Implementing Alt Styles from the Get Go! Rock 'n Roll by Friday

By Beth Zaluba

Musings and Reflections of Teaching Beginning Teen String Players
by
Incorporating Alternative Styles

(aka: The reverse brain dump)

Elizabeth Zaluba
June 25, 2009

Alternative styles of music have already been wholly adopted by my high school students prior to their pursuit of string playing. Most of my students deliberately enrolled in beginning orchestra, but some were just put in the class. This lack of choice--just fulfilling their music credit--makes the use of alternative styles even more critical to the success of the one school year my teens will study a string instrument. All but one, perhaps two, of the arrangements and compositions we read through this week may be simple enough to be played accurately by the students at the end of the school year. Add incorporating special education students of all challenges, disruptive standardized testing schedules, and lack of administrative understanding of what a string ‘program’ needs, and string instruction of any style seems to be doomed before it can begin.

Here are the parameters of my program:

- daily 43 minutes class periods (most weeks)

- instruments shared by two sections of orchestra

- a one year course with no subsequent orchestra offerings

- no dedicated budget

- no library

(Ironically, we do own full Kalmus scores and parts for major orchestral pieces like Mozart’s Overture to the Magic Flute)

As mentioned in class, orchestral repertoire is an alternative style for most of my majority/minority students. Even students of African-American heritage are far removed from the blues, jazz, and standards that their predecessors performed and popularized. Improvisation is the obvious method to begin using alternate styles. Simple improvisation allows students of any ethnic and racial group to express themselves musically even with basic skills on their instrument. It also requires no written materials.

When I present the instrument choices to the students at the beginning of the school year, I’ve only played alternative styles on the bass--the Ode to Joy excerpt from the Ninth Symphony, the bass line from “Stand By Me”, and a walking 12 bar blues line. Violin has had a token “Turkey In The Straw” effort. Right off the bat I will be able to play alternative styles as instruments are demonstrated.

I also want to ‘hook’ them by promising the students they’ll play rock and roll by Friday. (We start school the Tuesday after Labor Day.) Here’s the outline for the weeks plans:

Tuesday: Introduction to the class; syllabus and course requirements; assessing prior string experience. (There is usually one or two.)

Wednesday: I show a video (received in the string repair class) that begins with blocks of wood aging in a warehouse through the entire process of the pieces being fabricated into violins and bows. It is wordless and has an unaccompanied Bach violin sonata as a soundtrack. This has been a great help in teaching students to respect and care for their instruments. We’ve had only one act of vandalism to a violin (scratching) but the violin remained playable. Three cellos were decapitated though. More emphasis that large is still fragile this year.

Thursday: Try ‘em out! Let every student try the instrument they think they’ll want to play. I try to direct the more petite students to my 2 3/4 cellos. Larger instruments have been a harder sell, so presenting them with cool alt styles will make them much more popular choices. Model postures for left arm and bow arm and grip.

Friday: Get everybody set up properly with appropriate bow tension and reinforce correct postures. Look for naturals. It will be challenging enough to get the students playing accurately on one string right away, so again, go ahead and have the students play double stops (bass open strings) for the piece “Sunnymoon for Two”. I will walk the bass line that I played on Tuesday with them and remind the students I promised “rock and roll by Friday”. Follow ups to this activity would be listening to similar audio or videos of rocking strings or perhaps even inviting students to try taking short solos themselves and see what comes out.

Long term: I want to revisit improvisation on a regular basis to strengthen aural skills and maintain student interest. Improvisation as composition also meets Illinois State Goals in music. I would probably try introducing strumming and singing “Cielito Lindo” next as an alt style and assess if it could be a long term project to prepare it for eventual performance at the spring concert. Hip Hop has repetitive ‘riffs’ that I can also use as a basis for improvisation. (Using an appropriate song). I also plan to get a simple digital recording device to use to create student audio portfolios and for student assessment. This will also meet the goal of integrating technology into the music curriculum.

Me personally: I’ll try to score an electric instrument on Craig's List or Ebay for myself, search for potential funding, and eventually acquire electric instruments for school to integrate with student owned guitars to begin a core electric group. Most likely I’ll try to get a ‘price’ for multiple clip-on bud mics like I’ve used when touring bands (I’ve done Moody Blues and ELO) hire local strings as a back-up players. The school already owns a quality PA and the choir teacher is a guitarist and has lots of equipment and an after school club. I’ve already phoned him about collaborating this fall.