{"id":1109,"date":"2019-09-07T15:42:35","date_gmt":"2019-09-07T14:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fullpitcher.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=1109"},"modified":"2019-09-07T15:42:37","modified_gmt":"2019-09-07T14:42:37","slug":"are-we-excited-about-making-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fullpitcher.co.uk\/wordpress\/are-we-excited-about-making-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Are We Excited About Making Music?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>At the end of last term, I received a &#8220;Thank You&#8221; card from an elementary level pupil, which expressed that most joy-inducing of pupil responses: &#8220;I&#8217;m excited about next year!&#8221; It really motivated me to discover new things about the music I teach and play and rediscover things I take for granted after a lifetime immersed in music. I&#8217;m so happy to share the excitement of the beginner and awed by the responsibility to ensure that the journey matches expectations!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first thing I have to bear in mind is that lessons aren&#8217;t about what and how I want to teach, rather, what and how the pupil wants to learn. That&#8217;s fairly easy to ascertain by presenting the adult with choices of repertoire and trying different approaches to see how they respond. I think it&#8217;s more difficult, though, to get &#8216;under the skin&#8217; of children. The latter do not have too many preconceptions about their tuition, they are reluctant to tell a teacher if things are not to their liking, and they have had limited exposure to the range of musical genres. Yet music is not a distinct body of knowledge to be parcelled up in portions digestible by the young,  but a world which each experiences in a uniquely personal way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How can we relive the discoveries of our own musical journeys and open the door on new experiences for our pupils?  With that in mind, a few of the things I&#8217;m going to work on are <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>introducing pupils to new genres and styles through &#8216;quick study&#8217; pieces, using arrangements that make few demands on the current level of technical development, through pupil\/teacher duets and listening activities.  <\/li><li>exploring scales through simple improvisation activities, taking a small chunk of the mode at a time.<\/li><li>where appropriate, linking pieces to more developed works of similar character on listening sites, also the same piece in different arragements.<\/li><li>focusing on the central role of rhythm in melodic structure and character and exploring this in improvisation.<\/li><li>as younger pupils seem to spend a lot of time on YouTube and similar sites, I will be encouraging them to share their favourite links with me, so that I can build on their discoveries.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>My search for strategies to enhance pupil experience goes on and, meanwhile, I&#8217;m now excited about this new academic year! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the end of last term, I received a &#8220;Thank You&#8221; card from an elementary level pupil, which expressed that most joy-inducing of pupil responses: &#8220;I&#8217;m excited about next year!&#8221; It really motivated me to discover new things about the music I teach and play and rediscover things I take for granted after a lifetime [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4,1],"tags":[146,144,145],"class_list":["post-1109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-improvisation","category-instrumental-teaching","category-uncategorized","tag-academic-year","tag-approach-to-teaching","tag-creative-music-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fullpitcher.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fullpitcher.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fullpitcher.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fullpitcher.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fullpitcher.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1109"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/fullpitcher.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1113,"href":"http:\/\/fullpitcher.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109\/revisions\/1113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fullpitcher.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fullpitcher.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fullpitcher.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}