MODULE 6

Approaches to Music Education

PART II

Lesson 1: Suzuki

I want to make good citizens. If a child hears fine music from the day of his
birth and learns to play it himself, he develops sensitivity, discipline and
endurance. He gets a beautiful heart. — Shin’ichi Suzuki

More than 50 years ago, Japanese violinist Shin’ichi Suzuki realized the musical
implication of the fact that all children learn to speak their native language with ease.
He began to apply the basic principles of language acquisition to music learning, and
called his method the mother-tongue approach.

Suzuki understood that making good musicians requires investment in developing the
whole child – from their morality to their character and ability to be good citizens.
Only in this larger context can the child focus on developing their musical ability. The
ideas of parent responsibility, loving encouragement, constant repetition, etc., are
some of the special features of the Suzuki approach.

When a child learns language, they undergo a very extensive form of enculturation.
They begin by listening and repeating, mastering the linguistic process step-by-step.
They have to then memorize, build vocabulary, and are motivated by environmental,
cultural and social factors, including that of love.

To learn music using the Suzuki approach, the child must replicate the steps of
language learning by listening to excellent recordings so that beautiful music becomes
part of their natural environment. Recordings also provide inspiration, and lay the
groundwork for understanding music’s vocabulary and structure. Parental
involvement is also key to the student’s success, and parents provide daily motivation,
encouragement, and support. Parents often learn the instrument along with the child,
acting as musical role models, and maintaining a positive learning atmosphere for the
child to succeed.
Lesson 2: Dalcroze
Emile-Jacques Dalcroze is a Swiss educator best known for eurhythmics, which
incorporates rhythm, structure, and musical expression with movement. The ultimate
goal is to develop total cognitive and kinesthetic awareness through sound. The music
acts as a stimulus to which the body responds, after which sensation returns to the
brain to form emotions, which deepens the significance of the experience.

Philosophy
The Dalcroze philosophy centers on the concept that the synthesis of the mind, body,
and resulting emotions is fundamental to all meaningful learning. Plato said in his
Laws: “Education has two branches, one of gymnastics, which is concerned with the
body, and the other of music, which is designed for the improvement of the soul”
(Pennington, 1925, p. 9). Emile-Jaques Dalcroze believed that every musician should
strive to be sensitive and expressive, and to express music through purposeful
movement, sound, thought, feeling, and creativity.

Mead (1994) cites four basic premises that encapsulate the Dalcroze philosophy:
1. Eurhythmics awakens the physical, aural, and visual images of music in the
mind.
2. Solfege (sight singing and ear training), improvisation, and eurhythmics
together work to improve expressive musicality and enhance intellectual
understanding.
3. Music may be experienced through speech, gesture, and movement.
4. These can likewise be experienced in time, space, and energy. Humans learn
best when learning through multiple senses. Music should be taught through the
tactile, kinesthetic, aural, and visual senses.

The Dalcroze approach is based on eurhythmics, which teaches rhythm, structure, and
musical expression through music. Eurhythmics begins with ear training, or solfege,
to develop the inner musical ear. This differs from Kodály’s use of solfege in that it is
always combined with movement. Another component of the method
concerns improvisation, which helps students sharpen their spontaneous reactions
and physical responses to music.

Types of movement
Each movement involves time, space, and force, and all three should be taken into
account when moving, paying close attention to the musical attributes of the
movement.
• Time: Tempo (rate of speed) and duration (fast, moderate, slow)
• Space: Direction, distance covered, level, dimension (large, small), path (straight,
twisted), and focus
• Force: Energy or power expended, quality of the movement, and any adjectives to
describe the movement (e.g., heavy, light, sharp, energetic, gentle)
Movement that stays stationary is called non-locomotor, while movement that
moves through space is locomotor.
• Non-locomotor (movement in place):
o Stretch, curl, clap, snap, patsch, tap, stomp, twist, turn, conduct, sway, jump,
bend, speak, stretch, swing, reach
• Locomotor (movement through space):
o Walk, slide, skip, run, leap, gallop, hop, jump, slither, creep, roll, jog

Regardless of the type, movements should above all be musical. Movements should
also be focused and thoughtful; i.e. preparation should occur before each movement;
the movement should take into account the full length of the beat; and the movement
should return back to pre-preparation status. It is essential that the movement
coordinate with the beat of the music, the rhythm, and the phrasing (depending on the
exercise).

Dalcroze’s exercises are always sequential, beginning with the simplest and becoming
more complex as students master and develop their skills. Children are introduced to
key musical elements such as meter, dynamics, rhythms, tempo, duration, melody,
form, phrase, and pitch.

Types of eurhythmics
There are four types of basic eurhythmic exercises:
1. Follow
2. Quick reaction
3. Interrupted canon
4. Canon

1. A follow exercise is a basic music-movement response exercise. Students

physically respond to the sounds they hear.

Examples:
Students walk to the beat of music (piano, drum, etc.) and respond to changes of
tempo (speeding up or slowing down), rhythms (walking on quarter notes,
running on eighth notes, skipping on dotted rhythms), etc.
2. A quick reaction exercise requires students to respond to verbal signals or cues.

Examples:
Students move while the music is playing and freeze when the music stops or the
teacher yells out a command. Students also can change their movements on a
given signal, such as switching from a loco-motor to a non-loco-motor when they
hear a drum beat or chime or when the music stops.

3. An interrupted canon is similar to an “echo” where students imitate or echo a

beat, pattern, etc. The interrupted canon is a preparatory exercise for the canon.

Examples:
Students hear a rhythm and then echo it back on their body (lap, clap, etc.).

4. A canon requires students to echo back a pattern, but one measure later. While
they are performing their pattern, they are simultaneously listening and
memorizing the new pattern.

Examples:
The teacher claps patterns. Students respond one measure later while continually
absorbing the pattern currently being performed. Pass the pattern: A more
challenging version of this is to have students form two straight lines. The
teacher stands in front and “passes” a pattern to the first student in one of the
lines. That student then “passes” it to their partner across the aisle, who then
passes it across the aisle, etc. All the while, new patterns are being formed and
passed.

Dalcroze movement requires that children listen and respond simultaneously. The
music mirrors the physical motions expected. For example, music for walking or
marching is in duple meter and uses steady quarter notes, running music contains
eighth notes, skipping music uses dotted rhythms, jumping music contains large
interval leaps, and so forth.
Examples of music for Dalcroze movement exploration
 MODULE 7
Approaches to Music Education
PART III

Lesson 1: Edwin Gordon

Edwin Gordon developed his Music Learning Theory after years of music research
and studies. Music Learning Theory explores how we learn when we’re learning
music. Like many other researchers before him, Gordon realized we are lacking in
terminology to explain all of the complex processes that go on with music learning
and listening. Gordon’s main concept is called audiation, which he defines as
“hearing and comprehending in one’s mind the sound of music that is not, or may
never have been, physically present” (2007, p. 399).

Philosophy
According to Gordon, we are each born with music aptitude. As with other human
learning potentials, there is a wide range of music aptitude levels distributed among
the human population. Moreover, both music aptitude and music achievement are
dependent on audiation; i.e., our music learning potentials and our music learning
achievements are based on our music thinking. Most importantly, music thinking goes
beyond mere imitation and leads to music comprehension (2007).

Gordon’s Skill Learning Sequence is based on two main categories of learning:

Discrimination and Inference. Discrimination learning occurs by rote, and occurs
when a teacher teaches the basic building blocks of music—vocabulary and aural and
rhythmic patterns. Inference learning occurs conceptually, where the student is able to
identify, create, and improvise with musical materials already learned. The student at
this point is discovering music on his or her own.

Rhythmic learning concerns understanding three basic concepts: the macrobeat, the
microbeat, and melodic rhythm. Macrobeats are those we feel as main beats or longer
beats such as when we’re dancing. In 4/4 or 2/4 time, for example, the macrobeat is
represented by quarter notes, while in 3/4 time it is represented by the dotted half.

Examples of Macrobeats
 Microbeats are shorter than macrobeats and represent the equal division of the
macrobeat. In 4/4 or 2/4 time, microbeats would be represented by the eighth notes,
while in 3/4 time microbeats would be represented by the quarter notes.

Examples of Microbeats

Melodic rhythm refers to any rhythmic patterns in a piece. Rhythms can relate to the
melody or text from a piece of music. Similar to Kodály, Gordon also used two types
of solfege—tonal solfege (do, re, mi, etc.) for the pitches and rhythm solfege for
rhythm (du de, du de, etc. to represent duple meter, and du da di, du da di to represent
triple).

His approach begins on a holistic level, where the student experiences the whole song,
piece, and so forth; applies analysis; and then re-experiences the whole again but now
through the lens of having analyzed the inner workings in detail.
Similar to other sequenced learning approaches, such as Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal
Development or scaffolding, Gordon’s approach relies on a gradual increase in skill
level difficulty as the student progresses. For example, because improvising music is
far more complex than imitating basic patterns, the latter is required in order to
perform the former. This “Whole-Part-Whole” process recommends first engaging in
generalized activities to “experience the whole,” then progressing to “Study the
parts,” finally returning again to the entire piece of music (Valerio, n.d.)
Reggio Emilia
Although not an approach to music teaching in and of itself, this popular educational
method is worth exploring in its relation to music education. The basic approach
utilizes discovery in terms of music learning, and also is synchronous with many of
the 21st-century learning approaches discussed in Chapter 1.
1. The child as the creator of his/her own learning
2. The child and adult as researchers
3. The environment as the third teacher
4. Documentation as communication
5. The 100 expressive languages of children
6. The dialogue between child and adult
7. Collaborative work (Smith, 2011)