Comments on: What Is Musicianship?

By: O Maher

O Maher — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 11:56:33 +0000

An excellent point made about being “bogged down in the details” and wondering if “we’ve lost track of what musicianship really is”. There are so many invaluable musicianship skills which are essential in the nurturing and developing of well rounded students. In my experience, limited musicianship training can really hold up progress on the instrument. Very well written blog! Keep up the good work!!

By: Mike Carbonneau

Mike Carbonneau — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 02:14:24 +0000

I’ve been working on “ear training”, “solfege”, and hopefully “musicianship” with my college aged son this summer. I had some earlier Kodaly training in my student days and I am heartily enjoying his introduction to the process of using the inner ear, as you outline above. It is a true luxury to be able to work slowly at his own speed, in direct contrast to the usual classroom ear training environment. We’ve been doing about 30 minutes each day for a few weeks now, from the Kodaly Pentatonic Music vol.1 and Denny Bacon’s “Let Us Sing Together”. He’s got the pentaton going on inside there, and this evening we did our first dictation on simple mrd phrases that were about 8 measures of 2/4. Your thoughts in this posting are reinforcing my experiences. The process really does stick much better when it’s not drummed in. I’m so happy that I found your writing!

By: Rhona Gouldson

Rhona Gouldson — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:01:22 +0000

Great points you made here. Our piano school in Dublin also offers musicianship classes from age 3 on upwards. I think it’s such an important part of being a well rounded musician, and you are so right about the instrument becoming a “crutch”. Although not required to take piano lessons here at our school we would like to see it become mandatory as you can really tell which kids have had musicianship training and which ones hadn’t. The ones who have had the training progress so much more quickly. Great blog entry. Keep them coming!