Movement:
A Means To Music Learning Carlos R. Abril
Frost School of Music
c.abril@miami.edu
Reprinted from Tennessee Musician
ident to anyone who has observed infants or toddlers engage with music. From the ear- liest years of life, infants demonstrate their awareness of music by turning their heads towards a musical toy; or they express sheer delight by moving their arms and legs upon hearing someone sing an upbeat song. As infants move into toddlerhood and child- hood, they begin to move their bodies with greater precision and culturally recognized style (i.e., dance) to the music they hear or make (Campbell, 2010; Moog, 1976; Moorhead & Pond, 1978). This inherent need to experience music through move- ments of the body throughout life might be explained because of the links between the motor and auditory systems in the brain (Sacks, 2007). Music and movement are two deeply connected human phenomena. There is further evidence of this con- nection in some cultures, where there is no separation between the concepts of music and dance. “Dance is music and music is dance in African cultures. The two are in- separable and in many African languages, there is not a separate word for dance” (Welsh, 2010, p. 30). The Native American Blackfoot people use the word paskan to mean dance, music, and ceremony (Nettl, 2005). Clearly, movement is an integral part of the music experience, from birth to adulthood. It should be no surprise then that
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movement would play a role in music learn- ing and teaching. Movement has been used as a way to help students internalize and/ or reinforce their conceptual understanding of music. It has also been used as a way for students to express what they hear in music, what they know or have learned (Kerchner, 2014). Jacques-Dalcroze, who developed
TEMPO
uman predisposition to re- spond to music through movements of the body is ev-
a teaching system of developing musician- ship through movement (commonly known as Dalcroze or Eurhythmics), believed that students needed to develop their musical- ity first through active sensory experiences (movements of the body) before moving into more cerebral types of musical train- ing (reading notation) (Jaques-Dalcroze, 1921). Rudolf von Laban believed that movement helped to develop greater cre- ativity and self-awareness in people; his ideas would be influential to many music educators and applied in practice (Laban & Ullmann, 1971). Many others have written about, researched, and used movement as a means to help students develop their musi- cianship. For a comprehensive treatment of the topic, see Abril (2011). The purpose of this article is to explain how movement can impact music learning and to suggest some ways to harness the power of movement in music teaching.
Beat And Rhythmic Competency Keeping a steady beat is essential to
anyone wanting to perform music, whether kindergarten students singing a song in class to middle school students playing the first exercise in a wind method book. How can movement training help students improve their ability to maintain a steady beat or perform more accurately? Movement training in general music
classrooms has been shown to have a posi- tive effect on the ability to keep a steady beat. In one study (Rose, 1995), six differ- ent elementary classes were assigned to one of two instructional groups. The first group received music instruction through a Dal- croze approach, with a substantive amount of movement; the second group received music instruction primarily through ver- bal instructions. After
thirty-two weeks of instruction, students who received the 52
movement-based music lessons performed significantly better on a test of beat compe- tence. It appears that the teaching method itself (i.e., Laban or Dalcroze) or type of movement experiences (i.e., locomotor or nonlocomotor) does not make much of a difference; any movement experiences posi- tively effect beat competency in students (Blesdell, 1991; Croom, 1998). Movement is also valuable in ensem-
ble classroom. In a study (Rohwer, 1998), sixth-grade students who received ten weeks of movement instruction in the instrumen- tal music classroom performed significantly better at a synchronization test than were students who received traditional rhythm instruction, without the use of movement (Rohwer, 1998). Boyle’s (1970) classic study found that high school students who were trained to tap their foot to the steady beat were more successful at rhythmic sight- reading than those who did not receive such training. Jordan (1986) reported improve- ments in high school students’ rhythmic performance skills after applying music lessons that included Laban movement ef- fort factors (flow, weight, time, and space). What seems clear from these and other studies is that infusing some sort of move- ment experiences in the music classroom can make a positive difference in beat and rhythmic competence.
Ideas For The Classroom There are many ways to incorporate
movement into any music classroom. A re- cent article in the Music Educators Journal provides a wealth of ideas for the use of movement effort factors to improve rhyth- mic competence in the large ensemble set- tings. For example, one activity they suggest focuses on time: You can “use a programma- ble metronome to create tempo changes of the desired length and intensity. Using this
MARCH 2017
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