Room 101: sitting in judgement on the Elemental examples

One of the most interesting aspects of building Elemental has been the decisions I’ve made while either writing or finding the examples. The elements concepts are not, after all, perfectly boundaried concepts like those of the periodic table and it is for this reason that weird GCSE and A level mark schemes are a feature, not a bug, of examined music.

One set of data that has come out of the Elemental trial shows accuracy in answering each example, with the unsurprising finding that three of the five most accurately identified examples are those exemplifying the sound of a piano.

More interesting however is looking at the ones most frequently answered incorrectly and deciding whether this is because:

1. They are rubbish examples of the concept
2. They are good examples which push the boundaries of the concept and are successfully showing up typical student misconceptions

I’m going to start a series of articles on these ‘low performing’ examples and talk through my thought process as to whether these examples should be cast into oblivion, and sent to Room 101, or saved to continue doing the good work of highlighting misunderstanding.

First up in the dock: Vivace Example 2

When making the Tempo examples I wanted to try and find a way to ensure that the tempos were consistent. My attempt to do this was to keep all the clips for each tempo within the same bpm range. This did not work and even I, who made the clips, was getting quite a lot of them wrong when testing in Elemental because, of course, tempi are not bpm markings. They are about feel. All the tempos have been redone by simply closing my eyes and judging what I’d pick as the tempo for that piece, resulting in tempo scores improving when students answer questions.

Vivace Example 2 is a typical example of what went wrong. In this example I artificially sped up a clip that I had written at a different tempo and I think it actually just sounds like something played at the wrong speed. This question was answered incorrectly 81.5% of the time.

Judgement: Send to Room 101, never to be heard again.

Next up: Pedal Example 9

This example features an inverted pedal that can be mostly clearly heard iterating on the off-beat the whole way through the clip. The piano is playing alternating notes an octave apart but it’s the second one that stands out aurally. The question here is whether students are getting wrong because:

1. they hear it as a pedal but answer wrongly because they think it needs to be labelled as inverted
2. or because their understanding of the concept ‘pedal’ is too closely tied to ‘long held’ and ‘low’.

My suspicion is that it is the latter and this example has the crucial feature of sustaining a harmonically important note through a series of chord changes. This example therefore has a useful role to play in ensuring that students know that a pedal note isn’t simply low and sustained. This example is answered wrong 80% of the time but, in this case, non mea culpa.

Judgement: Lives to sound another day.

6/8 Example 1

6/8 is, to my mind, a tricky one already. Your median student listens to very little music in 6/8 and rarely encounters it through notation, which is anyway tricky because it involves explaining that quavers are not half a beat but half a crotchet beat and and that value in rhythm is all relative. It is probably the perfect example of how, when the sequence of sound to symbol is inverted, verbal explanation is found wanting. Students need a bank of good 6/8 examples that they know are in 6/8 to draw upon so that a verbal explanation can be grounded musically and therefore makes sense.

The clearest 6/8 examples in Elemental are those in popular styles where the kick and snare patterns reinforce the duple feel over the groups of three quavers flowing underneath. The example under interrogation, however, has the groups of three strongly enough that some students (69% in fact) are hearing 3/4 instead of 6/8. To build their understanding of 6/8 students need a clear feel of a stronger beat followed by a weaker one and this example is a shade too subtle.

Judgement: Byeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Our final example in the dock for today: Diatonic Harmony Example 3

Diatonic harmony makes an appearance relatively frequently in A level, and occasionally GCSE, mark schemes. Elemental presents it alongside examples with chromatic harmony to help students understand that diatonic music stays within the prevailing key.

This example is answered incorrectly 2/3 of the time and I suspect this shows that students have diatonic harmony logged in their heads as ‘pleasant, straightforward’. I have found in the past that students initially confuse dissonant harmony with minor tonality as they blur the harshness of dissonance with the sadness of a minor key. My suspicion is that this is what’s happening here and the marcato articulation is combining with the minor tonality to throw students off. This is, therefore, a good example that highlights a misconception.

Judgement: It’s a survivor, it’s gonna make it.

If you have any comments about these examples and the logic behind their survival or deletion then don’t hold back from emailing ed@elementalmusic.app.