| Guest blog by Jeanne Marie [message #25453] |
Sat, 23 January 2010 19:37  |
 b_twin_1
Messages: 2596
Registered: September 2008
Location: Victoria, Australia |
Senior Member
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Proud Teacher Pt 2
I've got a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel ~ Blackadder
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| Re: Guest blog by Jeanne Marie [message #25455 is a reply to message #25453 ] |
Sat, 23 January 2010 23:20  |
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Bratsche
Messages: 269
Registered: October 2008
Location: Washington State, USA |
Senior Member |
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I would ask her to sing or hum any note at all, and then I would match it. We did this a number of times, so that she could hear what it sounded like when we sang the same pitch. Then, I’d ask her to sing a note, but I’d intentionally sing a half step off, and ask her to listen and describe how that was different from when we were matching pitch. This kind of work has never yet failed to help students of mine, even previously non-musical students, begin to match pitch with greater accuracy.
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I'll have to mull this over and potentially try it with some of my viola students who have a hard time matching notes with their voice. I sometimes ask my students to sing the next note (that they're going to play); because if they can produce the sound with their voice then they are much more likely to be able to find it on their viola than if their body (ear, head, viscera) doesn't know what that sound should be. I mostly use this when they're going to be changing their hand position up or down the fingerboard (which is called shifting). I might also try having them do vocal sirens.
Thanks for sharing the wonderful story. It's always great to hear of someone discovering they can do something they previously thought they couldn't (and of course a story about music resonates even more for me -- pun fully intended!  ).
Wendy
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| Re: Guest blog by Jeanne Marie [message #25463 is a reply to message #25456 ] |
Sun, 24 January 2010 08:57 |
Jeanne Marie
Messages: 320
Registered: October 2008
Location: Kansas City |
Senior Member |
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| katinseattle wrote on Sat, 23 January 2010 22:57 |
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I play two notes on the piano, asking them if the first is higher or lower than the second.
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So that's what was going on in fifth grade! The teacher did this with each of us. I thought it was silly; anybody could hear that those sounds were higher or lower.
Which brings me to a question I've often wondered. What happens to a tone deaf child born in a culture with tonal language? Are they considered mentally deficient because they confuse "dish," say, with "grandmother"? Or do they all learn to hear tonal differences because they hear it from babyhood?
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In general, I don't believe in the concept of "tone deafness," though some people have differed with me on this. The closest I have seen is a case of a man who lost ALL the hair on his body, including the hairs within the ear, due to a childhood illness (scarlet fever, I believe). His hearing in general was severely compromised, and his ability to distinguish different pitches was also impacted.
I think that a kid born into a culture with a highly tonal language is not likely to be tone deaf because of the constant immersion in the sounds; kinda like those African languages where they have a "clicking" sound that is really hard for non-native speakers to imitate, but easy for native speakers?
Smiles,
JM
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