David Newman and Greg Ristow chat about four ways to teach intervals in music theory, as well as how to overcome some of the challenges of teaching intervals.   Transcript [music] 0:00:20.8 Greg Ristow: Welcome to Notes from the Staff, a podcast from the Creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education. 0:00:33.4 David Newman: Hi, I'm David Newman, and I teach voice and music theory at James Madison University and I create content and code for uTheory. 0:00:42.0 Greg Ristow: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and Associate Professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory. 0:00:47.8 DN: Thank you listeners for your comments and episode suggestions. We love to read them, send them our way by email at [email protected] and remember to like us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 0:01:00.1 GR: Today we'll be talking about teaching intervals, teaching reading and writing intervals more so than teaching the oral side of intervals, which we'll save for another episode and this David, I find to be one of the most challenging things to teach in fundamentals of theory. 0:01:17.0 DN: There's certainly a lot of approaches to use and picking one is hard. 0:01:22.5 GR: Yeah. 0:01:23.1 DN: And doing them all is also hard. [chuckle] 0:01:24.8 GR: Yeah, for sure. For sure. And there's just a lot involved too, right? I mean, it's like you've got the generic interval size. You've got the specific size or quality, you've got the inversions, you have the compound intervals, consonance and dissonance. It just adds up and it's one of those concepts that it seems like, I often forget to budget enough time for because there's almost always a next step. 0:01:56.0 DN: And it's one of those foundational concepts that if you are struggling with it, you're gonna struggle with everything else. 0:02:02.7 GR: Yeah, for sure. For sure. And I find it's also one that can be hard to motivate students to learn, because if you're not careful, it feels really like a terrible set of math problems. 0:02:13.2 DN: Yeah. Also, it's really easy to do if you have plenty of time but it's, you need to know it better than that. You need to know it so well that it doesn't take you time. 0:02:26.2 GR: Yeah and I think for a lot of us who are teaching it there's also that challenge that both Leigh VanHandel and Melissa Hoag talked about of we already know it so well, it's really hard to conceive of what it's like not to know it. 0:02:40.2 DN: Yeah. And there's all these extra concepts involved, the letter names and... 0:02:46.2 GR: So I guess one of the things that I think about a lot is this challenge of how do we keep the teaching of intervals musical, right?  [laughter] 0:02:55.6 GR: I think I'm gonna be really honest here and say, I think the first 15 times I taught intervals it was the dullest thing. I remember saying to classes, I'm sorry, this is gonna seem really boring, but it's really critical. As like a motivator, and I guess it's an okay motivator but there may be better ways the more I've taught it recently I've focused a lot on ways to keep it musical and make it musically relevant. 0:03:25.3 DN: Yeah. Yeah. And of course we've also had... We've talked to people this just recently about other ways of making it fun, but making it fun is not necessarily the same thing as making it musical. And making it musical is certainly more compelling. 0:03:40.4 GR: Yeah. Yeah. And if you can do both, all the better, right? Yeah. 0:03:44.5 DN: Right. 0:03:45.2 GR: Yeah. So I guess I don't know. I'd be curious your take on this. For me, I spend a lot more time teaching when I teach intervals now than I used to talking about consonance and dissonance really early on and talking about intervals as a way to get into how notes work together or work against each other. 0:04:06.3 DN: Ooh. I think that's fabulous

Dr. Paula Telesco walks us through some of the "gotchas" that come up when teaching accidentals, and shares some great musical examples for explaining concepts like enharmonic spelling, double accidentals, and cautionary accidentals.   Transcript  [music] 0:00:21.0 Gregory Ristow: Welcome to Notes from the Staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education. 0:00:35.4 Leah Sheldon: Hi, I'm Leah Sheldon, head of teacher engagement for uTheory. 0:00:39.7 GR: And I'm Gregory Ristow, founder of uTheory and Associate Professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory. 0:00:46.5 LS: Thank you listeners for your comments and your episode suggestions, we'd love to read them, so please send them our way by email at [email protected]. And remember to like us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 0:01:00.5 GR: We'll be taking a deep dive into the topic of teaching accidentals today, and we're delighted to have Dr. Paula Telesco with us for this. Dr. Telesco is a professor of music theory at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Her research interests include music theory and oral skills, pedagogy, analysis of classical and romantic era music, the omnibus progression and her monism and musical cognition. Her writing has appeared in The Journal of music theory pedagogy, the Journal of musicology and music theory spectrum, among others. Most recently, her chapter on the pedagogy of accidental was released in the Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, edited by Leigh VanHandel, who we just spoke with in December. Paula, thanks for joining us. 0:01:44.4 Paula Telesco: Well, thank you, it's great to be here. Thank you for inviting me. 0:01:48.8 GR: Yeah, we're delighted to have you. Tell us a little bit about yourself. You've been teaching at UMass Lowell for some time now. What all do you teach there?  0:01:58.8 PT: Well, I've taught many things. Currently, I'm teaching a basic music theory. I also teach the non-major music history course. The basic theory I'm teaching right now is for non-majors. Well, they're non-majors, they're also music miners or people who want to get into the Music program, but they're not quite ready. 0:02:29.1 GR: Yeah. So, what we often call Fundamentals of Music, sorts of things?  0:02:32.8 PT: Exactly. Yes. 0:02:33.9 GR: Yeah. Excellent, excellent. And I've to say, I really enjoyed your chapter in Leigh VanHandel Routledge Companion on teaching accidental. It reminded me of some things about accidents that frankly, I myself had forgotten. 0:02:47.8 PT: Well, thank you. Yeah, there's a lot more to know, certainly than students are aware of. The students who come into my class have mostly some background, and so they already think they kinda know accidental, but they don't. They know the basic things about them, but there are all these other things, the niceties of them that they're not aware of, so I wanted to make sure that they... I tell them, "This is the best theory deal in town." And I'm trying to give them as much information as I can. [laughter] 0:03:27.2 GR: That's great. I think, one of the things I have experienced, I'm sure you've experienced as well, and Leah certainly in your teaching with the elementary, middle and high school students, I know we've talked about this, is that accidentals can be a really hard topic for students to first grasp. What are some of the things that students struggle with when learning accidental?  0:03:50.7 PT: Well, for my students, the basic concept is not that difficult, it immediately starts getting difficult when you add an E sharp or E flat, something like that. And I tell them throughout the semester, we're gonna see why those kinds of notes are necessary. We're not just doing it just for the sake of putting a sharp next to the note E. So the black notes are always the e

Dr. Leigh VanHandel joins us to talk about the science of memory and learning, and how it can help us better structure our teaching. We also chat about her new book, the Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, which recently received an Outstanding Multi-Authored Collection award from the Society for Music Theory, and about the Workshops in Music Theory Pedagogy series she coordinates.

Dr. Stefanie Dickinson joins us to share some of the music fundamentals games that she uses in her music theory classroom.

Dr. Melissa Hoag joins us to talk about ways we can make the teaching of music fundamentals musical, fun and effective. She shares tips from her chapter in The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, and takes us through her list of six best practices for teaching music theory fundamentals. Links Melissa Hoag's faculty page at Oakland University The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, ed. Leigh VanHandel: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Music-Theory-Pedagogy/VanHandel/p/book/9781032174136 Lana Lubany "Sold" (Harmonic minor scale at beginning): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIGxMtWXjS0 Renaissance Composer Maddalena Casulana: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maddalena_Casulana Bruce Haynes: Performing Pitch: The History of "A": https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780810841857/A-History-of-Performing-Pitch-The-Story-of-A uTheory: Online Music Theory and Ear Training Show Notes 00:01:04 - Guest Introduction: Dr. Melissa Hoag, Oakland University   00:02:01 - Why is teaching music fundamentals hard?   00:03:18 - Can you talk about your own experience teaching music theory fundamentals?   00:05:14 - What topics do you include in music fundamentals?   00:06:37 - What do we get wrong about teaching fundamentals?   00:09:18 - How do you put actual music in your music fundamentals classes?   00:14:31 - Do you still have time for drill & practice if you're spending so much time with real music?   00:15:35 - Importance of letting yourself be fallible in front of students   00:17:21 - What are ways you connect fundamentals to sound?   00:18:30 - Composition exercises in fundamentals & engaging students creatively   00:23:47 - How do you approach teaching a topic that you know so well, that you can't remember what it was like to know the topic?   00:27:06 - The value of the piano keyboard in teaching & learning music fundamentals   00:30:10 - Six Best Practices for teaching music fundamentals   00:30:30 - #1: Repetition Counts   00:35:20 - #2: Consistency and Rigor Matter   00:38:20 - #3: More Assessment Opportunities are Better than Fewer   00:39:27 - #4: Prompt Feedback and Specific Grading Are Import for Learning   00:41:02 - #5: Involve Students in Finding Examples   00:43:31 - #6: Have Fun!   00:45:36 - Final thoughts? We should acknowledge that we're talking about Western, tonal music fundamentals, and that there is much more to the world, and we value that and are curious about that.   00:46:58 - Wrap-up Transcript 0:00:21.2 David Newman: Welcome to Notes from the Staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.   0:00:34.3 Greg Ristow: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and associate professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory.   0:00:40.7 DN: Hi, I'm David Newman and I teach voice and music theory at James Madison University and write code and create content for uTheory.   0:00:48.4 GR: Welcome to our second season of Notes from the Staff, and a quick thanks to all of our listeners for your comments and episode suggestions. We love to read them, so send them our way by email at [email protected], and remember to like us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.   0:01:04.3 DN: Our guest today for the first episode of our second season is Dr. Melissa Hoag who is Associate Professor and Coordinator of music theory at Oakland University. Dr. Hoag's writings have appeared in the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, Music Theory Online, Music Theory Pedagogy Online, College Music Symposium Notes and others. She is a scholar who thinks deeply both about music theory and how to teach it in relevant ways, from her 2013 article on strategies for success in the first year music theory classroom to her 2018 article on relevance and repertoire in the 18th century counterpoint classroom, to her recent chapter in the Routle

Leah, David and Greg reflect back on favorite moments of first season of Notes from the Staff, and chat about coming features for uTheory.

David Newman shares his music theory and aural skills teaching songs, as well as some of the stories behind them, in this laughter-filled episode of Notes from the Staff.

Jed Dearybury, author of The Playful Classroom and The Power of Play for All Ages joins us to talk about how bringing play into classrooms--no matter the age or level--leads to deeper, more engaged and more joyful learning.

Dr. Megan Kaes Long of Oberlin Conservatory joins us to talk about the earliest system of Western solfege, hexachordal solmization, and recent trends in music theory pedagogy.

Leah Sheldon shares tips for going beyond bake sales to build a sustainable fundraising model that can support a vibrant music program.