A Pedagogical Platform
There is so much talk these days about platforms and promises and policies. When former students come to tea, they all want to talk about the upcoming election. They are excited that they can vote. I am excited that they can vote. “I want a candidate that would put restrictions on social media,” one radical college kid told me last summer. “Can you imagine how much the world would change if we’d just get off our phones?” I nodded. This idea is easy for me to get behind. I fear he and I would be the only ones casting a vote for this imaginary candidate, however.
I’m trying to hold space for the kids working out their evolving political views. I’m trying to listen closely to the competing messages and conflicting opinions out there, but I find myself thinking, where’s the practice in all of this madness? To borrow the line from Gandhi: We have to be the change. We all should use fewer plastic bottles, plant more trees, eat less meat, walk more, drive less, take care of our neighbors, give extravagantly, live simply, put down our phones, stop lying.
Or to put it another way: It’s easy to have a platform. What we need is a practice.
If I had a teaching platform for musical education, it might look something like this: more sight-reading, fewer competitions. More emphasis on process, less on performance. More time for creative exploration, less time for rigid mirroring of someone else’s style and musical expression. More room to develop critical thinking skills, less tolerance for mean criticism and bullying.
And ear tunes. Lots of ear tunes.
Ear tune assignments are my pedagogical response to the deeply rooted belief that we all fall in one of two musical parties: either we can only play by ear OR we can only read music. Supposedly no one can do both. Or at least this has been very widely assumed.
My pedagogical platform generously includes both skills (health care AND safe streets!). I want students to sight-read like monsters and to be able to pick out any little ditty they want, by ear. Turns out it doesn’t take an act of Congress to manage both.
Hence the Ear Tune Playlist, my fun list of 32 folk tunes that students listen to, figure out the melodies by ear and then harmonize with basic I, IV and V chords. You know, songs like Sweet Betsy from Pike, or Old Joe Clark, or the infamous Hokey Pokey. Great stuff here.
This doesn’t mean that students can’t come up with plenty of excuses for why their ear tune assignments are not done. Like: What ear tune? Or: I was going to do it yesterday, but we had to eat dinner. Or my all-time favorite from the days when the Ear Tune list lived on a CD: I would have done it, but my mom sold our CD player at the garage sale.
Garage sale season or not, sometimes it’s like pulling teeth around here. (Just answer the question, yes or no: Did you do your ear tunes?)
That isn’t to say all the kids are resistant to ear tunes. Some would happily pick out their entire assignments by ear if it would save them from having to sight-read. Or play scales. Or practice their Bach prelude with the metronome. Everyone has something they don’t like to do.
But we were talking about ear tunes. (This distracted digression is exactly what the kids hope for when I discover what they haven’t done that week.) The fun doesn’t stop after the ear tune melody can be played and harmonized in the friendly key of C. No, siree. In fact, the fun (or the torture, depending on your attitude) has just begun.
Of course, it helps if the students have done their “chart.”
The “chart” is simple. It takes, even the most reluctant student would admit, like 30 seconds.
This is the chart:
Time signature: (3/4 or 4/4)
Melody range: (Sol to Sol. Do to La. Sol to Do. Whatever.)
First note: (Do. Mi. Sol. “C” is not an answer.)
Once the chart is done, the world and its possibilities open.
The next step in the ear tune progression is to determine whether the key of C is our best key for the average person singing along to “She’ll be Coming ‘Round the Mountain” or “Yankee Doodle.” Often, we discover, the good old key of C is not our best bet.
We start with the assumption that the most comfortable singer range is the octave between C and C. If the range of our ear tune is Sol to Sol, we quickly discover that we have a problem. Turns out there’s a reason we need to learn to play the key of F well.
Once we find our way to the key of F, or whatever key best suits our tune of the day, the assignment variations explode:
*We can transpose the ditty to not only a singer-friendly key, but other ones as well.
*We can write out solfege of the tune and the melodic rhythm (if you listen hard, you can hear the kids whine loudly about that one!)
*We can reharmonize with more interesting chords (I introduce non-diatonic chords options here, substituting the predictable C major triad with colorful harmonies like A-flat major or F minor. Kids who might have been bored senseless up until this point, suddenly wake up and take notice.)
*We can construct a two-hand accompaniment sans melody (roots in LH, chords in RH. Funky rhythms like tango or bossa nova encouraged if I can sing against—I mean with!—them.)
*We can write variations on the old standard, employing not only non-traditional harmony, but turning a major tune into a minor one, changing rhythm, embellishing tune. Options are limitless.
Every platform needs a practice. Practice charts demonstrate accountability. Just ask the kids: “I did some” (“I have concepts”) is not enough information. We can talk about policy all day, but specifics matter. Ear Tunes (and all their variations) are a tangible practice amidst all the hype around us. We light a candle. We put up a sign. We vote.
And besides, as I often remind the kids, we are ready for any group of preschoolers that come our way who need a pianist and a classic American folk tune. I always say this with great enthusiasm. I swear students just look at me like I am nuts. One day, I will present them with a group of four-year-olds and see what happens. Don’t wait for the world to change. Be ready.