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This splendid article about
our camp was written by Kristen LaDue who attended in July 2006.
"Alternative"
Ways to Teach Strings
by Kristen
LaDue
from the “Members Speak Out” column
in the February 2007 issue of Teaching Music.
Copyright (c) 2007 by MENC: The National Association for Music
Education.
Reprinted with permission.
It's Monday morning. The
chairs and stands are neatly arranged. Your score and carefully
considered lesson plan are ready. The bell rings, and soon the room is
full of students chattering and finding the instruments that they left
in school all weekend in favor of video games and soccer. You begin the
rehearsal with enthusiasm and a sense of purpose, only to face a group
of ill-prepared, listless, and unenthusiastic players.
You use all the
tried-and-true method books, study your scores, give high praise for the
least bit of progress, and still wonder what you have actually
accomplished. What skills are your students learning that they are
likely to continue to use after graduation? Have you truly inspired them
to continue to play their instruments independently? I faced this
dilemma for many years, but finally found a surprising answer: the
inclusion of alternative styles in my program.
I began by varying repertoire
and brought in local musicians skilled in genres students had never
heard in my class. Before I knew it, the students were listening,
analyzing, and performing in styles that were true alternatives to the
standard school-string-program fare. Over the years, these have included
swing, blues, jazz, rock, Latin music, ballads, and a number of fiddling
styles. We started with arrangements of "Moon Glow," "Bye Bye
Blackbird," and "Unforgettable." Recently, our district administration
purchased electric instruments—an electric cello and a bass and five,
five-string electric violins—for our program.
By varying performance styles
and including one or more of the aforementioned genres, students can
learn tunes by ear and create their own melodic variations and small-
ensemble arrangements. They develop the necessary tools for playing
solos, both in class and in concerts. They encounter new musical
challenges and are more interested in practicing, because they're
playing what they enjoy.
To introduce these musical
styles into your curriculum, start by attending workshops that
specialize in them. Network with musicians in your community. Talk with
your school's or the nearest university's jazz band director. You'll be
amazed at the resources in your own backyard.
String camps can be helpful
resources to teachers. In my case, the Pittsburgh Jazz and Fiddle Camp
was a great place to get started. The camp immerses participants in
alterative styles for an entire week. Classes offer the chance to learn
new ideas, acquire tools, and find out about repertoire to take back to
your students. Attendees include elementary through college students, as
well as teachers at all levels. Both classical musicians and
nontraditional musicians are part of the camp. The music serves as an
equalizer, and there are no barriers based on age, experience, or job
title.
Roy Sonne, who came to jazz
after forty years as a symphony musician, founded the camp in 2004 as
Pitts- burgh's first jazz string workshop for classically trained string
players. The Jazz and Fiddle Camp made its debut in 2005 and will be in
its third sea- son this coming summer.
Genres included in 2006 were
American and world fiddling, jazz, and rock. Instructors included Jan
Farrar-Royce, who led the camp's American Fiddling String Band. In this
class, we sang, danced, improvised on melodies, and created our own
string band arrangements.
In the World Music Class,
Julie Lyonn Liebermann covered styles from Latin to Klezmer. We learned
new scales, techniques like "vibra-trill," and how to improvise in new
ways and in new modes. To challenge us further, Liebermann took away our
music and stands, which heightened our aural perception of the music.
Jazz Orchestra with Martin
Norgaard fostered our improvisation skills. His method of learning jazz
and improvisation, outlined in Jazz Fiddle Wizard Junior (Mel Bay,
2002), helped us walk through many small steps that teach the player to
hear in expanded ways and create a palette of new musical ideas. We also
did various exercises with recorded accompaniments, which made the
repetition more interesting.
Rock specialist Matt Turner
taught us arrangements of songs like "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath and
"Superstition" by Stevie Wonder, allowing us to pull greater power and a
bit of funk out of our instruments. Relaxed and humorous, Turner helped
us play our instruments in new ways and gain confidence to play solos
that sounded unlike anything we'd ever played before.
It took courage for the more
than fifty students at the camp to move out of our comfort levels to try
alternative styles. The rewards, however, were far greater than we could
have predicted. We gained new freedom with our instruments, learned
greater creativity and spontaneity, and had fun. We were willing to take
more chances as the week progressed. Teachers who afford themselves the
opportunity to attend the Pittsburgh Jazz and Fiddle Camp or similar
events will walk away with valuable resources and experiences. These can
serve as catalysts to begin using alternative styles in your own
program.
Kristen B. LaDue is an
orchestra director and string teacher in the North Syracuse Central
School District in Cicero, New York.
This splendidly written
article and interview, by Hollis Taylor, appeared in the Spring, 2006
issue of FIDDLER MAGAZINE
FIDDLE ORCHESTRA
Learning and Teaching
in a Group Setting
By Hollis Taylor -
http://hollistaylor.com/
While it's rare to find more than one fiddler in a band, violinists get
to play in an entire orchestra. One new camp is out to change this
experience: the Pittsburgh Jazz and Fiddling Camp
(www.pittsburghjazzandfiddle.org), founded by the enthusiastic Roy
Sonne. A violinist in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Roy began
playing jazz violin at age 60, after a 40-year career as a symphony
musician, teacher, and conductor. In 2005 he organized the Pittsburgh
Jazz and Fiddling Camp.
HOLLIS TAYLOR: How did the Pittsburgh Jazz and Fiddling Camp get
started?
ROY SONNE: I'm a teacher at heart. As soon as I started having some
success with jazz, I wanted to share it with other people. I organized a
class - Introduction to Jazz for Amateur Violinists, using Martin
Norgaard's “Jazz Fiddle Wizard Jr.” I started doing one-hour workshops
in the schools. One thing led to another, and now we have the Pittsburgh
Jazz and Fiddling Camp preparing for its second season. Participants
include professionals and amateurs, students and teachers, children and
adults.
HT: Do your orchestra groups work with a live rhythm section or a backup
recording-or are the other students the rhythm section?
RS: Usually we have a one-person rhythm section, either piano or bass.
Sometimes the person who is teaching also serves as the rhythm section.
HT: Obviously, you realize the joys of making music in an orchestra from
your years as a classical musician, but how does it work in the
alternative styles? Does everyone play the same part, or something
different? Do they improvise in this orchestral context?
RS: I believe that the orchestral setting is a great way for a large
group of (15-20) people to learn jazz and fiddling styles. There is
comfort in a group, and everybody picks things up from the people around
them. Everybody who wants to gets to play improvised solos, but nobody
is forced to. Basically, it is the approach used by
Martin Norgaard in
his "Jazz Fiddle Wizard Jr." and also in the "Jazz Philharmonic" and
"Fiddler's Philharmonic" books by Bob Phillips and friends. One tune is
presented in a stylistic arrangement with three upper voices and a bass
line. Violins and violas switch off on the upper voices. Cellos can play
either an upper voice or the bass line. There is an optional piano part,
and a drummer is always welcome. Each tune has a chorus that is open for
improvised solos. Our 2006 camp will feature Martin Norgaard leading the
Jazz String Orchestra.
HT: Next, I checked in with Matt Turner, who will lead the camp's Rock
String Orchestra, to find out how he deals with group teaching.
MATT TURNER (www.improvcellist.com): I actually prefer to teach
improvisation in an orchestra/chamber group setting because I challenge
everyone in the orchestra to take on different roles-basslines,
accompanying figures, soloing, listening, etc. 90% of the time I have
people learn pieces by ear. I believe the best way to teach is to do
call and imitation. I play, they imitate. It's the oldest improvisation
method in the universe. It gets their heads out of the music stands, and
they tend to listen better and differently-more in depth.
I usually work with one pitch when doing call and imitation. Sometimes
it's nice to have an ostinato figure played by the cello/bass sections
(make sure the violins and violas do it too!) while introducing my
ideas. The key is to keep it simple so that the orchestra members can
more easily play back what you've played for them. One pitch, simple
rhythms, and starting with techniques like scoops and bending notes work
well. Then, I demonstrate ideas such as half-finger technique and
distortion and incorporate those ideas into the call and imitation.
Everything is done by ear.
I'm always interested in seeing what kinds of sounds string players can
get from their instruments without using pedals. I think that effects
pedals are really great, but I also believe that string players can
benefit from experimenting on their instruments without the assistance
of an electronic device. I believe this is beneficial in playing all
kinds of styles of music. In rock music and jazz, for example, musicians
are always experimenting with applying effects (slides, distortion,
bending notes, etc.) to obviously make the music expressive. How can we
create different colors and timbres? (In an upcoming issue, Matt and I
delve further into his teaching and playing style.)
HT: Janet Farrar-Royce will lead the Fiddling String Band. I asked her
about the advantages of the orchestra approach.
JANET FARRAR-ROYCE: I teach in a public school where our lessons begin
in the fifth grade in "heterogeneous" settings-that is, I teach violin,
viola, cello, and bass together. I got interested in teaching fiddling
because I wanted to teach my students a natural string improvisational
style, to expose them to American music and its various cultural
components, and to train them to be able to pick out a tune by ear
instead of learning exclusively from a book. Ensemble arrangements of
tunes that happen to be fiddling tunes didn't work for me.
It is important to be able to sing the tune before you try to learn to
play it by ear. Thus, the first National Standard of Music Education
("Singing a variety of repertoire alone and with others") has become a
much larger part of my teaching. I don't teach tunes from beginning to
end or at speed, though. You might say that I sort of teach tunes by
backing into them. In teaching tunes by ear, I employ methods that help
the students conquer the technical difficulties and/or find the leaps
and tricky passages that they will play back to me before I begin
teaching a tune.
I think that it is very important to teach fiddle tunes in their correct
(most commonly performed) key. Teaching viola and celli fiddling tunes a
fifth down is a dead end for them. How are they going to jam or join a
band when they have learned the tunes in the wrong key? Therefore, I
often have to octavate parts of the tunes for my lower strings. I don't
octavate whole tunes or generally even whole A or B Parts. Being a
violist myself and playing in jams with other violists, I know that we
really hop up and down the octaves for as little as a measure or phrase.
Sometimes you can just play a single harmony note and stay within the
first position and play the rest of the melody true. I hear fiddlers
play harmony notes or variations of melodies all the time while jamming
together. What fiddler plays the melody with exactly the same notes two
verses in a row? When I teach the whole class a tune using some lower
octave or harmony notes, I find that my violinists have no problem
jumping back up the octave, especially if they have heard a recording of
the tune done that way.
Teaching fiddling in the mainstream string curriculum has brought to the
surface the other two-thirds of music: the harmony and the rhythm. Now,
I must teach my students how to create chords and use them to make
basslines, harmonies, and chops. How this has increased my students'
awareness of harmony and progression! How much better they can sightread
when they have learned to "feel comfortable" emphasizing the off-beat as
well as beats one and three!
To my surprise and joy, teaching fiddling has also helped me meet my
personal teaching mission: To impart to my students all the knowledge
and skills that I can for them to continue to enjoy music however they
wish to for the rest of their lives. My students are already playing
with adults in the community before they leave middle school. In fact,
the community has come into my fiddle club. I am now teaching my
students to play music that is not so technically demanding that most of
them won't be able to keep up the chops to play it. I am showing my
students how to enjoy music on THEIR terms with THEIR own melodic,
harmonic, and ensemble arrangements!
HT: Janet signed her email to me with “A violin sings. A fiddle dances.”
Next, I contacted Julie Lyonn Lieberman (www.julielyonn.com), who will
lead the camp's World Music Ensemble.
JULIE LYONN LIEBERMAN: I can see a number of benefits to group work;
group interaction can be inspirational. When we hear and behold what
others can do, if we don't turn to jealousy or self-doubt, we can avail
ourselves of all that is possible. The ability to produce results on the
spot in front of fellow string players can elicit a deeper level of
focus-one that we should try to emulate when we practice at home. A
group experience can also challenge us to hold our ground, to coach
ourselves to breathe, take space, take our time, and organize our
thoughts and ears to give our best. At its worst, intonation and
technique can falter, but the great thing about attending a weekend or
week-long fiddle camp, is that there will be many more opportunities to
try and try again.
As an instructor, working with a group means less individual coaching
and less time to follow through on one agenda. I like to spotlight
difficulties encountered by one player, in order to teach the group. It
is rare that something comes up that's been mastered by everyone to the
top level and challenging to present a technical or musical issue such
that I reach all the attendees.
HT: What advice do you give your private students before they leave for
a summer camp?
JLL: Make sure to pay attention to any new techniques that haven't yet
been mastered by reviewing those techniques during a warm-up before the
group session, or in between sessions. Stand up and sit down a number of
times across the day, even if no one else does. Remember to breathe. Try
not to listen passively. When someone else is playing, pretend that you
are playing even note along with them. And, have fun!
HT: Julie's advice is always inspiring. I returned to Roy Sonne a final
time for his thoughts on how a student can get the most out of a camp.
RS: Stay open. Try everything that is offered. Play as much as you
possibly can. Don't stay on the sidelines. It doesn't matter if you mess
up. Try to get to know as many people as possible, both students and
faculty. Compare notes. You'll find that lots of people share your fears
and your desires. Try to find friends who you can stay in touch with
after camp. Find a person or two that you are comfortable jamming with.
You may have to hunt for a while, but eventually you'll find a partner
or a group where the chemistry is really good. When you play with those
people you become energized and you grow and grow.
Do a lot of listening. Find the music and the artists that you like.
You're the boss. Don't let anybody tell you what you should like. Listen
to an artist that you really love and then try to imitate his style, or
perhaps try playing along with the recording. Spend some time browsing
in your favorite music store. There is now a wealth of instructional
books, tapes, and CDs. If you keep looking you'll find one or two that
are right on your wavelength.
Stick with it! The more you do the more you'll grow. Do a lot of
listening. Mess around. Buy a fake book. Play along with recordings. Use
instruction books if that turns you on. FIND OTHER PEOPLE TO PLAY WITH.
Remember, it's not about perfection. It's about growth and adventure. My
goal when I practice is to go someplace I've never been before
musically, to do something really cool, really potent, that I've never
done before. And interestingly, this has become my goal in my classical
practice too.
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