on the reservation which would include Lakota language and be rhythmically more accurate. For example, the word "Wacicu" (commonly known to mean "white man" on the reservation but actually means those who follow orders) is pretty evenly divided when spoken by a native speaker. So is "Sicangu" (burnt or bad people) as in the Sicangu Oyate (Brulé Sioux family, Rosebud reservation or the Sicangu Lakota Oyate). I guess it wouldn't have the same effect in other places.

-T

I think it has to do a lot with moderation in all things. I have always struggled with rhythm and time. I was also taught almost exclusively by counting 1 & 2 & 3 & etc. With the help of some very patient teachers using a variety of methods including Orf adn Kodaly I am finally making progress with these difficulities . Also I learned music almost exclusively from reading and have found this to be a major impairment as I try to progress. I think it is necessary to approach teaching music from many different angle so as to not look over any fundamental skills and also to help as many students as possible since we all learn differently.
Just as a note the Suzuki method especially in strings is often used with very young children before it is practical to begin teaching music reading skills and at least from my observation is very sucessful in training students to use their ears and to memorize music as well to imitate others. It seems to work especially well when music reading is introduced at an appropriate age such 2-3 grade.

Amy

Captain Sousie wrote:Heresy!! How dare you use Dalcroze in the modern music world. It should be Orff/Koday or nothing.

Just kidding

Especially for those who sell all those neat Orff instruments.



I'm sure that others have wondered about the wisdom of handing a fifth grade student a trumpet or tuba or clarinet before he or she has had any real exposure to musical performance and written music.

Why not a year or two of choral singing and maybe a little keyboard work first?

Silly me--actually, yoiu're right. Dalcroze is ridiculous--imagine, a method based on dance, solfege and improvisation. How quaint!

Chuck(G) wrote:

Captain Sousie wrote:Heresy!! How dare you use Dalcroze in the modern music world. It should be Orff/Koday or nothing.

Just kidding

Especially for those who sell all those neat Orff instruments.



I'm sure that others have wondered about the wisdom of handing a fifth grade student a trumpet or tuba or clarinet before he or she has had any real exposure to musical performance and written music.

Why not a year or two of choral singing and maybe a little keyboard work first?

Silly me--actually, yoiu're right. Dalcroze is ridiculous--imagine, a method based on dance, solfege and improvisation. How quaint!

My point exactly. Why hand them a $250 trumpet when you can hand them a $1200 Orff Bass Xylophone.

But seriously folks. I agree that sometimes students are started on instruments without enough, or any in some cases, preparation. On the other hand, there are string teachers who firmly believe that a student cannot learn an instrument if they are not started by the fourth grade. Some even go so far as to not allow a student to start an instrument in their program after fifth grade. I have met some of these people so I am not just making this up.

Try that one,
Sousie