APSMER2017 PROCEEDINGS

Proceedings of the 11th Asia-Pacific Symposium for Music Education Research
(APSMER 2017) 19th to 21st July 2017, Melaka MALAYSIA
their natural style in order for discerning the players’ primary ideas and their
understanding of the music.
Yu:
I always request the players to play the whole piece of music
before beginning my instruction. Otherwise, I cannot get the
players’ preferred natural style.
The three teachers rarely proposed concrete directions for musical
expression in their session. Instead, they often used metaphorical languages
and encouraged players to try ‘an experimental performance’ to extract new
ideas for musical expression. For example, Taku requested the players to
invent lyrics to fit the music and to sing. This request started the players off
talking about not only an imaginal story but also a mood and an emotion that
they felt from the music. After this activity, the players made their musical
expression absolutely different to the previous one.
The teachers often lead to focus on a critical point of music without
suggesting any direction for a change of expression neither directly nor
euphemistically. Those directions often extracted changes of timing,
dynamics and duration of particular notes including a derived note for a key
transition and an appoggiatura.
In the latter half of their session, teachers requested players to listen to
each other’s sounds to make an interactive performance. Ken used the word
“talk musically” to promote collaborative problem-solving.
Ken:
It is better to play the music by talking musically to each other.
“You gave it to me, then I’ll give this back to you.” “That ignited
me!” I like such conversations.
Overall, the three teachers showed their mood to promote the players
to take an initiative. However, teachers took their initiative when they
demanded collections of obvious problems including asynchronous rhythms
and inapt senses of meter.
The teachers assessed not only sounds but also changes of the players’
thinking during the performance with the players’ verbal reactions to the
teachers’ direction and body movement with the music.
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