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Acoustical Sensitivity Training
Ed Dumas
I used to joke sometimes with my beginning band students that they were playing like they were having a “Musical Temper Tantrum.” No, they were not rolling on the floor and kicking and screaming, and were most definitely not banished to a practice room for a quiet space. The joke was a comparison to a toddler having a temper tantrum when that toddler is just completely sensory overloaded.
When toddlers get overloaded in this way and start to act out by plugging their ears, closing their eyes, and kicking & screaming, what they are actually trying to do is block out some sensory data. They are just too mentally tired at that point to keep on processing everything that they need to “keep up.” Hence the plugging ears to block out sound, closing eyes to block out their vision, rolling on the floor thrashing about to block out tactile input, and so on. The best thing for the child that is having a temper tantrum is not to get mad at them, but to just give them a chance to calm down and rest by having a nap, usually in their bedroom.
When band students start to play so that they are no longer watching or listening, I would jokingly call it a Musical Temper Tantrum. The musicians were not screaming about and crying, but rather just focusing so intently on the written page that they could not see what was happening with the conductor, nor could they hear what was happening with the rest of the band. Being able to attend to three different things, the sheet music, the conductor and the band requires great mental skill from anyone who tries it, and it is no surprise that young musicians get mentally tired doing this.
As an aside, I believe that this is the origin of the belief that “Music Makes You Smarter.” I would have to admit that being a musician certainly gives one better attenuation skills so much so that musicians become renowned for being able to focus better and longer. Still, “Music Makes You Smarter” might be an oversimplification of the effect.
In any case, it is no surprise to young musicians in their first year that all the mental demands of playing a new musical instrument mentally wears them out. At those times when students are mentally tired and only able to absorb the info from the written page, I like to run an energizing activity that helps them to recharge and get back into deeper mental attention. I have called this “Acoustical Sensitivity Training” with my students, as it seemed that a fancy name gave it more respect from the students. Either way, the students LOVED this activity and would often ask for it once we had done it once or twice.
The intent of Acoustical Sensitivity Training was for the students to become fully aware of all the sounds around them, at least for a brief moment. We would accomplish this by slowly removing all visual data for them to look at so that all that was left was for sounds to be heard. In reality, they still had other non-sound sensory inputs such as tactile feeling on their instruments and so on, but generally, it was so that they would focus less on sight and more on sound.
This activity begins with the students learning a passage from memory, such as 8 or 16 measures of something they like to play. I would give them a chance to play the passage once or twice, and inform them that as they were playing it, they needed to read it in a way that put it into short-term memory, as they were about to play it back to me without the music. After they had played it a couple of times, I would then have them turn their music stand around and play it again from memory. If they felt like they did not get it well enough yet, they could look at their page one more time, and then play it once again from memory.
Once they were satisfied that they “had it,” I would then tell them that that was not the exercise, but the preparation for the exercise. If they were sure they were ready, we would now begin. The next step is that I would now ask the students to stand and SLOWLY move to any other chair in the band. They were to move without their music as I needed them to be able to play without the music stand near them. I said emphasized the word “slowly” so that they understood it was not like “Musical Chairs” while they had musical instruments in their hands!
Once they were seated, I would ask them to play that passage back to me once again. Already now they were beginning to hear other sounds that they had not paid attention to before. Undoubtedly, every time, there would be a few students that still tried to sit beside the same person they always sat beside. To solve this, I would then ask the students to again sit in another different chair, but this time to make sure that they are not sitting next to anyone else from their section of instruments. This caused them to get mixed up a bit better. We would then play that passage one more time. Once again students are hearing more sounds that they are not used to because they are sitting next to different players.
The next step was to spread out the group even larger, so I would ask the students to “stand anywhere in the room, just so long as you are spread out.” This meant that they are now standing in the percussion section, over by the walls, or even by the music stand racks. We would play the passage again, and once again it would sound different in their ears.
The next step was to start to take away the conductor from their sightlines, so I would then ask them to turn away from me. This time when we play that passage I will count them in, but after that, they have very little left to look at and so must listen to each other.
The final step was to have the students face the center once again, but warn them I was about to turn out the lights. I warned them because I did not want them to do the usual screaming in the dark thing. I would count them in and from then on they have little to look at and must fully listen to stay together.
Once they completed that “blind” rendition, I would then turn on the lights, and have them slowly return to their original seat. From here we would play one final repetition of the memorized passage. Before we did this, I would ask them to try to focus on listening to some of the sounds in the band that they heard when they were “going walkabout” that maybe they were not used to hearing. This could be something like an instrument or two on the other side of the band. Without fail, most of the musicians were now able to better focus on musical sounds and less on the written page.
One of the important concepts that this fun activity is based upon is the proximity of sounds for young players. Being close to someone just makes it much easier for them to hear each other. Also, you can stretch that ability to hear other sounds by starting them out closer and then moving them farther apart. Switching positions in the band helps this out. Another concept in play here is the “primacy of the visual input.” This can be defeated by simply slowly taking away everything there is for students to look at leaving them only something to hear.
One of the interesting effects I always found with this activity was that if I attempted to take away all written sheet music as a source of visual input, I often still had students unwilling to look at the one thing left remaining for information, and that was the conductor! Sometimes students seemed to equate “Listen more” with “Don’t look at the conductor!” That would result in another exercise focusing them on looking at the conductor, but that is another topic.
The only danger with doing this “Acoustical Sensitivity Training” was in students moving about either too fast with instruments in their hands, or moving about in the dark with instruments in their hands. It is important that they understand they need to move slowly, and not at all in the dark. Since this is a new activity for them, the first time students do this they can get overly excited. It is important that they know to keep calm even though they are having lots of fun doing something different.
After you have tried this exercise once or twice with a class, you can then start to stretch their learning a bit by having them run a rehearsal in a different chair than normal. I have heard some folks call these a “fractured rehearsal” as it kind of resembles a band that has been fractured into instruments instead of sections. To do this, just ask the students to take their music and move to a different seat within the band setting. As much as possible, ask them to NOT sit next to the same people so that the sounds they are next to are different from what they are normally used to.
Just by having different players sitting next to them, musicians can feel a bit of an awakening experience so that they are focusing on listening once again, and not reducing back down to only watching the page. The adage “Familiarity Breeds Contempt” here might be more accurate as “Familiarity Breeds Indifference.” When young musicians become indifferent to the sounds around them is a good time to switch it up a bit to help them refocus on new sounds. This needs to only last for one rehearsal and then return to standard seating with the expectation that the renewed focus has been kept, at least for a time.
Finally, one more follow-up activity to “Acoustical Sensitivity Training” is that of running a rehearsal in the round. To do this, have your musicians set up in a large circle with the conductor placed in the middle of the circle instead of at the front of the room. This activity can help your students focus on watching the conductor, as everyone in the group is now equidistant from the conductor.
There are a couple of challenges with trying a circle rehearsal, the first being the size of the group. Some of the groups I have had in the past were so physically large that making one large circle would be well beyond the walls of the band room. Even making two circles, one within the other, still could not be logistically completed at times.
Another difficulty with the rehearsal in a circle idea is that the music room just might not allow for it if the music room is not completely flat. Some music rooms are built into levels and as such a circle of musicians on a flat floor just cannot work. I will leave it to you to decide if you want to try circle rehearsals.
One final thought for any of the ideas expressed above for helping students to learn the skill of listening while they are playing. This is a tough skill for young players to learn and is related to brain development that often does not happen until the late teens or early twenties. Don’t be disappointed that you need to keep reteaching these listening skills because students keep falling back into mindfully not listening while they are playing.
Doing these kinds of lessons too often, though, can be about the same as not doing them at all. Imagine doing a fractured rehearsal every day so that students now no longer listen to the different players sitting right beside them. You cannot do them so often that once again “Familiarity Breeds Indifference.”
Try using some Acoustical Sensitivity Training once in a while, but not so often that the students become bored with the activity. Used infrequently as something special is probably enough. Your students will gradually improve in their ability to listen while they are playing with this skill hopefully peaking in their senior years.
Ed Dumas is a retired band director who taught his entire career in the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows School District. Ed is now retired and living with his lifelong partner Laurie, and their little dog Sprocket in Parksville, BC. Ed & Laurie also work as Mid-Island reps for Tapestry Music while enjoying music in retirement.
You can find Ed’s other writings for the MusicED Blog at: https://www.tapestrymusic.com/news.aspx
