Putting Music in ”Music Fundamentals” with Melissa Hoag

Notes from the Staff

Dr. Melissa Hoag joins us to talk about ways we can make the teaching of music fundamentals musical, fun and effective. She shares tips from her chapter in The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, and takes us through her list of six best practices for teaching music theory fundamentals.

Links

• Melissa Hoag's faculty page at Oakland University
• The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, ed. Leigh VanHandel: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Music-Theory-Pedagogy/VanHandel/p/book/9781032174136
• Lana Lubany "Sold" (Harmonic minor scale at beginning): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIGxMtWXjS0
• Renaissance Composer Maddalena Casulana: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maddalena_Casulana
• Bruce Haynes: Performing Pitch: The History of "A": https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780810841857/A-History-of-Performing-Pitch-The-Story-of-A
• uTheory: Online Music Theory and Ear Training

Show Notes

00:01:04 - Guest Introduction: Dr. Melissa Hoag, Oakland University

00:02:01 - Why is teaching music fundamentals hard?

00:03:18 - Can you talk about your own experience teaching music theory fundamentals?

00:05:14 - What topics do you include in music fundamentals?

00:06:37 - What do we get wrong about teaching fundamentals?

00:09:18 - How do you put actual music in your music fundamentals classes?

00:14:31 - Do you still have time for drill & practice if you're spending so much time with real music?

00:15:35 - Importance of letting yourself be fallible in front of students

00:17:21 - What are ways you connect fundamentals to sound?

00:18:30 - Composition exercises in fundamentals & engaging students creatively

00:23:47 - How do you approach teaching a topic that you know so well, that you can't remember what it was like to know the topic?

00:27:06 - The value of the piano keyboard in teaching & learning music fundamentals

00:30:10 - Six Best Practices for teaching music fundamentals

00:30:30 - #1: Repetition Counts

00:35:20 - #2: Consistency and Rigor Matter

00:38:20 - #3: More Assessment Opportunities are Better than Fewer

00:39:27 - #4: Prompt Feedback and Specific Grading Are Import for Learning

00:41:02 - #5: Involve Students in Finding Examples

00:43:31 - #6: Have Fun!

00:45:36 - Final thoughts? We should acknowledge that we're talking about Western, tonal music fundamentals, and that there is much more to the world, and we value that and are curious about that.

00:46:58 - Wrap-up

Transcript

0:00:21.2 David Newman: Welcome to Notes from the Staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.

0:00:34.3 Greg Ristow: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and associate professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory.

0:00:40.7 DN: Hi, I'm David Newman and I teach voice and music theory at James Madison University and write code and create content for uTheory.

0:00:48.4 GR: Welcome to our second season of Notes from the Staff, and a quick thanks to all of our listeners for your comments and episode suggestions. We love to read them, so send them our way by email at [e-mail], and remember to like us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

0:01:04.3 DN: Our guest today for the first episode of our second season is Dr. Melissa Hoag who is Associate Professor and Coordinator of music theory at Oakland University. Dr. Hoag's writings have appeared in the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, Music Theory Online, Music Theory Pedagogy Online, College Music Symposium Notes and others. She is a scholar who thinks deeply both about music theory and how to teach it in relevant ways, from her 2013 article on strategies for success in the first year music theory classroom to her 2018 article on relevance and repertoire in the 18th century counterpoint classroom, to her recent chapter in the Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, which we'll be discussing today on Putting the Music in Music Fundamentals. Melissa, welcome.

0:01:53.3 Melissa Hoag: Hi, thank you so much for having me.

0:01:55.3 DN: We're so glad to have you here.

0:01:56.8 GR: Melissa, I have to say, I absolutely loved your chapter on putting the music in music fundamentals, that's in the Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy. This is a book that we're gonna be coming back to a number of times throughout the season. Its structure is just delightful, it's like a whole bunch of lesson plans or ideas from teaching from a bunch of different authors. One of the things that you said in your chapter that I think is absolutely true is that teaching music theory fundamentals is really hard. Why is it so hard?

0:02:27.3 MH: First, I completely agree with you that the Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy that Leigh VanHandel edited is just really wonderful, and I've already used a lot of the ideas from that book myself, so I'm glad that you'll be talking about it some more this season. I think teaching music Fundamentals is hard because most of us who teach this material just think of it as part of who we are as musicians, we don't remember not knowing those things in many cases, and we find it hard, I think, to take the time to recapture what it felt like not to know things like scales or key signatures, or what a tonic is, and I think that's really the hard thing, and then I think some people also maybe consider it not as interesting as teaching analysis. I think some people might feel that it's dry or just something they have to get through to get to the good stuff.

0:03:27.5 GR: And can you tell us a little bit about your own experience teaching music fundamentals you... What classes do you teach there at Oakland?

0:03:34.4 MH: So right now I teach and have taught for a long time, Music Theory 1, which does include fundamentals. We have a separate fundamentals class for students who really have absolutely no background in music, like maybe they sing well, but they don't have any background with note reading or anything, but everyone gets a very thorough introduction to fundamentals and Music Theory 1. And then of course, I teach a bunch of upper level classes and graduate classes, but the fundamentals part of Music Theory 1 goes for the first 10 weeks, so it's most of the semester and of course, before that, before I came to Oakland, I also taught fundamentals at Indiana University, Purdue University at Indianapolis, otherwise known as IUPUI.

0:04:28.2 MH: So I taught it then as well, and that was to non-majors, and so that was a different kind of approach, but I really use a lot of the same techniques for teaching college level music majors, some of whom are music minors, and teaching those non-majors, I don't see them as particularly that different in terms of trying to engage them, the level of rigor might be a bit different, I don't wanna let things go very much when I'm teaching college majors just because they're gonna have so much more theory following it, whereas a non-major taking music fundamentals, you wanna give them a broad overview and some experience, but I really adopt the same general idea as far as how to engage them in the topic.

0:05:14.8 GR: For you all, what's included within music fundamentals? What do you cover in that first, say, 10 weeks of the first semester.

0:05:21.9 MH: So for us right now, it is very western tonal-focused. That's a topic I'll talk a little bit more about later. We're in the process of trying to find ways to broaden that a little bit, or at least acknowledge that that is the focus instead of calling it music fundamentals and acting like it's all music. You know what I'm saying? So for now, because that is the focus of our major, it is a western tonal music focus in our major, we start with, of course, note reading, we do that very quickly, because most of them don't know the other clefs alto and tenor. We do do those because it's a college level fundamentals class, and then major and minor scales, and we do quickly acknowledge the different modes and stuff like that, but we don't require them to know them just because it's enough for them to know major and minor, and they'll get to the modes later on, and then we do intervals, a very basic introduction to meter, and then we do triads and seventh chords, and that's pretty much what comprises our fundamentals unit for that first year of Music Theory.

0:06:40.2 DN: What do we get wrong about teaching music theory fundamentals?

0:06:43.4 MH: Well, I think we get... I think many people can get it wrong by teaching it in a dry way, like just showing scales, just making students write scales, just drilling things, which obviously you do have to do some drill, of course, there's just no way out of it, but having students just do these really dry exercises without making them sing... I should say inviting them to sing without engaging their musicianship and even in a class of non-majors, some of those students probably took the class because they had choir in high school, or they sing in their church choir and they wanted to take this music class or they play in a community band or a rock band, and they just wanted to know more. So they've got some musicianship, most people do, and just finding ways to plug that in, and then of course, applying it to musical examples. I try to include just as much diversity of repertoire as I can, I use like band music, I just... I think the mistake really goes back to looking at it as something we just have to get through to get to the good stuff, and then not applying it to real music and not inviting students to engage their own musicianship. So that's kind of... That's kind of been my experience.

0:08:20.3 GR: That really resonates with me. My first real teaching job was at a community college on the north side of Houston, and I taught pretty much every semester a music fundamentals class, and the first time I taught it, I taught it as though I was preparing those students as quickly as possible to go into say theory one at a major conservatory and I wasn't too concerned about doing anything musical. It was like, we are going to master these music theory fundamentals. And it didn't go so well, I have to say, and that was a real learning experience for me. And gradually over the five years that I was teaching there, I introduced more and more activities of making music, of approaching music that students are actually listening to as opposed to say the things that I had studied in my own undergraduate and graduate training and... Yeah, it brings us really nicely, I think back to the subject of your article, which is putting the music in music fundamentals. So maybe you can go in that direction a bit. What are some of the ways that you do that in your own teaching?

0:09:24.7 MH: So for me, one thing I started doing a few years ago is just their first assignment on the LMS, the learning management system, for us it's Moodle. So I will put an assignment module on Moodle and ask students a series of questions, and those include things like their preferred name, 'cause sometimes the registered name is not how they prefer to be addressed, and what their pronouns are and who their studio teacher is in case I ever need to get in touch with that person about their progress, but then I also ask them their three favorite pieces they're listening to right now. And it can be any music, there's... And I say that in the question like, there's no guilty pleasure type of judgment implied here, it can be a video game music, it can be film music, it can be a pop song, it can be something you're playing in lessons or something you've studied in band, anything. And so then as soon as I have that, I slot those things into the various topics, 'cause I have playlists for all my topics on Spotify, and that way we can either start class by listening to one of their songs or one of their examples, and I'll just have them think like, well, what meter is this? Let's conduct it. Does this fall into one of the meter types we've studied?

0:10:45.5 MH: Or what kind of scale are they singing at the beginning of that example or... Just a lot of different techniques and approaches like that, and like you said, using music that the students are listening to is a really good way to engage them. And it's impossible to overstate how much they love it when you play one of their favorite songs, it just... They're so happy. Like I have the super quiet girl who is a trumpet major, and she is... Especially for a trumpet player. She is just so quiet in class, she does not ever speak unless I call on her, and if I call on her, like if I can tell it looks like she knows the answer, then her face gets red but she'll answer and she knows the answer. So anyway, I was playing her this piece that she's working on in her lessons, this trumpet piece, and she was just so happy that we were playing that piece, and I just asked a couple of basic questions like, what harmony is arpeggiated there at the beginning? Is it at triad or at seventh chord, is it major or minor? And it just took like five minutes out of class, but it really helps the students feel engaged and it helps them feel like you care about what they're interested in. And it's also a really easy way to diversify what you're teaching, because at least I cannot keep up with what the young ones are listening to.

0:12:16.6 MH: I don't really listen to that stuff. It's not that I don't appreciate it, I just can't keep up. So it helps me stay more current as well with pop music and film music and stuff like that. And then sometimes I'll just do a quick search too on Spotify, people have all kinds of playlists and they're of various quality, like if they say it's like compound triple meter, it may or may not really be. Or if they say it's a... You have to definitely vet them, but I found some really good examples. Like this Palestinian American singer, Lana Lubany, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing her name correctly, but there's this song Sold, and it has a harmonic minor scale right off the bat, and it's this really cool... It has like... She's plugged into her Middle Eastern roots, but it's a pop song and it's in English, and so it was really a beautiful example of a harmonic minor scale. And so I played that and then I had students kind of echo it after I played it a couple of times at the beginning, and then we figured out together what kind of scale it is, and then I had them notate it and sing it on solfege, which I just kind of, guess sort of fold in organically, even though it's not, I don't give them aural skills exams in fundamentals, but I still fold in solfege because I believe in solfege.

0:13:45.4 DN: For which those of us who teach aural skills are grateful for it.

[laughter]

0:13:51.1 MH: Well, yes, 'cause they are learning it also in aural skills in that class, but even when I taught it to non-majors, I still had them sing just some basic solfege because it's just so helpful. So that's just kind of an example. And then I try to also include, if I don't get these from students, I also include like... Of course, I include works by Western classical composers as well. I try to always have an example by a woman and an artist of color... Or composer, artist of color. I just try to be as broad as I possibly can within the confines of, yes, we're still talking about major and minor tonality as the focus of what we do, just having them sing as much as they can too as I already mentioned.

0:14:33.7 GR: Can I ask a devil's advocate kind of question, which is, if I do it... If I take this time to bring real music into the curriculum, will there still be enough time for them to actually do the drill and practice they need to master these topics?

0:14:47.7 MH: Oh, yeah. [chuckle] See, that's what I do. It actually doesn't take a ton of time to do the student's favorite examples, and to me, I view that as such a valuable use of time because students are applying that knowledge and they're viewing it as contextualized, which I think helps them learn it better and retain it longer because they see it as more relevant. And then of course, my students always have an assignment due the next class period, and it's not graded necessarily, they only have one graded homework per week, but they always have something due, and I call on people just... And I said, look, we're all gonna make mistakes. If you don't know the answer, it's fine, but if you don't know it because you didn't do the homework, that's different, then you should be embarrassed, but you have to try to at least make an attempt.

0:15:47.0 MH: And if you don't know it, that's fine. And I always make sure if I make an error, I own it. During the first week of class, I messed up writing the circle of fifths or something. And I said, I have a PhD in music theory, and I just messed up the circle of fifths, and none of you need to be embarrassed about any errors. I said, it's just something that is going to happen, and it's just music theory it's not... We're not learning to do open heart surgery, no one will die if we make a mistake, it is important to learn music theory, but we can all take some of that pressure of perfection off of ourselves. I don't know if it sinks in or not.

0:16:30.5 DN: I find that so valuable to lead by example and... Yes. To show my fallibility.

[laughter]

0:16:39.4 MH: For sure, of course. It's so different from at least my undergraduate experience, it's so different. I mean, everybody was afraid of my theory teacher. I loved her, but most of the students did not love her. They were terrified of her.

0:16:57.6 DN: Well, and it's incredibly daunting if you see someone who just seems to be impossibly good at something, and then how do you envision yourself being able to grow into that if you know that this is someone who didn't used to be able to do this, and they learned to do this.

0:17:15.9 MH: Exactly. So it's important to make it seem attainable, I guess.

0:17:20.4 DN: Yeah.

0:17:20.7 GR: You mentioned you have the students sing a lot on solfege, and one of the things that you talked about in your chapter in the Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, was that importance of connecting the ideas to sound can you talk about various ways that you do that? Obviously we've talked about using musical examples, they already know, so they have a good sonic image and singing as well. Are there other ways that we might do that in our teaching?

0:17:45.9 MH: For me it really... It's all about singing. I've also had students do different things with rhythms and stuff like that, even like in Aural Skills 1, when we do rhythms, just like a dry rhythm exercise. Sometimes I'll do things like if they do it well as a group, then I'll have them count off one, two, three, four, and they'll just go measure by measure, which definitely makes it more challenging. And so that's always a fun thing to do, just as far as connecting it to sound, I've had students like when we've done compositions and stuff like that, which we tend to get to a little later. Although when I taught it for non-majors, I did have them do some little composition assignments, which is an interesting thing, like just write a little jingle in major, and it doesn't have to be perfect 'cause they really know enough about chords yet to match them to the melody. But that was kind of an interesting little experiment and then just... I played some of those and had us sing some of them, and again, they kind of muddle through, some of them I've never sang.

0:18:56.0 MH: And that's okay, I'm like, "Just do your best." But like little composition assignments, if it really is just in fundamentals and especially if it's for non-majors, I think it's really fun to have them take some risks like that. In our fundamentals unit, we just don't have time to do that. 'Cause we are going to get to that by the end of the semester, they'll be writing a phrase. And then in the second semester, a period structure. And I think we're gonna have them write a little pop song verse or something like that this year, for the first time in theory 2. But if you're teaching non-majors and you have a whole semester especially, or even majors and you have a whole semester dedicated to fundamentals, I think that would be a great thing to connect it with composition. And especially if you have the keyboard skill yourself to kind of make whatever it is sound really good, [laughter] to support it. And I don't mean that in a negative way, but if you can take their idea and be like, "I see what you're going for." And give it a progression.

0:20:03.5 GR: Give it a good harmony. Give it a good... Yeah.

0:20:06.0 MH: Exactly. Then that's really fun for them. They really love that, when you can do something like that. Even with Counterpoint class, if you can play their minuet in a really convincing way, even if there's some stuff going on, it helps I think.

0:20:30.6 DN: It reminds me of a project I did with a bunch of middle school kids, where we collaboratively wrote a musical.

0:20:39.0 MH: Oh, cool.

0:20:40.6 DN: And that was obviously a totally different structure because it was a summer camp kind of deal, and we had lots and lots of time, but I got lyrical ideas from them. And then I would get melodic ideas from them, but they didn't have to know... They didn't have to be great at creating melodies because they could give me a melodic idea and I could take it and say, "Oh right, we could do this with that, that would be cool." I hadn't thought of doing that, but that's of course, brilliant that I could, in a fundamentals class, I could still use the same techniques so that they have ownership and that they see the utility of it, which is exactly what you're advocating. That's so awesome.

0:21:28.8 MH: Yeah. I think they really connect with that.

0:21:31.8 GR: And our students are, they're creative people, right? They are musicians, they're artists, or they're taking that class, even if it's a class for non-majors because they have an interest in music. And I love these ideas for engaging that creativity.

0:21:46.6 MH: Yeah. And it's also much more fun for the instructor to... You know what I mean?

0:21:52.8 GR: Yeah.

0:21:54.6 MH: Who wants to just drill scales and... You have do those things, you have to. But making it a challenge to find these creative ways of engaging them. And so Greg, what you were asking, is there time to drill those things? We always have some time at the end of the class to do that. And then like I said, I give them an assignment, and then we go over that the next time. So they do that drill somewhat out of class too. And then with the homework assignments, we have a pretty regular schedule where they're due on... We have Tuesday, Thursday, Friday for freshman theory. So they will hand in an assignment on Tuesday, and I do everything I can to get it graded and handed back by Thursday so that I can collate common errors and address things. And especially if they have a quiz on that Friday, 'cause Fridays are days when we have quizzes five times a semester, so. But that kind of keeps us on track and it... That way you grade it with a quick enough turnaround that they remember doing the assignment, hopefully, and can think back to what they might have done wrong. And that way you're using some of the time outside of class by having those little practice assignments due every class, not for a grade, just I'll call on random people.

0:23:20.7 DN: We are fans of offloading some of that drill work to software. [laughter]

0:23:26.0 MH: Yes, I know. I know you are.

[laughter]

0:23:31.0 MH: That is a wonderful thing.

0:23:32.8 DN: Which of course only works if students do it.

0:23:35.0 MH: Right, I know.

0:23:38.0 DN: Of course, nothing works if students don't engage, that's why engaging students is so important.

0:23:41.4 MH: Yes, they do have to actually do the work. Yes.

0:23:46.5 GR: One of the things you said at the start of our interview was that it's hard to teach music theory fundamentals for a lot of us because they're already so deeply ingrained that we can't remember a time when we didn't know them. As an instructor, how do you approach a topic when you're formulating how you're going to present it given that that stuff is already so deeply ingrained for you?

0:24:08.8 MH: I just try to keep in mind what things look like from their perspective, from some of their perspectives. Some of them have more experience than others, of course. Students who already play the piano have a very different perspective. But I try to imagine what it would be like if you're a voice major and you've never taken piano lessons and you don't have any of that tactile knowledge. I just try to keep that in mind instead of expecting them to immediately import that knowledge, which is impossible to do immediately. And of course, they're taking keyboard at the same time, but it's not... They're not gonna be at the same level as another student who has already had years of piano lessons, for example. So I just try to put myself in their shoes as much as I possibly can, instead of living inside my own head or teaching to the students who are gobbling it all up. And again, I try to use a lot of... That's why I use examples that students give me.

0:25:16.4 MH: And I try to also use, again, especially with voice, some vocal music like the Renaissance composer, Maddalena Casulana. Her stuff is really beautiful, and she was the first woman to call herself a composer and to publish music that we have record of. And so that's an interesting thing. And it's Renaissance choral music, so it's very triadic. So that's a good opportunity, we've analyzed two of her madrigals this semester. And so that's a good way to engage, just making sure that you have music that addresses different performing forces, of course, but especially for those singers who might feel a little bit more behind. Not all of them, but just some of them who come in without that note reading knowledge, they might be very, very good singers and they just... They don't have that knowledge yet to back it up. They've never played a triad, so it's a foreign concept to them. They don't have any kind of tactile embodiment with knowledge of that. So showing stuff like that in different performing forces for those students helps a lot. And also just having them not just arpeggiate them but sing it in groups, make them build the cord as the class, sing it as a class.

0:26:36.9 GR: Each person singing one note of the... Yeah.

0:26:41.4 MH: Yes. And we even do the thing where it's major, augmented, major, minor, diminished. And so the augmented is kind of weird, but at least it's a way to make it more applicable to everybody, 'cause I don't... I also don't teach it in a keyboard lab or anything, I'm just in a regular classroom. So if you're in a keyboard lab, that's helpful, 'cause students can at least see the geography of some of these things.

0:27:06.1 GR: Can you talk a little bit about the value of keyboard instruction a bit more in terms of learning music fundamentals?

0:27:13.5 MH: So for me, it's such a valuable aid because you can see the whole keyboard, you don't have to learn any special fingerings to make a note sound. To play a scale coherently, you do need special fingerings, but to play... It's not like guitar or a bassoon or something where you have to know the fingerings. It's just so valuable for being able to say, "Oh yes, that is a whole step. Between C and D, we skip exactly one pitch." And for that reason, it's just so valuable to have students take keyboard at the same time because it... Of course, it's an important skill because most schools have pianos and pianos are widespread, right? It's a good thing because if students have those skills, they can use that skill in their eventual professions, but it's just such an invaluable support to Music Theory learning. And our keyboard curriculum is similar to our theory curriculum, but a little bit slower because it takes time for students to gain those tactile skills, being able to just feel the geography of a triad, of a second inversion triad, and it's just hard to overstate the importance.

0:28:27.7 GR: As you say, along those lines, I think what you're getting at is something that I see all the time when I'm teaching fundamentals, which is that students naturally tend to assume that the musical staff is an accurate representation, just in terms of the vertical space between notes, of how far apart notes actually are. But because there are whole steps between some letters and half steps between others, that vertical distance on the staff doesn't always reflect the same distance, and that... You see that creep up when students are writing scales, when they're... Any topic for music fundamentals, you have to use some tool to think back to the exact distance and not just the generic distance between letters. And of course, the piano shows us all of those, plus it shows us the letter names because of the arrangement of white and black notes on it, in a way that other instruments don't. The guitar, yeah, you can see all the half steps, but you can't see where the octaves are on the guitar in the same way you can on piano.

0:29:33.3 MH: Yeah, absolutely. And being able to see the difference between B-C and F-G. Perfect example. Yeah, exactly what you're talking about that on the staff they look the same, but they're not the same because on the keyboard, you skip a note between F and G. So for that reason, it's just so important, and whenever I've talked to prospective students, "Try to get some piano lessons before you come to college, wherever you go, it can be a helpful thing."

0:30:08.8 GR: I want to come back to your article in the Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, because you listed at the end... The thrust of the article is putting the music in music fundamentals. But then at the end, you had this just delightful list of six best practices for teaching music fundamentals. I don't know if you could just talk a little bit about each of them. So the first one you listed was repetition counts.

0:30:34.1 MH: Oh yeah, I think I remember writing about that. So basically, fundamentals never leave the whole first year of theory. On every assessment, they will have to write some intervals. And they tend to get a little meaner by the end of the year, like some augmented ones in tenor clef and stuff like that. At the beginning we're a little more gentle, but there's just always fundamentals on every assessment. They don't know which ones they'll be for sure, but even after we're finished with the fundamentals unit, they will have scales, intervals, cords, meter questions like, "Here's a rhythm with no meter, provide the meter. Or re-notate this incorrectly notated rhythm to reflect the... " Those kinds of questions. That's one thing, we never stop. And we just always, on the LMS for every quiz or midterm or finals or anything, and fundamentals, that includes everything. So they know that any of those things can come back at any time and... 'Cause when I first came here, some of the upper level students were real foggy on things like intervals, and I thought, "OH, no. This can't be." So that's why ever since then they just know that it's gonna come up forever. [laughter]

0:31:56.7 GR: I love that. And I have to say that... But yes, I have also had the experience of coaching a student who is several years past their first semester of music theory, and just saying, "Hey, what key are we in?" And this look of abject terror comes across their face [laughter] and followed immediately by the same look of terror on my face for a completely different reason. But just... Yeah. I think also about... Probably many people are familiar with Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve, which is this theory, I think it goes back in the 1960s, that the moment you learn something, you have 100% chance of getting it right, and that quickly plummets with time. But each time you're asked that question again, it's a moment of learning that pops you back up to a hundred. And the curve falls at a more shallow rate with each moment of review. So I do love that idea of bringing back those fundamentals at many points throughout that first year, because you do... When you do that, significantly decrease the rate of forgetting, conversely, increase the rate of retention for those topics. That's great.

0:33:07.9 MH: Yeah. And the way I explain it to students is, "We just... We don't want you to be afraid of anything. I don't want you to end up conducting the local high school's Jazz ensemble at 7:00 AM where you have five French horns and an Oboe d'amore and three saxophones, and you have to help them with the transpositions. You know what I mean? You have to be able to deal with these things and not be intimidated because students will smell fear." And that's how I put... I just say... 'Cause we've been doing instrumental transposition this week, which they're always like, "Why? Who allowed this to happen?" There's always these reform ideas. [laughter] Anyway, I always make the joke about the local high school's 7:00 AM Jazz band with some ridiculous smattering of instruments that are all transposing at different intervals or something, but they all wanna take Jazz band, so.

0:34:10.5 GR: I've actually referred students to Bruce Haynes' book, Performing Pitch, The history of "A".

0:34:22.9 DN: Such a great book.

0:34:24.6 GR: Because inevitably, if you start talking about why we wound up with all these different transpositions, the students get super interested in it. And like, "Here, if you want 350 pages on it, go right ahead."

0:34:41.0 MH: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm always like, "Well, the saxophone was the last one, so blame [0:34:45.3] ____ at all sax." Because those are by far the worst... E-flats? Are you kidding me? Was that really necessary? Couldn't you have done something better than that?

0:34:58.4 GR: And for me, I'm just like, "But that's just a bass Clef transposition, right? It was like, I'm just...

0:35:01.9 MH: See, I don't ever think like that.

0:35:04.0 GR: Yeah. I have the old conductor clef training where it's like, I'm reading the E-flat part in treble clef, if I just imagine the base clef then it transposes itself for me.

0:35:11.8 MH: See, I'd rather just think down a major six. I'm self-punishing like that. [laughter]

0:35:19.8 GR: Yeah. So the second one on your list of best practices was consistency and rigor matter.

0:35:24.6 MH: Oh, especially like, yes. And again, this goes back to when I first came and I was so disturbed by students who were gonna be graduating and didn't have a good grasp of any of this stuff, and they knew it, and they were like... They were upset. They didn't wanna feel like that. So starting with the first year then we just were just very specific about the sharp has to be centered on the line. And I'm not a big notation stickler, but it has to be clear, it has to mean what it means. It needs to be on the correct line. And it doesn't have to be a beautiful sharp, but it needs to be like accurate. And just being very consistent, if the rhythm is supposed to be this, that it needs to be that, don't be lackadaisical with those things and really hold them to it and they will meet that.

0:36:32.0 MH: Or if your standards are way up here, students will at least approach that, but if your standards for consistency is mediocre, then they will approach that too. So if you can do that in a fun and inviting and engaging way without... You don't wanna, again, while being fallible yourself and admitting that everyone makes mistakes, but then at the same time, being consistent and holding a reasonable level of rigor for their actual eventual gaining of those skills. At least for me, at my school. [chuckle] It all varies by institution, curriculum, goals, student body and preparation and the kinds of majors, all those things.

0:37:22.3 GR: But I guess maybe a corollary of that would be that if you're not able to have a certain degree of rigor in what you're teaching, maybe teaching fewer subjects with more rigor is better than trying to cover more with less rigor.

0:37:37.4 MH: For sure. Like maybe you don't get to seventh chords. Maybe you just do triads and that's fine. Or maybe no alto and tenor clef. I mean, for a non-major fundamentals course, I would never do alto and tenor clef. I just do that because I'm teaching first year music majors. And I know that they're gonna be looking at orchestral scores and music history and stuff like that, and so they need to know those things, but... And I think it's of course good for things like sight-singing, 'cause it tends to put everybody on a level playing field to read a clef that's really not very familiar to almost anyone. But for a non-major fundamentals class, it'd be very different.

0:38:19.7 GR: Your third best practice, more assessment opportunities are better than fewer.

0:38:24.0 MH: Oh yeah, that's just so that no one assessment activity is like this behemoth, terrifying, do-or-die kind of situation. So as I mentioned, we have graded assignments every week, we have five quizzes, one of which is dropped, so they can have a bad day, or it doesn't have to be this big stressful thing. And then a mid-term and a final. We've tried to make it so they have a lot of chances and that they can improve as the semester goes on. And if something weird happens, we work with a given student, like if they've had a bad run of health or they're in crisis or something like that, of course, we work with them and try to help them find ways to make up some of that work. So we make exceptions, of course, we'll re-give quizzes again or write a new one or whatever.

0:39:29.1 GR: And I guess really related, your next best practices, the prompt grading and specific feedback are important for learning.

0:39:36.1 MH: Yeah, like I said earlier, just I try to turn things around by the next class period, just so that they have time to get the feedback before the next thing is due, or before our... If we're having a quiz that Friday, before the quiz, so that they have time to... We have supplemental instruction which is offered through our Academic Success Center and it's a couple of sessions taught by an upper level student, and it's for Theory 1 and 2. And so SI is offered on Thursday and Friday, which is perfect. So if I give the homeworks back... They hand them in Tuesday, I turn them around and get them back to the students by Thursday morning, then they can take it to SI and get help with it there, or I can address any questions in class that day, and then they're good to go for the next one that's due the following week. But if you hold on to something like that for a week, that kind of... It doesn't happen in time for them to improve, so.

0:40:43.3 GR: Right. I think for me, this is where I often turn to technology as well, because just the ease of students... Am I writing the scale correctly? I don't have to wait two days between when I turn it in and get it back to find out whether I've written that scale correctly.

0:40:56.6 MH: Absolutely, of course. And we really need to explore some of those ideas, I think that that would be a good direction for us to take.

0:41:05.0 GR: You've already talked a bit about your fifth best practice, involve students and finding examples of various techniques. Anything else to say there?

0:41:09.5 MH: Oh yeah. I mean, just that I'm always saying things like, for later in the year, I really need some musical theater examples of ascending five, six sequences, or I don't have enough compound triple minor mode pop music examples. And every now and then, even an upper level student who I haven't had since their first year, will send me an email and be like, "Hey, this video game has... Here's a YouTube video," or this one kid sent me a rap example and was like, "Before you play it in class, make sure you find a clean version." [laughter] He wanted to make sure I didn't just play it without listening more of the way into the track, 'cause I think it's fairly profane. Anyway, I definitely, especially some of them who I know are really into it, I'm like, "Please go find some of these things, or listen for them and send them to me," and it just kinda helps them stay... Keep their theory brain on when they're not in theory.

0:42:23.5 DN: I've been doing the same thing in oral skills with... And we've listened to Childish Gambino twice this semester. We're doing metric modulation, and one of his songs does metric modulation.

0:42:35.7 MH: Oh cool.

0:42:37.3 DN: It's great. And just used the Marvel Studios theme song too this week.

0:42:45.2 MH: See? And that's what I rely on students for because my knowledge of film music is not good. I mean I know a few things, but I'm not like they are, and certainly not video game music, other than the Super Mario Brothers from my childhood, which is surprisingly still relevant, I found.

[laughter]

0:43:04.1 GR: It's amazing.

0:43:05.3 MH: It's wonderful.

0:43:06.5 GR: That's my favorite [0:43:07.6] ____ is the opening of... [chuckle]

0:43:11.2 MH: Or of mode mixture when he dies.

[vocalization]

0:43:15.7 MH: Oh yeah, totally.

0:43:16.4 GR: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. [laughter]

0:43:17.6 MH: It's so great. It's the best example of mode mixture ever.

0:43:21.0 GR: Yes.

0:43:23.5 MH: Yeah.

0:43:23.6 GR: The Water World, The Planning, oh god, don't get me started. [laughter] Well, I guess related to our lecture, your last best practice is have fun, and I think you've given us some ideas of how you create that fun environment in your classes. Anything else to say along those lines?

0:43:41.9 MH: Use puns. [laughter] No, I mean I'm kind of joking, but I just find that it depends on how you are in the classroom. Everybody is different. But for me, I tend to be fairly silly. I mainly... I feel like I just want them to see me as approachable. And I think they do, and I want them to see Music Theory as something that is pleasant and interesting and fun. And so especially with the first year students, I tend to be rather silly. Like today, we were talking about, as I said, instrumental transposition, and a couple of the instruments had to be transposed to C to sound in B-flat and I said, "Do you see what I mean? No pun intended." And it's like the stupidest joke ever, but they all laughed even though it's like... I mean talk about a dumb, worst, stupid pun ever, but...

0:44:44.1 DN: They don't need to be good to be fun.

0:44:45.5 MH: No, they're better if they're bad. [laughter] It's even stupider. But I mean just having fun and adopting a sense of joy and, I don't know, like a sense of wonder or like, "Isn't a half diminished seventh chord the most amazing thing ever?" and then play in a couple of quick examples just on the keyboard, like "Listen to that. Nothing else sounds like that." And just trying to kind of infect them with some of that sense of wonder. And the success varies. Some students are maybe not ever gonna feel like that about Music Theory, but I hope some of them do. [laughter]

0:45:35.9 GR: Gosh, well, this has been just a delight. Any last words of advice or wisdom for our listeners?

0:45:42.1 MH: I mean, I think I mentioned at the beginning, I think the next hurdle, at least for me, is trying to just find a way to acknowledge that this is like, we're talking about total Western tonal music fundamentals and maybe building in even some like, just little writing assignments here and there. And especially if I were teaching non-majors, I would do it a lot more, I think, if I weren't building toward this later curriculum of comparing and contrasting something like Ragas and minor modes, and a way of acknowledging that there's this whole other part of the world and that we value that and we are curious about it regardless of what our focus happens to be here. So I think finding a way to do that in a way that's meaningful and respectful and fosters a sense of curiosity. I think that's kind of like the next, for me, the next hurdle for me and my curriculum and my students at my school. So that's the next challenge.

0:47:00.4 DN: Well, we're so grateful to have you spend this time with us.

0:47:02.9 MH: Yeah, it's wonderful to talk to both of you, and I'm definitely going to look up that Bruce Haynes, The History of "A".

0:47:09.7 GR: Yeah, it's really fun. The funny thing, of course, is if you type the History of A into Google, you get totally unhelpful results. [laughter] So, I think it's either performance pitch or performing pitch, the story of A. So yeah.

0:47:25.6 MH: Okay. I will definitely have to look that up because, I mean I know some things about the history of instruments and stuff like that, but...

0:47:35.0 GR: Yeah. And he goes really down into the weeds, so like...

0:47:37.8 DN: Yes. The details of why a clarinet is...

0:47:40.1 GR: "We measured the C pipe of this organ in this city built in this year, et cetera."

0:47:40.2 MH: Very fascinating. And it would be great to have something like that to point students toward so they can just nerd out on their own time.

0:47:53.6 GR: Totally.

0:47:54.9 DN: That's why we have Bach Magnificat in D, which is later the Bach Magnificat in E. 'Cause it was easier to transpose some of the parts to match...

0:48:07.3 MH: Oh.

0:48:08.2 GR: To match the local pitch.

0:48:09.4 DN: Yeah.

0:48:09.9 MH: Huh. I did not know that. Very fascinating.

0:48:13.7 GR: We are definitely approaching our time in here, so yeah, Melissa, thank you again so much.

0:48:20.3 MH: Yeah, it's wonderful to meet you and to talk to you both.

0:48:23.5 GR: Excellent. Thank you again.

0:48:24.8 MH: Yes thank you.

[music]

0:48:30.1 Leah Sheldon: Notes From the Staff is produced by utheory.com.

0:48:32.8 GR: UTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.

0:48:36.7 LS: With video lessons, individualized practice and proficiency testing, uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world master the fundamentals of music theory, rhythm and ear training.

0:48:47.6 GR: Create your own free teacher account at utheory.com/teach.