Educational Experiences
Teaching Music Literacy Skills (reading, composing, improvising) via Solfege
Fixed-do Solfege is a traditional form of teaching music literacy skills, particularly reading and composing music, although improvisation can also be taught using Solfege.
While Solfege may seem like an alien term to most, mention the sounds "do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do" to someone and they'll most likely associate them to music, which indeed they are -- these sounds are the "names" of musical pitches, just as colors are referred to with names like "blue" or "chartreuse." The designation fixed-do refers to the fact that the pitch commonly referred to C is always designated as "do." (There is another form of Solfege, called movable-do, in which whatever note is the key's tonic is referred to as "do." Moveable-do is most often taught in high schools and university schools of music).
Today, Fixed-do Solfege is mostly used at music conservatories (including New England Conservatory, the Juilliard School, and the Curtis Institute of Music) which aim to impart the greatest amount of fundamental music technique upon their students. Randy has intensively studied Solfege and Solfege Pedagogy with Larry Scripp at New England Conservatory, and has been actively teaching this form of aural skills to conservatory music students -- he has been a Teaching Assistant at New England Conservatory for two years.
"You Too Can Be A Solfege Superhero" Project at Boston Arts Academy
Last year, Randy was awarded the opportunity to participate in a unique mentorship program through Music-In-Education@New England Conservatory, a non-degree Concentration program that allows music performance majors to teach as artists-in-residence at Boston-area public schools.
The Boston Arts Academy (BAA), a public high school that emphasizes the fine and performing arts in its curriculum, wished to bolster its students' knowledge of the theoretical aspects of music -- including the ability to read, compose, and improvise music. These skills are commonly known as fundamental music literacy skills.
Randy taught two sections of fixed-do Solfege, twice per week, for one semester at BAA. He lends the following perspective on the project:
At NEC, performance majors are encouraged to teach subjects other than their instrument because the Artist-Teacher-Scholar model challenges students to find ways to link their performance artistry with scholarship and teaching. A key example of this is a fellowship NEC gave me in Spring 2002 to teach Solfege at the Boston Arts Academy (BAA), a public high school near Fenway Stadium. Because it seemed that Solfege (a very traditional form of music pedagogy) would have no room for innovation, I found myself wondering, “how do I engage urban high school students in a centuries-old tradition of teaching music literacy?”
I found an answer when I experimented with a juxtaposition of Solfege with urban hip-hop music (like that by Jennifer Lopez, Eminem, and A Tribe Called Quest). Often, the class and I explored how bass, drum, synthesizer, and vocal tracks on pop tunes interact with one another harmonically and structurally, the same way that violins, violas, and cellos do in a string quartet or a Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and a Baritone does with a Bach Chorale. One of my favorite memories was a class in which we had dug head first into learning each of the rhythm section tracks in Solfege, explored how conventional Bach-like voice leading principles were followed, and then took the next step by improvising melodies that used the same voice-leading but sounded different. With my bass in hand, I accompanied my students as they spontaneously composed their own arrangements of Jennifer Lopez’s hit, “If You Had My Love” – not bad, if I may say, for students who previously had never had lessons in Solfege, improvisation, or composition. My experience at BAA, although only a semester long, demonstrated to me that teaching from a performance background can only help to further one’s teaching and learning experiences; for example, the importance of Bach’s voice leading rules, in order to be truly understood, need to be applied in a concrete way.
In conjunction with the BAA project, Randy also found himself in the workings of authoring a methodology for teaching/learning Solfege along with his young high school students. This methodology, entitled, You Too Can Be A Solfege Superhero, was copyrighted in June of 2002, and can be found in the Library of Congress.
To see pictures from Randy's experience at BAA, click here.
Interested in taking private lessons to improve your knowledge, understanding, and/or practical use of aural skills? Randy particularly specializes in:
If you are a musican and would like to arrange a trial lesson, please feel free to contact him.
English-as-a-Second Language (ESL)
The realm of language acquisition has always been of utmost interest to Randy; as a youngster he often accompanied his mother to French-language conversation groups and other French-language immersion events & activities as sponsored by the Alliance Francaise, of which his mother is an active member (Randy's mother was a French major in college, and spent several years living in Tours, Paris, Toulouse, and Marseilles following her graduation). Randy's real start in ESL came when he heard of a position opening for a Conversation Group Leader for foreign students enrolled in New England Conservatory's Intensive English Proficiency program led by Panagiota Kambouris. While working as Teaching Assistant for the program, which catered mainly to students from Asian countries (especially South Korea, China, and Japan), Randy began to wonder how his training as a performing artist (and his students' training as well, since all were students at New England Conservatory) could affect his students' abilities to learn the English language.
South Ocean School Dalian's Intensive English Summer Camp
In July and August of 2002, Randy was one of eight teachers chosen to receive a Teaching Fellowship from the International Office at South Ocean School Dalian, to teach at the school's Intensive English Summer Camp. Randy saw it as the perfect opportunity to experiment with the Learning Through Music model in a foreign setting. Randy writes of his experiments:
New England Conservatory's Artist-Teacher-Scholar ("A-T-S") framework guided me as I journeyed to China this past summer, to teach English as a Second Language at South Ocean School Dalian’s Intensive English Immersion Camp, and as an emissary of American culture and Western teaching.
My China trip allowed me the unique opportunity to simultaneously implement the A-T-S framework and Learning Through Music model with students who had most likely never encountered their equivalents; in fact, the camp’s administration specifically wanted Western teachers who could teach using non-traditional methods.
One of the most interesting transformations my students and I observed were the elimination of accents from phonetic pronunciation in their English. Most of my students, since they were taught by non-native English speakers, came to camp with severe accents. But when we practiced singing simple conversational phrases, using familiar melodies, their foreign accents began to disappear. And disappear they did, as we took steps further by gradually eliminating the pitch element, so that their phrases really did become understandable. I also experimented with composing melodies that matched the conversational tonality of each phrase; for example, question phrases were marked by rising contours. Because my students’ overall English proficiency ranged from zero to moderate, implementing the Learning Through Music teaching model and A-T-S framework was not only helpful, but highly appropriate.
To see pictures from Randy's trip to China, click here.
Research Center for Learning Through Music
Teaching Assistant, New England Conservatory Music Theory Department
All original compositions © by their respective owners.
To contact me (Randy Wong), e-mail me directly.