Principals Of Teaching

What principals form the basis for teaching beginners?  How particular would you be with technical acquisition and explain when and how you would use notation.

To uncover the principals that form the basis of teaching students entering the elementary epoch of musical pedagogy, we must first examine the ideal traits exhibited by those who are graduating from the great educational edifice. Characteristics that can be expected of professional instrumentalist must include profound mastery of "technique" and mature musical understanding. In his book "Teaching Beginners", Paul Harris presents four of these characteristics as worthy of further thought and consequence: "immaculate technique" "Highly developed sense of rhythm" "Sophisticated control of sound" "deeply felt" sense of musical meaning". With one further intermediately step, Harris specifies expanded definitions of each one before distilling them into an omni-alliterative and perfectly pocket-sized quartet of principals for practical pedagogy. I have adopted this paradigm particularly prevalently in lessons I have given beginners and children (since being introduced to the method). This are the resultant "Four P's" (principals perhaps?) presented: Posture The "immaculate technique" stated above, transforms to "posture" through the useful articulation of a "muscular control" that is need to attain the former. It makes sense to label the physical journey that a prospective music student will have to undertake as "posture", as if this were the first position in a mind-meets-body, meditative exorcise (like yoga)- and all further physical disciplines can be fathered by this initiating position and state of mind. I can see an example of this principal (or lack thereof) in my own attempt of physical mastery of the trombone. Even in my lessons today, in my trombone lessons today, after 16 years of trombone playing, almost every critique my teacher makes of my playing is entirely and directly due to me not being too tense (physically). I have been aware of this problem for 6 years and though I am improving, in stressful situations (like trombone lessons) I always find myself absolutely Titus Andronicus (and that's not just because I'm afraid of farting)! Possibly, if my first teacher had attended to my physical anxiety in lesson 1 my house physical torment of learning the trombone would have build on sturdier foundations than the briny sands of town brass bands. Pulse This deduction also contains lots of useful imagery for a student and teacher (me) through using words like "instinctive" in association with the "pulse" of the heart and intern implying that an instinctive understanding of rhythm is merely an profound understanding of our bodily pulse (perhaps holistic and universal one). A very obvious proof of this, in my experience, can be seen when comparing the concepts of rhythm of both musicians with a classical education/experience and jazz (or any other "rhythmic music"-as coined by the Copenhagen- rock, pop, salsa, samba etc....) musicians. Simplistically put; "jazz" musicians spend a lot of time thinking about a very consistent PULSE/metre which is internalised to such a profound extent that is gives musicians an ability to "groove" - a term that includes controlling, in very minute timescales, where exactly the subdivisions of a beat, bar or phrase are placed whilst the metre/"pulse" will continue mercilessly precisely. A lot of music in the classical repertoire has no regular metre (comparatively) and when controlling, in very minute timescales, where exactly the subdivisions of a beat, bar or phrase are placed the metre/"pulse" usually succumbs to the poco rubato carried out by the instrumentalist. Generally jazz musicians are infinitely more accurate (in relation to the metre) at playing, feeling, reading rhythms than "classical" musicians. Phonology This P is perhaps a little more clearly derived from its original "sound quality" trait and I have found it very useful to articulate to myself when trying to make a beginner open their perceptive skills to the nuances of sound so that they may become accustomed to intricacies of musical language as well as develop an ability to evaluate their instrumental sound. In my experience of teaching brass instruments, pupils learn a lot more fluidly when I encourage them to listen to their sound and they repair the embouchure instinctively as opposed to me trying to explain exactly what the physicality of making a nice sound should encompass. As ever in music, seemingly our human ears and intuition know far more than the brain. Personality Here Harris poses the question of defining music apart from noise and provisionally concludes that it is the intention behind the noise. This, as he presents it, opens a sluice gate, from which gushes forth an infinite stream of words, expressions, and other extra musical thoughts all of which are fantastically healthy, inspiring, useful, relevant, functional and fanciful for anybody who isn't doing a PHD in musicology. In my experience this approach to talking about music is the best, strongest, and occasionally the only way to communicate with children. Using the same derivative formulae I should also like to add some more satellite pastoral principals to this Petri-dish of fertile pastures, previously presented. These further desirable qualities of a working musician should also include: -A serving and virtuosic work ethic. This applies to the way to teach students to practice through their development as well as the way teachers prepare for a lesson art carry out the art of teaching. -A positive outlook on life in the capacity of a musician. This is talked about a lot in all three of the Harris peripatetic's pedagogical triptych. I believe it to be vitally important to carry out especially with children because spending half an hour a week alone with a stranger is bound to have a powerful impact on a child. I remember how much my first teacher affected me in my weekly one-on one-lessons when I was 8-15. I would not expose my child to such poisons. -An excitement for engaging with creativity of music as an art (high and low) form. It is my opinion that is too often the case, in instrumentalists of all standards, which the craft is revered to an adequate level but the art (or poetry) and musical understanding is incidental. -An ease of being resulting in an ability to form "egoless" relationships with those we share our musical lives with. These are the four "A"s. In practise they all consolidate into one "atmosphere" and shall orbit around the four "Ps" controlling their swathing , like the moon and the tide. Though technical acquisition and musicality are primary principals of teaching beginers, with most pupils it will become necessary to teach the pupil how to use notation. In his book "Teaching beginners", Paul Harris states that "we are all familiar with the problems" of learning to play entirely by ear. Whilst learning music totally without notation may sometimes appear a considerably more profound and penetrative method than our current mainstream habit, it seems to me that introducing notation early on is indeed a necessary evil which unfortunately is the only way to give the student a realistic chance of exposing themselves to "art" music or community ensembles (in this country). To alleviate a prospective teacher of having to imprison their wide-eyed and enthusiastic beginners behind bars, Harris's presents a method of learning notation where all parameters of a given extract of sheet music are first explored in their purest verbatim form without the slightest odour of a tadpole. In my own teaching i have very much enjoyed creating exorcises and games to help the pupil explore and play with all the analytical cells of the piece. Eg: intervals, rhythmic cells, dynamics etc. Harris emphasises the importance of explain how reading music should be like reading words, ie we know what they sound like and what they mean before we say them. When finally presented with the music, as always, a special emphasis is made on establishing that crucial sense of pulse. From this consistent foundation, a rhythm can be learned and then the pitches. Only when the pupil has learned exactly what it is going to sound like should they put breath to mouthpiece. Harris then prescribes a course of further exploratory exorcises with different aspects of the written piece including composition and improvisation. These two aspects I find particularly important in my teaching as most of what I have learned about music has often been a means to one of these ends which is a prospect I find very exciting and I hope will continue to souse me in enough energy to fuel me through a lifetime of musical study. I wish for nothing more than my pupils to feel the same.