For the past few months, I've been teaching a short class to my mother.
As silly as this sounds, it's both a small work opportunity for me, as well as a nice bonding experience every week for the two of us.
We started the class discussing Rhythm and Meter to learn about the 'x-axis' of music before venturing into the 'y-axis': Pitch, Melody and Harmony. After that, I exposed my mom to Tonality and the basics of Arranging. Dynamics, Tempo, Format, Articulation, and Ornaments came next, followed by Vocal & Instrumental Performance, Period, and Genre.
Along the way, I show my "student" various contemporary pop songs to go along with the current topics. For example, to illustrate a glissando, I played her the beginning of "Dancing Queen" by ABBA; then, she gets to see it on sheet music. This is a super helpful tactic to relate such antiquated qualities of music to today's modern music listeners.
She also gets weekly assignments, a set of forty questions that mix reading, writing, listening, and recording her own 'performances.' Although I have diagnosed my mother as medically tone-deaf, she has given a spectacular effort to succeed in my course.
She has asked me to refrain from posting her grades on my website.
Comments