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Keys to Music Learning
Keys to Music Learning
Community Chat with Greg Chase (Part 3)
Our final episode with Gregory Chase explores advice for new teachers (remember...FIBAS), music aptitude testing, and Ars Nova, Greg's extensive resource for teaching notational audiation.
Music Learning Theory for Newborn and Young Children, by Edwin Gordon
An Overview of Music Aptitude, a free mini-webinar by Janna Olson
Ars Nova de Audiation, resources by Gregory Chase
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Introduction to Audiation-based Piano Instruction and Music Moves for Piano
Ready to learn more about audiation-based piano instruction and Music Moves for Piano? Visit Music Learning Academy for online courses, webinars, and resources.
Want to dive into audiation-based piano instruction? Check out Music Moves for Piano by Marilyn Lowe.
Welcome to Keys to Music Learning. I'm Krista Jadro of Music Learning Academy.
Hannah:And I'm Hannah Mayo of Mayo Piano.
Krista:Join us as we discuss common goals and challenges in the piano studio and offer research-based ideas and solutions to guide every one of your students to reach their full musical potential with audiation.
Hannah:We are back one more time with Greg Chase. Welcome back, Greg.
Greg:Thanks. It's great to be here.
Hannah:In episode three, we get to ask our favorite questions, starting with what advice would you give new teachers who are getting started with audiation-based piano teaching other than get the teacher book? What advice would you give?
Greg:I don't know why, but lately, I've kind of been into acronyms. So I'm gonna say, FIBAS will be my answer. So the F would stand for forget everything you were taught. Yeah, and I know that seems absolutely crazy. But I remember when I was in grade seven, Canada moved from the imperial system. So from inches feet and miles to the metric, so to centimeters, meters, kilometers. And the advice that they gave us was do not convert from one system to the other. And so even for myself, now, I deal with metric with outside temperatures. And I deal with Fahrenheit, on inside temperatures. So I use both systems of the process. And probably I'm still more on the empirical side of things than the metric. But I think that's kind of sound advice for when you're moving from a traditional approach to teaching music to an audiation approach, because they are so different. And as I mentioned earlier, really it turned my teaching completely on its head and much to the better of it, that's definitely for sure. So that would be the first thing. The second thing I would say would be immerse yourself. And so I think a lot of times with teachers, we're a bit tentative. And so we might say, "You know what, I'm just going to try one student in this process and put them into Keyboard Games." And I mean, I went many, many years with one student or two students, and I'm really convinced after this year, having an influx, a wonderful influx of beginner students, that is when you really start to see the magic of Music, Learning Theory. The activities, I love my students, the activities that I make started on Monday, we'll take on a new form by Thursday, which is great just because of the evolution, things that actually evolve during the lesson with that. And I think that that's been able to see that magic is really incredible. And I don't think you get to see it when you only have one or two students in the book.
Hannah:Yeah, and also just for practice, for a practical purpose, being able to teach the same lesson multiple times throughout the week is great practice, versus maybe just doing it on Monday, and then not getting back to it again until the following Monday.
Greg:I totally agree. It's huge, because then you get to see the connections. And even when you have them at different levels. As I had mentioned earlier in the previous episode, how Marilyn had that foresight to see that overview of what was needed, then you really start making those connections. "Oh, that's why they're doing that here" because they're gonna need it there. So that really helps with that. My other suggestion is Be Humble. Maybe, maybe this is a reflection on me and my ego, that I put that in here. My best ideas come from my students. They are such excellent teachers. And if I forget something in the process, they're very quick to remind me that I skipped a step or that I forgot a crucial element in the process. And it could be something as small as taking a breath, or establishing tonality or meter. But inevitably, regardless of what it is, I very quickly find out that something was missed due to their inability of being able to do what I have guided them to do. I just I love my students there, those comments that I mentioned earlier, are just really very fruitful and very telling of what's happening. Another thing would be to understand that audiation is a foundation. And it's really an undercurrent that all music is based upon. And this really came as a paradigm shift in a conference that we had a number of years ago. It's our provincial teachers association that we have. And we have a conference. One of the professors from the university here, the University of Regina, Dominique Gregoire, he studied with James Jordan, and Dominique did a workshop on constructivism. And I was just at the beginning of my master's studies. But as Dominique spoke, I had this paradigm shift in regard to understanding audiation. And I think we try to achieve audiation or try to reach a point of audiation. But really audiation Is that undercurrent where learners construct knowledge, rather than just passively taking in the information. And really, our experiences of all the things around us really reflect on what kind of information that we take in. And so we build our own representations. And we really incorporate the information into our pre existing knowledge. And I think that is why Gordon said that "Audiation is to music, what font is to language," because it is just that constant, it's always there. It's that undercurrent that is running under everything that we're doing, everything that we're hearing. And also, I think that's why audiation can be subjective, just simply due to our own experiences, and the knowledge that we have constructed. And then the last one is Study. And that's me, and I really shouldn't be projecting what I do upon others. But to really understand the theory, and the skill learning sequences. As I mentioned before earlier, I didn't understand. I was reading sequence sequence sequence. And I didn't understand what the sequence was. But what it was, is that it is the skill learning sequence. And so my explanation or analogy, if I can share this with you, I think with the MLT terms, we have to remember that the terms are based on the sequential order of how students learn. And so I do know that at first, it's really hard to keep track of what is what, but as you do it more, hopefully, everything falls into place. And so I'd love just to go through and share this with you. Discrimination learning, really, we tell the students the answer. So we teach them the words, we all did this with our own children in regard to chair, table, dog, cat, all the things that we taught them, and we tell them what they are seeing or doing. "Oh, look, you're walking." Right and, and "Oh, you're crawling." And so we use that, we're always telling them what they're doing. We're always giving them the answers. So when it comes to Aural/Oral, I think of infants that they're sitting in their swing, they're laying on the floor, they're listening to the sounds around them, then about six or seven months, they start to create their own sounds of passing air through the lips. When they're closed, like we're making the different sounds, then they start to babble as they make other sounds with their mouth. And in music, we're listening to the sounds, we're starting to sing tonal patterns, and chat rhythm patterns, we're starting to build our musical vocabulary, then we get to the Verbal Association in the sequence. And oftentimes, we'll say, "Hey, look Zachariah,"(that's my son's name) "there's a puppy" or when we hand them a sippy cup full of juice, we say"juice" as we hand it to them, or whatever is inside. So we start labeling things for our children, we start making connections with words with what they are, what with what they are doing, or using. In music, we do the same thing. We give labels to sound Major, Minor, Tonic, Dominant, Resting tone, you know, the different things like that.
Unknown:Then with improvisation, we bridge to improvisation. And so when children first learn to make a specific sound, right, they play with making that sound and experiment with it to see how they can make a sound different. Walk into any grocery store or supermarket and you generally will hear a child who has just discovered their screaming voice, and I have found this so many times, and they start playing with it like "Ah! Ah!" You hear that all the time. And it wasn't until I understood what was happening. I would just go "Oh there's all these screaming kids." This was when I was single, young, there's always screaming kids in the grocery store, or in the supermarket. Now I go, "Oh, someone's found they're screaming voice." And so understanding why I'm hearing this noise makes a difference with that. But again, often kids will start with the words, they'll mix them up that sort of thing. And so as they know that they're learning, well, that is what we do with music.
Greg:And then Partial Synthesis. And I know that this kind of stuff can kind of be a bit of an obstacle for some people, but I see, I think of it is that they see a cat and they point and they go "puppy," you know, and so what do we do is we correct them, and we say, "No, that's a cat. Notice how the ears were shorter, and pointy, and the cat says, meow, but the dog goes woof, woof." You know, so we tell them, although they are similar in nature, and how they are different. So in music, the difference between Major and Minor or Tonic and Dominant or Duple and Triple. It's the exact same process. And then we get to the Symbolic Association of how kids will recognize certain sounds by how they look at actual words. Now, my son, he couldn't remember the word McDonald. I don't think he could say the word McDonald's. But he knew that if he made that big M, that I understood what he meant, you know, and it's not that we went there very often, or AMW, I can't remember if he remembered those words, or what he said. So children start associating symbols with specific places, and with specific items. So in music, this would be like reading our familiar tonal patterns and rhythm patterns that they have been singing or chanting. And then Composite Synthesis. Well, when the kids start reading and putting words together, think of really small phrases such as Dick sees Jane. Small sentences like that, then I know that was one "See spot. See Spot run," you know. So in music, we're putting these patterns together as well, to make them a longer patterns of phrases, the melodic phrases, the combining of rhythm and tonal pattern with that. Inference learning I love. Students will know that they can take that information that they've learned, and they're going to apply it to what they're doing. So once they know what the differences between the dog and a cat, then they call a dog, a dog, and a cat, a cat with vehicles, it takes a little longer. Generally, anything that has wheels is called a car. You know, it isn't until later that they start to realize that not all of these with all things with four wheels or a car, that some are truck, some are buses, and so on. But once they know the difference between the truck and a bus, they can start labeling them properly. So again, with Generalization, they use what they know and they can label things properly. So they may see two buses, but what they're going to do is then infer "Oh, since this is a school bus, this is a bus that goes to school, this must be a school bus. Since this is a bus that drives around the city, then this would be citybus." My son, anything that backed up was called a "beep, beep," whether it was a grater, whether it was a backhoe, everything was called a "beep, beep," because what ends up happening when it backs up? Beep beep. So a lot of times I'd hear it go "beep, beep, beep, beep," and he'd run to the window to see what big, thing was going by our house. So again, they start to make those references. And it wasn't until later that you could define the difference between a front end loader and a backhoe. Those sorts of things. Creativity/Improvisation, to me, that happens all along the way. Okay. And it's really, I'm finding that they know to create something else, then they will experiment. They'll create to build upon what they know. And they're always going from the known to the unknown. Well, to me, this reflects life, really, and what we do on a daily basis. Then Theoretical Understanding. And this I found very interesting, you know, I mean, generally we just call it theory. But I also think it's about assessment. And really an interesting when it comes to MLT. There's a bit of a black hole in the curriculums of MLT, when it comes to Theoretical Understanding. And I think I found the reason why. In Gordon's book from Prepatory Audiation, Audiation, and Music
Learning Theory:A Handbook of a Comprehensive Music Learning Sequence, the 2001, Gordon said,"As a matter of fact, there is debate as to whether the teaching of Theoretical Understanding is even necessary. After all, one can learn to speak the language with good syntax and grammar, without first learning how to parse the sentence, or to name the parts of speech. Nonetheless, Theoretical Understanding is included in Music Learning Theory for the sake of tradition. It does not play a formidable role in the audiation process." And I found that very interesting when I came across that. So, for those who don't know what Theoretical Understanding is, don't worry about it. It'll happen.
Hannah:If you do all the other things that come before Theoretical Understanding, you'll be understanding theory.
Greg:Definitely, yeah. And again, it just happens. It happens as you go through the sequence.
Krista:I remember when I was preparing for explaining Theoretical Understanding and our Patterns, Skills, and Sequence study group. And like you said, Gordon didn't write much about it. I love that quote that you use. I'm going to use that in the future. So I started looking at conservatories and colleges and seeing what they covered in their theory classes. And I got pretty far before I got to anything that my Music Moves students didn't know, the whole first couple of terms. I like oh, they they know all this already. So I can see why Gordon said that.
Hannah:We just don't write it down. We don't, like in a theory workbook, or I mean, we write it down eventually, when we get to the writing aspect of the sequence. But we're not writing a lot down in the early days, but we are experiencing all of that same music theory knowledge like Tonic, Dominant, Major, Minor, Duple, Triple and probably the experiencing it (or not probably) definitely the experiencing theory is a lot more useful and beneficial than the the talking or the writing in a traditional music theory workbook.
Krista:So we had FIBAS. Is that what the acronym was? Let's see if we remember them, Hannah F was...
Hannah:Forget everything, you know.
Krista:Okay. I...
Hannah:Immerse yourself
Krista:Yes. B..
Hannah:Be humble.
Krista:Audiation. Was there something else?
Greg:Audiation is the foundation.
Krista:Audiation is the foundation. And S. Study. Study the skill learning sequence. There's three S's there.
Greg:If you understand the skill learning sequence, then you have the why of what you were doing. You know, and that would be one thing that I would recommend to teachers too, even in the in the lesson plans, is once you realize why you're doing something where it falls in the skill learning sequence, write that into the into your teachers guide, you know, "Oh, this is a Verbal Association. Oh, this is an Aural/Oral," and there is just so much. If you were to do that on one lesson plan, you would see all the different things of the skill learning sequence that we are covering in one lesson simultaneously. It's just absolutely incredible what Marilyn has given us and has packed into each lesson plan. Yeah, I can't say that enough.
Krista:Yeah. And when you have that awareness, then you can take what you're doing in your lesson plans and apply it to your own activities, the repertoire that students are working on as well.
Greg:Yeah, definitely.
Hannah:Yeah, I think that is a(I just want to highlight a little more what you said,) writing in your teacher book. Please write in your teacher book, write notes, write reminders to yourself, write page number references, write things you want to remember to say. I personally have started using the initials in the margins of like keeping track of where students are. I don't know why I didn't start doing that sooner. It has been magnificent. Yes, like just write all over your teacher book all the time.
Krista:So Greg, our next question, how has Music Learning Theory been valuable for your piano teaching? And what do you think it brings to the table that other piano approaches or methods might not.
Greg:I would say the development of musicians. Yeah. I think of rural Saskatchewan and the Yorktown area where we're used to teach and live. In that area, they, they have a fiddler's group. And so these are all these musicians who don't necessarily read music, but they definitely understand music. And so most of them are self taught. So they understand the syntax of music without being taught theory, or how to read music. And to me, they are the true musicians, they have that innate aptitude. And so they're listening to the music, they know what is coming next. They're anticipating what is coming next. And they know when to change and when it will recur. And so I remember talking to a local store owner here in Regina, and she called me a musician. And I really felt uncomfortable with that. And so I corrected her. And I said,"No, I'm not a musician." And at that time, I really did feel that way, as it was shortly before getting into Music Learning Theory. I thought I know I can play musically, I know that I can decode notes on the page. And I can make it sound musical. But I didn't feel that I was a musician. Because I felt there was still so much that I couldn't do, that I didn't have at my fingertips, to be able to call myself a musician. So that is my goal is to become a musician. And I know that I'm on my way, everything's a continuum, I really do believe that audiation is a continuum, which I absolutely love. And it's an audiation journey that I'm still on, I think we're always on. And that really excites me. As I think that there's always something new to learn, and something new that we can audiate. And if you haven't gathered, I love learning. So I love that aspect of it.
Hannah:I have to say, I think that's a common thread in our community of teachers, and not just in the piano world. But in all the strands of Music Learning Theory, is that everybody just loves to learn. And that's good, because there's a lot to learn. And what about music aptitude testing? Because I know you do a lot of that. Has that been beneficial for your teaching?
Greg:Yeah, you know, if you don't do it, I recommend that you do it. I know, when I did it the first time, I was shocked when I saw at the results. And I would never have labeled students or put students where they actually tested. And I know in talking to my advisor. she said, "Yeah, piano teachers are really bad for underestimating what their students are capable of doing." And so what I found is that I wasn't even coming close to challenging some of my students that I was teaching. And I think of this one student in particular, as she was not a good reader, she was a transfer student. Not a great reader, not a great practicer. And so we did the the MAP, because she was old enough to do it. And her score for tonal was like 98/99, it was really, really high. And I thought, "You know what, I'm not even coming close to tapping into her potential of what she has." And I remember that when really stood out, in my mind, because it really helped me to realize, "You know, what, just because they can't read doesn't mean that they don't have high aptitude." And again, that was my own biases, because I came from you gotta read, you gotta read, you gotta read. I mean that that was the way I was taught. That's the way I taught for how many years? Even in another case, it helped answer some questions, where I had a student who would often argue with me when I'd say, "Oh, you didn't get soft there, or you didn't, you know, crescendo there" and he'd go "Yes, I did." You know, and he was just at that where he would argue back, and we didn't MAP and so with the music sensitivity, and this is about the only time that I've actually shown a student some of the results. So he scored very low. I think he was in the 30th percentile, so the low average of music sensitivity. And so then I showed that to him, and what his mark was. And I said,"This is why, when I say you aren't doing your dynamics or something, you feel that you are. It's because you're just low in this area." That actually stopped all arguing. And from there, then he accepted more of what I had to say. And he's still with me. He's getting ready to do his grade 10. He's graduated from high school. He's working. And just a phenomenal, sensitive player. Because now he was able to listen to what I have to say. So it goes both ways. And it can really help. But it helped me to understand and so I thought I now need to make sure that I'm making him aware of that, so that is what really affected the teaching.
Hannah:And for those who might not know about music, aptitude testing, Dr. Gordon developed many aptitude testing packets, and the one I think that is kind of the favorite among teachers is MAP, the Musical Aptitude Profile, but there is one primary measure, an intermediate measure and an advanced measure. But MAP is very comprehensive, because it does test six different areas.
Greg:Seven,
Hannah:Seven, it is seven. I've only done four. Well, there's two tonal and two rhythm, can you just tell us go down the list of seven real quick before I tried to do it and get it wrong?
Greg:Yeah, so the seven areas. They've discovered that there's about 32 different music aptitudes. So Gordon just picked seven that he felt were the most important. And of course, there's always more that can be done. So, we have the melody and the harmony. So those would be the sub tests for the tonal imagery, tonal aptitude. Then for rhythm imagery, we have tempo and meter. So those are the sub tests, the two sub tests for that, then for musical understanding, we have phrasing, balance, and style.
Krista:And if our listeners would like to know a little bit more about music aptitude in general, on the Music Learning Academy YouTube channel, we have a mini webinar by Janna Olson, that I'll link to in the show notes. And also, Greg, we keep talking about having you back on because we really need you back on. But I think music aptitude would be a great thing to dive into with you and your expertise.
Greg:Yeah, sure.
Hannah:And speaking of expertise, could we hear a little bit about your very expertly put together website Ars Nova with your audiation development curriculum?
Greg:Yeah, you guys are just to kind. Really. This was a project that I started for my studio, and for my students, and it kind of has evolved and gotten much bigger than what I initially anticipated. And so what really started it was a transfer student who was having trouble reading. And so I started the process, I thought, what do we need to do? And so I started the process of him kind of doing melodic patterns, because I thought he can read the rhythm and the tonal. And then I started to realize that, "Oh, I could use this for reading activities with my own students." But then, as I said, my students or my best teachers, it very quickly became evident that I was missing things. And so I went through this whole backup process of of doing the Symbolic Association, and the Composite Synthesis. And so what I initially started with my transfer students who were poor readers, is now about halfway through my program that I that I had developed. And so in order to be able to do this, initially, I thought I need to have my own LSA patterns, my own tonal patterns, and my own rhythm patterns. Gordon did those three phenomenal pattern studies and so I got my hands on them and started working through them and researching them and reading. I really wanted to know okay, they may be easy to write and easy to sing, or they also easy to audiate. Then it was in one of his earlier writings, in one of his books that I came across, where he said, yes, you know, they're the same, it was the key that I was missing to be able to progress forward on this.
Unknown:So I mean, he tested 1,114 tonal patterns. And he tested 486 rhythm patterns. And so they're all rated from easy to difficult. And so that is what I did is that I started to pull from his patterns, that I could be using with my students to give them a really good cross section from Easy-Easy to the most Difficult-Difficult. And so then I've just started to work through and to create the LSAs based on his hand book, and his suggestions. And then those are the patterns that we use for Symbolic Association, for the reading of the patterns. It's been revised, because for piano, right, every instrument is different. And so I'm doing it for the sake of piano. And so I know that when I started to have my students play the tonal patterns, I came across some awkwardness, that it just didn't fit comfortably under their hand moving from one tonal pattern to the next. So then I did revise a couple of them, so it would actually fit. And I still kept the same category difficulty level for that. But there was some revising that did have to happen and go through. So those are the materials that I use for my students for the reading. There's still more materials that have to be added. I think there's different flashcards. I think now, it's over 2000 pages of resources that are on there. Yeah, I thought one day I'm gonna count how many there are. I was just curious. Yeah, for that. So it's, it's a subscription, teachers can subscribe to it. And then they have access to an end. And it goes through the process and the number of it. And I do provide training sessions. I was hoping to do that before Christmas, but then COVID hit. But it takes about three hours for me to walk you through the material. So I usually break it up into two 90-minute sessions.
Krista:So if teachers are interested, they pay a one time fee for this subscription.
Greg:Yes, it's a one time fee. And it'll allow them access to all the materials, and then also to anything that will be added. And I feel like this is just the beginning stages. And there is still so much more that needs to be done and to be added. So yeah. It'll be a lifelong project. It's one of the adventures that'll be going on and on and on.
Krista:Yeah. Wow. That's pretty amazing. And I will definitely link Ars Nova on the show notes, incase any teachers are interested.
Greg:Yeah. Great. Thank you.
Hannah:And now, for the last and most fun question of all. What is your favorite part of teaching piano using an audiation-based approach? If you can even narrow it down to one, you're allowed to answer more than one.
Greg:So like, how much time do we have again? Yeah, there's so many favorites. I think the flow in which students play and learn their music. They learned little pieces, their songs up to tempo. And so they aren't slowed down due to the decoding process. So I find that we're able to get to that musical level so much faster than when we take a decoding process for that, because they're already playing that tempo, they already have the technique that they are doing. And so then you can now start to concentrate on the musical aspects of the music. I think another thing would be the creativity. We are creative creatures. And so we improvise on a daily basis in our daily life. So to be able to bring that to music and to their instruments is just absolutely wonderful. I remember as a child just sitting at the piano, creating and making up things. And so it really became a different world for me, as I was imagining playing in front again, here's my ego playing in front of the crowds, you know that they were listening and shooting for me. I mean, that's a six and seven year old minds play there with that. But I love being able to see that within my students. That one never knows what aspect, whether its rhythm, tonal, or what song we sing, that they will grasp on to. And then they will start to create and improvise with it. And I had a wonderful little five year old, who really, she took a number of items that we did in our activity. And she put it all together in a song. And so I could tell exactly what she was pulling from where, as she was doing her movement, and her dancing with that. And I just, I just love that creativity that we have with that. And as I mentioned earlier, I think probably the biggest one is that I just love developing musicians.
Hannah:Intelligent music makers is what you get with the audiation-based approach to piano teaching. Intelligent music makers, who can be musical at and away from the piano. For sure.
Greg:Yes. Definitely.
Hannah:Greg, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for being here with us and sharing your story and your knowledge and your experiences. We're just delighted that we can have you on the podcast.
Greg:Oh, thank you. It's my pleasure, really.
Hannah:And I think you're like many of us, we could just sit and talk about this stuff for hours and hours. But we are going to stop there for now. But we'd love to have you back next season when we explore a little deeper about some of the topics that sort of mystify and confuse people, and one of them being music aptitude. But there are many other things I'm sure that you could continue to educate us on. We'll look forward to seeing you again. Listeners, be sure to check out Greg's website Ars Nova, if you are in search of some really great materials and resources for notational audiation. And don't forget about Janna Olsen's mini-webinar on music aptitude on the Music Learning Academy YouTube channel. And FIBAS. Remember, FIBAS. Thanks so much, everyone. We'll see you soon.