6 ms·

Courses teaching music theory through visual depictions, take note!

by oatmeal1 3y ago

NetOpWibby 3y ago
This is why I failed music class in high-school. I was the only non-band student so the work was accelerated.
- jacobolus 3y ago
  This is why trying to rank/judge/grade everyone by a uniform standard is almost universally terrible. Students should be encouraged to try their best in every subject, allowed to make the mistakes they are naturally going to make at whatever level they are currently, and helped to improve over time. Punishing people for being less prepared than peers who did more practice or for making ordinary and expected mistakes actively gets in the way of their learning, as well as making them feel terrible. It's pretty bad for the students who are more prepared as well, as many of them internalize the idea that they are inherently good at some things and inherently bad at others, which is sometimes temporarily gratifying but often stops them from pushing themselves to try anything new or hard.
  - shrubhub 3y ago
    How do you decide who gets to study a subject full time at a famous institution?
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      Same way we do now: based on who's parents can donate a new wing for the campus to build. But sure, it's the same problem with any other prestigious venue. Demand far far far outstrips supply. So they don't really need to pick "the best" students. Merely students "over the bar of quality". There's no problem in the eyes of the venue, so there's nothing to change. I think the implied assumption in this question is flawed to begin with in that not everyone needs to be at a famous institution to succeed. But if you want my likely bad take: sports coaches actually have a pretty decent method of scouting by... well, scouting. seek out local/state/national talent and nurture them years before an app goes in. If they can build a relationship, that's a personal referral that goes farther than any essay prompt. It's the most flexible method because scouters can tailor from culture to culture, based on qualities that traditional education metrics wouldn't take into account.
      - fragmede 3y ago
        It's a good idea! The Math Olympiad was a thing when I was in school. Just need to turn that into a more mainstream competition and build up a much larger culture and business around succeeding in it.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Having some pressure to learn things is essential. I discovered that if I audited a course, I never learned much. I needed the pressure of grades.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      I agree and disagree. I agree in that pressure is good, I disagree that audits are bad because of no pressure. Audits mean that is low priority which means that it will fall off when your busy schedule of "actual" courses have deadlines. Which is not a refletion of your ability nor interest to learn but of your workload. This is the main reason I hold resentment towards GE's. Not because I don't want to be a well rounded person, but because when 3-4 other major classes are already crushing you the last bit of "pressure" needed is some random music theory or history course quizzing you. I never really got the time to breathe in college, and taking my time woulda been a $20k+ decision on top of the $80k I already had in debt. I literally could not afford to learn properly.
      - 2devnull 3y ago
        Moreover, the hope is that GEs would mean more well rounded students, liberal thinkers. There is little proof of that outcome being achieved. I wouldn’t want to scrap them though, out of fear of what less well rounded graduates might act like.
        Jensson 3y ago
        > I wouldn’t want to scrap them though, out of fear of what less well rounded graduates might act like. They would act like Europeans and the rest of the world where GE's aren't a thing. What that means depends on your biases, but it doesn't seem too bad to me. And since silicon valley is mostly foreign software engineers today it doesn't seem like a bad thing for their performance either.
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        You're right about that, I took an economics class which turned out to be a Marxist indoctrination course. I wasn't interested in wasting time on fairy tales. I then satisfied the GE requirement by taking classes like financial accounting, which I expected to be useful in my career.
  - master-lincoln 3y ago
    A bad mark is not a punishment, just an evaluation of your learning level.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      and can lead to a punishment of repeating a class or entire grade.
      - Jensson 3y ago
        You are telling me that giving them more education is punishment? No matter how you do it they get left behind, if they continue to get put in classes they aren't ready for that is bad as well.
        watwut 3y ago
        Students who repeat the class don't tend to learn more second time around. And it is massive punishment due to social consequences with peers. Whatever did not worked first time around, does not work second time around and plus they are more demotivated.
        Jensson 3y ago
        More time absolutely helps, people do much better the second time they take a class. Teachers are a good example, they typically didn't get good grades, but after having seen the class over and over so many times they get good enough to teach it. It works, repetition leads to mastery.
        watwut 3y ago
        It is just that practically it did not happened with elementary school students. Special help class with more repetition and teacher trained in learning issues do help. Also, the issues of failing students are not easily fixable with repetition. They have often attention issues, learning disabilities, behavioral issues, mental health issues etc. that are not helped by repetition at all.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    The problem here was too little testing, not too much. If they tested the students on music before they started they would have been put in classes where they belong and they could have gotten the teaching they needed.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - sandos 3y ago
    I often end up in this concept of the "real world" when talking about kids and their up-bringing. Iv'e always felt school needs to be much more individually tailored, and this connects to my real-world thinking about kids: I envision how the world "outside" of the family will treat my kids, and what they need to do well out there. Same thing applies to school, really. And in the real world we do not expect everyone to know the same things, do the same job, or have the same personality or talent as everyone else. So why should schools be like this? Its just stupid.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - kqr 3y ago
    > This is why trying to rank/judge/grade everyone by a uniform standard is almost universally terrible. The point of grades on a universal standard ought not to have anything to do with the students; it should serve as a diagnostic metric for the teacher. And it can be far more coursely grained than it often is today. In fact, most teachers don't need a finer signal than number of passing and failing students to figure out how well they are doing. Much like I use the uptime percentage as a signal for which code needs bugfixes and how bold I can be when introducing new features, the teacher can use the fraction passing to determine what needs to be taught differently and how quickly to introduce new material. Of course, schools don't work in a way that makes teacher-led learning possible...
arvinsim 3y ago
Sorry if it is bot clear. Is it a good or bad thing to teach music theory via visual depiction?
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  Bad practice. Music is auditory, so you need to focus on audio.
  - Tainnor 3y ago
    Of course, you need auditive input to study music (although interestingly medieval education would have disagreed with this). But visual depictions also help a lot with music theory. Seeing the structure of, say, a sonata's first movement visually makes it easier to understand certain aspects of it. The same is true of understanding relationships between different keys (e.g. the circle of fifths). It's not an either/or, you need both.

Courses teaching music theory through visual depictions, take note!

NetOpWibby 3y ago

This is why I failed music class in high-school. I was the only non-band student so the work was accelerated.

jacobolus 3y ago
This is why trying to rank/judge/grade everyone by a uniform standard is almost universally terrible. Students should be encouraged to try their best in every subject, allowed to make the mistakes they are naturally going to make at whatever level they are currently, and helped to improve over time. Punishing people for being less prepared than peers who did more practice or for making ordinary and expected mistakes actively gets in the way of their learning, as well as making them feel terrible. It's pretty bad for the students who are more prepared as well, as many of them internalize the idea that they are inherently good at some things and inherently bad at others, which is sometimes temporarily gratifying but often stops them from pushing themselves to try anything new or hard.
- shrubhub 3y ago
  How do you decide who gets to study a subject full time at a famous institution?
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    Same way we do now: based on who's parents can donate a new wing for the campus to build. But sure, it's the same problem with any other prestigious venue. Demand far far far outstrips supply. So they don't really need to pick "the best" students. Merely students "over the bar of quality". There's no problem in the eyes of the venue, so there's nothing to change. I think the implied assumption in this question is flawed to begin with in that not everyone needs to be at a famous institution to succeed. But if you want my likely bad take: sports coaches actually have a pretty decent method of scouting by... well, scouting. seek out local/state/national talent and nurture them years before an app goes in. If they can build a relationship, that's a personal referral that goes farther than any essay prompt. It's the most flexible method because scouters can tailor from culture to culture, based on qualities that traditional education metrics wouldn't take into account.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      It's a good idea! The Math Olympiad was a thing when I was in school. Just need to turn that into a more mainstream competition and build up a much larger culture and business around succeeding in it.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  Having some pressure to learn things is essential. I discovered that if I audited a course, I never learned much. I needed the pressure of grades.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    I agree and disagree. I agree in that pressure is good, I disagree that audits are bad because of no pressure. Audits mean that is low priority which means that it will fall off when your busy schedule of "actual" courses have deadlines. Which is not a refletion of your ability nor interest to learn but of your workload. This is the main reason I hold resentment towards GE's. Not because I don't want to be a well rounded person, but because when 3-4 other major classes are already crushing you the last bit of "pressure" needed is some random music theory or history course quizzing you. I never really got the time to breathe in college, and taking my time woulda been a $20k+ decision on top of the $80k I already had in debt. I literally could not afford to learn properly.
    - 2devnull 3y ago
      Moreover, the hope is that GEs would mean more well rounded students, liberal thinkers. There is little proof of that outcome being achieved. I wouldn’t want to scrap them though, out of fear of what less well rounded graduates might act like.
      - Jensson 3y ago
        > I wouldn’t want to scrap them though, out of fear of what less well rounded graduates might act like. They would act like Europeans and the rest of the world where GE's aren't a thing. What that means depends on your biases, but it doesn't seem too bad to me. And since silicon valley is mostly foreign software engineers today it doesn't seem like a bad thing for their performance either.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      You're right about that, I took an economics class which turned out to be a Marxist indoctrination course. I wasn't interested in wasting time on fairy tales. I then satisfied the GE requirement by taking classes like financial accounting, which I expected to be useful in my career.
- master-lincoln 3y ago
  A bad mark is not a punishment, just an evaluation of your learning level.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    and can lead to a punishment of repeating a class or entire grade.
    - Jensson 3y ago
      You are telling me that giving them more education is punishment? No matter how you do it they get left behind, if they continue to get put in classes they aren't ready for that is bad as well.
      - watwut 3y ago
        Students who repeat the class don't tend to learn more second time around. And it is massive punishment due to social consequences with peers. Whatever did not worked first time around, does not work second time around and plus they are more demotivated.
        Jensson 3y ago
        More time absolutely helps, people do much better the second time they take a class. Teachers are a good example, they typically didn't get good grades, but after having seen the class over and over so many times they get good enough to teach it. It works, repetition leads to mastery.
        watwut 3y ago
        It is just that practically it did not happened with elementary school students. Special help class with more repetition and teacher trained in learning issues do help. Also, the issues of failing students are not easily fixable with repetition. They have often attention issues, learning disabilities, behavioral issues, mental health issues etc. that are not helped by repetition at all.
- Jensson 3y ago
  The problem here was too little testing, not too much. If they tested the students on music before they started they would have been put in classes where they belong and they could have gotten the teaching they needed.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- sandos 3y ago
  I often end up in this concept of the "real world" when talking about kids and their up-bringing. Iv'e always felt school needs to be much more individually tailored, and this connects to my real-world thinking about kids: I envision how the world "outside" of the family will treat my kids, and what they need to do well out there. Same thing applies to school, really. And in the real world we do not expect everyone to know the same things, do the same job, or have the same personality or talent as everyone else. So why should schools be like this? Its just stupid.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- kqr 3y ago
  > This is why trying to rank/judge/grade everyone by a uniform standard is almost universally terrible. The point of grades on a universal standard ought not to have anything to do with the students; it should serve as a diagnostic metric for the teacher. And it can be far more coursely grained than it often is today. In fact, most teachers don't need a finer signal than number of passing and failing students to figure out how well they are doing. Much like I use the uptime percentage as a signal for which code needs bugfixes and how bold I can be when introducing new features, the teacher can use the fraction passing to determine what needs to be taught differently and how quickly to introduce new material. Of course, schools don't work in a way that makes teacher-led learning possible...

arvinsim 3y ago

Sorry if it is bot clear. Is it a good or bad thing to teach music theory via visual depiction?

tsimionescu 3y ago
Bad practice. Music is auditory, so you need to focus on audio.
- Tainnor 3y ago
  Of course, you need auditive input to study music (although interestingly medieval education would have disagreed with this). But visual depictions also help a lot with music theory. Seeing the structure of, say, a sonata's first movement visually makes it easier to understand certain aspects of it. The same is true of understanding relationships between different keys (e.g. the circle of fifths). It's not an either/or, you need both.