Richard Laprise

Pedagogy of Music Theory

Observation Report #3

On March 23, 2016, I observed Dr. White's aural skills 2 class which focused
on the main topics of chromatic appoggiaturas, duplet and triplet rhythms, and the
introduction of modulations through chromatic pitches. The materials needed were
Rhythm and Pitch, a piano, and the whiteboard. The lesson was well organized
resulting in a fast paced class period with high student engagement throughout.
The level of engagement by the students created a positive environment where
students took ownership of their learning and promoted independence. This
independence was observed through group participation without the teacher's help,
changing tonic throughout a series of examples without a new pitch being given,
and the vast amount of error detection that was required, but guided, by Dr. White.
The beginning of class demonstrated the atmosphere Dr. White believes is
best. There were jokes, laughter, and conversations between students and the
teacher that created a relaxed environment that seemed to promote risk taking and
collegiality. The first activity is clearly a routine warm-up since the entire class knew
what to do without any instruction from Dr. White. His signal for them to stand up
has been conditioned to mean that the conversations stop and class starts. The
warm-up consisted of Dr. White using chromatic hand signs similar to the Curwen
method for the students to copy and sing. Later, he asked the student if the hand
signs, used as kinesthetic learning experience, helped, and a majority said it did.
The sequence of pitches followed a simple to complex pattern and foreshadowed
the modulations that are going to be addressed in future lessons. In addition, as the
sequences became more difficult, Dr. White started to sing with the class as a form

of scaffolding. Although this warm-up only lasted about five minutes, it provided a
focus for the beginning of class, prepared students for similar pitch patterns to be
explored in the current class, and introduced them to pitch patterns that will be
addressed in future classes. Dr. White is clearly teaching and developing lessons
with future lessons in mind for his students.
This warm-up led into pitch patterns revolving around chromatic
appoggiaturas. The students sat down and Dr. White used the piano to have them
echo the patterns. Similar to Bruner's modes of cognitive processing, Dr. White had
the students experience several appoggiaturas in isolation before giving them a
label. From here, Dr. White drew a visual representation of the pattern using arrows.
It was clear that the students would learn this concept based on function and not by
intervals. He now taught the class how to sing these patterns by using a simple to
complex approach as advocated by Karpinski involving the removal of the chromatic
tone and singing the resolution first. This was related to the function of
appoggiaturas before he had the students add in the chromatic tone to complete
the appoggiatura. Overall, this approach focused on hearing meaningful patterns
which is recommended by Rogers.
The next part of the lesson focused on rhythm patterns prepared in their
Rhythm and Pitch book. They performed the rhythms using takadimi and conducted
along as suggested by Rogers and other pedagogues. From Dr. White's article on
takadimi, his first goal for an effective rhythm pedagogy- lead to accuracy and
musicality in performance- was clearly a focus of this exercise. He made many
suggestions and corrections relating to the accuracy of the rhythms and stressed
musicality extensively. Dr. White then presented the class their next homework
assignment relating to duplet rhythms which they went over together. Dr. White

made connections between duplets in compound meter with the students' wellestablished knowledge of two eighth notes in simple meter. This is an example of a
spiral curriculum design and making meaningful connections between what the
students already know with a new concept.
The last activity of the class featured students being randomly called to
perform their homework assignment of pitch patterns on moveable do syllables for
a grade. As suggested by Karpinski, students were allowed to establish tonic by
singing there own pitch pattern based on structural tones before singing the
example in their book. Even though each example was in a different key, each
student had to find their starting pitch based on what the person before them sang.
Students were further kept engaged since they were frequently called on to detect
any mistakes made by their peers. Consistent with Karpinski's views on grading, Dr.
White offered feedback and suggestions to fix mistakes in additions to peer
corrections.
This observation provided many examples of good pedagogy that have been
explained by Rogers, Karpinski, John D. White, and John W. White. Most interesting
was the independence of the class and their ability to detect errors and establish a
new key based on what previous classmates had sung. The lesson was well
structured to have many concepts introduced to them aurally, such as modulations,
to promote the future success of the students when these concepts are formally
taught.