Student Recordings and Reflections

If you've ever taken a performing ensemble to a large group contest, you are probably familiar with the practice of judges talking into a small recorder while the performance is taking place. The first time I adjudicated this type of contest, it took some getting-used-to. I mean, you're not supposed to talk during a performance! But then, I realized how valuable it would be for two reasons:

1) Directors and student musicians get a sense for what goes in in an audience member's head during a performance - what do they pick up on? What are they listening for? What do we need to emphasize differently?

2) Instead of referring back to a point in the music or relying on memory, you get feedback as soon as it happens in the performance and you have better contextual understanding of their comment in your performance.

Why not make students an active part of this same type of practice in their own rehearsing and assessment?

Here's what that could look like:

Jane is working through her Clarinet methods book and ready to mark off a new scale on her progress report. Small group lessons are so jam-packed, though, that its hard for her director to hear everyone at the same time. So, she gets out her iPad and films herself playing the scale using iMovie. When she goes back and looks at it, she realizes that she keeps stumbling over a certain section because her fingerings are wrong. She knew it before, but now that she can see it, it makes more sense and she goes back, practices a few more times, and re-records herself playing the scale. That evening, she e-mails it to her director, and when she gets to school the next morning, she finds an e-mail from her director in her inbox congratulating her on accomplishing another step on her progress report!

David is a high school choir director and is looking for ways to efficently assess his high school boys group without doing it during rehearsal time (because goodness knows you've got to keep them engaged 100% of the time otherwise they'll be doing the spider up the doorframes!) He wants to know both their vocal progress and also how they self-evaluate. He assigns his ensemble to play the YouTube video of David playing the accompaniment for mm. 21-29 of Laura Farnell's "She Walks in Beauty" and at the same time, take a QuickTime movie of themselves singing along. Then, they are to go back, play the student recorded video, and at the same time, take a QuickTime audio recording of their comments and observations during the 8 measure passage. It seems like a lot of jumping between apps, but once they walk through it in rehearsal, the boys have no problem. In fact, they have some fun over the weekend recording the bass part and then singing the tenor part over it!

Valerie is a grade school music teacher who wants to let her fourth grade students continue progressing on their recorders even though she will be at a conference for two days. She asks them to practice in class, and then has the sub allow two to go into the hall at a time - one to perform an assigned song and one to record the performing student using Quick Voice Recorder. Then they switch performer and recorder, and once they are both done, they e-mail the file to their teacher to review.