Composition: Helping Students Grow, Part 2

NAfME member Daniel Deutsch shares more strategies and tactics for helping students with their first composition assignment (continued from Part 1):

The student who can’t think of an opening idea:

“What kind of mood or style do you want for your piece?” Deutsch asks. Once the mood is picked, “Can you hear a little tune that sounds like that?”

When questions fail to jumpstart the process, Deutsch uses some ice-breaking activities:

Start in the student’s comfort zone: “What is your favorite scale?”
Ask the student to play the scale normally.
Then lead a series of transformations:

Dynamics

Articulation

Note Duration

Repeating Notes

Change in scale direction

Soon, almost every student will discover a satisfying musical idea.

The Blocked Composer:

Try asking “What sounds good after that?”
Have the student listen passively. “I’m going to play your piece for you. Just imagine what would sound good next.”
Enlist the class’s help. Play the music while students take turns singing the next phrase.
Demonstrate possible solutions with alternative scenarios to choose from.

If the music seems drab or lifeless:

Appeal to the student’s emotions. “How do you feel when you score a soccer goal? Wouldn’t it be fun to put that in your piece?”

When the student’s ideas are hard to understand:

Don’t judge too swiftly.
Record the music and listen to it several times outside class.
Ask, “Do you mean this, or this?” as you bend the phrase slightly in one direction or another.
“Some of my favorite music is unusual. Do you want to create something unusual, or are you unsure what you mean or how to play it?”

The advanced student:

Help the student understand the theoretical implications of his or her ideas.
Extend the knowledge through exercises and analysis.
Urge the student to participate in regional, state, and national programs and competitions to interact with compositional peers.

Deutsch stresses, “All students must leave each lesson with hope, optimism, and a sense of how they’ll move forward.”

“In direct response to students’ weekly progress,” Deutsch says, “the curriculum spirals up through a series of topics: melody and harmony; tension and release; phrase, form, and structure; texture and instrumentation; dynamics, expression, and articulation; and tonal, modal, and atonal theory, as appropriate.”

Resources–NAfME Books:

Why and How to Teach Music Composition: A New Horizon for Music Education, by Maud Hickey

Minds on Music: Composition for Creative and Critical Thinking, by Michele Kaschub and Janice Smith

Composition in the Classroom: A Tool for Teaching, by Jackie Wiggins

Daniel Deutsch is the Composition/Improvisation Chairperson of the New York State School Music Association (http://composition.nyssma.org) and National Chair of the NAfME Student Composers Competition.

This article is adapted from “Mentoring Young Composers: The Small-Group, Individualized Approach,” by Daniel Deutsch, in the Fall 2009 issue of the Kansas Music Review. Used with permission.