Promoting Collaborative Playful Experimentation Through Group Ear Playing in Higher

Reflective conservatoire conference Promoting collaborative playful experimentation through group ear playing in Higher Education Abstract Forty-six first-year, primarily classically trained, undergraduate students took part in an exploratory research study on Group Ear Playing (GEP) in Higher Education. The students attended the ‘Playing by Ear’ component of the Practical Musicianship module, which adopts the materials and strategies on playing by ear in the instrumental lesson developed by Lucy Green (2012; 2014). The students were divided into eight groups, they were provided with audio material (one pop song, a selection of classical pieces from which to select one and a free choice piece) and were instructed to copy the music by ear as a group for 40 minutes each week for five weeks. Data were collected through individual reflective logs collected each week (n=196) and end-of- programme feedback forms that included open questions and rating scales. The findings of the study suggest firstly, that the students engaged in playful experimentation in a collaborative manner, where the more confident musicians supported their less confident colleagues. Secondly, a variety of strategies for improvising together was explored, which included adding ornaments based on scales, playing chords and rhythms for variety, altering the pieces’ structure, adding or changing rhythms, and missing notes out. Thirdly, although the focus of the activity was on copying music by ear from recordings, all groups included an improvisation section at each piece they rehearsed, where all musicians playfully experimented together rather than as soloists, in order to ‘change things slightly’ and ‘make the piece sound more interesting’. Finally, the students reported that GEP not only helped them to feel more confident about playing by ear (85%) but also to be more confident about improvising (72%) and to become more confident musicians (78%). This study proposes that group ear playing from recordings successfully facilitates collaborative playful experimentation and motivates apprehensive classically trained musicians in Higher Education contexts to become ‘less self-conscious’ and ‘enjoy new ways of improvising’. 1 Keywords Group Ear Playing; improvisation strategies; collaborative experimentation; higher education Background Group playing has been found to motivate learners to practise, with direct links to increased achievement. Furthermore, it creates a sense of belonging and of making an active contribution to a group, it supports the creation of friendships, it boosts the participants’ social skills, it supports teamwork skills, self-discipline and concentration, a sense of responsibility towards shared goals and purpose of the group; a sense of achievement and the development of a musical identity. There are particular musical skills such as improvising and playing by ear that flourish as a result of collective experimentation and interaction within a music group (Green, 2001; Johnston, 2013). In her book How popular musicians learn (2001) Green emphasised that popular musicians acquire musical skills and knowledge through copying recordings by ear and through peer learning and collaborative experimentation. Johnston (2013) and Thomson (2008) highlight that improvisation skills can be ideally nurtured through collaborative learning and group relationships and interactions where students are free to collectively experiment together. James Mainwaring (1951a, 1951b) and Phillip Priest (1985, 1989) stressed that ear playing supports the development of musical literacy and creative musicianship. Experimental research with 101 high school instrumentalists by McPherson (1995) and McPherson et al. (1997) has also shown that playing by ear was the only attribute that correlated with the other four attributes examined (improvising, performing rehearsed music, playing from memory and sight-reading), suggesting its significance in supporting their development. With the exception of Woody and Lehmann’s study (2010) on the differences in ear playing ability between formal classically-trained musicians and those with vernacular music experience, no other study has systematically studied ear playing as skill to be developed within Higher Education. Woody and Lehmann’s study found that the vernacular musicians outperformed the formal musicians on singing back and playing back on instruments. A strong association emerged between musicians’ performance and the ear playing tasks and their prior experiences. Vernacular musicians played songs from recordings, played chord progressions on the piano, collaborated in 2 groups to work up a song, improvised and composed music, ‘messed around’, improvised in a group, improvised solos to recorded accompaniments and composed original music. Formal musicians, on the contrary, had limited or non-existent prior experiences of such creative musical activities during their musical development. The authors concluded that playing by ear is largely absent from music education curricula, both in one-to-one instrumental settings and in group settings. The study described here explored how engagement in a short Group Ear Playing (GEP) programme, supported first year undergraduate students’ creativity and improvisation skills and the processes that they adopted in order to practise familiar and unfamiliar musical repertoire through collaborative playful experimentation. The sample Forty-six students took part in a 5-week Ear Playing segment of a HE Practical Musicianship module. The students were randomly allocated in eight groups of maximum six or seven students with at least one pianist in each group. The students were given the freedom to choose between their principal instrument or their second or other instruments. The instruments that were played by the students were: violin, cello, double bass, flute, clarinet, oboe, trumpet, saxophone, piano, marimba, xylophone, glockenspiel, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass, recorder and euphonium. The majority (28/46, 61%) chose their principal instrument and the singers (14/46, 30%) played the piano, xylophone, glockenspiel or their second instrument. All students had a Grade 8 or equivalent in their principal instrument and Grade 5 theory, which are pre-requisites for entrance to the Music Department where the study took place. This ensured a level of consistency in musicianship (technical competence and music theory) across the sample. Procedure of GEP and data collection Each group engaged in GEP for five weeks. On their first session each group was allocated a spacious room with an electric piano and the participants were asked to copy musical material provided to them by ear as a group. It was clarified by the tutor that the students were free to make any changes they wished to the pieces copied, for example changes in the dynamics, tempo, 3 rhythm, harmony and even the melody, as long as they kept the flow of the music. It was stressed that seeking perfection was not the focus of the activity. Instead, playful interactions amongst the musicians and opportunities for creating new material were welcome. The tutor would then leave the room and return forty minutes later to informally record the students’ piece at the end of each week’s session. Informal recordings at the end of each session were taken so that each group could track their progress over the five weeks of the programme. Before the end of each session the tutor distributed a reflective log with the question ‘Can you describe how you went about copying music by ear from a recording during the session?’ to each student. The reflective logs were collected on the day or were sent to the tutor by email before the following session. The logs were identified as a useful documental form of collecting detailed descriptions of individual and GEP improvisation processes. The GEP study used the same audio material for the first two stages of the programme (Link Up and a selection of 6 classical pieces) as Green (2012a; 2012b) and Varvarigou & Green (2014), which can also be found in the book ‘Hear, Listen, Play’ (Green, 2014). The material was uploaded on Blackboard, the university’s Virtual Learning Environment, and all students had access to the material. For the first two stages of the programme (weeks one to three) the students were asked to copy Link Up and one of six classical pieces by ear. For the third stage of the programme each group could select a piece of their choice and, by following the same approach as in stages one and two, copy it by ear. At the end of the programme each student filled in a short feedback form that sought their level of agreement (1 strongly disagree to 5 strongly agree) with a list of statements: 1) whether they had done ear playing similar to the Playing by Ear classes before; whether Playing by Ear classes 2) helped them feel more confident about playing by ear; 3) helped them become more confident musicians; 4) helped them feel more confident about improvising; 5) improved their musical skills, in general; 6) information was communicated clearly; 7) the sessions were at the right level for them. They were also asked to respond to the open questions ‘I most enjoyed…’, ‘I least enjoyed…’ and ‘Overall, what if anything (musical or other skills), do you think you might have learnt from doing the ear-playing task’. Space was also available for the students to add any comments they had about this particular unit within the Practical Musicianship module. Finally, four 4 students (two males and

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