A Way around It

Happy Sunday, Solfa Adventurers!


October is here, but it's still short-and-sandal weather in Colorado, with delightful cardigan mornings and evenings.  Autumn is making quite a positive impression on me this year, I must say!


Many of you know that I've embarked on the adventure of a gluten-free diet (until recently, it's been gluten-free pescatarian, but on the advice of my alternative health practitioner, I've now introduced small amounts of super-humanely-raised-you-can-request-a-picture-and-personal-history-of-the-bird-to-confirm-it-had-a-happy-life chicken...quite a change for me), which has necessitated something of a paradigm shift in what it means to put together a meal.  However, it's a LOT easier to do this kind of thing now than it used to be, I believe, especially since lots of other people are on similar journeys and talking about it in interesting and helpful ways.  


http://www.elanaspantry.com/

http://www.thenourishinggourmet.com/fresh-nourishing-salads-for-all-seasons


Tons of information is out there -- you just have to be willing to look for it, and be willing to embrace a different way of going about the procedure of everyday things.  Is it convenient?  Not really.  However, does it give you an opportunity to grow?  Undoubtedly.  And, the experience of exploration opens you to new delights, treats and treasures that people who walk the path more-traveled-by don't get to see.  


As I've been dipping my toes into new dietary waters, I've been fortunate to have a parallel experience, but from the perspective of the guide rather than the tenderfoot explorer.  Several intrepid and delightful women have been studying music fundamentals with me over the past few months, and we've been having tons of fun.  As I mentioned last week, new information takes time to sink in, and that tends to worry us unnecessarily.  Additionally, I have increasingly come to believe the "direct path" is a myth.  Sometimes we get lucky, and the first time we explain something, it sinks in for the learner.  However, in the world of music, almost nothing works like that.  Multiple modes of operation, conflicting vocabulary, redundant synonyms (how many ways can you think of to say/describe "half step"....it's just plain sick to have that many ways to say the same thing), an ancient notational system, all within a culture where many of our most handsomely compensated "musicians" boast of having no formal training and no knowledge of any of the above -- these are some serious learning barriers.  Anyone who makes it in the door despite all of that (especially as a grownup) is worthy of a big dollop of respect in my book, and they deserve to have a teacher who can show them more than one way to navigate through the choppy waters of determining the quality of an interval, unraveling the mysteries of the circle of fifths, constructing the three forms of the minor scale, etc.  And, while it's a difficult task to do what we're doing, and many people would consider it more trouble than it's worth for a person who is pursuing music as an amateur, the expressions of empowerment and pride and good old-fashioned geekiness I've seen and heard out of these students have convinced me that this is worth it for them.  Sometimes it's just a matter of repetition.  More often, it's a matter of repetition from a variety of perspectives, taking a whole panoply of routes past one point of interest until it becomes a landmark, and then adding more landmarks, then determining the spatial/conceptual relationship of one landmark to the others, then creating a map of an ever-larger hunk of musical geography incrementally over time.  In this way, being a teacher is sort of like being a human GPS device...and sometimes road closures or human error or bad neighborhoods or new developments make us say "recalculating" about 9000 times along the way, which can be annoying, but it's our job.  We're the ones who already have a pretty good map (even though we, too, are always learning), good enough that we can find a way around it.


So, this week:


All Levels


Take a look at Ottman, chapter 2.  Yes, I'm serious.


Read pp. 12-13.  Now, take yourself back to your earliest sight-singing experience and think through what else your teacher would have needed to say in order for all of this prose to make sense to you.  Did you know what a major scale was?  Did you know what half steps and whole steps were?  How would you define them for someone (like your former self) who had been singing them forever, but who didn't know what they were or why they were called that or why they had other names?  Would you use a keyboard?  


After thinking through these issues (and others that might come up along the same lines), create a procedure for teaching an older beginner basic sight-singing using the material in Ottman, chapter 2.  For the purposes of the exercise, you may assume that the imaginary student already has a basic understanding of rhythms and meters.  


Now, if you're curious, empirically minded, or if you have a willing victim/captive audience handy, it might be interesting and fun to try out your strategies on a real live person.  In fact, I highly recommend it -- that person will inevitably teach you far more than I can.  If your handiest student is a bit beyond chapter 2 skills, adapt your strategies and the material to the situation.  Notice what surprises you.  Delight in your student's successes.  Be creative in your descriptions and your problem-solving.  As you think on your feet, remember what it's like not to know.  Recalculate as needed.


Enjoy!