Music Tuition: Teaching Portfolio

Introduction:

This teaching portfolio will include learning approaches and techniques aimed towards a beginner vocal student with interest in the jazz genre and extended improvisation. As the student will already have a background in the genre my teaching approach will be taken from a vocal perspective, maximising on how a singer would interpret jazz standards originally written for a trumpet or saxophone. 

By approaching the learning style in this way, the student will begin to understand the traditional structure of how a jazz performance would take place. For the lesson, the tune that I will be teaching my student is ‘Autumn Leaves’ written by Joseph Kosma. 

I picked ‘Autumn Leaves’ because the melody and structure of the tune is simple and repetitive as well as the harmony being relatively functional and typical of the jazz genre. I also picked this tune as I know that my student (Miles Hardy) already knows the tune well from listening to instrumental versions such as the Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderley interpretation. 

During the lesson I will be applying a mixture of different learning styles to allow the student to learn in various ways. Multisensory learning will be at the forefront of my teaching style incorporating Fleming and Mills (1992) VARK Modalities which suggested learning and teaching experiences with a mixture of visual, aural and kinaesthetic approaches to allow the student’s strengths to come through. From their findings they state that ¹“Those who do not have a standout mode with one preference score well above other scores are defined as multimodal.” I wish to incorporate this teaching style so that whether my student is multimodal or more lenient to a particular approach, they are not being deprived of any access to all these ways of learning. 

 Movement will take a key role in memorising the lyrics of the tune so I will include the Orff and Dalcroze Eurhythmics methods, using movement to cement the students learning into their memory. 

The Learning Environment:

When preparing the learning environment for the student I will first consider the lighting in the room. I will purposefully select a practice space with a window so that a considerable amount of light enters the room, for this reason the lesson will also take place in the morning. The student is also less likely to be burnt out in the morning and so their concentration and attention will be better. This lesson took place in the Leeds Conservatoire building, so adaptations to the learning environment were limited however, these are things I would usually take into consideration when teaching in a space I have more control of. 

Lighting will either be natural lighting, or warm low lighting such as fairy lights or lamps as harsh, bright lights would create an uncomfortable learning experience for the student and myself. Having lighting which isn’t overstimulating won’t distract the student’s focus from the lesson. 

I would also decorate the space with a variety of plants and flowers to add colour and a sense of life to the space. Another reason I will intentionally incorporate plants into the learning environment is because ²“active interaction with indoor plants can reduce physiological and psychological stress…through suppression of sympathetic nervous system activity…and promotion of comfortable, soothed and natural feelings.” So, if the student is feeling anxious about their first lesson this may help calm them. 

Finally, something which is essential to the learning environment is a piano. This is the main reason why my 1-1 lesson took place in the Conservatoire, as it is fully equipped with Boston and Steinway pianos. I will utilise the piano for: 

• The vocal warmup – I will practice arpeggiating up and down major7 chord tones, as well as intervallic practice 
• To transpose – as my student is a male singer, we will both be singing in different ranges and octaves to each other. Having the piano means that I can transpose the tune as well as any other vocal exercises into a key or range which suits him best 
• Tuning – having a piano at hand during teaching is useful for intonation and checking that we are still singing within the correct harmonic space 

Lesson Plan:

Lesson Reflection:

Warm Up:

During the warmup I believe that the student approached the exercises I gave them well and confidently. In hindsight I should have thought more about the range of my student’s voice and which exercises would have suited him more, however the warm-up exercises I had prepared targeted more jazz-specific technique. For example, major 7 arpeggios are something which can be done in any range of the voice and focuses more on ear training as well being a beneficial warm-up technique. Using different vowel sounds and syllables such as ‘oo’ and ‘vv’ allowed the student to understand how the same notes can sit differently within the placement of the mouth, depending on the enunciation. 

(See at 01:48)

We also warmed up with a lip trill, this is something the student struggled with technically so I adjusted the lesson by getting him to do the same exercise on a ‘vv’ sound, so he could get the same aim out of the exercises but at an adjusted ability. 

(See at 04:03)

Overall, the warm-up was beneficial to the student, but in any future lessons I would put more consideration into the range of the student’s voice. 

Learning ‘Autumn Leaves’:

The student already had some knowledge of the jazz standard ‘Autumn Leaves’ which helped him to excel in the lesson. I sang him a version of the song with lyrics, as he has only listened to instrumental versions before, and had a chord chart up on the piano for him to look at whilst I sang. For the lesson, I wanted to take the VARK Modalities approach incorporating multisensory teaching approaches for my student to fully benefit. At this point in the lesson the student was experiencing both visual and aural learning styles. 

After I had shown him an interpretation of the song, I began to teach him the tune to ‘Autumn Leaves’ (without lyrics) in short four bar phrases. I decided to take this approach to teaching from Grindea (1978), Odam (1995) and Whiteside (2000) and their research which “advocates singing short phrases, pitching intervals and experiencing movement away from the instrument as part of the sightreading process”. As the voice is the instrument in this instance, I decided to take my own interpretation of their research by learning the tune by singing in ‘short phrases’. This also helped for when we introduced learning the lyrics to the song, as the student could remember the tune in smaller blocks, rather than trying to remember the whole thirty-two bars all at once. 

(See at 07:06)

As we were learning the tune I was taking a summative assessment style, giving him feedback on what he could improve on as the lesson went along. I believe that this type of assessment worked best with this student as he responded quickly to the instructions that I gave him. 

Whilst we were singing through the tune together, I noticed that Miles was moving his head a lot to aim for notes he thought were too high or too low for him. I explained to him that this is bad for the vocal cords as he was stretching them when he moved his head. I also discussed that he is probably moving his head like this because he thinks that he can’t reach the notes, so my solution for this issue was to have him sing in front of a mirror. He sang the tune all the way through, this time watching himself in the mirror and trying to keep his head still and correcting himself if he did move his head. Once he had finished this exercise, I asked him if it felt any different in his voice, and he responded saying it felt much easier to sing. 

(See at 10:54 – 13:24)

Once we had learnt the whole melody on a ‘doo’ sound, we moved onto learning the lyrics for ‘Autumn Leaves’. We took the same approach with the lyrics as we did with learning the melody, taking the words four bars at a time so that they could fully cement into the student’s memory. As we went on it was clear that he was struggling to remember some of the lyrics, or he was mixing up lines with each other. At this point I decided to apply the ‘Orff’ and ‘Dalcroze Eurhythmics’ methods to my teaching. I incorporated actions to represent the lyrics of the tune. For example, waving our hands vertically downwards to mimic leaves falling for the lyric “The Falling Leaves”. I also had the student come up with most of the actions themselves, as I knew this would help them remember the lyrics better. I had also researched into ²Sudnow’s ‘Ways of the Hand’ (1978) which describes how hand shapes and finger patterns are felt kinaesthetically, providing an example that our playing is seemingly create by what our muscles know (apply this to singing and how humans now how to make this sound naturally). Once we applied these methods the student found it much easier to remember the lyrics. 

(See at 17:20)

Another thing I had noticed whilst the student was singing ‘Autumn Leaves’ with lyrics was that some notes weren’t as clear, or as in tune depending on the lyric. For example, the word ‘leaves’ always sounded flat when he sang it. My advice to Miles was to lift his cheeks and ‘face’ more whilst he sang in this ‘ee’ vowel, he also found a similar struggle with the word ‘window’ which although sat lower in the face on a ‘oh’ vowel, still needed to be bright. An exercise I came up with the tackle this issue was for Miles to imagine that he was ‘putting up a hood’ every time he sang these vowel sounds. By pairing this imaginary idea with the action of putting up a hood the notes sounded much brighter when he sung them the second time around. This teaching method links back to Sudnow’s theory that hand ‘shapes or actions influence and create muscle memory. By imagining this scenario whilst singing these notes, Miles was aiming higher for the notes which meant they were no longer flat and out of tune. 

(See at 21:05 – 21:37)

Improvisation:

Once he was comfortable with the melody (head) of ‘Autumn leaves’ we discussed improvisation. I already knew prior to the lesson that Miles had a very wide jazz language vocabulary, therefore I didn’t go into detail on the basics of how to navigate your way around the changes. As improvisation was something I had added as an additional advanced exercise on my lesson plan, I let him intuitively improvise around the chord changes. Once he had done a chorus (one take of the song structure) I traded fours with him. I made this decision spontaneously to see how he would react, and I wanted to see if he would feed off any ideas, I gave him through my own improvisation. This was a success. 

(See at 25:36 – 27:27)

Finally, to end the lesson I had Miles do a full take of ‘Autumn Leaves’ in a traditional jazz structure. For example: Head in, Chorus (improvisation), Head out

I made him do this completely on his own so I could assess his progress and give him some final feedback at the end of the lesson. His overall performance was excellent for a beginner to jazz singing; to improve I told him to work more on his stage presence and playing around with the melody more in the head out. Finally, I asked him for feedback on my teaching which he said he found very helpful and clear. 

(See at 27:31)

Final Reflection:

Reflecting on this, I believe that my student made excellent progress throughout the lesson learning considerably about vocal health and placement whilst singing. I believe that taking the multisensory learning approaches was the right decision, as my student was able to benefit from visual, aural and kinaesthetic teaching methods. He managed to exceed expectations and take on the more advanced task in my lesson plan and was interactive in his improvisational skills. 

As a teacher I have learnt that I need to be more aware of my student’s specific needs. For example, whether they know what their range is, how comfortable they are singing in specific areas of their range and their overall technique whilst singing. Overall, I have learnt that teaching with a variety of different approaches and methods allows you and your student to benefit from the learning experience, as their strengths will show more in specific areas visually, aurally or kinaesthetically. 

Bibliography:

1. VARK Learn Limited (2020). The VARK Modalities. [online] VARK – A Guide to Learning Preferences. Available at: https://vark-learn.com/introduction-to-vark/the-vark-modalities/.
2. Lee, M., Lee, J., Park, B.-J. and Miyazaki, Y. (2015). Interaction with indoor plants may reduce psychological and physiological stress by suppressing autonomic nervous system activity in young adults: a randomized crossover study. Journal of Physiological Anthropology, [online] 34(1). doi:https://doi.org/10.1186/s40101-015-0060-8.  
3. Sudnow, D. (1999). Ways of the hand : the organization of improvised conduct. Cambridge, Mass.: Mit Press.