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Why Music Lessons Matter

Throughout the ages, great musicians desired to train their students in the art of music making so they could make progress in the most efficient ways possible. What it took the teacher many years to coalesce, the student could acquire in a fraction of the time. Saving the student time in their pursuit of musical discipline was of the greatest importance to the teacher. We have the same attitude at our Music School Odessa Texas.

The great J.S. Bach wrote tutorials for his students, not only to learn to play their instruments, but also to master the skill of composition. In fact, two of his sons succeeded him and became respected composers of their generation.

At the beginning of Bach’s famous collection, “Two and Three-part Inventions,” he wrote that it was an “Honest method, by which the amateurs of the keyboard- especially, however, those desirous of learning – are shown a clear way not only 1) to learn to play cleanly in two parts, but also, after further progress, 2) to handle three obligate parts correctly and well; and along with this not only to obtain good inventions (ideas) but to develop the same well; above all, however, to achieve a cantabile (singing, melodic) style in playing and at the same time acquire a strong foretaste of composition.”

Some of the more notable examples of musical methods in recent history include, the Kodaly method, the Orff Approach, the Suzuki Method, and Nadia Boulenger’s assistant’s Dieudonne’s Solfege training method. We have developed specific methods to train our students at our Music School Odessa Texas.

Many people ask the question: Are music lessons really worthy it? One of the greatest examples in history of the benefits of music lessons is the teacher Nadia Boulanger.

She herself studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Gabriel Fauré. Her initial career track was to be a composer, but she began to realize that her greatest contribution would be as a teacher. She opened up her French Music School for Americans in Fontainebleau. This is similar to what we are doing in our Music School Odessa Texas.

Kodaly’s method was not devised from a subject-logic approach to musical education but rather based upon the various stages of child development. In terms of rhythm, moving rhythms are more child-related than sustained ones. Melodically, the first recognizable tunes sung by most young children are made up primarily of minor thirds, major seconds, and perfect fourths. They are the tones his mother uses to call him to dinner.
His plan included the following concepts: 1) The range in which a young child can sing songs comfortably and correctly is limited- usually encompassing not more than five of six tones, 2) Descending tones are easier for children to learn and reproduce accurately than ascending ones. 3) Small skips are easier for the young child to sing in tune than small steps, and 4) In terms of range, one study has shown that left to his own devices the young child will most often pitch the upper note of the minor third around F#, thus the keys of D, Eb, and E would seem to be indicated for pitching rote songs. In a similar manner, we take popular Spanish folk-songs to use as teaching materials at our Music School Odessa Texas.
Kodaly carefully selected materials for the children’s development from songs with the following criteria: 1) Authentic children’s games and nursery songs, 2) Authentic folk music, and 3) Good composed music from recognized composers.

“Kodaly felt that the simple, expressive forms of nursery songs and folk music were more suitable for children because they were living music, not fabricated or contrived for pedagogical purposes. The language of folk music tends to be simple, drawn from speech patterns familiar to children even before they enter school. He believed that a love for masterworks could be cultivated through a knowledge of and a love for one’s own folk music. “Kodaly collected great numbers of children’s songs and folk songs. Kodaly published six massive volumes of Hungarian folk music, the first of which contains more than one thousand children’s songs.
“To implement the third source of materials- good composed music- Kodaly himself wrote much music for children: four volumes of pentatonic music, numerous volumes of two- and three-part exercises, and many children’s choruses. Bartok, too, wrote for children: the Mikrokosmos for piano students, and a number of songs for children’s choruses.

Kodaly used three sets of ‘tools’ in his training: 1) A moveable-do system of solfege, 2) Rhythm duration syllables, and 3) hand-signs. We have similar methodologies at our Music School Odessa Texas.

Regardless of the exact form a method for teaching takes, it is evident from Kodaly’s example that an entire generation can be affected by a successfully implemented method.
We believe the same is possible again at our Music School Odessa Texas!