Music Monday - ANZAC Day

Anzac Day. One of the most important days in the Australian calendar year. Over my 45 plus years of teaching I have witnessed the resurgence of observation of Anzac services in schools. Back in 1975, as a young high school Music and English teacher I was fresh from the moratorium marches of the Vietnam war years and not wanting to be seen to glorify war in my choice of songs for Anzac Day. So, it was “I Was Only Nineteen” rather than the more patriotic traditional choices. Emphasising the futility, rather than the glory, of war.

Nevertheless, in our family – like so many Australian families – we have our own WW1 story; that of my great uncle Sam’s untimely death at Passchendaele, Belgium on 17 October 1917.

Samuel Vaughan Selby was a dentist, working at rebuilding soldiers’ destroyed faces after shelling. He received a white feather which shamed him into direct combat on the battlefield where he was killed on his first sortie.

Today I was sorting through music in my music room when I serendipitously stumbled on two pieces of old family music.

One was great uncle Sam’s - a work for violin and piano. He never returned home to play his violin again.

The other was one of my grandmother’s piano pieces, purchased when she was studying piano in London, after winning a place at the prestigious Royal College of Music. At the start of the war, her father sent her a cable to tell her to come home immediately as it was no longer safe to stay. Her performance career was cut short, and she returned to Perth to work as a piano teacher for the rest of her 84 years. My grandmother was Samuel Selby’s sister. 

So here, on my bookshelf, are two volumes of music, each representing music silenced by war.

Where are the songs about that?

Music Monday - Using song cues for learning intervals.

I’m sure that we have all used song cues in the learning and teaching of musical intervals (the difference in pitch between two sounds). 

An understanding of intervals is crucial to our understanding of the shape of music, the structure of scales and chords and intune singing. Understanding intervals is also pretty important for passing music theory exams!

My earliest memory of using song cues was thinking the opening phrase of “My bonny lies over the ocean” to identify a major 6th  as a child preparing for the aural component of AMEB piano exams.

During my teaching career I have created lists of song cues and used other teachers’ lists and suggestions too.

Recently a community of singing teachers I am part of was discussing the challenges of singing a perfect 4th. One member posted the following link as a comprehensive list of song cues for intervals. It was certainly one of the most comprehensive I had come across and so I share it with you. There seems to be a song for everyone on this list.

https://www.earmaster.com/products/free-tools/interval-song-chart-generator.html

Happy music teaching!

Music Monday - Welcome back to another year of music making.

Here in Western Australia the music teaching community, refreshed after the 6-week hot summer break, turns its attention to the arrival of the omicron variant of Covid19. 

For those of you reading from afar, WA has maintained until now a firmly closed border (a matter of vigorous political debate) and so we are only now experiencing the start of our own omicron wave. 

After a relatively normal 2021 teaching year, teachers here are now joining the ongoing international and interstate discussions about the most suitable masks to wear while singing. Or whether performing groups in schools should be limited to single year cohorts to minimise potential viral spread within a school. Or whether choreography for the school musical can include body contact with another performer. 

One of my singing students happily picked up a gig in a Perth Fringe Festival show this week after the original singer was sadly deemed a close contact of a positive case and forced into isolation. There are winners and losers at this time.

There is much uncertainty about how this semester will proceed in schools. Some disruption seems inevitable. I found yesterday’s all-day teaching in a mask very tiring. So did my students and teaching colleagues. 

Our daughter in the USA has been doing this for two years. It feels odd to her to be not wearing a mask now. 

News from interstate suggests that omicron might be receding. That is good news. But will another wave follow? 

Right now, the questions outnumber the answers. 

To end on a completely different note, so many of us were saddened to learn of American actress  Betty White’s passing on 31st December 2021. Did you know that in her early career she also sang? Take a listen to this:

Enjoy your day!

Music Monday - Vale Stephen Sondheim, 22 March 1930- 26 November 2021

In the days following Sondheim’s sudden death at age 91, the internet has been saturated with an outpouring of reaction to the loss of the ‘Shakespeare of Music Theatre’, arguably the greatest writer of the form in the 20th century. In the past few days, singers, actors, teachers, writers, directors, artists and journalists have articulated tributes far more eloquently than I can.

My first Sondheim experience was the movie of West Side Story in 1961, though like many at the time, I thought of it as mainly Bernstein’s piece. 

Some years later in late 1973, on my first solo trip to Sydney as a young adult, I saw A Little Night Music at Her Majesty’s Theatre (restored after fire destroyed it in 1970). This was a pivotal point in my musical life. I can still remember sitting up in the dress circle, trying to absorb it all.

In my 30 plus years of teaching singing at WAAPA, I have been privileged to work with and learn from three Sondheim devotees. Firstly John Milson, founding head of Musical Theatre at WAAPA. It was John Milson’s ambition to direct all of Sondheim’s musicals. Denis Follington followed John Milson and would often say “To sing Sondheim well, you simply follow all the instructions contained in the score – Sondheim has written it all down for you.” I was reminded of this when watching the Times Square tribute below. Most recently, retiring former head of Music Theatre, David King, has taught, played, MD’d and researched all of Sondheim’s works.

What a huge legacy Sondheim has left for us all.

Please look at the three links below. They are among my favourites from these recent days. 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/parenting/stars-react-to-the-death-of-legendary-composer-and-lyricist-stephen-sondheim/ar-AARcsbU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKSYeMgamIA

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/VIDEO-Broadway-Sings-in-Times-Square-to-Honor-Stephen-Sondheim-20211128?utm_source=newsletterdaily&utm_medium=email

Music Monday - How does an increasingly data-driven education system affect growth and satisfaction in music learning and performance?

A few weeks ago, I ran into a high school music teacher friend. She has decided to retire at the end of this school year. Why? Well, like many of us, she is of an age where retirement is a possibility. But more significantly, a driving force in her decision was what she perceived to be the increasing demand for data collection across all aspects of the education system. 

This teacher’s retirement will mean a true loss for that school and its students – she is  passionate and dedicated worn down by the demands of the system.

There is no doubt that as teachers we are asked to be increasingly accountable – and that can be a very good thing. But it does seem to come at a cost. For every step of the learning journey there is a marking rubric to be filled out, both in schools and in universities now. Again, a marking rubric does provide a level of moderation, but can it ever tell the whole story?

For many years I have prepared year 12 secondary school students for their exit performance exams in music. We spend years 11 and 12 practising songs with a close eye on the marking rubric and ensuring that melodies and rhythms (to name just two criteria) are accurately performed. I teach in a specialist music theatre program, so this is sometimes at odds with how the songs would be performed in the real world. 

Many of my students go on to audition for places in the various tertiary music theatre courses across Australia. Those auditions take place around the same time as the performance exams but have very different expectations. It is much less about the accurate processing of notational information and much more about demonstrating potential in story-telling and vocal flexibility. The final voice lessons for year 12 students tend to be a slightly crazy mix of ‘now let’s try the song in exam style’ or ‘sing it this time as you will for your audition’. Two versions of the same song – the less ‘correct’ one often the more authentic.

Similarly, the tertiary course where I teach music theatre and acting students,  has taking up the use of marking rubrics for assessment. For the final year music theatre students there is often a disconnect between preparing for the assessment and preparing for their careers as performers.

I don’t pretend to have answers. I know we needed to move on from the old days of ‘I just know what an A grade sounds like’ or ‘this student deserves an A; they have worked so hard’ to something more accountable. But in so doing, have we sacrificed a little of the joy? I hope not. 

My soon to be retired teacher friend mentioned at the start worked incessantly to maintain the joy. But in doing that she perhaps burnt herself out.

Music Monday - Encouraging good practice habits in young singers

Most of my practice these days is incidental. I warm up my singing voice in the car on my way to school or waapa, then sing as required during lessons to demonstrate aspects of vocal technique. On piano, I accompany at least one song per lesson so most of the student repertoire is under my fingers when needed.

However, in these past few weeks I have had to play some new repertoire for exam recitals and audition self-tapes. This has necessitated some more formal practice sessions. One song accompaniment required quite a bit of work to master some tricky rhythmic passages. As always, I recalled the words of past piano teachers – my maternal grandmother and, later, Stephen Dornan. They emphasised the critical importance of regular (little and often) repetition of problem passages. Over a week I did some daily (tedious) slow practice on the accompaniment and was rewarded with the buzz that came when I could get through the whole song without mishap. The reward was quite tangible – without the practice sessions I couldn’t play the accompaniment without a sense of embarrassment. After 5 days I could – and then again, after a few days break from practising that song, the notes were still there under my fingers.

This set me thinking about the difference between motivating young instrumentalists versus young singers. With instrumentalists (young and old) no practice = an obvious inability to play the music and audible wrong notes. However, with young singers the songs are often musically simple. Singers with a good musical ear and quick memory, can sing a song with minimal practice. It might not be a convincing performance, text wise, nor use appropriate registration – but they will be able to find the notes.

So how do we motivate the young singer to practise? 

Classic FM published 10 tips to help you practice.

Most articles on practice emphasise the importance of goal-setting. For young singers, we can set specific and measurable goals around technique -eg sustaining a hiss or hum for a specific number of seconds / being able to produce a light, clear tone / brassy, louder tone, etc.

Bur when it comes to solo song repertoire, we teachers must work a bit harder to set goals that are recognisable by the student. It could be something like aiming for a particular vocal quality at certain phrases or assigning specific acting thoughts (actions) to phrases. Even then, the achievement of those goals is easier to recognise in the reaction from audience than by the singer themselves. 

As young singers mature and tackle harder repertoire, the rewards from productive practice are much more obvious to them. But good practice habits are best started early in life.

What are your thoughts on this? We would love to hear of your success stories!

Music Monday - Musings on a choral festival

I volunteered at a choral festival yesterday. The festival is an annual event for government schools here in Western Australia and yesterday took place on a beautiful cold, sunny Sunday after weeks of rain.

Over the course of the day, we heard 20+ choirs, all a high standard, and several which were memorable for the best of reasons. Stylistically, the repertoire ranged from Gregorian Chant through to beat-boxing, with lots between.

 How wonderful for students to hear excellence in performance from a choir in quite another style to their own! 

There was a real sense of ‘family’ and inclusivity within each choir.

The day was not without its challenges though. As always, choir directors received last minute emails and text messages from parents who decided spontaneously to do something else on that sunny Sunday. (Would they tell the sporting team coach that their kid was not going to play that day, I wondered?) And of course, sickness precluded some students from attending – and presented stress for the directors when those students were on key parts in the ensemble. One of my colleagues and friends had to stand in for 2 missing parts in a beautiful 11 part unaccompanied ‘Magnificat’.

The festival is non-competitive. Choirs receive comments from an adjudicator and receive a ‘grading’ – good, excellent, outstanding. But there are no winners – a healthy thing, since the point of the festival is the opportunity to perform and hear choral singing in many genres. 

However, the grading system creates an unofficial sense of competitiveness which is not always in the spirit of the festival. A grading of ‘excellent’ is interpreted as ‘average’ (since it is the middle grade in a scale of good, excellent, outstanding). If an adjudicator’s comments included something like “this was excellent singing” there would be a sense of achievement – but as a grade it can bring disappointment. 

Are we so geared to grading in arts education that we can’t accept just a critique from an adjudicator?

In conclusion, another colleague remarked that the football derby playing that day (a game between the two state teams) had attracted much news coverage and thousands in attendance at the stadium. But here we were running a government run music festival with zero news cover. Yet another indication of arts v sports in Australia? Wouldn’t it be fantastic to have arts + sports!

Music Monday - How often do I need a music lesson?

This year has marked a significant reduction in singing lessons at the tertiary institution I work for. Driven by budget constraints, the students are now provided with fortnightly lessons, where previously they were weekly. Furthermore, there are a number of non-teaching weeks in each semester (rehearsal, production and performance weeks) when classes are cancelled, so, in fact, the fortnight’s gap between lessons often becomes several weeks. In 2021 there are a total of 12 lessons per year in the 1st and 2nd years of the bachelor degree and 10 lessons in the 3rd year.

At the same time, in my other workplace, a specialist performing arts high school, there continue to be weekly lessons (40 per year). The irony has not been lost on me when sending home an email to the parents of a student who has missed a lesson – “only 8 more lessons this term – don’t miss any more!”

This strange 2021 dichotomy between my two teaching environments has set me thinking about how many lessons we actually need at the various stages of our training.

As a young child with a live-in piano teaching grandmother, I was used to the pupils turning up at their regular weekly lesson time. I guess the weekly lesson meant that each family’s household calendar was straightforward. Certainly in the beginning stages of learning any instrument (including the voice), regular lessons ensure that mistakes are not too practised in before correction by the teacher.

In my role as a high school voice teacher, I wear several hats – simultaneously I am teaching vocal technique, music literacy, interpretation skills, to name a few. The students need the weekly contact to maintain their growth and development.

In the tertiary environment, our 1st year students come from a variety of musical backgrounds. Because they are music theatre students, their individual skill levels vary. Some are strong dancers and inexperienced singers. Occasionally I have had a student with a prior degree in voice. The so-called triple threat encompasses singing, acting and dancing and no one starts the degree with equal skills in all three – I mean, why would they bother to do the course? It is very frustrating to be limited in how much instruction we can offer the beginners, who really need correction and guidance in the studio on a weekly basis.

If a reduction in practical training is to be a thing of the future, how can we fill the gaps?

Students could, of course, seek private teachers outside of the institution. The obvious benefit is the increased number of lessons. The potential downside is differing teacher approaches, which could be confusing in the early stages of training.

Technology offers some solutions. Although I am not a huge fan of the zoom music lesson – mainly because of the time lag involved – I do find that students benefit other uses of technology, such as submitting practice/ performance videos for teacher viewing and feedback. Is technology the way of the future here?

However, one thing that becomes clearer to me with every passing year is this – unless there is an investment in significant practice routines by the student, the number and frequency of lessons is irrelevant. A student who doesn’t practice will make as little progress with weekly, fortnightly, or even monthly lessons. But a student with good practice habits is going to progress faster with more regular instruction. Your thoughts?

Music Monday - Which layer of the music do you hear best?

A couple of weeks ago I attended a singing concert given by our graduating class of acting students. It is a class that I have taught for the past 25 years, and passed up this year as the start of a general reducing of my teaching hours. 

For past concerts I have been the accompanist and this time I was in the audience enjoying the whole experience. A couple of observations surprised me. For a start, I found that my attention kept straying to the pianist – despite compelling story-telling from the singers concerned. Was part of me wishing I was still on the piano stool? Or was it the fact that the accompanist is one of our finest local pianists? Or something else?

One of the challenges in training classes of acting students to sing is that there is a wide range of natural ability, experience and inclination present. This group were all strong at the story-telling aspect of singing, a couple had pitch issues and several are all round strong singers. With the last category, I was more able to appreciate the whole tapestry of their song – text on melody and the harmonic layers of the accompaniment.

In the week which followed, I was in one of my secondary school singing classes, but for once the students were silent. They were completing a written ‘marking up the score’ task in preparation for some sight-singing. In nearby rooms the faint sounds of clarinet and violin lessons could be heard. One of the students commented on how distracting the sounds were. Another said that she always likes to hear the background lessons when we are quiet in our singing class. Someone else noticed that the violin and clarinet clashed with each other but yet another student remarked that she thought it sounded like a really interesting piece of (unintentional) music. At this point a student, who had been intensely focussed on figuring out the solfa for the sight-singing piece, looked up and asked, “What are you talking about? I don’t hear anything.”

We can never really know what audiences hear when they listen to music. For example, that wonderful, evocative wash of sound in so many piano concerti of the Romantic period is created by the harmonic structure. We hum the tunes, but we inwardly hear the harmonies from both piano and orchestra.

How can we submit to the complete tapestry of music without our own preferences (and prejudices?) distracting?

Is it easier for audiences without music training to appreciate the whole concert experience?

These are my current preoccupying thoughts.

Music Monday - ANZAC Day

On the eve of the Anzac Day long weekend last Friday, Perth, and one regional area, Peel, in Western Australia, were plunged into a snap lockdown for the weekend, after a case of community transfer of the more contagious Covid variant. It came as complete surprise to us all, as we have been covid-free for months now. 

As many music teaching friends went about cancelling their bands’ and choirs’ attendance at Anzac Day ceremonies on Sunday (all public events were cancelled) I couldn’t help but reflect on my post from last Anzac Day. As the rest of Australia held ‘normal’ Anzac ceremonies on Sunday many Perth households revisited the tradition started in 2020.

Here’s the post from last year – I refrained from calling it the Last Post!

Anzac Day 2020 was like no other before it in the many years since 1915.

In Australia, with gatherings banned due to covid-19, the usual services and parades were cancelled  - except for one at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra attended by only the few dignitaries who conducted it, telecast to the nation..

Instead, at the tops of suburban driveways across the country, Australians gathered just before dawn, holding lighted candles, and sometimes waving to acknowledge their neighbours without approaching or speaking to them.

 In quiet reflection Australians remembered their Anzacs  - and all who have suffered and perished in war – and as the skies softly lightened with the dawn, the morning chorus of magpies and crows was augmented by players of music – student brass players, music teachers, amateur and professional musicians and singers – each contributing to an extraordinarily moving tribute.

On my own driveway I could hear from the next street the hesitant sounds of a student trumpeter playing “Lest We Forget”. Further away there was the faint sound of the Last Post with its tricky high notes for beginner players. 

In the couple of days since Saturday the papers have carried letters from Australians suggesting that the dawn driveway tradition be kept and commenting on how moving it was to have their own silent contemplation accompanied by the sound of live music. My music teacher friends as well as non-muso neighbours have all said much the same.

Music is SO important in our many life rituals. When we work on the tedium of music theory, or teaching the singing and playing of scales, it is worth remembering how important our job is. We are contributing in our way to the rich tapestry of our country’s unique culture.