Ep. 98 Creating Literacy in the Music Room (Part 2)

Introduction

Here is the Crescendo Music Education Podcast – Episode 98. Debbie O’Shea back with you on the Crescendo Music Education Podcast for our third and final, sadly, chat with Claire Preston. This is where you’ll hear more advice and hear great discussions about working with a group of singers. We also have a chat about advocacy and working towards music education for all of our kids and the sorts of battles that we all have to fight to keep our important work happening. Enjoy part three with Claire Preston.


This podcast is being recorded on the lands of the Turrbal people. I acknowledge them as the traditional owners of the land and pay my respects to elder’s past, present and emerging. They were the first music makers on this land.


About ‘Read the Episode’: Sometimes, we would rather skim visually than listen to a podcast! That’s a great way to learn too!
The transcript of episode 098 of The Crescendo Music Education Podcast is below.



Claire Preston
Accompanied or not accompanied?


Debbie
That is the question. I’d be interested in your answer. I’ll tell you mine after you’ve told me yours.


Claire Preston
I think with babies, with preps through to year two, I will teach everything unaccompanied. I think it’s key for them to be able to hear their voice, otherwise they can’t match pitch. So when they’re sitting really close to their friends, and if everybody’s singing too loud, they actually can’t hear their own voice. I’m interested in creating as many opportunities in a setting like that, where they can sing on their own, because they can’t actually hear whether they’re singing in tune unless they sing it on their own.

So small groups is better and I know that is a luxury. But I would put year three in that category. I mean by year three most schools have a year three choir and most schools will perform with the accompanist. But so much of that learning can take place without the piano, they don’t need the accompaniment. However, when you’ve got the right accompanist, man oh man, what they can add, they can add all of the phrasing and the subtleties and the nuances that would take you months to teach, they can just do it, if from the very first time you hear them play, it’s got all of that, it’s got the spirit of the piece. That’s what the children are going to absorb.


Debbie
Can I just add in the when you’ve got an accompanist that actually isn’t one, it can destroy a piece.


Claire Preston
Correct and it’s better to work without them in a situation like that. My view is that the accompanist role is not to bash notes, it’s more important that the conductor is vocally demonstrating how they want the phrase to be expressed and the quality of the tone and the vowel shape and the word painting and the emphasis on particular words. All of those colours come from the modeling, none of that comes from the accompanist and part of that literacy is developed with with the children’s inner hearing.

You don’t achieve that as a conductor, you’re relying on the accompanist to bash the notes or play the notes. Or if you’re training the children to rely on hearing it from the piano. And of course, I’ve worked with some very fine secondary school choirs that have been trained very diligently to rely on their accompanist. But then of course, they all sing behind the beat, because they’re waiting to hear it first. So we want to develop that inner hearing and that ability for our students to pitch the notes with help, that doesn’t come from the accompaniment.

The great things that come from the accompaniment is the harmonic language and the harmonic colour. So look I think with our young children in year two and year three, and we’re introducing partner songs and canonic singing and that’s how we’re getting into our part singing and our harmonies, it’s so important to do all that, we don’t need the accompanist for that, again, it would just depend on the repertoire. And I know some schools need to work with a backing track and I sort of have mixed feelings about that.

I also believe that with year twos and threes, it’s really important to teach unison singing and to not rush into parts and a unison song can be made incredibly beautiful with an effective accompaniment. And that’s a gorgeous experience for the children because they can’t replicate that harmonic language and that’s where the harmonic language can be quite sophisticated and beautiful and make this their unison melodic line sound incredibly artistic. So anyway, they’re just some thoughts about accompaniment.


Debbie
I agree with those and having been in situations most of my career where I’ve worked without just in state schools with little or no budget, you do the choirs, then if you are going in a competition or something that requires an accompanist, then you beg to have the money to pay for the accompanist to come for one or two rehearsals and to come to the performance. And it’s always so exciting when the kids get to hear it with an accompanist. So you make it work.

But I think teaching and rehearsing, like you said, aurally without an accompanist, really, although you might see someone rehearsing with an amazing accompanist going lucky, which they are, because a good accompanist will let you do all of your things and join in when needed, adding artistry. But it’s really not that bad not having an accompanist if you’re an educator.


Claire Preston
Correct. And we talked about age appropriate repertoire and that is really important. And I’m not so worried about trying to choose repertoire that the kids know or like, dare I say, because I don’t rely on that. I don’t worry that oh, that’s the only reason they’re going to attend.


Debbie
And I think there’s a danger in that. Because I know, someone came up in a little discussion in one of my classes, and someone mentioned Taylor Swift. And there was this huge reaction from a small group of kids going, Oh, no, I hate her. You know, most of them, of course, are Swifties but there was this group that wasn’t. So I think you run the risk if you’re trying to do something really “popular” you’re going to get kids that are really against as well as really for, you’ve got to be careful. And it’s also not our job. I actually don’t think I need to include Taylor Swift, because they get a lot of that in their diet. My job is to give them the other vegetables.


Claire Preston
That’s exactly how I think and what’s popular now, it’s not going to be popular in a few years time. And you’re right, they’re hearing enough of it anyway. So I do I feel really passionately that I’m failing them unless I’m broadening their musical experience and hearing music that they wouldn’t normally hear. That’s why they come to school. Right? So yeah, this whole idea of building skills that are transferable, that means that every time you introduce a new piece of music, they’re going to have more skills than they did the previous time.

So then you can start doing repertoire that perhaps is a bit more advanced, whether that’s from one song to the other, or from one term to another, or from one year to another, it means that you’re starting to grow your program because your children are becoming more experienced. Yeah, I just think that it’s very easy to sell the children short, I really think that they can read. Reading is actually not difficult. They learn to read their native tongue. They can read notes. I don’t know, I just feel like there’s for some people, there’s this kind of like “Aagh, they can’t do it”.


Debbie
Yeah they can. It’s like you get what you expect. You just go I just expect you to be doing this. You put it in front of them, you scaffold you play the games and then they learn.


Claire Preston
They do, they really do. As you say we’re scaffolding it and we’re supporting them. We’re putting it in a really safe framework. So we’re not handing it out and saying, Okay, off you go. We’re not doing that. We are breaking it down. We’re taking our time with it. So it’s all perfectly safe. And there’s no risk taking for them. It’s just how we’re unpacking it.


Debbie
It really just sounds like you’re applying common sense. Good educational practice to choir work.


Claire Preston
Yeah, probably.


Debbie
That’s what it is really. We’re teaching and we’re scaffolding. What advice would you give to new choral conductors? Who just want to get started?


Claire Preston
My advice is go, find the people that you’ve heard their school choirs you like them, ring them up, email them, say, and this is what I did 30-40 years ago. Can I come and watch your rehearsal?


Debbie
And you know what they’ll all say? Sure.


Claire Preston
They’ll all say yes, absolutely. Listen, listen to lots and lots and lots of children’s choirs from all around the world and get an idea of the sounds you like so that you’ve actually got some sort of a sound ideal in your head. I think it’s really important before you start teaching a piece of music, so we were talking about repertoire choices before and I was saying for every one piece I’ve chosen, I’ve ditched another 30. So my bar is pretty high. I’m really fussy. And that’s why it’ll take me like almost a year before the following year to plan all my repertoire.

I don’t tend to do things at the last minute, I just take forever is what I’m trying to say. And I get on to the ACDA website, I reached out to colleagues all the time, any of my colleagues will tell you that Claire’s always emailing me, texting me. I look at the programs from concerts and I go to lots of concerts, and I’m privileged to be adjudicating a lot and I love hearing other people’s work and that’s how I hear lots of music or at festivals or whatever. So for advice. Yes, basically go and watch rehearsals. That’s what I did. Lots and lots and lots of them, I still do. I still love watching people work. Yeah. And listen, listen to lots and lots of choirs.

That’s the other way to find great repertoire Birralee has loads of CDs, fantastic children’s choir. Mark O’Leary does Young Voices of Melbourne. Adelaide Voices, Young Adelaide Voices, Sydney Children’s Choir, they all have fantastic websites with loads of CD recordings. So if you’re choosing something that you’re not familiar with and you’d rather listen to it easy, everything’s on Spotify these days, it’s so easy. But I would encourage you, before you start teaching, make sure you know every note of that piece, don’t be learning it with the children, don’t be one lesson ahead of them. Otherwise, you’re determining the pace.

With the help of YouTube these days, I love being able to introduce a piece. I always say it’s my favourite. And students say “oh, you say that with every one”. But it’s that excitement about each piece. Sometimes with a piece, it’s that awe and wonder, you want them to be as completely like “Oh wow”. And then you play them a YouTube clip and the great thing about it is that they’ve seen the whole thing, whereas, you know, if you start just introducing a little bit each week, sometimes it can be too slow, or they only know that little bit you’ve taught them and sometimes they’re going to be more engaged if they’ve listened to a whole YouTube of it. They’ve sort of experienced that engaged with the whole piece. And then you separate it out.

So yes, I love showing my children YouTube clips, and again, then they get to hear other choirs. And then you can use that as a learning tool. You can say, Well, what did you like about their sound? How does it compare to your sound? Or do you think your sounds the same? Or better? What would you change? Inevitably I find my students are really honest, oh, wow, those vowels are really spread or, Oh, I really liked that beautiful resonant sound there or No, I think we do that section better. Great. You get them thinking, thinking about the sound they’re making.


Debbie
That is amazing. Before we go, there are two more things I want to talk to you about, advocacy, fighting for our profession. As choral conductors, music educators, we are all music educators, the circles overlapping as you say, what can we do? What advice can you give us around advocacy?


Claire Preston
I don’t know if I’ve got the answer. But I can tell you that even just at the end of last year, I had to fight to keep our year four program alive. And I’m in a school that’s got a really well supported music program. So I was pretty gobsmacked. And I think part of the problem is the moment music became part of the arts, umbrella schools only have to deliver a certain amount of minutes per week. And this is what I was struggling with.

My school was telling me “Well we have enough arts minutes and now we’re trying to fit in X, Y, and Z so we’re going to take away that music time in replacement of blah”. And oh boy did I fight hard. We had several meetings and I bought in my whole team. And it was at the end of the year when we were all like just ridiculously tired. It’s always that last staff week isn’t it when schools make these changes? And we fought like crazy and we saved it. And I’m in a well resourced school where music is a high priority.


Debbie
What did you do? See we need like, obviously systemic type changes too.


Claire Preston
Yeah.


Debbie
What do you think was your power in that win?


Claire Preston
Oh, man. It’s such a good question. I was gonna say we can never stop advocating, never.


Debbie
That’s true.


Claire Preston
We’re never going to be in a position where we don’t have to. I think having an open door is really important. The more our leadership team see us teaching the better. The more they understand what we’re teaching. Why did we win that? That’s a really good question.


Debbie
Like your arguments must have been compelling. And in a way, it’s obviously got to be at least in part because of your skill and your passion. If you are a bit shit at your job, you’re probably not going to convince them to keep that section of the program. So obviously some of it comes down to they know you’re doing a good job. But how do you convince them that what you do is more important than those minutes they have to find from somewhere else?


Claire Preston
Yeah, well, I think I might have used a few lines like, “oh, well, we’ve just increased our school fees and this matters to parents and this is why they choose our school and not such and such a school”. But my colleagues who are in government schools, that’s not the case. We were willing to be, we were understaffed and yet we were still keeping those subjects alive. We all went overload last year. Because the moment you lose it, you can never ever get it back.


Debbie
That’s what we’ve been saying in our Music for Every Child Every Week campaign, don’t give up if you can hang in there. Don’t give up because once you leave and they pop in arts instead of music, the fight to get that back is lost or it’s very, very, very, very long term.


Claire Preston
Yes, yes.


Debbie
But it’s hard, it puts us in a really hard position doesn’t it?


Claire Preston
It does and what they wanted to replace music with wasn’t even an arts subject. So we were like, “Well your argument that we’ve got this many arts minutes, well that doesn’t hold true because you’re replacing it with some, IT or whatever”. I think you’re right, I think we fought so passionately for it, that they found it really difficult to actually say no, and I think they went back and they figured out somewhere else to put where they wanted to put it because they could see how dear to us it was and how important it was to us.


Debbie
And you’ve got to prove to them how important it is for the children. It’s actually not about us and our job. I mean, it is, but it’s not. It’s that we believe that the children benefit from this. And we just have to show them that even if they’re not musically literate or interested in music, it’s an important thing for our children to have as part of their development.


Claire Preston
Correct. And they need music when it comes to Anzac services and Easter services and Grandparents Day and book parade and celebrations and assemblies and end of term awards. I’ve said to them, “Of course we want to be part of all of those occasions and events and performances”. But the education is more important than the show and tell, but you can’t have the show and tell without the education. So you can’t cut back hours and then still expect us to be able to whip up something for a performance because the performance is as a result of the classroom practice. And that’s again why it’s very important that we say that even though it’s year level singing, it’s music education. We’re not just teaching songs.


Debbie
Yeah it actually comes back to our whole theme. One of the analogies I like to use, which I haven’t used recently, I have subtly, is it’s a tree. You can’t have the healthy green leaves and the beautiful blossoms, if you don’t have branches, trunk, and roots, like you don’t have that stuff. You can’t have the flowers, if you don’t have the other stuff.


Claire Preston
I love that, because sometimes in their ignorance, they do think we can just whip up a performance. And they don’t understand what goes on behind it. And so you’re right, it is about educating. Actually advocacy is educating and helping them understand the process and how we get there. Yeah.


Debbie
And when I say I haven’t used the tree analogy lightly, I have very subtly because Together Sing, which you know, Deb and I started and operate under the banner of Kodály Queensland. I designed the logo for it. And if you have a look at it, it’s a tree.


Claire Preston
It’s a tree. I love it. And that’s about cultivate and it’s about growing deeply. Yep.


Debbie
And all the lovely bits on the outside. You’re not gonna get that unless you have the other really important stuff.


Claire Preston
That’s it. That’s absolutely right. So yeah, we can never stop. We can never take it for granted that they understand what we’re doing and, and how skilled I mean, that’s the thing we’re specialists. So yes, just fight the good fight. Keep on fighting it. Never stop.


Debbie
I love it. Before we go, do you want to hop on your soapbox? Though, I do think we’ve both been on our soapbox.


Claire Preston
Yeah, well, I think it’s because we’re passionate. I think for me the two most important things is just love the kids, love the kids. And for me making music is number one. The music is always number one, the children and the music, it’s what gets me up every morning and I’m privileged, it’s my happy place. And when students stay in touch with me, and they talk about “Oh when I went to high school with you Miss”. The words they use are things like “our choir felt like a family” and our “choral community and all the kids in the music department and that was my safe place and that was my happy place and I always loved being there”.

It’s about this safe place that we create at school for our students that love to be expressive, and we are a family, we are music family at school, and we have our own music community within the school community. And that’s what students talk to me about when they’ve graduated, all their memories are associated with their friends and this feeling of being in the music family.

So we talk about the education is important, and we’re passionate and we talk about the repertoire being so important, all of that, but at the end of the day, teaching is a human endeavour, and really it’s about the way we uplift and enrich our students. And for us we’re doing that through music, we’re teaching children. That’s number one, we’re using music to teach them but we’re we’re developing good human beings. We’re developing expressive, soulful, good characters and it’s a privilege. Yeah.


Debbie
That is the most beautiful note to finish the episode, thank you so much, Claire. It’s been a pleasure.


Claire Preston
I feel the same way. And a shout out to all our music educators, we all work incredibly hard. We give beyond, above and beyond, and we do long, long hours and long, long days. And I know that we all do it. We always prioritise the students, whatever challenges there are in our school environment and no school is perfect. I hear so many people time and time again, say, But I do it for the kids. And so thank you, a big shout out to everybody. Yeah, for your wonderful work.


Debbie
Thank you, Claire. Bye.


Claire Preston
Pleasure. Bye, everybody. Have a great teaching year.

I appreciate you and all of my colleagues, and hope this episode has been enjoyable and useful. Don’t forget, you’ll find the show notes on crescendo.com.au. I’d love a share, rate or review to help other music educators find this podcast. All I can be as the best version of me. All you can do is be the best you. Until next time, bye.


Just for Laughs

As we know laughter relieves stress don’t lose sight of the funny side of life.

What do you call a fear of giants?

Fee-fi-fobia.


Links Mentioned in the Episode:

📕 Books 

🎙️ Episode 97: Creating Literacy in the Music Room (Part 1)

🎶 Ep 72: Together Sing

Where to find me:

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