Abstract
String musicians put a high priority on ear training in order to be successful on their instruments. Research suggests that delaying music reading to teach by ear does not negatively affect sight-reading performance in the long term, may improve music literacy skills, and also may improve student perceptions of accomplishment. The pedagogy of learning by ear, which is distinctly different than learning by rote, may be unfamiliar to many string teachers, regardless of their experience in the classroom. The purpose of this research-to-resource article is to provide string teachers with strategies to teach repertoire by ear with the intention of strengthening students’ aural acuity, problem-solving skills, and knowledge of the fingerboard.
Due to the multiple physical components of string posture (e.g., bow hold and instrument placement) and the physics of bowed string instruments, many string pedagogues have suggested strings be taught without the use of sheet music in the beginning stages (e.g., MacLeod, 2019). Accurate intonation, vital to musicianship in any discipline, is especially important in string playing. This may be attributed somewhat to timbre but also to fingerboard geography. String instrument finger placement is sequential but not fixed because there are multiple hand positions that a string player may use to play the same pitch. In addition, string players have been found to use multiple systems of tuning (e.g., Pythagorean, Just, and Expressive), sometimes within one piece of music (Keyes, 2013). String players must adjust certain notes depending on the key, to maintain correct intonation; for example, they raise the leading tone higher when it is functioning as a different scale degree. There has also been evidence that listeners are more critical of string intonation than with other instruments (Geringer, MacLeod, Madsen, & Napoles, 2015; Geringer, MacLeod, & Sasanfar, 2015). For these reasons, ear training is important at all stages of string instrument learning.
The importance of ear training for string musicians has been emphasized throughout the literature, from the beginner level (Bergonzi, 1997) to advanced college-level string musicians (Ha, 2015). It is clear that intonation is a technique that string players work to perfect throughout their careers. Intonation is at the forefront of their priorities with every practice and performance. Kupers et al. (2014) investigated the techniques that master string teachers covered in lessons and found that intonation, posture, and style were most often attended to and note reading was rarely addressed. This is primarily because reading is something that provides access to the music making and generally does not require constant honing once the skill is obtained.
Aural-Based Instruction and Delayed Music Reading
Music reading has been lauded as a vitally important component of music education (Asmus, 2004; Shehan, 1987). It has been presented as an antithesis to rote learning or learning by ear (Asmus, 2004). However, McPherson (2005) found that music literacy and ear training are equally important to the success and retention of student musicians. He found that poor student performance in both sight-reading and in playing by ear were correlated with music lesson dropout rates. Similarly, Theorell et al. (2015) found that learning by ear may be significantly and positively associated with continued playing into adulthood.
Ear learning has been found to inform sight-reading skills (Gromko, 2004; Musco, 2009, 2010). Researchers have also found that learning by ear may have a positive effect on music literacy skills and may be an effective method for preparation for sight-reading and for performing rehearsed music (McPherson, 1993; Musco, 2010). In a comparison experiment, Musco (2009) found that students who learned exercises in new keys by ear, compared with students who read from notation, performed just as well when sight-reading in the new keys and reported significantly higher perceptions of improvement than their counterparts. Other scholars have found that the skill of playing by ear significantly correlates with improved sight-reading skill and this correlation improves over time (McPherson, 2005). Similarly, Mishra (2014) found that sight-reading was a skill that improved with the musicality of the performer rather than being a simple decoding process. These findings indicate that aural training can be a pathway to music literacy and the two skills are interconnected. Finally, Musco’s (2010) literature review concluded that aural-based instruction is supported in the research as an important and effective means of teaching music.
Several researchers have investigated the impact of delayed note reading on music literacy (Glenn, 1999; Grande, 1989; Haston, 2010; Musco, 2006; West & Rostvall, 2003). Haston (2010) and Musco (2006) found that delayed note reading did not impede the development of sight-reading skills. Glenn (1999) found that delaying note reading for 3 months of a school year did not affect students’ sight-reading performances and that the ear learning experimental group experienced a significantly higher rate of continuation when compared with the music notation group. The author concluded that allowing students to develop a certain degree of automaticity in string playing before introducing music reading may make reading easier, improve performances, and lower the dropout rate. Grande (1989) compared student performance and sight-reading abilities after 20 weeks of instruction. Half of the students started with notation and half of the students learned by rote during the first 10 weeks. The rote experimental group performed better but not significantly. It was noted that students in the experimental rote group commented that music reading was fun and like a game when note reading was delayed. Similarly, but with a contrasting design, West and Rostvall (2003) analyzed transcripts of private lessons and found that the teachers exclusively focused on reading notes from the method books and rarely modeled for their students. Instructions to students were primarily verbal. When students had questions about the music, the teachers referred to the method book instead of an aural example. They found that in these sight-over-sound lessons music was presented as a grouping of symbolic objects not an audible phenomenon. They found that the students did not develop authentic music skills and, thus, often dropped out of lessons.
Supporting an Inclusive and Culturally Responsive Classroom
Learning by ear is a tradition in folk, blues, jazz, and popular music. Strings, specifically, are an important component of Old Time, Mariachi, and other eclectic styles that rely more on performing by ear and improvisation than on music reading. Ear learning is culturally relevant for anyone who is not regularly exposed to Western art music. Researchers have identified aural learning as being an approach that is prevalent within many diverse communities. For example, Tan (2011) suggested that rote learning is a culturally ingrained approach among those of an East Asian descent and that teachers may find success with students from these cultures using rote techniques. Gilbert (2018) and Waldron and Veblen (2009) both noted that Celtic music is almost exclusively transmitted aurally and that aural learning contributes to feelings of community and connection among the musicians.
Students with disabilities may also benefit from the addition of an aural approach in their music classroom. Students with visual impairments and reading disabilities, for example, could be included without modifications if aural learning had a prominent role in their orchestra class. Empirical evidence has documented that music reading is correlated with academic abilities, but many academically challenged students are also gifted in music as evidenced by music aptitude tests (Kuhlman, 2005). Similarly, it should be noted that music literacy goes well beyond visually decoding symbols on a page. Literate musicians know about key signatures, modes, chordal progressions, cadences, and beyond. There are documented cases of pivotal, visually impaired musicians who do not ever read music, yet are highly musically literate (Jaramillo, 2018).
Classrooms and ensembles are filled with students of diverse backgrounds and abilities. Teachers are more likely to meet the learning needs of the wide variety of students if multiple approaches are utilized. Delayed note reading and an emphasis on ear learning meet the criteria of the concept of universal design in which the approach meets the needs of a much larger pool of students.
Learning by Ear Compared With Rote Teaching
Rote learning has often been thought to be synonymous with ear learning, but the difference between learning by rote and learning by ear are distinct processes (McPherson, 2005; Musco, 2010). Learning by rote is a teacher-led activity that involves verbal and visual instructional cues without traditional notation. Learning by ear is a student-engaged, aural translation of an existing piece without traditional notation. Both learning types may fall under the heading of sound before sight. Example activities for playing by ear include (a) echo playbacks of musical phrases, (b) question and answer phrases to chain longer melodic sections together, and (c) decoding familiar melodies. In contrast, examples of rote learning activities include (a) teaching the solfège syllables while students echo; (b) writing the note names, solfege syllables, or finger numbers on the board or on paper as a reminder to students; and (c) teacher modeling of fingerings.
Learning by ear requires that students listen to determine whether a pitch is higher, lower, or the same and then demonstrate the directional movement on their instruments. Student who learn by ear are analyzing pitches and how they relate to musical phrases and applying their knowledge to decode the music. Students learning by rote are remembering what the teacher has taught and putting it into practice on their own instrument. Learning by ear trains the ear, while learning by rote trains the memory.
Strategies for Teaching by Ear
In Musco’s (2010) literature review regarding rote learning, she concluded that “very few resources offer concrete suggestions [for ear learning strategies] specifically for instrumental teaching” (p. 59). Although the literature is scant in this area, some have attempted to analyze ear learning more empirically by describing the process. For example, McPherson (2005) detailed three strategies that participants most often employed when individually learning a piece by ear: (a) listening to determine the contour of the melody and singing or chanting the rhythms; (b) thinking about how to play the notes on the instrument, often piecing the song together in parts or chunks or chanting the rhythms while fingering through the piece; and (c) playing along with a recording or between hearings of the song. In addition, others, such as West and Rostvall (2003), have suggested that teachers chunk melodic phrases for their students and provide plenty of opportunities to repeat melodic passages to support students’ internalization of the melody. To supplement this body of work, I suggest the following research-based sequence for teaching ear learning in a group setting.
Learning by Ear in a Group Setting
Prerequisites: Students should know the geography of the fingerboard for the notes that are included in the song.
Song choices: Simple, easy-to-sing melodies that appeal to both teachers and students and that employ skills that are sequentially appropriate for the students. Melodies should come from diverse music traditions.
Sequence of activities:
Provide a listening example of the whole song with enough repetition that the students are able to sing along using words or sung on a neutral syllable such as la. Note: Providing pitch names or solfège would be an example of rote learning.
Divide the song into singable phrases and have the students echo your singing of each phrase while moving up and down with the contour of the melody. Students could also draw the melodic contour on the board as a form of assessment before trying it on their instruments.
After a starting note name is provided, students work on one short phrase at a time. Teachers play or sing the phrase, then give students a short amount of time to discover the remaining notes on their own. Note: If students are memorizing finger movement, they are learning by rote.
During the discovery learning time, students can be paired to support those who are having difficulty or the teacher can roam around helping students by playing the phrase again or guiding the student with questions about the melodic contour.
Once students learn the phrases, the full melody can be chained together. Teachers can also start with the end phrase and work backward through the song or can begin with a phrase that repeats within a song.
Repetition is crucial. To practice, teachers can assign individual students one phrase from the song and direct each student to play the parts in order, in tempo, without pause. Teachers can also use a call-and-response technique in which the teacher plays alternating phrases with the students.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.