Ch-ch-ch-changes

As many of you know, I've been in the process of applying to other schools for a tenure-track teaching position. Because of this, I've been putting off making some changes to the way I teach my classes, figuring that upon moving to a new school, I'll likely need to make some significant adjustments anyway.

Well, as I approach another final year here at UNC, I decided I should stop putting them off, and so students who have had me for theory or aural skills in the past will notice some fairly significant differences beginning this semester. I'll go over these on the first day of classes, of course, but since you're reading this, you're obviously pretty bored, so I'll give you a little (okay, maybe not-so-little) preview of what's to come:

Music Theory: A Revised (But Not Really) Late Policy

As I understand it, I am fairly well-liked by students at UNC. Though I'd love to credit my rugged good looks, I know it has more to do with my homework policy, which allows students to turn homework in late and redo any and all assignments for a higher grade. The irony of this is there is enough proverbial rope there for students to hang themselves pretty easily; without the sharp teeth of an unbending deadline, students often get lazy and end up procrastinating their homework submission to the point of failing the class.

Now, I could certainly adopt a no-late-assignments allowed policy, but I don't feel good about punishing a student because he or she happened to forget to bring a completed assignment... or (more likely) forgot the assignment was due today and neglected to get to it. I gave this a lot of thought this summer, and I think the way to solve this issue is to simply follow my own syllabus. See, this is what my syllabi say about late papers:

Homework must be turned in at the beginning of the class period on the date which it is due. Late assignments will have their grade lowered by two (2) points for each class period it is late. Assignments will not be accepted later than six (6) class periods after the due date. Exceptions will be made for unusual circumstances at the instructor’s discretion.

The thing is, for the past I-don't-know-how-many years, I haven't assigned late points... and I've allowed students to submit assignments as late as the last day before Finals Week. The reason I've done this has to do with bookkeeping: with papers coming at me from all directions, it's hard for me to keep track of when something was turned in. But after yet another semester of getting close to half of the homework for the semester on that Friday before Finals Week (and none of it particularly high quality work, having been procrastinated and completed under duress), I've decided to solve the bookkeeping problem with technology:

I've always loved stamps, so bring able to justify the purchase of one of these bad boys is awesome.

So starting with this semester, homework that is submitted on the due date gets no penalty, homework turned before six class periods have passed (that's three weeks!) gets late points taken off, and homework turned in after six class periods will get a zero. I'll still grade it, so students can at least prepare for the final. Homework can still be redone up through the last day before Finals Week, but the late points stick.

I'll make sure students are warned about impending due dates; I'm envisioning a chart showing due dates and late points that I'll post online and bring to class. The goal of all this, of course, is to discourage procrastination... whether or not it helps, time will tell.

Music Theory: No More Keyboard Labs

Oh, I'm sorry, I should have made sure you were sitting down before you read that.

Keyboard Labs — computer-graded tests which involved applying theoretical principles to the piano keyboard — have been a part of the curriculum since well before I arrived at UNC. Waaaaay back when, they were given by the instructors in their office: students would come in one at a time and suffer through transcribing progressions while the prof sat there and graded their proficiency with it. When technology allowed it, these tests were moved to the Piano Lab, proctored by lab monitors, but hated only a little bit less by the students. (Probably because they could cheat on them easier. What, you think I didn't know?) Over the last five years, as the UNC Theory Faculty has almost completely changed (Dr. Ehle and I are the only two theory faculty who were teaching here six years ago), fewer and fewer instructors are incorporating Keyboard Labs into their classes; in fact, I believe I was the only one doing them last semester.

On a practical level, I think it's silly to pay lab monitors for an entire day of proctoring to serve only one professor's needs, even if that professor is me. On a curricular level, our Class Piano curriculum includes most of the skills covered in these tests, and so I think it's time to bid this long-standing institution a perhaps-not-so-tearful adieu.

To account for the portion of the course grade taken up by Keyboard Labs, I am increasing the Daily Work portion of my theory course grades to 50%, and I am going to try to have a few more graded in-class assignments to balance things out a little.

Sorry, still don't believe it? It's true... Keyboard Labs are dead. Yes, that means you don't have any scheduled theory-related things on Friday! Yes, between practicing for these tests and taking them, that means you have a little more spare time than you used to. And before you get too far in planning what you are going to do with that extra spare time...

Aural Skills: Homework

Okay, wait, just hear me out on this one. Believe it or not, my goal with adding graded homework assignments to Aural Skills is to actually improve the students' life, rather than make it more painful.

The thing with Aural Skills is that there's only one way to get good at it, and that's individual practice. I could spend every minute of every class period on ear training exercises and it would do very little to help the students. Why? For several reasons. First, the in-class stuff has to be targeted at the median skill level, so there are inevitably going to be some students who are bored stiff and others who are frantically trying to keep up (and spiraling into frustration). Second, there is no way to spend time on everyone's weakest exercises; some students may need more practice with rhythmic dictation, while others may need more time on chords. Third, in-class exercises have to be rushed, and often students don't have time to go through the entire thought process they need to before being given the correct answers. And having the answers given, no matter when it happens, makes the student approach it differently ("I'll try this and see if it's right" as opposed to "I better focus and really try hard so I can get a good grade").

Of course, practicing outside of class has always been expected... I implore my students on a daily basis to this end, but let's face it: most students don't spend the time outside of class that they need to. I don't take this personally — I know that most of them really do intend to spend more time on it — but college students are crazy busy, and individual aural skills practice tends to always be a weak point.

So then that brings us to the idea of somehow requiring aural skills practice for a grade, and that often takes the form of MacGAMUT or something similar. I won't go into my gripes with MacGAMUT here (as an aural skills teacher I applaud it but as a computer interface designer it gives me wildly violent convulsions), and most other software I've seen tends to get pretty limited especially with the higher-level chromatic stuff. Plus, working with any of these programs is about as fun as watching paint dry. Like, really boring paint.

So what I'm going to try is homework that might be marginally fun to do: transcribing popular music. It's going to be pretty restrictively guided transcriptions... for example, dictating the melody of a song using solfege, or notating only the rhythm of some other song. I'll provide answer blanks that guide the student through it pretty carefully, with lots of instructions, and I'm choosing songs very specifically to match the skill level of the class. Sure, they're going to be challenging, but it's music people enjoy. The Beatles. KT Tunstall. Muse. Owl City. And I've found out how to make the music itself available through Blackboard, so there shouldn't be any need to spend gobs of time in the lab or Music Library to do the homework.

And my intention with this homework is not to create more work, but just to structure the existing work a little more. Doing these transcriptions counts as time spent practicing your aural skills... heck, it's the way I keep my own skills honed.

Aural Skills: No More Gigantic Exams

The other big change — and this is probably the biggest one — is getting rid of the one thing the students and I both hate the most about Aural Skills: these monumental, hour-long exams that blast into the scene like Godzilla at midterms and finals. For the students, it's pure, concentrated pain — before, during and after the exam.

So, you know what? Bam. They're gone.

Well, of course, I still need to evaluate the students, so it's not that testing is going away, but why have it all crammed into one day? Fatigue plays a huge part of student's trouble on these exams, and having everything on one day makes for a ton of preparation. Plus, if that particular day is your off-day, you're hosed.

So I am breaking the evaluation into 9 smaller (10-15 minute) tests over the course of the semester. Each one will be over one particular skill (for example, melodic dictation) and will have a more casual feel to them. Between these tests and the four sight-singing tests we always have, every Thursday will have some sort of evaluation, but I think having everything spread out will be less overall stress (remember, no midterm and no final!) and more chances to improve one's grade.

All Classes: More Blackboard-y Goodness

Lastly, I've spent the last two or three weeks really trying to work with my arch-nemesis, Blackboard (why UNC would choose an actual supervillian to provide online course management, I'll never know) and I'm happy to say that we have come to a slightly better understanding of each other. As a result, I am not only beefing up the amount of stuff I'm posting on Blackboard (as I mentioned above, all the Aural Skills homework, with recordings, will be up there) but I have also figured out how to export my gradebooks into Blackboard without needing a ton of extra effort. The Grade Center in Blackboard will now have individual assignment grades as well as overall averages, so students will be able to see exactly where they are at, gradewise (including which assignments have yet to be handed in). I should be able to update the system after each grading session, so it should stay pretty current. Really, the only thing Blackboard's Grade Center won't have is the Tuition Wasted Through Absence column... but you can check with me personally if you're worried about that one. (That, or just not skip class.)

Once More Unto The Breach

To be honest, this may be the most prepared I've been for a semester for a very long time, but with all these changes, I fully expect something to go haywire and need to be revised on the fly, so bear with me. Either way, I look forward to 15 weeks jam-packed with theory and aural skills goodness... starting Monday. See you all then!

A Small Gift to My Students

My dad told me a story once about when he was a boy growing up in Kansas City. One of the neighborhood kids had found out that he was related to Daniel Boone. Of course, at the time, Daniel Boone was a superstar and coonskin caps were a frequent sight in any group of kids. This boy took every opportunity to bring up his famous relative, leaving the other kids wishing that they had a famous ancestor.

Now, this particular neighbor kid eventually moved away, and after seeing the moving van drive off, my dad pointed out — for probably the hundredth time — that the boy was related to Daniel Boone, and wished aloud that he had a famous relative. It was at this point that my grandmother decided to tell him that he was, in fact, related to President Abraham Lincoln, which out-awesomed Daniel Boone by a factor of ten or twelve and which caused my father to utter in stunned disbelief, "You tell me this now?" My grandmother's reason for withholding this precious bit of information was just what you'd expect it to be, if you had ever met my grandmother: she wanted my dad to live on his own merits, not those of some famous relation. (And that's just as well, considering there are more than enough rogues and crooks on my father's side to more than balance out whatever Honest Abe's family contributed to the bloodline.)

Fast forward to seven or eight years ago, I found the source of my grandmother’s information: the obituary of my great great grandmother, Abigail Stover (neé Nave), which stated that President Lincoln was her great uncle. Unfortunately, for Lincoln to be anyone's great uncle, he would have to have a sibling with grandchildren, and President Lincoln did not... his younger brother Thomas died at the age of three, and his older sister, Sarah Grigsby, died while giving birth to her first child, who also did not survive the birth.

My dad: “Well, they tended to embellish things a bit back then.”

So, on to the gift: another type of genealogy. The connection here is not blood, but learning. My faculty advisor for my Masters and Doctorate was Dr. Evan Copley, who retired a few years back. He studied at Michigan State University with H. Owen Reed, who studied with, among others, Bohuslav Mårtinu, on whose third piano concerto I wrote my own dissertation. Reed actually studied with several other composers of note, and of course they each studied with other great musicians, and so on.

Now, this genealogy comes, quite literally, from an afternoon spent on Wikipedia, which means 1) you can trace my steps if you like, and 2) well, the information is as reliable as anything else on Wikipedia. It is, of course, woefully incomplete; I’ve studied with many other professors, as has Dr. Copley, and so forth and so on. If this type of thing interests you, think of it as a “start.” Most importantly, don’t put much stock in this; it’s not going to mean anything on a resumé, and bringing it up to others will just make you look pretentious. My main point in doing this is to show you that it’s actually a pretty small world, and that the masters we study existed in the same world we do, even to the point of affecting us more directly than we may have previously considered.

So I give you my “Professorial Lineage”; and if you’re a student of mine, I commend it to you for further expansion downward.

(PDF, 15.9 MB)

The Force is Strong With These

Thanks to everyone who came to my presentation on "The Music of Star Wars" last night... it was great to have such a nice turnout (I think it was assisted by Dr. Dickensheets recommending it to her students as something they could attend for class credit).

This presentation often sparks people sending me humorous Star Wars-related links which I greatly enjoy. So I'm not being selfish, though, I thought I'd share some of them here.

First, I'm guessing most everyone has seen Corey Vidal's Star Wars video. No offense to Corey, who did a fine job, but I'd like to point out that it's not him singing; he's lip-syncing a tune by an absolutely fantastic a capella group out of Utah called Moosebutter. If you like this, check out their website, where you can listen to any of their other pieces as well. In fact, Moosebutter did their own Youtube video in response to Corey's, which I think is better:

The next video is one from a while back that I'm guessing many people haven't seen. It's Joe Nussbaum's independent short film George Lucas in Love.



Lastly, thanks to Jon Fisher for sharing this one with me, one which had me in stitches, laughing out loud in my office, making people passing by outside wonder what was going on:


Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

May the force be with you!

Do and Redo

One of the things I think I've become known for at UNC is my homework policy, which is very lenient: I allow students to turn homework in late, and I allow them to resubmit assignments for a higher grade as many times as they can until they get a perfect score or the semester ends. This is not just something I do in order to be popular or well-liked (although that's a nice side-effect, to be sure); it's a policy about which I've given a great deal of thought, and which has evolved over the last ten years or so. It works the best for me for several reasons:

• In my classes, homework presents the student with the topics and types of exercises that they will find on the exams. Thus, gaining a real understanding of the homework is the best way to prepare for the exams.
• Often, the misunderstanding of a single element can cause a cascade of errors throughout the homework. If someone misunderstands how to build a particular type of chord, for example, it could be disastrous for a long assignment which uses that chord throughout. Grading that assignment objectively might result in a very low score — a 12%, for example — that does not truly portray the student's understanding of the assignment as a whole. However, knowing that the student can fix and resubmit the assignment frees me from feeling like I am condemning that student to a horrible fate while remaining objective.
• Allowing a student to "try again" — or submit homework even though they didn't meet the deadline — reduces the chances that the student will throw up his or her hands and "give up" with that particular assignment... something that benefits no one.
• The system actually makes grading much easier. Because students can redo their assignments, grading consists of identifying which problems are wrong, and not explaining why they are wrong — this is left as an exercise to the student as he or she is redoing the assignment. Of course, if a student continues to make the same mistake after a few redos, I will give them some guidance either on paper or in person. And because I allow students to turn in assignments after the deadline, I don't need to keep track of when a particular paper is handed in, nor do I need to play judge and jury regarding reasons for papers being late. (And, as any teacher can tell you, the whole "judge and jury" role is an exhausting one.)

The only drawbacks to my system is that students sometimes take advantage of it too much. I've had students go the entire semester without turning in anything, only to frantically complete all of their homework by the end of the semester and hand it all in. Unfortunately, this generally results in some very poorly done homework and no chance to redo it, and I can only hope that the student learns a valuable life lesson as a result. However, I think that giving students these opportunities to manage themselves — even though, to quote a colleague, it gives them "freedom to fail" — is an example of respect from professor to student, something to which all students have a right.

Fall 2008 Midterm Status

Midterms are here! This post is for the benefit of my students and will be updated as I get midterms graded.

MUS 104: Your midterms are graded. Come get them today!

MUS 213: Your midterms are graded. Come get them today!

MUS 214: Your midterms are graded. Come get them today!

MUS 215: Your midterms are graded. Come get them today!

MUS 216: Your midterms are graded. Come get them today!

Aural Skills is a Funny Thing

I've never met anyone who wanted to be an Aural Skills teacher when they grew up.

For you non-music-majors out there reading this: (First of all, why are you reading this?) Aural Skills is a set of courses that music majors are required to take, generally as freshmen and sophomores, which help them learn ear training, which is the capability to notate music that they hear; and sight-singing, which is the capability to sing a written melody that they haven't heard or sung before. The classes are named differently depending on the college or university: sometimes they're called "ear training" even though they incorporate sight-singing, sometimes they're called something like "musicianship." Regardless of what they are called, they almost always deal with ear training and sight-singing, and they are almost always hated by the students with a firey passion.

Well, you may find it interesting that the professors of the classes feel about the same way. Okay, "hate" may be too strong word, but I would wager that most Aural Skills teachers look forward to teaching Music Theory more than they do Aural Skills. The reason for that is simple: Aural Skills classes are usually taught by Music Theory professors.

Sure, that makes sense, right? After all, Aural Skills is part of Music Theory. Except for one thing: it's not. Aural Skills is not Music Theory and never was.

Yes, the Aural Skills curriculum correlates well with the Music Theory curriculum, and it is primarily this reason that the Theory faculty usually teach the classes. But they are different disciplines. Music Theory is, as I've usually defined it, the art and science of figuring out why music sounds the way it does. It is the exploration of what makes music tick. Aural Skills is something entirely different: it is the development of physiological skills, both aural and oral, that are necessary for a professional musician or music educator.

So if Aural Skills doesn't really fit in the Music Theory department, where should it be? If you go through the list, you'll find that there is no good answer to that. Sure there are some departments — Music History, for example — where it obviously doesn't fit. Others seem right at first until you get to thinking about them. The Music Education Department? While a music education class should cover how to teach aural skills, it doesn't have the responsibility for teaching aural skills any more than a music ed class should teach you music theory. The Voice Performance Department? That's probably another close fit, but aural skills is an aspect of general musicianship, and it is not specific to performance.

What about having a separate Aural Skills Department? A few of the larger schools in the country (Berklee, for example) do just that. For most schools, however, the administrative costs of having a department devoted to Aural Skills makes little or no financial sense. Plus, having a separate department also implies that you have at least some faculty whose career is specific toward that discipline, and as I mentioned above, Professors of Aural Skills are pretty hard to come by. (It's worth mentioning that the more than a dozen faculty members in the Berklee Ear Training Department are, like most faculty at Berklee, performers.)

So what do we do? The Theory Department is probably the best place for Aural Skills, but we — students, faculty and administrators — need to realize that it is indeed a separate discipline, and should be treated as such. I wasn't too aware of this when I first started teaching, but over the course of the last decade I've learned a few interesting things about Aural Skills:

• It's not only a different discipline, but a different type of discipline: it's physiological (involving mind and body working together) rather than purely cognitive;
• Research in Aural Skills pedagogy (the science of teaching aural skills) is a hugely underdeveloped field; and
• I have come to find the stuff fascinating.
  

Don't get me wrong, I love teaching theory and generally look forward to my Monday-Wednesday schedule more than my Tuesday-Thursday schedule, but I feel like eleven years of teaching Aural Skills has given me some insight that has really started to coalesce in my mind over the last few years and which I've been able to apply in class to the benefit of my students. I'm going to try to blog about these over the next little while (read: "very periodically over the next twelve months or more") in preparation for a journal article or something.

And who knows? Maybe I'll get someone so excited about it that they'd want to grow up and be an Aural Skills Teacher? Ooh... hopefully not.

Goodbye, MUS 113-170; We Hardly Knew Thee

So yesterday in our weekly Academic Area meeting we made a small change that should save a lot of grief.

For those of you unfamiliar with UNC Music Theory, here's the deal: theory students, in addition to registering for a theory class, must also register for a zero-credit-hour lab section. This section represents Theory Keyboard Labs, which are computer-graded tests taken every Friday outside of class. The professors do not have much to do with this; while they decide which tests to give, the only other thing they do is receive and record a grade report issued by the lab proctors.

The reason for this lab section, as I have always understood it, was to account for the fact that students had a required element of the class that was scheduled separately from the actual class.

Now the real pain with this was at registration time, especially in the fall with new freshman theory students. Here is the typical exchange between me and a theory student who is finding out that he or she passed the Theory Placement Test, which allows them to skip MUS 104 and go directly into MUS 113 and 114:

Me: “It looks like you passed the Theory Placement Test. Congratulations! We recommend that you register for MUS 113: Music Theory I and MUS 114: Aural Skills I.”

Student: “Oh, uh, do I take them at the same time?”

Me: “Yes, they're meant to be taken concurrently. MUS 113 is offered on Mondays and Wednesdays, and MUS 114 is on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You can't sign up for either second-semester course until you pass both of these first-semester courses.”

Student: “Oh, okay. Thanks.”

(Time passes. Sometimes it's minutes, other times it's several days.)

Student: “Uh, I wasn't able to register for MUS 113 and MUS 114 because it says the sections are closed.”

Me: “Right. That's because you need to have the professor of each of those sections clear you to register. You need to choose the sections that work with your schedule, and then contact the professor and have him clear you.”

Student: “Uh, contact them?”

Me: “Yes. You can send them an e-mail, or you can just attend the class and ask the professor afterward to clear you for the course. Then you will be able to register.”

Student: “Oh, okay. Thanks.”

(Time passes again. Usually longer this time around.)

Student: “Uh, I could register for MUS 114, but I can't register for MUS 113... it gives me some sort of error.”

Me: “Right. That's because you need to sign up both for your regular section of the course, and for MUS 113-170; that's a zero-credit-hour lab section you need to take.”

Student: “Oh, when does that meet? How does that work?”

Me: “Don't worry about it yet; it will be explained in class. All you need to do right now is register for the thing. But here's the thing; the computer requires that you register for the lab section and the regular section simultaneously.”

Student: “Oh, okay. Thanks.”

(Time passes.)

Student: “Uh, I tried to register for that keyboard lab section but it's closed too.”

Me: “Right. And that's because you probably need to get cleared for the keyboard lab section too.”

Student: “Oh, is that something my professor does?”

Me: “Not necessarily; it depends on whose name is on the keyboard lab section. It might be your professor, or it might be one of the other professors who are teaching MUS 113. You'll need to ask your prof.”

Now, you may be thinking, why not just explain this all to the student in the first place? Believe me, I've tried.

Me: “It looks like you've passed the Theory Placement Test. Congratulations! We recommend that you take MUS 113: Music Theory I and MUS 114: Aural Skills I. You should register for both classes concurrently, since they are on different days and you need both to move into the second semester classes next spring. What you'll need to do is find the sections of those courses that work for you, and then contact the professor to have him clear you to register. You can do this either by e-mail or phone, or by simply attending the class and asking the professor after the class to have you cleared. After he clears you, you will still need to register for the courses. And when you register for MUS 113, you will also need to register for the zero-credit-hour lab section, MUS 113-170, which represents Keyboard Labs, something you don't need to worry about right now but which will be explained to you in the first few weeks of classes. The Keyboard Lab section might have a different professor of record, meaning that you might need him to clear you for that section before you can register. Once you are cleared to take both, you can then register, but the computer system requires that you submit the registration request for the regular section and the lab section simultaneously, or it will give you an error.”

Student: “Uh... what?”

So, anyway, what happened yesterday? We voted unanimously to do away with the separate keyboard lab sections entirely. The decision may need to be approved by the School of Music Curriculum Committee (I'm not sure why... it's a registration change, not a curricular change), but hopefully they'll be off the books by Spring.

And theory students, don't get too excited. We're deleting the lab section from the registration procedure, but the keyboard labs themselves will remain. And for some of you, they start this Friday! How fun for you.