MUSICAL LITERACY AMONGST GUITAR STUDENTS - Pt. 3

by John Wakelin

The Student’s Perspective

What Are Students Impressions of Music Notation?

When looking back on their own experiences of learning to read music, it can be tempting for a music teacher to project their own memories of the experience onto their students, and assume that this is the way students feel about the process also. Students often tell music teachers that they prefer the practical side of music making to the theoretical, but it is only through the process of actually asking the students what they really think that their viewpoints can be fully known. As a consequence of this I conducted a survey that sought to discover what students thought of learning to read traditional music notation, and whether they thought it was a necessary skill for both students and professional musicians to have.

Survey Method

The survey was given to 120 core music students from years 9 and 10, and was conducted at a central Auckland decile ten secondary school. The students were drawn from both upper and lower streams to allow the views of higher and lower achieving students to be expressed. The survey consisted of five questions whose main purpose was to establish whether the students viewed learning to read music as a positive, neutral, or negative process, with the opportunity to expand upon their answers if they wished to do so. The full survey can be seen in Appendix B at the end of this essay.   

Survey Results

The results showed that most of the students (62%) were neutral with regards to learning to read music, with 29% viewing it as a negative experience and 14% positively. 80% of students felt reading music was an important skill to have for both music students and successful musicians, and 61% considered music theory to be important. It was interesting to note that some students wrote that they were unaware of what the term ‘music theory’ actually meant and chose the neutral answer as a result, and some chose not to answer the question for the same reason. In the case where the question was left unanswered and the student stated it was due to this ambiguity, I marked the response as neutral in the same manner as the other students who didn’t understand the term had done, and the total outcome for the neutral option amounted to 34%.

The full results for each individual class can be found at the end of this essay in Appendix A. All percentages are rounded.

Total of 120 students
1/ Do you find learning to read music boring or exciting?

2/ Is reading music important or unimportant for music students?
3/ Is reading music important or unimportant to become a successful musician?
4/ Is music theory important or unimportant for a musician?
Positive
17
(14%)
97
(80%)
96
(80%)
73
(61%)
Neutral
74
(62%)
19
(16%)
17
(14%)
41
(34%)
Negative
29
(24%)
4
(3%)
7
(6%)
6
(5%)
5/ How do you think reading music could be taught to make it more interesting?
See below.


The answers to question 5 raised some interesting answers, with the commonest answers being practical application (i.e. playing a musical instrument), more modern/popular music, and by computer or video. The main answers were as follows, with those that are in quote marks being the student’s answer verbatim:
  • Learn more modern/popular music. Ask what kind of music the students like. Students choose which piece to learn.

  • Through practical application/learning to play an instrument/singing.

  • Prizes and rewards (e.g. food). ‘Put the chords [notes?] on food. Or chord shaped biscuits or … cake. If you get the chord right you get the food.’

  • Fun games. Make it competitive.

  • ‘Projects with creating sheet music.’

  • ‘Interact with the student to a greater extent.’

  • Writing your own song.

  • Using computers or videos ‘because the computer is cool.’

  • Acronyms. Using funny words to explain it.

  • A bit of background information on the music being studied.


Discussion

The results of the first question show that the majority of the students were indifferent to the process of learning to read music with only 24% tending toward the negative, and the results of questions 2 to 4 show that students accept that music theory and the ability to read music are important and necessary skills to have.

The various responses to question 5 suggest many possibilities for lesson plans, and the combination of several of these suggestions is a distinct possibility, e.g. downloading a simple piece of the student’s choice in TAB from the internet, learning it on an instrument, and the creation of a sheet music version using notation software such as Sibelius.
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