I am still processing my experience at this year's Colorado ACDA
conference, because it was full of some genuinely beautiful and
inspiring moments. I was already starting to get excited for the school
year, but this conference has me feeling pumped and has sent me hurtling
full on into prep mode as I walk away with over 50 new pieces that I
want to program this year or in the future, strategies and ideas gleaned
from interest sessions and great conversations with my colleagues, and
of course the deep sense of renewal that comes from listening to some of
the masters in my field. I have been going to these summer conferences
for years, at least since I
started teaching and possibly before that, and I am not sure I have
ever had headlining clinicians who were as inspiring as Alice Parker and
Dr. Rollo Dilworth. They are separated in time by nearly half a
century, and yet both demonstrated and tried to enkindle in us a deep
respect for the art of singing and the concept that often we need to
move away from the printed page in order to realize the potential of
song.
From Rollo Dilworth:
"If we are to continue to help our singers understand that non-printed music is an important part of our traditions, we will do so much for them."
"There is no distinction between high art, low art, it's ALL art. The aural tradition has cultural value."
"When one learns in the oral/aural tradition, the notes, rather than being written on paper, are written over the entire body and the behavioral attitude of the teacher. One learns so much more than the notes." -Dr. Ysaye Barnwell
"At best, on learns a culture, a language, a reason, a technique, an interpretation, idiomatic distinctions and subtleties of music as well as the specific notes, rhythms, tempos, etc. The teacher's entire being is the model for what is being learned." -Dr. Ysaye Barnwell
-Benefits to the singer for learning music in the aural tradition: it builds cultural awareness and cultural competence, strengthens memorization and aural skills, improves rhythmic accuracy & attentiveness to stylistic nuance, immersion into a modality utilized by 90% of the world's population, and sets up singers for success!
-Benefits to the teacher/leader teaching music in the aural tradition: it strengthens cultural awareness and cultural competence, it makes us be vulnerable instead of distance from our singers (eliminating the physical barrier of the music stand, piano, music folders, etc.), builds our aural and rhythmic skills, improves attentiveness to stylistic nuance, builds sequencing skills (always start with the steady beat), builds confidence and charisma, and strengthens our connection with our singers.
Then Dr. Dilworth proceeded to sing with us, teaching us several songs aurally, modelling the stylistic nuance he wanted us to use. Notation is very limited when it comes to communicating how to get from one note to the next.
From Alice Parker:
"We do not study melody anymore. We are taught that the first thing one should do to a melody is to harmonize it. Actually that's the last thing someone should do to a melody."
"Things exist only in relationship to each other. The pitch 'A' doesn't exist until it occurs at a particular time, on a particular instrument, in relation to other pitches." Without all that context, the note does not exist.
"The first thing a child can do in the womb is hear, before sight, before smell, before speaking, hearing is at the center of our humanity. And yet we do not hear very often, we are a very eye-oriented society."
"You cannot prove a song. Notation does not and cannot give you a set of steps that if you follow all of them every time it's going to come out exactly the same. Babies are at home with all of these potential variances in sounds."
There is a "fulfilled silence at the end of a piece of music; the air is charged with all we just heard. This is very different than the silence before a piece begins, which is very empty."
"The farther you are from the page, the closer you are to the song."
On the limitations of notation, and how writing down what she hears in her head or sings to herself is often incredibly frustrating because it never looks right on the page: "The world that we're swimming in all the time resists notation. It's like taking a magnificent oil painting and trying to describe it in paragraphs. No description will do the painting justice and no two descriptions will be the same."
"Songs teach us how to sing. We don't need to learn how to sing in order to sing songs, we need to sing lots of songs so our voices develop the capacity to fulfill them."
"The page has no control over the sound at all."
The Anatomy of a Melody:
Text first, which then leads to
Rhythm: "the movement of the voice speaking the text in rhythm up and down gives us the beginnings of pitches through the accents on the words."
Pitch=space
Rhythm=time
"The phrase is what you breathe at the end of. Breath is to the singer as the floor is to the dancer. You literally cannot do anything without it."
"We have no way of notating freedom [in a melody]. All we have is arithmetic proportions."
"We need to look at the notation we've got with a tremendous amount of disrespect."
So needless to say in the final two days of the conference there was a very strong theme of not being so bound to the printed page and only singing from notation. I found this them to be incredibly refreshing. I have a strong interest in culturally diverse music, much of which does not or did not originally exist in notated form. To teach much of it from notation or with notation is to not authentically communicate the song. I also teach a population where many of my students' primarily modality is to sing and learn by ear, not by sight. Yes of course I teach them sight-reading and we learn much of our music from scores. But I feel like the majority of my profession is so focused on music literacy (we MUST always have them sight-reading, all of our students must be able to sight-read perfectly, we should not program literature that our student's cannot sight-read) for reasons that I suspect include A.) fluency in standard Western music notation is one of the ways in which we can demonstrate that our subject is "academic" thus justifying its existence to the powers that be, and B.) for many of us in our profession the goal is to sing the most technically difficult/impressive works we possibly can, works that require a strong background in music-reading in order to perform.
As I said, I teach my students to sight-read, we work on understanding notation and interpreting the printed page, but I do not sacrifice the other great aspects of choral music and the many needs of my students at the Altar of Music Literacy. Yes this means that your kids probably sight-read better than mine do, but that's totally okay.
All in all, a wonderful three days of learning, inspiration, and catching up with friends and colleagues. I got to have several great conversations with a friend from my undergraduate who I only generally see once or twice a year, but at ACDA we were able to catch up and it was wonderful to see her. Both of my mentors with whom I did my student teaching (TEN YEARS AGO!), my choral music ed mentor from undegrad and my choral music ed mentor from graduate study were all present at the conference, and it was great to see and re-connect with all of them. Furthermore, I am now far enough along in my career that I have younger teachers whom I have mentored as a cooperating teacher, and I was able to spend a great deal of time with as well, which was really cool. I am right smack in the middle of my career, it would seem, and it's a good place to be.
The next couple of weeks I have some posts coming about planning for the new school year, both my personal planning as well as in a more general sense, as we start moving into the new school year. As I said on my Facebook post about the conference, "Yay Colorado ACDA! Yay choir!"
From Rollo Dilworth:
"If we are to continue to help our singers understand that non-printed music is an important part of our traditions, we will do so much for them."
"There is no distinction between high art, low art, it's ALL art. The aural tradition has cultural value."
"When one learns in the oral/aural tradition, the notes, rather than being written on paper, are written over the entire body and the behavioral attitude of the teacher. One learns so much more than the notes." -Dr. Ysaye Barnwell
"At best, on learns a culture, a language, a reason, a technique, an interpretation, idiomatic distinctions and subtleties of music as well as the specific notes, rhythms, tempos, etc. The teacher's entire being is the model for what is being learned." -Dr. Ysaye Barnwell
-Benefits to the singer for learning music in the aural tradition: it builds cultural awareness and cultural competence, strengthens memorization and aural skills, improves rhythmic accuracy & attentiveness to stylistic nuance, immersion into a modality utilized by 90% of the world's population, and sets up singers for success!
-Benefits to the teacher/leader teaching music in the aural tradition: it strengthens cultural awareness and cultural competence, it makes us be vulnerable instead of distance from our singers (eliminating the physical barrier of the music stand, piano, music folders, etc.), builds our aural and rhythmic skills, improves attentiveness to stylistic nuance, builds sequencing skills (always start with the steady beat), builds confidence and charisma, and strengthens our connection with our singers.
Then Dr. Dilworth proceeded to sing with us, teaching us several songs aurally, modelling the stylistic nuance he wanted us to use. Notation is very limited when it comes to communicating how to get from one note to the next.
From Alice Parker:
"We do not study melody anymore. We are taught that the first thing one should do to a melody is to harmonize it. Actually that's the last thing someone should do to a melody."
"Things exist only in relationship to each other. The pitch 'A' doesn't exist until it occurs at a particular time, on a particular instrument, in relation to other pitches." Without all that context, the note does not exist.
"The first thing a child can do in the womb is hear, before sight, before smell, before speaking, hearing is at the center of our humanity. And yet we do not hear very often, we are a very eye-oriented society."
"You cannot prove a song. Notation does not and cannot give you a set of steps that if you follow all of them every time it's going to come out exactly the same. Babies are at home with all of these potential variances in sounds."
There is a "fulfilled silence at the end of a piece of music; the air is charged with all we just heard. This is very different than the silence before a piece begins, which is very empty."
"The farther you are from the page, the closer you are to the song."
On the limitations of notation, and how writing down what she hears in her head or sings to herself is often incredibly frustrating because it never looks right on the page: "The world that we're swimming in all the time resists notation. It's like taking a magnificent oil painting and trying to describe it in paragraphs. No description will do the painting justice and no two descriptions will be the same."
"Songs teach us how to sing. We don't need to learn how to sing in order to sing songs, we need to sing lots of songs so our voices develop the capacity to fulfill them."
"The page has no control over the sound at all."
The Anatomy of a Melody:
Text first, which then leads to
Rhythm: "the movement of the voice speaking the text in rhythm up and down gives us the beginnings of pitches through the accents on the words."
Pitch=space
Rhythm=time
"The phrase is what you breathe at the end of. Breath is to the singer as the floor is to the dancer. You literally cannot do anything without it."
"We have no way of notating freedom [in a melody]. All we have is arithmetic proportions."
"We need to look at the notation we've got with a tremendous amount of disrespect."
So needless to say in the final two days of the conference there was a very strong theme of not being so bound to the printed page and only singing from notation. I found this them to be incredibly refreshing. I have a strong interest in culturally diverse music, much of which does not or did not originally exist in notated form. To teach much of it from notation or with notation is to not authentically communicate the song. I also teach a population where many of my students' primarily modality is to sing and learn by ear, not by sight. Yes of course I teach them sight-reading and we learn much of our music from scores. But I feel like the majority of my profession is so focused on music literacy (we MUST always have them sight-reading, all of our students must be able to sight-read perfectly, we should not program literature that our student's cannot sight-read) for reasons that I suspect include A.) fluency in standard Western music notation is one of the ways in which we can demonstrate that our subject is "academic" thus justifying its existence to the powers that be, and B.) for many of us in our profession the goal is to sing the most technically difficult/impressive works we possibly can, works that require a strong background in music-reading in order to perform.
As I said, I teach my students to sight-read, we work on understanding notation and interpreting the printed page, but I do not sacrifice the other great aspects of choral music and the many needs of my students at the Altar of Music Literacy. Yes this means that your kids probably sight-read better than mine do, but that's totally okay.
All in all, a wonderful three days of learning, inspiration, and catching up with friends and colleagues. I got to have several great conversations with a friend from my undergraduate who I only generally see once or twice a year, but at ACDA we were able to catch up and it was wonderful to see her. Both of my mentors with whom I did my student teaching (TEN YEARS AGO!), my choral music ed mentor from undegrad and my choral music ed mentor from graduate study were all present at the conference, and it was great to see and re-connect with all of them. Furthermore, I am now far enough along in my career that I have younger teachers whom I have mentored as a cooperating teacher, and I was able to spend a great deal of time with as well, which was really cool. I am right smack in the middle of my career, it would seem, and it's a good place to be.
The next couple of weeks I have some posts coming about planning for the new school year, both my personal planning as well as in a more general sense, as we start moving into the new school year. As I said on my Facebook post about the conference, "Yay Colorado ACDA! Yay choir!"
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