Kansas Music Standard #4: The teacher of music has skills in reading and writing music.

Knowledge

• The teacher can develop and use criteria for evaluating and selecting materials for reading and writing musical compositions.

Performance

• The teacher conducts from a variety of scores, reading multiple staves, transpositions, clefs, and contemporary notation.
• The teacher performs music notation at sight vocally and instrumentally.
• The teacher notates music from aural sources

      In order to properly teach music a person must be able to read music. Just how one is not considered literate if they can only read text but not write it, one must be able to both read and write music in order to truly understand it. Everything from score reading and conducting to notating simple scales for students to play requires proficiency in reading and writing music.

      The conducting curriculum at KSU has taught me how to view a score and then physically convey the music to my students through movement. This includes showing students different dynamic levels, tempos, meters and overall musical style. With regarding to writing music, the aural skills courses at KSU require each student to sight sing on a regular basis as well as notate melody and harmony using nothing but the aural perception. This has come in to use several times during Jazz combo when the director has requested that the group learn a new chart using only a recording.

      The following links should lead you to a copy of the program from my senior recital as well as a recording of excerpts of my performance of the Muczynski, Sonata from the second annual KSU music department honors recital. These artifacts should provide adequate evidence of my ability to learn and perform large amounts of music with accurate interpretation and stylistic considerations, a set of skills that I will now be able to pass on to my own students.    

      Nicholas Pool senoir recital program and recording of Sonate op. 29, I. Andatne Maestoso by Robert Muczynski (recorded spring 2007 at the 2nd Annual KSU Music Department Honors Recital)