Expressing a Musical Sequence with Music Blocks

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Foreword Note: I have planned to write up my ideas with regard to curriculum for a while. Originally I planned to write the ideas in a linear fashion from easiest to most difficult, but I find that harder to do. Rather, I have decided to sketch down my ideas in these blogs in no particular order of difficulty first and use these sketches as material for a more “progressive” (i.e. in stages) curriculum later. I hope you enjoy!

Screenshot of Two Musical Sequences in a short melody in Music Blocks. Try the project at https://musicblocks.sugarlabs.org/index.html?id=1534792092631254&run=True

I was teaching a guitar lesson just the other day and the student and I were working on a short melody. The method book we were using introduced the “Tocatta” melody as a study for reading and playing the notes on the bass strings of the guitar. However, as many instrument teachers may observe, a lack of understanding of basic music theory can surface as the biggest barrier to learning (even if the intended goal is something didactic such as “reading notes on a given instrument”).

Toccata Short Melody. Student has written in all the names of the notes as a reminder.

The student had done well memorizing the names of the notes and where to play those notes on the guitar, which are new to her. However, she was not yet seeing the larger patterns and consequently her performances of the study material lacked direction. The particular pattern in the piece is called a “sequence” by musicians. There are two sequences in the “Toccata” melody. The first goes like +1, +1, -2, +1 (within “a minor”) and repeats a total of four times. The second pattern descends down two steps then up a step or -2, +1 three times.

When performing a passage such as this, it is important to notice this “sequence” pattern for a few reasons. One reason is this pattern is a musical idea in itself–some of the “DNA” of this melody. Another reason is recognizing this pattern helps one’s memory. Instead of memorizing every distinct note, the performer needs to memorize far fewer musical gestures and their underlying rules. The final reason worth mentioning here is understanding the underlying compositional techniques in the creation of this melody helps one to create their own musical material.

The student and I created a Music Blocks project together to represent the musical ideas in the passage. By the end of the lesson the student was playing the passage more fluently (evident by accuracy, speed, and phrasing) with fewer errors than at the beginning of the lesson. She also was able to play more of the passage by memory than at the beginning of the lesson. As for this student’s previous experience with Music Blocks, this was her second time (the first time, she transcribed “Ode to Joy” at a workshop at Libre Planet).

I saved the project onto her father’s USB (he happened to have his) as well as the Music Blocks code so that they may try the program at home even without Internet access (and for the novelty of being “free to share the code”). Music Blocks certainly helped me to explain the idea of musical sequences for this particular lesson.