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Ready to Read: 4 Steps for Developing Proficiency (Music Education Basics)

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Ready to Read: 4 Steps for Developing Proficiency (Music Education Basics)

Welcome back to Music Education Basics!

Today, we’re talking about readiness for music-reading and developing proficiency.

Just like learning to read language, music-reading follows listening and responding, developing a musical vocabulary, and active musical experiences in a natural progression, as we’ve been reviewing this week.

If you’re a choir director or an elementary music teacher, I recommend introducing music-reading (as in holding a score in your hand) around 2nd or 3rd grade. We tend to introduce music-reading a little sooner in one-on-one settings — piano lessons or other beginning instrumental studies — but in choir, you can usually wait until 3rd grade and spend more time with rote-learning and gradually bridging that gap.

I’ll walk you through a simple 4-step process and a few tangible ways to do this in today's lesson.

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The Case for Musical Expression (Music Education Basics)

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The Case for Musical Expression (Music Education Basics)

Welcome back to Music Education Basics!

Today, we’re talking about musical phrasing, dynamics, and movement and why it’s important to incorporate these elements of musical expression into the teaching and learning process from the very beginning.

Visuals and active experiences are a huge part of the learning process. In some cases, they are more important in our teaching than spoken directions and letting people read things for themselves. How can we be intentional about structuring our teaching in a way that supports visual learning and active, hands-on experiences?

We’ll explore a few useful strategies, ways to create opportunities for active experience, and meaningful analogies you can use to support music learning and the development of musical understanding in your students.

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How to Develop a Musical Vocabulary (Music Education Basics)

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How to Develop a Musical Vocabulary (Music Education Basics)

Welcome back to Music Education Basics!

Today, we’re talking about what it means to develop language skills in music—namely, the importance of building a vocabulary of tonal and rhythm patterns, something you’ll hear me describe as the building blocks of music.

Tonal patterns are short, 2- to 5-note groups or phrases. Think of them like words: instead of reading and focusing on the individual letters that make up a word, our eye recognizes the group of letters together; we understand the letters within the context of the word. The same is true in music: instead of focusing on individual notes, we want to help our students learn to read groups of notes as meaningful patterns.

The goal is to understand the notes within the context of the music.

Rhythm patterns are the same: short, 2- to 4-beat groups or phrases. It’s important to recognize them as patterns vs. reading individual note values.

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The First Step in Music-Learning That’s Often Overlooked (Music Education Basics)

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The First Step in Music-Learning That’s Often Overlooked (Music Education Basics)

To begin Music Education Basics, we’re going to talk about a primary component of music teaching and learning and something you may not immediately think of as being the first step in the teaching process: listening and responding.

In the introduction last week, I talked about the Music Learning Theory and the idea that learning music is a lot like learning how to speak a new language.

When you learned how to speak your native language, you probably didn't start with reading; you spent time listening to others speak the language around you, soaking it up, exploring how to create sound yourself, and eventually, imitating them.

It’s so important to build listening and responding into your teaching, because, while it's vital at the beginning of musical development, it’s something we come back to over and over again as we learn.

Everyone can learn from opportunities to listen and respond to music, at all stages of musical development, something I explain more in this lesson.

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Welcome to Music Education Basics

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Welcome to Music Education Basics

Music Education Basics is a free online workshop for music educators in all types of settings.

It’s available as a video series, but I’m going to share the audio version right here on the podcast so you can tune into the content here each day if that’s easier for you.

Each day, we’ll explore a different foundational aspect of music teaching and learning — a core mindset or process or sequence or approach that will apply to you and your work whether you’re teaching elementary or secondary students or even working with adults. Each lesson has a corresponding workbook and a brief challenge to encourage you to take action in some way.

In this introductory lesson, we're going to talk about the Music Learning Theory and how learning music is a lot like learning a new language.

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030 - Five Myths About Music Teaching & Learning

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030 - Five Myths About Music Teaching & Learning

You know those things you’ve heard that seem true? I mean, they sound plausible. Plus, if enough people say it, it must be true, right?

Before long, we find ourselves buying into the hype, retelling the story, believing something we’ve heard without stopping to ask questions.

This is how myths begin.

Sometimes, there’s simply a lack of information—nothing to disprove this theory or that idea. Other times, they sound good on paper but are only surface-level with no substance to back them up.

Whatever the case may be, we’ve all encountered myths (big and small) in various parts of our lives.

But have you ever stopped to think about myths related to teaching and learning?

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029 - The Cost of Perfection (A Teaching Story)

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029 - The Cost of Perfection (A Teaching Story)

Music and perfectionism often go hand-in-hand, don't they?

In music school, we're trained to pursue excellence, to strive to be the best. We're taught to set high standards for ourselves, to work hard, and live up to the high standards our teachers have for us.

The thing is, there are two sides to perfectionism.

The value of perfectionism is that it's a commitment to achieving at a high level. But the cost of perfection is a crippling fear of failure, an unwillingness to try new things, negative self-talk, and an unrelenting pursuit of something that may not always be attainable. In fact, it might not even exist.

I mean, have you ever had a perfect performance? What does that look like? Of course, there's technical perfection — the right notes and the right rhythms with the right fingering at the right tempo and the right dynamic level, whatever that might be for you — but is that what we're aiming for, technical proficiency? Or is there something more?

028 - The Case for Musicianship Skills (My Response to the Rolling Stone Article)

028 - The Case for Musicianship Skills (My Response to the Rolling Stone Article)

Last week, a controversial article written by a Juilliard graduate was published by Rolling Stone. The author argued that a more innovative approach to education at music conservatories could reverse the decline of classical music in the face of pop culture.

It generated a lot of conversation in the classical-music world. Some people sided with the author that music conservatories need to change and integrate more popular music styles into their curriculum to stay relevant and others argued that orchestras aren’t dying and that taking a class on Taylor Swift won’t make you a more well-rounded musician and guarantee that you have a successful music career.

I read the article. Perhaps you did, too.

I’m not here to take a stand on one side or the other, per se. Instead, I thought I would share a bit of the conversation that I had with my husband, Steve over dinner one night last week after the article came out.

027 - 8 Ways to Save Time This Week

027 - 8 Ways to Save Time This Week

I hear this over and over from music teachers and educators: there never seems to be enough time to get it all done.

You know what it's like, right?

Time to teach
Time to plan
Time to write
Time to practice
Time to read
Time to exercise
Time to learn

We’re always looking for new ways to be more productive, get more done in the little time we seem to have, and save time in places where, like money, we might be overspending.

026 - My Favorite Aural Skills Games & Activities

026 - My Favorite Aural Skills Games & Activities

Aural skills (also known as ear-training) is a fundamental facet of musicianship. Learning to listen, identify, discern, and understand music without notation present helps us develop the inner listening skills needed to become well-rounded, well-versed musicians.

What kinds of aural skills experiences are we giving our students, of all ages? How can we incorporate aural skill activities in our weekly lessons?

I've done a little research on this and found several helpful resources for fostering the development of aural skills in private lessons (and at home) with students of all ages.

If you don't already include aural skill experiences in your teaching on a regular basis, I hope this inspires you as much as it has me!

Follow along with my creative work and daily adventures: @ashleydanyew

Maybe this is an unpopular opinion— But in this season of goal-setting and checklists, I think it’s important to acknowledge that not everything can be measured. Not everything follows a set of orderly steps (as much as I may try!). Tha
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Sending you love and warm wishes this season! Here’s to another year of teaching, writing, creating beautiful music, and building community wherever we are. 💛🎵🥂 Love, Ashley, Steve, and Rory