Learning Songs By Rote-Reading
  .. Join Free at www.musapp.club
.

Rote learning is a memorization technique based on repetition.  The idea is that you will be able to more easily recall a melody through repetition.  Part of the process in teaching a song by rote is to break the music down into smaller segments or phrases. These phrases are taught by rote using an echo approach.  You listen to the leader demonstrate the phrase then you echo or repeat what you heard.  This process is the most common method used by elementary music teachers for teaching a song.  This is because most students have not learned how to read music notation.  When teaching by rote, the teacher must demonstrate by singing the phrase and encourage correct pitch and rhythm throughout the echo process.

The teacher must decide how to break a song into manageable and logical portions.  This is usually done according to the song's phrase structure.  After the students have learned the first phrase the second phrase is introduced and learned by rote.  Then the phrases are combined into larger sections. These larger sections are also taught by rote. The process of combining phrases must be repeated until the entire song is learned.  Attention must be given to correct pitch and rhythm during the echo process.

Learning a song by rote is useful for quickly memorizing a song, but it doesn't help you learn the next song.  Learning to sing by rote creates short term memory of a song which will eventually be forgotten.  And it leaves you dependent on rote memorization to learn the next song.  That means someone else must model the song for you so you can learn it. Unfortunately, there is not enough time in an elementary music class to teach note reading and the memorization of songs to sing in the next concert.

To solve this problem, I have developed MusAPP for computer aided music instruction.  The focus is on developing performance skills.  One of the activities is called "Rote-Reading".  It is a computer aided learning experience that uses rote memorization combined with note reading. 

MusAPP plays a phrase while you listen and try to remember it.  Then MusAPP waits for you to sing the phrase from memory.  As you sing MusAPP is listening to you and judging your performance for correct pitches.  When you are on pitch, MusAPP plots each note on the staff.  Then you do the same process for the next phrase.  After the second phrase, MusAPP takes you back to the beginning and requires that you sing both phrases.  If you can sing it from memory it is OK but you must sing each note accurately.  A pitch pointer is following your voice via a microphone so you can see when you are wrong.  If you sing a wrong note, everything stops and waits for you to get on pitch.  By pushing the pitch pointer onto the target note, you can continue singing the phrase.  The result is that you will resort to reading notation when you forget the phrase.  By the end of the song you will have experienced the value of learning to read music notation.

The experience of reading notation will help you learn to sing the next song.  By using the MusAPP Rote-Reading activity,  you will engage in an active, constructive, and long-lasting experience that allows you to be fully engaged in the learning process.

Two important goals of the learning process are retention and transfer.  "Retention is the ability to remember the song at a later time.  "Transfer" is the ability to use prior knowledge to solve new problems like learning a new song.  

Remember, you only fail when you stop trying!

How To Develop Your Tonal Memory
.
Join Free at www.musapp.club
.

In music, tonal memory or "aural recall" is the ability to listen a tone or melody and sing or play it from memory. Tonal memory helps you sing or play an instrument in tune with correct intonation.

When we listen to music, short-term memory plays an important role. Without tonal memory, we would not be able to tell how the different tones in a musical phrase are related to each other.  Thus, working to develop your short term tonal memory is a necessary and valuable skill.

There is a long debate on whether you are born with an ear for music or whether you develop it over time through practice and training. Studies have shown that people with musical ability have certain regions of the brain more developed than those of other people. Recent scientific studies suggest that experience, not genetics, affects the musicians' neural responses and development.

If you think of musical performance as a set of developed skills, you begin to understand that repeated musical experiences are essential to musical development. Some skills that contribute to the ability to perform music include: pitch recognition, rhythmic accuracy, and tonal memory. If we think of a skill as muscle memory, and we assume that muscle memory can be developed through accurate repetition of a task, we can conclude that tonal memory involves more than just thinking the pitches.  Watch this demonstration video.

If we accept the premise that tonal memory is the ability to listen to a tone or melody and sing or play it from memory, then tonal memory must involve more data than a simple audio recording made by your brain. To be able to sing or play from memory must require a sequencing of physical commands sent from the brain (memory center) to muscles that reproduce the the sounds. This suggests that repeated musical experiences are essential to the development of tonal memory.

This is the hypothesis on which the MusAPP Tonal Memory activity is based.   Join the Musapp Club and experience a new way to learn and teach music performance skills.

News Flash! -- Now you too can learn to sing on pitch!

Join Free at www.musapp.club

If you have watched the auditions for TV shows like American Idol or America's Got Talent, you may have heard the judges say that a singer is "pitchy". That means that the singer is not singing on pitch or "in tune". The singer is generally not aware that he/she lacks vocal control and is singing off key. They think they are singing very well, but the audience knows the difference. Even though most members of the audience can't sing any better, they know when a singer is "pitchy".

People who have learned to match pitch can't tell you when or how they learned do it.  And those who can't match pitch usually don't realize they are not singing on pitch until someone embarrasses them by telling them that they can't sing.

Are you a non-singer?

Singing requires that you first learn to match pitch. Many people struggle to sing on pitch so they are often called "tone-deaf" or "non-singers". Very few people are truly "tone-deaf". That is a condition similar to being color blind, and no amount of practice will help. However, almost everyone can hear the difference between pitches and enjoy listening to music. So why can't they match pitch with their voice?

Singing on pitch is like learning to catch a ball.  The first time someone threw a ball to you, it probably hit you in the chest.  Some people get embarrassed or are fearful they will get hit again so they refuse to catch the ball.  Others keep trying and soon learn to watch the ball and move their hands to catch it.  With practice they develop hand to eye coordination and muscle memory which is the skill of catching a ball.

Its like learning to ride a bicycle.  At first you fall off the bike.  After falling several times, some people refuse to try again and never learn to keep their balance on a bicycle.  Others need training wheels to keep them from falling but eventually they learn how it feels to ride a bike. They learn to sense whey they are starting to tip and to turn the wheel in the direction of the fall and bring the bike back into balance.   Riding a bicycle requires practice, and learning mental control over your muscles will eventually develop this skill.

Is your muscle memory accurate?

The fact is that non-singers have just not yet learned the skill of matching pitch.  Developing vocal skills is a matter of developing muscle memory.  Much like a cache of programmed tasks, muscle memory is a skill you store in your brain.  It is a form of performance memory that can help you become very good at something through repetition.
If you are a non-singer, it could be said that you have developed muscle memory that causes intonation problems.  The brain hears a target pitch and sends wrong commands to the vocal muscles resulting in wrong pitches being sung.  Non-singers, through no fault of their own, have developed erroneous muscle memory.  This happens because they have never been quite sure when they were singing on pitch so their muscle memory stores these errors and repeats them over and over.

The problem is that learning to match pitch just by listening is an abstract experience.  There are no buttons to push or keys to press so the singer goes through life guessing  pitches.  If your parents are non-singers or they just didn't take time to sing to you as a preschooler, you will likely grow up as a non-singer.  Traditional education requires the eternal patience of a dedicated teacher to repeatedly indicate when the student's pitch is wrong.  Most teachers simply don't have that kind of time so the student eventually concludes that it is best to just not sing.

For the non-singer, it is like trying to learn to shoot hoops in the dark.  All you can do is listen for the swish which may never happen.  Most physical skills are learned through visual biofeedback.  You see the ball coming toward you so you move your hand to catch the ball.  You shoot the basketball and watch where it goes, then change your shot to compensate for the miss.  You see and feel your bicycle tipping so you turn the wheel to balance the bike.

Have you been conditioned to sing off key?

It could be said that a non-singer has learned to sing out of tune.  To correct that you must retrain your muscle memory. To do that you must have a way to know when you are on pitch and be able to repeatedly get on pitch. With practice you will retrain your muscle memory.

I have spent years developing computer aided audio/visual biofeedback to train singers to sing on pitch, in tune, in rhythm, and to be able to read music notation. The result is MusAPP, a web application that allows singers to see and hear their pitch in comparison to a target pitch. As you sing a melody or harmony part, you must move your voice to push a visual pitch pointer onto the target. If you are accurate, you earn a point and can progress to the next note. If you miss the pitch, you must continue to adjust your voice to match the pitch, then progress to the next note. If you take too long to match, you loose a point.

The pitch pointer works like magic!

Watch a demo video.

The objective is to retrain your muscle memory to correctly move your vocal muscles resulting in correct pitches. With practice, the position of the note on a music staff becomes a memory hook. When you see a note on a line or space, your voice remembers how it feels to sing that pitch. Soon you will be able to match the pitch just by hearing a tone.

You can experience the MusAPP pitch pointer system by visiting www.musapp.club. Create a FREE member account and you will be enrolled in the Matching Pitch course. When you feel comfortable matching pitch, you can continue with lessons in note reading, sight reading, and 14 other courses to teach you the fundamentals of music and basic music theory.

Remember, you only fail when you stop trying!