S15: E277 Nurturing Musical Growth: Identifying and Supporting Struggling Musicians
In episode 276, I talked about how we can identify and support students who demonstrate exceptional musicianship and need a push beyond the standard Today we’re looking at how to identify and support students who are struggling in areas of musical concepts or performance of musical skills. I’ll talk through some common areas of struggle that I’ve seen in my students over the years. Then discuss ideas for how we can help them gain confidence and improve their musical skills to build stronger personal musicianship.
First Area: steady beat
Students struggle to keep a steady beat or find it challenging to clap or tap along with music.
Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.
Moving to music.
Older students who are struggling: march beat. Pat beat while listening to you sing a song. Tap beat while speaking rhythm. Passing games that require a beat - concentration.
Second Area: matching pitch
Student has difficulty matching pitch or singing in tune
Singing too loud
Hasn’t heard themselves sing alone
Hasn’t received feedback that they aren’t singing in tune
Individual singing opportunities: love games for this that involve call and response or one student to sing a phrase
Meet individually with student to do listening
Third Area: Inconsistent Tempo
Difficulty maintaining a consistent tempo while performing a piece or playing with others
Move first. Then speak the rhythm or sing the melody while moving to the beat. If playing a piece, tap the rhythms on your lap before playing them on percussion instruments.
Check the tempo of the piece you’re working on. It may be too slow! Determine if the tempo of the piece needs to speed up a bit (meaning that you change the tempo you’re teaching it) or if you truly want students to go with your tempo. I often will use a metronome website to check what tempo we keep trying to push it.
Typically I find that students rush more than they slow down. Unless they’re singing or playing soft! Then they often try to play soft and in doing so, they slow down the tempo.
Explore different tempos with students.
Fourth Area: Coordination
I see this especially when students in drumming ensembles or using mallets on xylophones.
Speak it. Tap it. Play it.
Take away the mallets. Students move to the melody. Sing it. Make sure they can perform it with their bodies before putting anything in their hands.
Slow down the tempo. Review hand positions or movements at a slower pace to check for coordination of where hands should be.
Hand clap games - great for crossover hand positions and brain connection.
Playing with movement and shapes to music.
Fifth Area: Improvisation or Creating Musical Ideas
Students need parameters when they first begin improvising or composing. Blanket statements asking students to create something musical are overwhelming.
My favorite: Pentatonic scales. Break it down even more by asking them to improvise on one pitch. They’re only creating a rhythm.
Provide building blocks. Use speech.
Improvising with singing: limited options. Create patterns with only so and mi. Create a melody using the tonic and dominant (C and G). Then scaffold over time. Now create with Do, Mi and So. Create a melody using the tonics of this chord progression: C G C F.
When we see a student struggling, we want to help guide them towards understanding what they’re doing that isn’t correct while encouraging them with ideas for what to try. Oh this can get tricky sometimes. Our role is to help build understanding and skills while helping students find success over time without feeling embarrassed or defeated. Sometimes this is done in those one-on-one conversations after class. Sometimes this is done as a whole class explanation when there are many students not demonstrating musical skills correctly. Sometimes this is best done through peer teaching: pairing students who demonstrate correct technique or musical skills with a student who is struggling. This requires teaching students how to lead peers and help them without doing it for them or just telling them they’re wrong. Conversations about leading help with this!
As with many things, it takes time to help students develop and growth musical skills. Provide opportunities for lots of repetition in practicing and experiencing music.