Musicianship

What is Musicianship?

I consider musicianship to be musical and executive skills developed in order to Create, Perform, and Respond. Musical skills are tonality, meter, and style; executive skills are essentially playing technique. My personal understanding of musicianship has been heavily influenced by elements of Music Learning Theory (MLT), researched and developed by Dr. Edwin E. Gordon. The primary objective of MLT is to develop students’ audiation (or “musical thought”), building musicianship and skill through understanding. Through tonal and rhythmic audiation students will not only draw greater meaning from music they listen to and perform, but they will develop the tools to improvise, compose, and be independent music learners.

Gordon's work can be found in Learning Sequences in Music: A Contemporary Music Learning Theory

SEQUENCE OF LEARNING

How we Learn Language

In learning our first language, we often go through this sequence:

Listen → Speak → Think → Converse → Read → Write

Likewise, learning music should go through that same exact sequence:

Listen → Sing/Play → Audiate → Improvise → Read → Write

When babies learn to speak, they start out by babbling, or imitating sounds they’ve heard their parents make. Babies don’t have to know how to read or spell before we let them speak. Don’t wait for your students to be proficient at music reading or theory before you let them play!

If students learn to read music before they learn to audiate, they are simply “decoding” the notation (similar to if I learned how to pronounce words in another language without understanding what they mean). It is essential to teach students to recognize tonal and rhythm patterns (audiate) instead of individual notes and note lengths in order to foster musical understanding and comprehension.

Comparison to language learning found in Jump Right In Teacher's Guide (p. 2) 

  WHOLE • PART • WHOLE

Start with the Big Picture

When introducing a new tune it is important to begin with the whole song, having students simply listen over and over. After students have had a chance to get a feel for the piece, break musical material down into parts (remember the parts are patterns, not individual notes). Then, when you move back into having students sing/play the entire piece, they will perform with far greater understanding and musical style.

Learning Sequences in Music (pp. 273-274)