Music Mentor: This is how music should be taught
By Zatni Arbi
JAKARTA (JP): Roughly two years ago, someone wrote an excellent exposition in the Kompas daily about how Indonesian children are put through a torture called "music class". Instead of learning to sing popular children songs, third and fourth grade students are taught to read music.
"Gone is the enjoyment of learning music at school," the author wrote, "because the children are now trained to be conductors even though they can't even sing correctly." Two years have elapsed since the article appeared, but the torturous music lessons at Indonesian elementary schools remain.
Having a nine-year old child myself, I have firsthand experience of this sad joke. Last year, this daughter of mine was told by her teacher to learn to play the recorder because that was the instrument used to teach pupils to read music.
Feeling sorry for my daughter, who became so frustrated because she found it really hard to play the correct notes on the recorder, I went to her school and met her music teacher. I asked him very politely why he didn't just let the children use a small keyboard, like a cheap Pianica or a Casiotone electronic keyboard, instead of forcing them to learn to play the recorder.
"The black and white keys on the keyboard will make it easy for the children to visualize the relationships between musical notes," I suggested. "They will be able to see that, for instance, there are seven notes between a Do and a higher Do. Because of the way the recorder is played, such a visual aid is not there," I reasoned.
Unfortunately, our teachers aren't much different from our bureaucrats. They may make grandiose assertions that they're always open to suggestions from parents, but nothing will ever change. My daughter's music teacher simply answered my question by saying that the recorder would be the tool of trade for my daughter until she graduated from that elementary school, so I'd better start teaching her to play that instrument whether I liked it or not.
We really do have much to lament when it comes to our children's formal education. If our children weren't forced to spend so much time on so many useless and worthless things at school, they could get much better and more meaningful education at home using the plethora of multimedia materials available. Music lessons, for example, could come from Music Mentor.
Digital Mentor
Music Mentor, written by Music Technologies Associates, is one of several musical software programs available. Although the version I looked at was already three years old, it didn't matter because masterpieces never age.
The Main Screen, which is on the opening screen, lets you choose what you want to explore. You can start with the most basic knowledge of music, or you can jump to one of the five major eras in the history of music: Early music, Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Modern. Music Mentor is organized around melody, rhythm, harmony, timbre, texture and form. Whether you explore the basics or any of the five musical eras, your lessons will be categorized according to these six topics.
You definitely need a good sound board that supports MIDI, a pair of stereo speakers, a CD-ROM drive and a fast machine to take advantage of Music Mentor, as the software comes with a collection of MIDI clips -- sample music that you can listen to in order to gain a better understanding of what you're reading.
A musical tour
If, like myself, you are also one of the uninitiated, the best place to start -- as is usually the case -- is at the beginning in the Basics. Clicking the button found in the left panel of the Main Screen will bring up six buttons in the right panel. Starting with Melody, the leftmost button in the row, is instinctive.
Clicking on the Melody button will bring up the first music lesson. Music Mentor is written in a rather conversational language which makes it all the more interesting.
It explains the definition of "melody" as: "A simple definition might be to say that a melody is a succession of pitches which is perceived by the mind as a unity. A simple example is the part of a song that you can sing or hum or pretend to sing or hum." Clear and easy to read.
Music Mentor doesn't simply suggest that a melody should be perceivable as a unity. Underneath the definition there's a music notation and underneath it there's a button to tell Music Mentor to play the succession of notes on the notation -- using MIDI. When I clicked the button I heard: A succession of pitches which, to me, didn't form a unity at all. What I heard reinforces my understanding of what a melody is.
On the bottom of the screen is a line of buttons that allow you to go to the recording session, to the previous or next screen, or to get back to the Main Screen. Clicking the Next button after each screen will take you through lessons on each of the six topics -- from Melody to Form.
Historically rich
The history sections of Music Mentor show what composers have done with the six musical elements since the Middle Ages. For example, you can go to the Romantic Harmony section to get an idea of how composers in the Romantic era used harmony. Or you can go to the Modern era to see how rhythm has been used by modern composers in creating their own music.
I explored the Classical era, and Music Mentor led me to the section explaining how an orchestral work was created. There are plenty of "Play" buttons to press to get examples of how musical piece sound each time another instrument is added.
In fact, Music Mentor is very rich with music samples, and although they were created using MIDI instruments, they were played by professionals. Mozart's variations of Twinkle, twinkle little star, for instance, would deceive passersby if played through a pair of power speakers; they would think a concert pianist was practicing.
And -- music teachers take note -- there is also a section that teaches how to read music. Strangely, however, this section is not accessible from the Main Screen. To get to it, you have to click on the Mentor menu item and then Reading Music. Like other sections, however, the lessons on music reading are very well prepared and appealingly presented.
Having briefly enjoyed Music Mentor, I wonder why Indonesian children must still endure the unpleasant experience of being scolded by their teachers for not being able to play the recorder. Music could be taught in a much more entertaining and informative way.
There is so much to learn. Learning about music can definitely be very enlightening, as long as we start from the basics and build from there.
Music Mentor was created using Asymetrix ToolBook, so it's possible for Indonesian music teachers to produce similar educational material in Bahasa Indonesia. But unless property rights are protected, who would be interested in such a time and resource consuming venture?