Unit 10
Match the beginning and the end of the sentences.
1. A good teacher…
2. School-leavers can go to…
3. When you choose a job…
4. Teaching is…
5. This challenging profession…
6. The main disadvantage of this occupation is…
7. The success of educating and upbringing of children…
a) …vocational and technical schools, institutes and universities.
b) …it is a low-paid work.
c) …a responsible occupation.
d) …depends on the personality of the teacher.
e) …you should think of many factors.
f) …requires a lot of patience and enthusiasm.
g) …treats his pupils with respect.
Discuss the qualities necessary for a music teacher with your friend. Use the following:
To pursue a career in music, you must have the drive and dedication to create a space for yourself in this highly competitive industry. Whether you are an instrumentalist, singer or a performer, it is imperative for you to practice, rehearse and prepare well. Confidence, determination and perseverance will certainly help.
Read the text, answer the questions and explain how you learned to listen to music.
How to Listen To Music?
"I want the students to understand the difference between listening and hearing. In order to succeed in the course, they would need to practice directed listening: "listening for" rather than "listening to."
My solution to this problem involved getting the students to articulate knowledge they already intuited, and devising an exercise that helped them to think critically about their familiar modes of listening. Since most students have moved their bodies to music at some point in their lives, I decided to build on this bodily knowledge the very first day of class. After introducing the basics of meter, I presented a number of musical examples, from country waltzes to jazz standards, from marches to funk, and advised students to listen for the percussion section.
As we listened, we tried to translate our sense of strong and weak beats into arm gestures and quiet taps. The students quickly overcame their embarrassment and stifled laughter and soon were moving and counting out the meter together as a group. Then I asked them to compare and reflect upon the listening to music as background and this more focused mode of listening. I asked them to put on a song of their choice and to record their impressions of the piece, then to listen a second time solely to determine the song's meter. At our next meeting, we discussed their findings and found that in many cases, the song itself seemed to change depending on how we were listening. We also learned that listening in a concentrated manner often helped explain our emotional and bodily responses to music because meters often carried complex associations. The students were able to understand meter's role in organizing their musical experience.
We proved the effectiveness of this approach as the semester progressed. Not only were my students able to talk about a piece's meter, they were able to approach technical language with confidence. More importantly, however, they learned that there are a variety of listening modes. Many students were surprised to find that focused listening could be a limiting experience, one that drowned out other (perhaps more important) aspects of the music. By "listening for," they realized that they could choose to "listen for" any variety of things, even for pleasure. This emphasis on the listener's role in creating musical meaning had several unexpected benefits. In later discussions of the musical "happenings" of John Cage and others, students easily grasped the fluidity of these musical works by recalling their first task: they already knew that listening to the same piece in different environments and in different ways altered their experience of the "music itself." By making this leap, the students were able to understand a very difficult concept, that the musical work comes to life only through the act of performance and through our attention to it.
Melina Esse
1. What is focused listening?
2. How did the students learn to listen?
3. What is the role of the song's meter in listening?
4. What conclusion does the author finally come to?
5. How do you listen to music?
Read the text and answer the questions.
Why do you need to know how to play the piano by ear?
If you're like most beginning musicians, you're struggling to learn music theory - melodies, songs, and chords AND how to use music theory to your advantage when it comes to playing piano by ear. To be quite frank, learning the piano is not an easy task. In fact, you can never totally master it ... there's always room for improvement and exploration!
Let me first start by saying that this article does not intend to discourage you from sight
reading. In fact, you need the basics of sight reading even before exploring the techniques of playing by ear. Although, it will create several disadvantages:
· Sight readers rely heavily on sheet music.
· Sight readers are less likely to improvise (add style, chords ... respond to what they hear) because their goal is to play whatever is written on the sheet music accurately.
· Sight readers attempt to memorize entire songs instead of simply recognizing chords at certain points in a song ...
Note: Don't misunderstand me in any way. These are the qualities of sight readers who don't understand the theories behind the music that they play.
Advantages of Playing the Piano By Ear:
· Being able to recognize chords in songs even without being at a piano.
· You are able to learn songs faster and easier because you understand the chords played at certain points in songs.
· Not required to memorize chord progressions (pattern of chords played one after the other) because understanding them automatically inclines you to know what chord to play next.
· Allows you to improvise and add your own "flavor" to the song.
· Allows you to use the same methods to play virtually any song you want.
However, buying the sheet music isn't a bad idea if you want to learn specific parts to songs that have high levels of complexity.
Jermaine Griggs
1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of playing by ear?
2. What can't sight readers do?
3. Will playing by ear help you to recognize chords in songs?
4. Is buying the sheet music a bad idea if you want to learn playing the piano?
5. Can you play by ear?