Klarinet Archive - Posting 000525.txt from 1999/11

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Re: beginners' intonation/voicing
Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 19:40:53 -0500

Audrey Travis wrote,
>For my brass students, because any fingering or slide position combination
can produce so many different pitches, I have them sing a song after me, like
Mary Had a Little Lamb. If they can sing it back to me, pitch accurate, I
let them play brass. [snip] I ask whoever is doing the brass to make sure
the child can get at least two harmonics on the brass instruments, and later,
I ask these kids to sing "Mary". It seems to me that if a child can sing in
tune, they have learned pitch discrimination and will be able to distinguish
them on a brass instrument. The ability to sing in tune presupposes pitch
discrimination. Lots of people learn to sing accurately without learning
Orff system, a learned set of skills, first. So I don't really agree that
having kids sing to test for pitch discrimination doesn't really test what it
sets out to test.>

I agree that this test will identify many children with good pitch and will
not mistake children with poor pitch for children with good pitch. My point
is that, while ability to sing in tune always indicates good pitch
discrimination (as you say), the converse is not true: Lack of singing
ability does not always indicate lack of pitch discrimination. Unfortunately
the type of test you describe weeds out, with ruthless efficiency, the
children with good pitch who can't *sing* in tune because of physical faults
with the vocal apparatus that may have nothing whatsoever to do with their
ability to *play an instrument* in tune. I wonder how many kids who love and
need music get the door to the band room slammed in their faces just because
they can't sing? I've heard so many anecdotes similar to Kevin's and mine
that I think it happens a lot.

But I do understand your need to test those kids somehow and do it quickly.
Your test at least will save you from the awkward dilemma of a music teacher
I used to know. My mother brought me up as a member of a Presbyterian church
with an excellent choir director. One year, we got a new minister, whose
youngest child, an albino with serious birth defects that had already
required several surgeries, loved music. In addition to being partially
deaf, he was also the only truly and absolutely tone-deaf person I've ever
heard attempt to sing. He seemed to pitch his voice completely at random --
with great enthusiasm, in a triple forte bellow so that he could hear
himself. The entire congregation and probably most of the rest of the county
could hear him, too.

Naturally the choir director didn't want to kick the minister's son out of
the choir, especially when the boy had already lived through several
hospitalizations and (according to gossip) vicious harassment from bullies at
school. Therefore, to the tune of much uneasy murmuring about Christian duty
and charity toward the less fortunate, the choir director and the
congregation conspired to avoid confronting the reality that this innocent,
frail and angelic-looking little boy laid waste to the children's choir more
ruthlessly than any pack of devils with (off)pitchforks could have managed.
Other children began dropping out. My younger brother, a fine boy soprano,
begged my mother to let him quit. Church attendance dropped week by week.
At last the choir master steeled himself to make an appointment for a
conference with the minister.

The child withdrew from the choir. Thereafter, on weekday evenings, people
who walked past the manse next door to the church on warm summer evenings
heard the most astonishing trumpet blats exploding through the open window,
at shocking volume, and at pitches previously unknown to science. As an
adolescent in the process of revising my beliefs, I decided that the
Christians had got it all wrong. They thought the Last Judment would look
like the stained glass window in the sanctuary and the Final Trumpet would
sound like Maurice Andre. But no: That preacher's kid, with the insight and
zeal of the Holy Fool, had tapped into the cosmic truth about the end of time
and space as we know it.

Lelia

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