#mufu2013 What I learned - Session 2: Classroom Workshops

The first practical session was a chance to look at Classroom Workshops as an approach to whole class interactive teaching.

The Musical Futures guidance for classroom workshops can be found here.

The methodology arose from the work done by the Guildhall Connect programme.

The basic premise is that musicians work as a large ensemble to develop a piece through a collaborative and holistic process, where the key skills of appraising, performing, improvising and composing each inform each the other.


This session was led by the impressive Robert Wells, and followed the usual process of warm-ups which led into whole class work, followed by break-out tasks which fed into the final piece.

There is a discussion thread on the Musical Futures network thread on classroom workshops here. I would not begin to pretend to be an expert, but having used the approach for a while now, I'd like to think I can give some share some advice that has helped me on my way. Already it has been notes how this way of working can seem daunting at first, in my mind this is for a number of reasons:

1. Perceived issues with classroom management - In fact, I have rarely found this to be a problem. Provided you have already established rules for when to play and when not to, the students have little time to think about anything other than music. As you become more used to working in this way, students will spend increasing amounts of time playing/discussing/refining and even the most tricky students seem to buy into it. I think this is in part due to the pace that comes with classroom workshops, but also the sound of 30 people playing together really is wondrous to a disaffected young person.
2. Not having instruments - This is a genuine issue in many schools, but percussive pieces work really well in classroom workshops, and body percussion is instantly available if you don;t have a trolley full of stuff to whack. The voice is also crucial in any music teaching, and Ofsted have recently highlighted an issue with a lack of high quality singing in schools, especially Secondary. The argument that "My students won;t sing" just doesn't cut it I'm afraid. To me, the mind and voice are the first instrument, regardless of any instrumental experience. Singing is cultural thing and so it takes time for it to become pervasive in school, especially with older children. We are nowhere near where we want to be as a school yet. However we ought to be teaching our students to sing and use their voice to understand music. This is where the warm-ups come in. More on that later.
3. How can students be learning? They often seem to be simply playing repeated patterns - Yep, it's great isn't it? I've never sat in a communal space in an African village, but I've seen videos and heard recordings, and I'm just about certain that actually experiencing such music would put to shame anything I have ever managed to thrash out on a stage. Incidentally, it is of great interest to me that as the musicologist Nicholas Cook points out, the people of many African tribes would not understand our concepts of performing, composing, listening or improvising, to them they are all one and the same thing. This is why I love to teach using workshops, it is the time when I fell most able to do holistic music making alongside my students. If you are genuinely concerned that students will perform simply repeated patterns, then address this in the way you plan the sessions. Have some students work on longer phrases, or work on the structure of the piece such that there are demands in variety and technicality that challenge your most able pupils.
4. I am not a very good composer, I feel a little naked - To this I would say from the outset, be sure where you are tight, and where you are loose. That was a great piece of advice given to me by a great man named David Jackson, at the time he was talking about curriculum design but it applies equally here. By that I mean, once you know what you are trying to teach/introduce through the workshop, you can decide what devices/structures are immutable and where you will allow creative input from the students. It is actually rather scientific when you think about it, but to the kids it is magic. In reality it is a trick, as before the workshop starts you should have an idea of some scaffolding musical ideas that will guide the composing process, which could be echoing phrases or two note motifs as in Robert's workshop. For minimalist music you might insist on phase shifting or note addition for example. I think this seemingly boundless opportunity is what scares some teachers, but if you decide in advance, 'What do I want the kids to learn?', the rest becomes more easy, listen to them and guide them in a semi-predetermined direction. Much creativity comes from constraint!

The session with Robert was a timely reminder for me in many respects.

Yes, there were some great ideas for warm-ups, but there is a danger with many of these sessions that we leave with only brilliant ideas for activities we could try. Don't get me wrong, it was genuinely inspiring to work alongside so many other creative and enthusiastic people, and there was a real buzz as we left the conference with conversations about all the things we would try when we got back to school.

However, what is central to Musical Futures is the pedagogy, not the activities. Musical Futures is not and never has been about leaving kids in a practice room, that is just poor teaching. It is about the pedagogies of Informal learning and Non-formal teaching.

So here's why, under the bonnet as well as on the shiny surface, Robert's session (which can be found here) was so brilliant. 

Warm-ups should link to the learning - In particular, copying Robert's movements the beat after he made them tied in directly with the musical intentions for the session; to form consonances and dissonances through echoing of phrases.

We should start from our students' own musical experience - We sang Ba Ba Black sheep as an ensemble, but in completely free time, changing syllable/pitch only when we need to breath. The sound was genuinely breathtaking and at once complex, but all from the simplest and most recognisable of starting points. The constantly shifting textures and note clusters were immediately reminiscent of the stimulus material we listened to before the workshop.

That choice within workshops should be framed - So that the learning intentions are delivered. Once we had decided on the simple two note motifs that would form our theme, Robert gave us break-out tasks, that whilst offering creative freedom i.e. develop a second part in harmony with the first, would always feed back into the final piece in a way that Robert had planned for.

Workshopping can be used to teach any style/genre or tradition - Our break out group actually talked a lot about harmony, that might well have been the lesson, it wasn't in this case but I hope you get the picture. Whilst workshopping musical theatre you may have some students looking at a whole class agreed chord progression, looking for opportunities to use inversions to create idiosyncratic bass movements commonly found in the genre, whilst another two groups may be tasked with the composition of two melodies over the same progression, each using a particular interval, aiming for melodies of entirely different character.

The stimulus piece was Ascent by Schnittke.

I did also discover that I am a guitar feedback inducer, maybe I am made of Kryptonite, or something.

References:

Cook, N (2000). Music: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks.