Most beginning theory students without strong keyboard backgrounds have a hard time hearing their written harmony exercises. As a result, assignments are often full of outlandish mistakes, improbable-sounding dissonances that can only be understood as musical typos–"paper" errors resulting from a gap between eye and ear. Students write down pitches they would never accept in sound.

In my first year of teaching, this rift between notation and audiation caused me much chagrin. In class, I proselytized continually about the practical relevance of elementary theory; meanwhile, my students’ work made it plain that nothing could have been more "theoretical" to them, that is, more divorced from their aural perception. It was obvious that they had no idea what their assignments sounded like. I felt profoundly uneasy correcting direct fifths or doubled leading tones on papers covered with absurd sonorities, while students were often so overwhelmed by red ink that they could not process my corrections usefully.

Such a situation makes a mockery of the study of written music. Of course, most music programs have aural skills and keyboard requirements that address this very problem; but whether separate or folded into the theory curriculum, musicianship classes are generally taken concurrently with (or even after) the first theory courses. Even if all students leave a music program with reasonable reading and playing skills, most do not have these skills in hand when they are actually supposed to be learning the basics of harmony. This makes the study of theory abstract, more difficult, and hollow, and points students toward the common conclusion that theory is an irrelevant and unmusical subject.

I was determined to do something to ensure that students associated their notation with actual sound. It is just not realistic, in one or two semesters, to expect first-year, non-piano majors to develop sufficient facility to play typical three- and four-part examples fluently; my first year had convinced me that no amount of enthusiasm or exhortation would alter that fact. In order to provide the immediate aural feedback otherwise available only to those with good keyboard skills, I turned to the computer.

Most computer notation programs have at least rudimentary MIDI playback features. Once music is entered it is instantaneously available for playback, regardless of a student’s keyboard ability. I now have my students do the bulk of their written work using Coda Music Technology’s Finale, ensuring that they are able to hear everything they write.

In the remainder of this paper, I describe how I have integrated Finale into my classes. First, I consider the practical problem of adding computer notation skills to an already overburdened theory curriculum. Next I discuss some of the ways playback can be used not only to reduce "stupid" mistakes but also to check for proscribed melodic motion and forbidden parallels–always integrating notation with hearing (playback), reinforcing the connection between theoretical principles and actual sound. Finally, I consider some pedagogical pros and cons: my students’ immediate improvement and greater involvement with their written work vs. my concerns about the passive nature of mechanical playback as a feedback mechanism.

A natural objection to the use of notation software is that learning to use the program takes up precious class time. Finale’s reputedly steep learning curve intimidates many teachers as well as students. I do not mean to promote Finale in particular, but rather to show that one can use even a powerful program without getting mired in its complexity, thus conserving class time for the study of music itself.

For each of the first assignments, I create a template in choral score format (one voice per staff); the correct meter, key signature, number of measures, and such are already established (as in the example below). All the students have to learn is how to enter notes and rhythms and how to work the playback controls–a matter of minutes and a few simple instructions. Once these skills are mastered, I introduce new tasks one by one: setting clefs, time and key signatures, notating multiple voices on a single staff, measure layout, creating staff systems, and so on.

Thoughtfully composed instruction sheets, incorporating graphics of the Finale tool icons as they appear on screen, entirely obviate the need for classroom explanation of most operations. Page Layout, perhaps the most complex of everyday notation tasks, is reducible to a half-hour of class and one bare-bones instruction sheet (see Appendix). This sugar-coated approach works so well that I now require students to figure out certain features I have not detailed, just to make sure that they learn how to, as the saying goes, RTFM (Read The Finale Manuals)!

Of course, a certain amount of class time is inevitably taken up with computer issues. But computer notation is fast becoming a necessary skill. In a degree program that does not offer a separate computer skills or notation course, responsibility for introducing it probably falls on the theory curriculum anyway, for better or worse.

Finale’s playback capabilities are not as sophisticated as those of a dedicated sequencing program, but it has the key advantage that students already know the "interface": traditional staff notation. If they can notate it, they can hear it. The first, and most important, result is that students do not hand in assignments that sound obviously wrong to them. Even the busiest (and the laziest!) students listen to their work before handing it in: they are already sitting at the computer, and playback is just a mouse-click away. When I began to assign homework in Finale, there was an immediate and dramatic reduction in the number of careless mistakes.

Of course, the computer does not magically improve a student’s ears: the only mistakes eliminated are those that sound wrong to the student. There are still plenty of parallel fifths, dissonances improperly prepared, resolved, or doubled, disjunct lines, and so on. But the mistakes that make it past the student’s aural check provide a faithful representation of what the student hears–they are not just careless written errors that the student would not for a moment accept in sound. What is left to correct are things that the student needs help hearing as well as seeing. These problems are the "real stuff" of part-writing, the things student and teacher should be spending time on.

More advanced manipulation of playback can help students hear these "finer points" of common practice as well. In Finale, it is easy to audition any one staff or combination of staves while muting others. This provides a convenient way to check for good melodic construction in individual lines or for good counterpoint between the outer voices. At some point I insist that the students check each voice pair for forbidden parallels. Some begin to recognize such parallels by ear, a rare accomplishment even for advanced students: what is for many the least intuitive principle of common practice voice-leading becomes audible and so, perhaps, less arcane.

Another way to highlight the voice-leading is to take advantage of Finale’s ability to play back different lines on distinct "instruments" (channel/patch assignments). Finale can send information on up to 64 MIDI channels. With a multi-timbral synthesizer–or with QuickTime musical instruments installed–one can assign distinct timbres to individual staves, bringing particular lines into sharper relief.

None of the study methods I have described here is new. All that my students do with Finale can be done with the piano and the human voice … in some ways, to better effect. The passive experience of hearing one’s music played through the computer is a poor substitute for the kinesthetic experience of performing several parts simultaneously in real time, and for the mental discipline necessary to do this.

But, as I noted at the beginning, most students entering the theory curriculum are simply not prepared to read three- or four-part exercises at the keyboard, to say nothing of hearing them with the inner ear. Of course I exhort my students to play and sing their work as much as they can; but most students absorb the basic principles of common-practice part-writing intellectually much faster than they can learn to play such music. The question is whether we are willing to put students’ aural-harmonic development on hold until their keyboard skills catch up. Personally, given the constraints of a four-year music program, I welcome anything that helps students write and hear better immediately. I abhor any move to replace traditional keyboard training with computer playback, but the value of computer tools should be considered separately from the question of keyboard competence.

It is worth noting that the computer is in some ways more stimulating to the aural imagination than the keyboard. For example, when one enters polyphonic music into a notation program, the imagination is less tied to what lies easily under the fingers; for those who do have plenty of keyboard facility–whose hands and brain naturally light on keyboard-style voicings–computer notation (particularly in full score) tends to inspire unexplored possibilities by reducing the temptation to "think with the hand."

I should also note an unanticipated drawback to computer playback, pedagogically frustrating but interesting psychologically. We all know that good sightreaders never look back: they play through their mistakes unapologetically without missing a beat. As I am forever telling my own students, if you play confidently and in time, any note can sound plausible; there are no wrong notes. Unfortunately, this bit of pedagogical hype turns out to be only too true–and the computer is the perfect sightreader. Its very implacability can lull the listener into missing even what I have been calling "obvious" mistakes. I find it necessary to remind students to listen slowly and attentively, using clear timbres without complex attack transients.

The ability to hear their work is quite simply gratifying to the students. For many, computer playback takes harmony and voice-leading out of the symbolic realm and into their immediate sensory experience, helping them learn the common practice as practically as possible–that is, as principles connected to actual sound–and making them less likely to become alienated from theory as an "abstract" (read: irrelevant) discipline. My students have become more enthusiastic about their written work, feel more creatively involved, and are having more fun.

The following sheet provides all the essential information needed for basic page layout, one of the more involved Finale tasks. This sheet does not make virtuoso engravers of the students, nor is it meant to replace the program’s official documentation. It does condense information scattered on dozens of pages throughout four separate volumes–the three main Finale 3.0 manuals and the two sections of the version 3.7 Addendum–into one page that students can learn in about an hour and keep for easy reference.

Several easier to navigate mid-level notation programs offer many of the features of a publishing-quality program. Ease of use is a major consideration, all the more so in a course whose proper subject is music theory, not computer notation; thus a mid-level program may be the best choice for people interested in introducing notation software into their theory courses.

But a case can be made for using a professional program. It gives the students useful experience with software they might end up using for advanced notation needs, whereas skill developed with a less powerful program may be of no lasting benefit. And those teaching theory, whether theorists, composers, or historians, are often most familiar (from their own work) with one or another of the higher-end programs. Using the familiar program makes more sense than trying to learn a new one for theory class; not only will it reduce the instructor’s preparation time, but students too are better off with a program that the instructor knows thoroughly. In my experience, carefully thought-out instruction sheets like the following one make the main features of a complex program easily accessible while keeping class discussion of notation skills to a minimum.