The importance of making things interesting

I don't know about you, but I like things that are a little out of the ordinary.  Mind you, that doesn't mean I want everything to be weird or cantankerous or obscure (take that, hipsters!).  Instead, I just like things that work a little differently than is sometimes the norm.

For example: I have a penchant for barbecue.  Not just some meat in a restaurant slathered in sauce, but real, slow-cooked, smoky, well-seasoned meat that has been tended to over a bed of hot coals for many hours.  This is different than the norm these days in that people don't often like to spend hours in preparing a single food item.  But it is worth it in the end.  It's also nice to come in the house smelling like woodsmoke and meat, knowing that I have been playing with fire for the most delicious result imaginable.  Also, each time I make barbecue it's a little different.  No matter how hard I try, I can never perfectly replicate the previous result.

Smells like.... Victory!

Another example: My own personal style is... somewhat rustic, I suppose.  I like to wear things that are both comfortable and functional, but that look acceptable for their purpose.  This has resulted in showing up to Halloween parties dressed as a lumberjack or some other outdoors enthusiast and having people ask why I wasn't wearing a costume.  But I digress.

I'm a lumberjack, and I'm okay.

Part of the attraction of these things, to me, is that they are interesting in some way.  They are interesting partly because they are different.  Not what you would expect.  Not what you see every day.

"But how," you may be asking, "does this relate to teaching?"

The answer is quite simple.  Things that are out of the ordinary - striking, different, novel, however you want to say it - attract more attention in the learning process.  Our brains are wired to accept new input, categorize it, file it away for later retrieval, and expend minimal effort in recognizing it in the future.  Have you ever walked past a painting on the wall so many times you forgot it was there - only to realize some time later that it had been replaced with something else?  This is just part of how the human mind works.  We don't want to spend a lot of energy or effort on noticing the same things over and over again.  This helps us cope with the incredible amount of stimuli that exist as part of our every day lives.  We would be quite overwhelmed if we took notice of every single speck of everything that we encounter regularly.  There's just too much.

"But how," you may be asking, "does this relate to music education?"

Again, quite simple.  One of the most difficult things to teach students is to make things interesting and novel even when they are practicing the most mundane, uninteresting, boring aspects of music.  It's why I have as many different acronyms for teaching lines and spaces of the staff as I possibly can remember.  It's why I like to ask students to tell me what they think after something goes horribly wrong - or wonderfully right.  It's why sometimes a band director will switch around seating and do something ridiculous - like putting the trumpets in the front row. (Another great Tone Deaf Comics moment!)

When things are different, we pay attention to them differently.  Our brains are always (ok, usually) more responsive to new things than they are to things that are well-worn and habitual.  Music teachers (and teachers in general) take advantage of this frequently, if for no better reason than to keep their students from griping about being bored (side note - I couldn't tell you the last time I had the luxury of being bored.  Seems like there is always something that must be done.  Must be one more curse of growing up.).

I would like to share with you the revelation I had about a week ago (actually, I had it several years ago but forgot until just last week).  When you practice on your own, do you use a metronome?  If you teach music, do you use a metronome in class or in lessons?  Personally, I can't imagine life without a metronome.  It's as fundamental to music as sound itself.  The division of time into perfectly regularly spaced pulses is not something that comes easily to many of us.  We need something to keep us on target, and something to get irritated with when we are playing in perfect time and that infernal machine is OBVIOUSLY SPEEDING UP. (John Bogenschutz sums it up perfectly in his Tone Deaf Comics found here.)

So what do you do to teach kids that a metronome is so important?  "But Mr. Earley," I can hear my students saying, "it's just an annoying noise that won't stop and gets boring (there's that word again!!!)."

Hmmm... They may have a point there.  The sound of a metronome does become rather monotonous after a while, and if you're not focused on keeping 100% with the metronome pulse it can become white noise and ignored rather quickly.

A view of the metronome being ignored.
Also, how it feels when your foot falls asleep.

One approach I have tried with a general music class is to play some sort of percussion instrument.  Conga, Bongos, Djembe, drum set, you name it, I've tried it.  This usually leads to kids complaining that they want to try it.  Or worse, ignoring it just like the metronome.  The most reliable of these has always been the drum set, but there are two fundamental problems with it. First, I am not a terribly gifted drum set player.  Second, it only works if I am behind it, and this keeps me from being able to move around the room.  What good is a means of keeping tempo if I can't actively adjust/fix things?

If I can't get out of here, I might as well get comfortable...

Hmmm... So what I need is something that works more or less like the drum set, can keep a perfectly steady tempo, is interesting to listen to, and lets me move around as needed....

Bingo. (Cue novel approach fanfare!)

What I have found is that by using audio software and a loop library, I can metronome the heck out of anything, yet still make it fresh and interesting for the students.  Heck, it makes it more enjoyable for me, too!  I use Acoustica Mixcraft (because I am not an Apple fanboy), which is essentially the Windows equivalent of GarageBand (what I would use if I were an Apple fanboy).  This is a fairly straightfoward digital audio workstation (DAW) that includes, among other things, a fairly impressive loop library.  By searching for a drum groove, I found one that I liked - it's straightforward, only slightly syncopated, clear enough to follow, and outlines two measures.  I took that and expanded it to three minutes in length.  Then I added a chime sound (which sounds suspiciously like something from Super Mario Brothers) to indicate when each minute passes.  For kicks, I added a short chime riff to the end to indicate that time was up (I may go back and make this the "game over" sound from Mario - we'll see...).  I can now use this to not only keep my groups on track with tempo, but also to manage my own time in the classroom.

What I love about this approach is that it is interesting and novel enough on its own that as soon as I start the track, I can see the kids wiggling and moving to the beat in their seats.  No instruction needed, just pure interest.

The next step was to expand the track so I could have one that was 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 7 minutes, and 10 minutes in length.  This way I don't have to just play a recording on endless loop - I can pick whichever length fits the activity and time remaining.  Furthermore, it is versatile enough to use for an extremely wide variety of activities.  I have used it with second grade playing mallet and rhythm instruments, first grade and kindergarten playing Boomwhackers , even the older students in band and strings when doing exercises and scales.  What's more is that if we get to where this particular track gets stale or loses its novelty, I can go back to Mixcraft and make a new one that sounds completely different with minimal effort.

Now, I understand that not everyone is in love with loops and creating audio tools the way that I am.  If you'd like, you can visit my Teachers Pay Teachers store and pick up the audio tracks I created, either individually or as a bundle of all four lengths.  The length is the only difference between them. They are done as mp3 files, so you don't need to worry about having a particular piece of software to make them work.  If you use them, please feel free to leave a comment here and/or a comment on TpT.

I plan to keep making things like these rhythm tracks to keep everything as novel and interesting as I can.  I also would love to hear from you - what do you do to keep things interesting in the classroom?  Do you have a particular approach/trick/product that you use?  Do you have a particular group/student that needs more novelty than you can keep up with?  I welcome your comments below!