Hello Classmates/Amy!
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Sarah Brenay and I am a music education major with an English minor. Right now I'm listening to Michael Jackson sing "Blame it on the Boogie," which is putting me in a fantastic mood, and if you haven't heard this song you really should stop reading and YouTube it. It's such a good tune. Above all I love music arranging and editing, singing, and reading. I enjoy listening to all genres of music as long as it's good music, you know? I think all genres can be creatively constructed and performed with artistry. But I won't listen to Taylor Swift or Miley Cyrus if I can avoid it. The last book I read was Ender's Game and my favorite read in the last year was Sherman Alexie's Flight. He has such a great sense of humor and he's wonderfully offensive.
Now a little bit about my subject. To me, music means complete concentration and exact execution to produce art. It means collaborating with other musicians to create something, to communicate something that we can't express in any other way. Performing is thrilling! Practicing is fascinating. Teaching is exhilarating and exhausting. Music is about a human connection, it's like dance and poetry expressed through sound. I've always enjoyed music. My experiences running small rehearsals and participating in choirs sparked my passion for music teaching. Choral and small ensemble music is my favorite form of ensemble to participate in. There's something about the experience of working with others, devoting all of your focus to the creation of this one thing, and combining your voices into a patchwork of colors, sounds, and shapes. Being a part of an ensemble is really incredible, and I guess that's why I want to teach. Facilitating that experience for others.
One might think that this course doesn't apply to music, as we seldom read text in the traditional sense of the word. But if we broaden our definitions of literacy to include more than the ability to read and write, it suddenly becomes much more applicable. As we discovered in class, literacy is difficult to define. My vague definition of literacy is the ability to understand and correctly apply information from various mediums relevant to a specific content area. In this sense, music necessitates literacy to a very high degree. Musicians need to learn an entirely new system of notation including the notation of rhythm, pitch, expressive text, and articulations. They also need to be able to transcribe, transpose, and correctly execute aural information. Depending on their instrument there will also be technical considerations, including fingering, bowing, and register adjustment. Becoming what I would define as a "literate musician" is a tall order. As we learn more about literacy and learning in this course, I hope I will be able to cement my ideas about music literacy and better understand the level of information my students will need in order to succeed.
This is my first blog so I have no idea how to conclude this post. I also had a terrible time figuring out a title for the blog. But I thought the subtitle was terribly witty. (So far no one else has. So few people appreciate great humor.)
