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Past-President’sColumncontinued...
complex. It can be used at any age level, but it will improve with students’ own maturity and ability to objectively evaluate their own reactions. The actual lesson involves a basic listening lesson: expose students to a wide variety of music and have them chart their reactions to it: physical, emotional, and intellectual, using a scale of -5 to +5 to indicate the strength of their response, either positive or negative. They need to try and figure out WHAT they are responding to in each piece: the rhythmic, physical component; the melodic, or emotional, affect; or the complexity and intellectual content of the music.
The activity is three-part:
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1. Students differentiate between their intellectual, emotional, and physical responses to the selections by charting them.
2. Students are then instructed to examine other perspectives by comparing their responses with their small groups (in our class, this includes parents, which makes for VERY interesting discussions).
3. Students then reflect on their responses by writing a concluding statement about which response seems to be their most prevalent.
Our Experience:
The musical samples used can be as varied as the students in the class. Remembering that we were teaching a general population, not a music class, we chose a huge variety of musics and got a wide variance in responses. We played each piece for approximately 2 minutes and played two pieces in a row before participants reflected on and charted their responses. Our musical choices included the Beatles, Steppenwolf, Mozart, Barber, Simon and Garfunkel, marimba ensembles, Coolio, the Robert Shaw Chorale, Dave Brubeck, Village People, Wagner, Aerosmith, Fifth Dimension, Pachelbel, Vivaldi, Nirvana, The President’s Own Marine Band, and Abba. This list stretched the thinking of students, teachers, and parents. Both the student and parent evaluations were extremely positive, as they found the activity fun, thought-provoking, and self-revealing. We encouraged students to continue to evaluate their responses and become more self-aware whenever they listen to music.
