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Re: teaching clarinet

Author: allencole
Date: 2004-02-26 16:19

One thing that these newer books illustrate well is the fact that you can change much of the terminology to be far more practical. In the process, you may find that practical musicians have already been thinking along these lines.

One chief area is the description of scale degrees and the chords which are based on them.

Do Re Mi, or even worse, Tonic, Supertonic, Mediant, etc.

You can still teach theory quite well substituting 1-2-3 etc. while simply pointing out that systems like Do-Re-Mi or Tonic-Supertonic-Mediant are equivalent. Pop musicians have done this for years, with the effect of more closely associating scale elements and their associated chords, making on-the-spot transposition more practical, and more aptly describing cadences, and other standard types of chord movement.

As a teacher or a student, you should keep in mind that music is not based on the rules, but that the rules are simply observations of how music works. Don't be afraid to adapt what you find. Just ask yourself if it will make things clearer for the student, and can the adaption be made without witholding information that the student needs. If the answer to both is yes, you're probably moving in the right direction.

I generally examine a new 'popular' theory book whenever it pops up. They are getting smarter and clearer all the time. Music Theory for Practical People shows particularly great strides in the struggle to verbalize the quality of various chords and chord changes.

The toughest thing about materials for formal instruction is academic tradition, but I've found that slight adaptions get me what I want from Master Theory without disrupting its flow.

Allen Cole

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