Thursday, 20 Nov 08
Overview World Music Attentive Listening Imaginative Composing Improvising Using Vocabulary Teaching Notation AppendixTeacher feedback: In a media-rich world, pupils are just not accustomed to listening with focus and undivided attention. It is hard to get them to listen perceptively and to articulate with precision what they have heard.
KS3 context: The English National Curriculum for Key Stage 3 music requires that pupils should be able to "listen with discrimination and internalise and recall sounds" (2.1f) leading to the ability to "identify the expressive use of musical elements, devices, tonalities and structures" (2.2g). They should also be able to “analyse, review and compare pieces of music” (2.2a). In KS2, pupils will typically have spent a good deal of time listening out for musical features described in advance by the teacher. In KS4, exam success depends on an ability to listen attentively and identify significant musical features in previously unheard music.
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To come across a brass band in the street, a particular record played in the disco or a snatch of a tune played on the radio, and to focus in on that to the virtual exlusion of all else is to become an auditor, an engaged listener. We become absorbed in and changed by the experience. We are thinking here of the crucial aesthetic experience. Audition is the central reason for the existence of music and the ultimate and constant goal in music education.
Keith Swanwick, A Basis For Music Education
The above quote from Swanwick points out that our ability to listen attentively is at the heart of everything musical. It enables our understanding and enjoyment. The more accomplished we become as listeners, the more we will be able to appreciate the skill and artistry in what we hear.
In the music classroom, effective listening is intrinsically linked with composing and performing skills and the National Curriculum requires that they are integrated activities.
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Teachers must actively nurture the ability to listen carefully and attentively. It is not something that comes naturally or easily to young people who are now bombarded with fleeting, often incidental sounds from so many modern domestic media sources. 'Background music' is specifically designed not to be listened to attentively, but instead to establish a subliminal emotional inclination by stealth.
The modern world presents a proliferation of informal listening situations in which music is as easy to ignore as it is to listen to attentively. Music educators must stay aware of this situation and address it by adopting appropriate teaching strategies.
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You may wish to explore Music Strategy materials that are particularly relevant to promoting more attentive listening (but make no specific suggestions for using technology):
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In the Musical Futures approach, the learning of a pop performance is broken down into its constituent parts, initially by careful listening alone. This gives students a greater awareness and understanding of the individual musical ‘riffs’ (or motifs) contained in the piece. Listening skills are integrated into the practical activity and development of ensemble skills.
Students are initially asked to bring in some of their own music and, in friendship groups, to attempt to recreate it by listening and copying by ear. Using a media player that allows the user to set start and end points for isolating individual phrases or for repeated (looped) listening can be very helpful here.
This informal learning approach is described in the video clip ‘Into the Deep End’, which can be found within the online materials at www.musicalfutures.org.uk/teachers_pack_inner_herts.html. It has been shown that this approach increases student motivation and develops listening skills in a different way. Students learn to listen to varying layers present in the music, rather than just the lyrics. The subsequent task (see ‘Modelling Aural Learning with Popular Music’) has students working out riffs from a predetermined song rather than one they choose themselves.
You can download example tracks and more resources for use in your own teaching from the Musical Futures website.
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The SoundJunction website has a unique listening tool. It allows users to listen to an entire ensemble or focus on sub-groups and individual instruments within it. In most situations you can automatically see video footage that matches your choice of audio focus. Because the tool is both flexible and interactive it is a great way to get pupils to engage attentively with recorded sound.
The SoundJunction Explorer tool showing expanded kora and guitar tracks
The tool can only be used with the specially prepared pieces on the site. These encompass jazz, African and modern classical styles. The ability to zoom in to component strands and then back out again to the fuller texture is a powerful way to clarify perception of the musical roles played by different instruments. Read about the Explorer tool at www.soundjunction.org/explorertoolhelp.aspa, then click the Sound Explorer link in the left column to use it yourself.
The award-winning SoundJunction site, developed by ABRSM, is designed for use in music education and contains a wealth of other information and interviews. Teachers can devise unique learning trails through the site to suit their particular purpose and save them for their pupils to follow later.
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Most people know that a 'cover version' of a song is a new version by a different artist, often in a different style. For example, Nirvana's Teen Spirit has been covered by Tori Amos (piano ballad), Paul Anka (swing), Warp Brothers (dance remix) and The Flying Pickets (a capella), among others.
After installing iTunes software (free download from www.apple.com/itunes), the iTunes store allows you to audition 30 second clips of any song it contains. This feature can be used to compare cover versions. Noticing differences requires and encourages more attentive listening. Students will not only gain a greater understanding of the original track but will develop an increased awareness of the conventions of different musical styles.
This could be extended by asking students to develop their own cover version. You may wish to offer resources to assist students in learning the song. Limit these to a lyric sheet and chord chart as the aim is to not be too prescriptive.
For further listening, Mark Ronson’s 2007 album Version also contains several cover versions of tracks by different artists. Notable tracks include versions of Britney Spears’ Toxic and the Kaiser Chiefs’ Oh My God.
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An audio podcast is similar to a radio broadcast, but can be downloaded from the internet for playback on a computer or MP3 player at any time. Podcasts could be offered on the school's central server or from a personal blog. It is also possible to make podcasts available from iTunes.
It is relatively easy for students and teachers to make their own podcasts. You will need audio recording software (e.g. Audacity freeware from http://audacity.sourceforge.net) and a microphone that plugs into the computer. A portable audio recorder will also be helpful for capturing recordings away from the computer. Microphones and recorders that connect via USB are probably the most convenient.
A podcast is really only a delivery format. Whether or not it encourages students to listen more attentively depends largely on the subject matter that you or your students podcast about. The fact that podcasts are intended to be listened to by others is likely to increase student motivation. Podcasts are normally a mixture of speech and recorded music, either separately or superimposed. They are therefore an ideal way to present information or opinion about music. For music education a podcast could be:
Further information about how to record a podcast and make it available to others can be found on the web using a standard search engine such as the one at www.google.co.uk.
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A good activity for focusing listening is to play a musical excerpt and ask students to write instrument names at their left/right position in the stereo field. Writing only one instrument per line, as shown below, will allow positions to be altered easily if students change their mind.
Headphones make it much easier to identify the stereo positioning of instruments. Alternatively, students will need to be positioned at a fairly central point between two speakers.
A more recent development in sound separation has been the rise of Surround Sound. This allows for front/rear separation of sounds as well as left/right. It is now used extensively in films and games and some commercial albums have been mixed using this format.
Affordable surround sound set ups are available from many high street outlets and most advanced audio recording software now offers the facility to mix in surround sound. Some computer sound cards have several output sockets intended for the different surround speakers. You can test your computer's surround sound capability by watching the Halo3 game excerpt at www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3fDYAjumCc&feature=related.
With the right equipment, student ensemble performances and compositions can be recorded in surround sound, assigning each instrument to a different location. This would allow for easier focused listening during playback.
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The visual representation of sound can be helpful in keeping attention focused and in enhancing perception of components present in the music, especially for more visually-inclined learners.
A variety of listening tasks can be devised using standard staff notation providing students have some understanding of what the symbols mean. For example, preparing a musical listening exercise in score writing software and displaying the result on an interactive whiteboard enables you to solo and mute parts so that individual instruments can be auditioned in isolation or in various combinations.
Other forms of notation can also promote attentive listening. There is a separate hard-to-teach notation area devoted to how technology can support notation in its different forms.
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A listening walk is a walk through a predetermined route that encourages the listener to open their ears to the soundscape around them. The only rule is that there should be no talking. This disciplined listening approach is about learning how to listen. Gary Ferrington has written an essay on this subject at www.acousticecology.org/writings/ferr-walk.html.
Ask your students to take a listening walk and record the sounds around them. A handheld digital recording device is ideal for this purpose but mobile phones can also be used. Recordings can then be uploaded into audio editing software, ordered, arranged and processed to produce some interesting soundscapes.
A poem by Harry Owen called The Music of Ourselves could be used as a stimulus for a listening walk project. It is available online at www.myspace.com/harrythepoet.
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Students could define repeatable regions within any recorded sound to form loops that produce interesting rhythms or phrases. Fine adjustment of start and end points, so that loops work well, requires enormous concentration on listening. Making loops can be a worthwhile activity in many other situations, including the listening walk context, and it will always require attentive listening.
There are specialist devices often known as loopstations that may be worth investigating. Affordable sequencers such as Mixcraft (www.acoustica.com/mixcraft) make it extremely easy to edit and 'drag out' loops from recorded material and combine them with other sounds.