Why
are learning musical fundamentals and musicianship so important for children?
As
someone who always loved music as a child I did not start playing an instrument
until the relatively late age of fourteen. Then, it wasn't until I was in my
twenties and studying music at a university that I began to realize how
important musical fundamentals really are and how much I missed out on compared
to people who had been studying music from an early age. In fact, fundamentals
are so important that they what I currently spend the most time practicing and
improving still at the age of thirty-two.
I will share some of my experiences
with musicians who studied fundamentals from a very young age which served as
eye-openers for me.
When I was twenty-two years old, I
had the fortunate opportunity to play in a Master Class with the fantastic
guitarist Lorenzo Micheli from Italy. During our lesson, he could sight-read
even the most difficult sections of the piece and solfege any voice of the
music with perfect pitches and in a very musical way. It was like he could
instantly hear all of the music in his head and absorb it just by looking at
the page. I later spoke with him after his concert and he invited me to a
guitar festival in Italy where they give lessons for interested students.
A year later, I was returning to the
festival in Cervo for the second time and was taking a train from Milan with
some of the guitar students I met there the previous year. One of them asked me
which pieces I intended to work on with my lessons so I showed her the music.
She sung the entire piece with Solfege from start to finish just by looking at
the music and then remarked 'I like this piece very much, it is beautiful!'. I
was amazed because I'd never met a young person in the United States who could
do that.
Then later on in my life, after I'd
finished my first degree in music, I was staying with a friend in North
Carolina and we were just enjoying the summer and learning to play and sing our
favorite songs on the guitar. It was very difficult for me to learn how to play
and sing guitar at the same time. My friend, who doesn't even consider himself
to be a musician and rarely ever picks up any instrument to practice, could
figure out the songs much more quickly. In fact, he could recall entire songs
from memory and figure out the chords on the guitar and start singing the
melody with all the correct pitches - all with very little effort. I said to him
'Alright Mozart, how can you do that? I'm jealous.' He said that he had studied
violin with the Suzuki approach on the violin when he was a kid and it improved
his ear so much that it carried over into his later life even though he never
practiced anymore.
In Italy, it is common to have
classes in elementary and middle public schools where music fundamentals and
Solfege are taught to children. And children who show interest in music are
often able to attend professional conservatories at a low-cost, where they learn
fundamentals very well from a young age in addition to playing an instrument.
My friend in North Carolina was lucky enough to have had parents who gave him
the gift of Suzuki training as a child. Even though he isn't a professional
musician, music has always been one of his absolute favorite things in life.
The more fundamentals are studied
and practiced, the more clearly a person is able to hear pitches and subtleties
when listening to or playing music. And this is incredibly beneficial to both
professional musicians and non-professional musicians who love music. By
teaching kids fundamentals, they will better appreciate and more clearly hear
music, regardless of their path in life.
Studying the musical fundamentals,
like solfege, sight-singing, sight-reading, pitch and chord progression
recognition are important for enjoyment and success in general music and instrumental
study. Solfege trains the ability to
hear pitches in a person's head just by looking at the music. Sight-singing is beneficial for all musicians
because all music – vocal and instrumental music - has melodies intended to be
shaped to resemble a sung voice.
Harmonic progressions provide the foundation and support melody.
As a guitar teacher, and musician in
general, I always try to teach the fundamentals and emphasize their importance
to my students, in addition to guitar specific skills such as proper
technique. Any great work, composition,
or performance is built upon a good foundation - and having a strong foundation
in musical fundamentals improves their musicianship for any instrument that
they might end up picking up throughout their lives in addition to improving
their ear and listening experience everytime they hear any genre of music from
throughout the world.
-Mr. Shawn Satler, CYM guitar department
No comments:
Post a Comment