Diane Boyd, Eastern Illinois University

Dawn C. Miller, University of Oklahoma

Playing together in ensemble is a rewarding experience for all musicians. This experience has even more potential when joining electronic and acoustic instruments together in a chamber music setting. Imagine a young flutist being able to perform with an ensemble of the intended instruments of an early classical quartet and then, just as easily, to play a contemporary jazz work with a seemingly "live" jazz trio. The opportunities for strengthening musical and performance skills using technology can be exciting and motivating for both teacher and student.

Today, in the absence of our own students, we ask you to use your imagination to visualize an ensemble of young keyboardists playing with an intermediate level flutist. You will hear different instruments playing in ensemble. The sequencer will help to create this illusion.

Engaging the young performer in these performances can enhance motivation. For the intermediate instrumentalist to hear a work as a recording in the original orchestration, while enlightening, is still a more passive activity than participating in a live ensemble of the same literature. Unfortunately most realistic situations do not afford us the luxury of having the appropriate instrumentalists at our fingertips. Even if we did, the development level of each performer varies widely depending on the idiomatic difficulties of each instrument. Technology can allow the creative teacher the flexibility to embrace student centered learning, creating a challenging environment for each student.

Adding an acoustic performer not only increases the socialization of such activities, which is a concern for the isolated pianist in the past tradition of piano lessons, but it sets the stage for determining phrasing, meter and the flexibility required of all ensemble playing.

We will illustrate this concept with a selection from Baroque mix. This collection, published by the Neil Kjos, Jr. Music Company, contains literature for keyboard ensembles arranged by Dawn Miller. The Bourree from Handel's Flute Sonata in G Major is a popular piece for the young flutist.

After only two years of teaching in the music department of a university located in the rural midwest, I have identified many consistent weaknesses that I hear repeatedly in audition situations. When sight-reading, playing scales, or performing solo literature, students display poor intonation, a lack of rhythmic consistency, and disregard for ensemble with the accompaniment.

The majority of the students learn about music only through the band program beginning in fifth or sixth grade. Unfortunately, these programs are often geared towards success at marching or concert contests, and minimal rehearsal time causes the individual to be overlooked. A student not grasping the subdivision of a quarter note into two eighth notes when it is taught in band class will always have a void in his/her understanding of the intricacies of rhythm. Too often a director is forced to say, "Imitate this rhythm after I sing," or even worse, "Don't play that section from letter A to letter B." Failure to comprehend the rhythmic fabric of the music leads to problems with tempo maintenance as well as tempo fluctuations. Not until a student can play exactly in time and understand the relative durations of note lengths can she incorporate a sincere rubato, stringendo, or ritardando into her performance.

The last movement of J. S. Bach's Second Brandenburg Concerto provides the student a clear path to rhythmic accuracy and tempo maintenance.

Playing strictly in time with the metronome is considered boring by most students; moreover, there are students who can play happily for hours with the tick of the metronome serving merely as background noise and not a guide. Additional features of this technology are its abilities to add the click of the metronome and to slow down the music without dropping the pitch level. This latter feature is especially helpful as the student is able to isolate tricky passages for slow practice with the simple touch of a button.

I have encountered very few students entering the university or my private studio who possess good senses of pitch. Because the mass-produced lower-priced beginner instruments tend to have inferior scales, it is possible for the student to train herself to hear out-of-tune. In addition, it is difficult to practice matching pitch in the band setting when the student is one of twenty flutists in the section or one of eighty in the full group. Flutists, too, are often perplexed by the tuning process once vibrato has been incorporated into their playing. More problematic is the tuning of intervals, a weakness that becomes painfully obvious in the smaller "one to a part" ensembles more commonly found in colleges and universities.

The next example, the slow movement of the Brandenburg Second Concerto, assists the student in matching pitches and tuning intervals.

As a coach of woodwind quintets and flute ensembles, I often notice a lack of awareness about where a particular line "fits." Frequently I pose such questions as "Who has the melody here?" or "Which part had the running scales?" only to be met with blank stares. Using technology pedagogically helps the student inflect within a larger framework of stability provided by the keyboard ensemble.

In the contemporary vein, enjoyable pop styles are easily accessible. Inclusion of this literature can increase motivation and provide an interesting alternative to the recital programming of the intermediate performer. This flexibility of programming is also the first step to making music visible in our school or community.

The following piece, I'm Passing By You, written by Dawn Miller and published by the Alfred Music Company, is an example of the endless timbral and contemporary style choices we can make available to our students through technology.

Consider the variety of styles contained in the jazz idiom. Wouldn't every jazz band director delight in acquiring students who have already internalized sophisticated jazz rhythms through active participation? Thewell known standard, Birdland will demonstrate a portion of this potential.

When I prepare a student for the annual solo contest, college audition, or other special performance, I hear repeatedly, "But it just didn't sound right with the accompaniment and it made me mess up!" The young flutist gives the score to the accompanist and focuses only on the solo line, without any regard to the role of the accompanying instrument. Sadly, pianists are in short supply in my region, and students are lucky to have a fifteen minute run-through with the accompanist on the day before the event. The student is unaware of the interplay between parts, how tempo fluctuations are prepared, or even how to cue entrances. Suddenly the experience becomes frightening, frustrating, and unfulfilling, and one that the timid or self-conscious student will no doubt elect not to replicate in the future.

Preprepared accompaniment disks are now available from a wide variety of music publishers. There is also interactive computer software that provides this function. I find it very useful to have my students make their own sequences of the orchestration to their concertos. Mastering a powerful, but not overly complex sequencer allows them the freedom to create with technology. In so doing, they are combining many types of thought. They are questioning timbre, learning transposition skills, absorbing the form of the entire work. They are being active learners. These skills will transfer to all areas of their continued music making. Listen to an excerpt from the Haydn Piano Concerto in D major. The student created this sequence to rehearse and perform with.

We would like to conclude with this excerpt from Claude Bolling's Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano . Bolling scored the work for flute and jazz trio, which includes piano, bass and drums. It is a favorite of ours, and we can never seem to get the remaining performers in one place at one time.

What we do can be done with $500 keyboards and acoustic instruments. The most expensive component of this arrangement is the sequencer itself. What you choose for this role can be as complicated as an advanced computer set-up or as simple as this sequencer, the Roland MT-200. A reasonable investment for the instructor, this particular instrument and others like it are portable and user friendly. There is ample software available and it is simple enough for students to use, even when you're not there looking over their shoulders.