Carrot and stick

I have a young student who had narrowly missed out on taking her grade 1 exam with her previous tutor about 18 months ago. Between then and becoming my student last autumn she had drifted, making little progress with a flute that was in need of some attention.

We started looking at the grade material again but I quickly realised she was bored with it, having studied for an exam that never materialised. She needed a new challenge and, having made some great strides (including prevailing upon her parents to get her flute sorted out), I felt she was ready to take grade 2.

That was some time before Easter and the exam has been booked (July) and paid for. Since then, however, she has done almost nothing. The effect of this is to go into reverse; the pieces she could play some weeks ago are now too difficult. Because she doesn't practise, her tone has suffered and she spends the first ten minutes of a lesson looking into the instrument (for blockages!) and adjusting the footjoint in the hope that her flute is somehow to blame.

There was an article on BBC radio this morning about the psychology of household waste collection. It turns out it is more effective to reward people for the amount they recycle rather than charge them for the quantities they send to landfill sites. Any psychology student could tell you that encouragement is more effective than punishment. Buoyed by this fact I gave her all the praise and flattery I could think of. I finished by telling her how much better her tone sounded at the end of the lesson than it had at the beginning. I may have exaggerated the improvement but there's nothing like practice if you wish to improve and she had, after all, just spent half an hour playing the thing.

After she'd gone I congratulated myself on avoiding dire warnings of impending failure if she didn't put in some work. Hopefully she is sufficiently astute not to assume from my positive demeanour that she will walk grade 2. So, carrot and more carrot for my students. The stick, should it be needed, will be wielded by the exam result when it arrives during the summer break.

Seeds on stony ground?

I did two more woodwind demonstrations this week which passed without a hitch. The Pink Panther theme always goes down well, as does The Simpsons music. I hold up 8-year old Lisa as an example of someone who's done a lot of practice to reach such a high standard. (I suspect, in his time, Bleeding Gums Murphy has done a lot of something too but I don't go there.) The clarinet brought some surprising responses because a character in Sponge Bob apparently plays it. Note to self: watch more TV.

One year 7 class remains. I couldn't fit it into my schedule. When I asked about it I was told it was the special needs class: ten students, three helpers. I would be unlikely to get any takers but they would probably enjoy the experience.

Straight after that I found myself chatting with the guitar tutor about a student he had who was making little or no progress and seemed ill-equipped to grasp even the basics. What to do? So I told him of my time in a special school where for some kids even assembling a saxophone with the crook (curvy bit) pointing the right way took some weeks to crack. There were no future Galways, Charlie Parkers or Naftule Brandweins among them but there were improvements in their co-ordination, behaviour and appreciation of music. On top of that they were getting one-to-one with an adult who was neither parent nor class teacher and needy kids just love attention.
So now the guitar teacher is determined to enjoy his student on the child's own level and I'm ready to perform for kids in the bottom set and broaden their horizons in any way I can. But first it's the half term holiday and hooray for that.

The significance of the title? My memory of the Bible is poor: it was compulsory to attend church on Sundays at my old school and there were various assemblies led my well-meaning hypocrites. This 'Christianity as a tool of the Establishment' was guaranteed to foster rebellion against organised religion in all its forms. However I do remember something about the waste of scattering seeds on stony ground. That may be true for gardeners but when it comes to people no ground is so hard that you can't plant something.

The Drummer's Tale

Martin, the drum teacher at a local high school, related this exchange with at student:

Martin: "Where's your book?"
Boy: "I actually had my book and drumsticks in my hand but then the house caught fire. We had to leave and I wasn't allowed to take anything with me. I wanted to go back in to get them but the fireman said I couldn't. I said it was my drum lesson today and I had to get my sticks but he wouldn't let me ."
Martin: "You forget them again, didn't you?"
Boy: "Yeah."
Martin: "How long did it take you to think that one up?"
Boy: (thinks...) "About an hour?"

Time better spent practising, no doubt, but now that you're reading this perhaps the effort wasn't entirely wasted.

What a surprise!

Research, reported in the Guardian, has shown that learning an instrument at school has knock on benefits in other areas of learning. Does this sound at all familiar to anyone? This time the UK government 'hopes to double the number of children' in primary schools learning an instrument by 2011. The bad news is that there will be an election next year that only the most roseate Labour supporter thinks the incumbents can win. So a great time for making promises then.

Perhaps the new government, of whatever political persuasion, will at last take some notice both of this research and all the other studies that have been made in the past. If you sense a lack of optimism on my part it's because many people struggle with the idea that something recreational, like music, can be of educational benefit beyond its own sphere. No amount of evidence is likely to overturn this fundamental prejudice. I just hope there are enough forward-thinking head teachers out there prepared to give it a try. There's really no need to wait for yet another government initiative.

Air clarinet

I have often 'ghosted' through pieces prior to an audible run through. This involves holding the flute, clarinet, saxophone (or whatever) and just moving the fingers. It saves tiring the lip unnecessarily as well as the ears of anyone in range. In a group situation it also prevents the sonic chaos that ensues when everyone is trying to practise their part at the same time.

As a reed and pipe player this method has a few shortcomings, one being the accurate pitching of the note, especially on the flute where a controlled overblowing is required to determine the register in which one is playing along with subtle changes in the embouchure to adjust the timbre and tuning.

Imagine my delight when a student arrived the other day and told me he had discovered air clarinet and this enabled him to practise at night without disturbing the neighbours. I assumed he meant either what I call ghosting or else imagining holding the instrument and moving the fingers as required. The latter, especially when applied to scales or other patterns of notes, I find a sure fire cure for insomnia.

What my student meant, in fact, was the removal of the reed and then playing as normal. He assured me he could hear the notes and that it gave him a sense of how much air would be required to play the piece. When I put this to the test I found that I could hear the notes fairly accurately in the chalumeau (bottom) register but that they were unsurprisingly absent above that. And while it may be satisfying on some level to blow into the instrument it is of little use in determining the breath control that will be required when playing 'for real'. Unlike saxophones and flutes, which have conical bores, the clarinet is a cylinder and it requires far less breath to make it speak. I do run short of breath on occasions but more often I find the problem is finding the time to expel unused air from the lungs where it has gone stale.

Still, 'air clarinet' gives the instrument the kind of cool cache it probably hasn't enjoyed since Artie Shaw was at his peak. It's definitely a term I will coin.

Teaching disturbed children

Some years ago I taught woodwind to students aged 11 to 18 in a special school for children who were being given one last chance. If this didn't work out for them their next home would be secure accommodation of one sort or another. Some had been traumatised by severe abuse at home, some were from good homes but were chronic offenders and others had mental health issues that gave rise to antisocial behaviour. In short, they were challenging.

Enter me. At the time I was teaching woodwind in a number of private and state schools, as well as privately in a desirable part of town. My expectations of my students, and of myself, were high. Success meant achieving good marks for my pupils in their Associated Board exams. If one of them had an issue with an aspect of their technique, or made a mistake in a piece, I would point it out and together we would address the problem.

What I wasn't used to was students who would assemble their saxophone with the crook (the top part) pointing the wrong way week after week, students who wouldn't accept they'd made a mistake in a piece of music and would fly into a rage if I even suggested it, students with attention spans shorter than a chocolate commercial, students who storm out of the lesson shouting and swearing and students who weren't in the mood that day so decided not to come.

I spent the first few weeks wondering how best to explain to my employers that these kids were unlikely to pass their grade one exams any time soon. When I finally plucked up the courage I discovered that they didn't care. They were interested in giving their students a new experience. They wanted to add value to these kids of a kind that a pass or fail at grade one couldn't measure.

And so I began to see things differently too. I learned to tell when a very angry fifteen year old was in a receptive mood and when to forget the clarinet and listen to her rail against the world instead. I learned to savour moments such as the first time a boy whose body, the visible parts anyway, was covered in burn scars, put the crook on his saxophone the right way round without prompting. I learned to appreciate the gradual increases in his co-ordination skills.

It won't surprise you to know that my attitude to teaching 'normal' students changed as a result of working at that school. People learn for all sorts of reasons that are not goal-oriented and to assume they all aspire to greatness is a mistake. My students in the special school were extreme examples but the principle is the same: strive to find out what it is they need and add value where you can. For most of your students that really is the best thing you can offer them.

Instrumental tuition for the unworthy

Should primary schools screen out children who may not excel and bar them from instrumental tuition? For some years my local primary school has administered just such a test. I only became aware of its existence when my youngest child failed – much to my surprise because I had considered her quite musical. She could carry a tune and was able to mimic her favourite pop stars with a fair degree of accuracy. When I asked her about the test it turned out to have had a strong written component. No allowance had been made for the fact that my daughter had just joined from a Rudolf Steiner school where children are taught to read and write at a later stage of their development and at a slower pace. I let it go. Piano lessons (private, not at school) were going well and she was enjoying life. On top of this, the music teacher was about to leave and I hoped that the test would leave with her

I was prompted to obtain a copy of the music test when my barber told me that, much to his surprise, his own daughter had been considered 'musical' and was to learn the viola at the school. Obviously the test had survived the change of music teacher. The test is divided into four sections; pitch, tunes, chords and rhythm. Instructions are given, questions asked and then a tape is played and the children write their answers.

Now call me thorough but these exercises need to be practised for the concepts to be understood. The instruction to the test administrator is 'Pause and check children understand'. My suspicion is that very few seven or eight year olds understood. In fact they understood so little that they couldn't even begin to explain. The silence around them just made them feel they were alone in not understanding. The answers are 'multiple choice' meaning you have a reasonable chance of success depending regardless of ability. It also means that the person marking the results has no real clue as to whether or not the question was understood.

I will not reproduce the test here as I find it abhorrent but I will email it to you on request. My point is not just that the test is flawed. I don't believe it should be replaced by a better one. My point is that everyone should have the opportunity to learn, whether they are future Mozarts or Hendrixes or not. If there aren't enough instruments to go round then draw straws. Are seven year olds barred from P.E. because they exhibit poor co-ordination? Of course not! Everyone can benefit from instrumental tuition. (More on teaching woodwind to disturbed and disabled children in a later post.)

With Christmas crackers a recent memory you've probably had enough of bad jokes. Please indulge me anyway: the kids that supposedly can't tell a high pitch from a low one, can't tell one tune from another and can't distinguish between two different rhythms, what happens to them? I'll tell you what happens to them. They get to join the school choir! Ho! Ho! Ho!