[Smt-talk] Keyboards for theory classes?

[Deborah Stein]

I disagree with Stephen's assumption that using keyboard in basic theory
courses is biased or just a "tradition."  I am in favor of developing our
students' ears, for which the keyboard is helpful.  Writing progressions
without hearing them is an exercise with limited usefulness.  Students do
part writing to learn a language that must be heard , just like we learn
verbal languages through speaking and listening and not just writing
sentences. 
Certainly the keyboard can be of great help in a conservatory, where
students learn harmony and form through listening.

After learning the theory core, I can understand not relying on keyboard,
though in my electives we certainly listen to music (including the piano) as
much or even more than during the core.

Deborah

From:  Stephen Soderberg <hyperchord at me.com>
Date:  Monday, May 5, 2014 9:35 AM
To:  <smt-talk at lists.societymusictheory.org>
Subject:  [Smt-talk]  Keyboards for theory classes?

While I fully understand this was brought up as a pedagogical practices
issue, I can't help but point out that there is an important (but apparently
unexamined) underlying issue here.

Why would anyone want to make Freshman theory ++more++ explicitly
piano-centered?? At the college/university level, why would one want to
focus ever more on the "usual diatonic" as a sine qua non model and
reference point for a student's future creative efforts and studies in
music? (Certainly the answer isn't "We've always done it that way.") I
assume that undergrad music programs still have a "keyboard requirement" -
but even if not, is a theory course, which ideally ought to be fully
"branchable" as in Freshman physics, the place to require it?

This appears to be a praxis-theoria rock-and-a-hard-place problem with no
easy solution. On the one hand, I certainly recognize the pragmatic/survival
need for most of my colleagues and their students to make theory relevant to
the "real world." On the other hand, to continue to maintain the "usual
keyboard" in its various guises as the center of music's pedagogic universe
is circular and has, to me, the odor of bias about it.

Stephen Soderberg
Keswick, VA

On May 05, 2014, at 07:15 AM, Jonathan Santore <jsantore at mail.plymouth.edu>
wrote:

> Seth, I've contemplated it, but have never gone ahead and DONE it. I think
> it's a marvelous idea, personally, and the costs now compare favorably with
> those for most textbooks.
> 
> Jonathan Santore
> Plymouth State University (NH)
> 
> 
> 
>> Dear friends,
>> 
>> While revising my Freshman theory course more to make it more explicitly
>> piano-centered, I¹ve had to contend with the possibility that the resulting
>> spike in usage might well strain our campus resources. ....
>> -----------------------------------------------------------
>> Seth Monahan
>> Assistant Professor of Music Theory
>> Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester
>> Reviews Editor, Music Theory Spectrum
>> (585) 274-1556
>> www.sethmonahan.com <http://www.sethmonahan.com>
>> 
>> 
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