In grading student papers, there are two words that baffle me.
One is "feel." Somehow, students think that anything about music's temporal structure can be described as its "feel." For example, there are pieces with a "triple feel" or a "compound feel," or with a "fast feel." Of course, what they mean is "triple meter," or "compound meter," or "fast tempo." To me, "feel" in this case sounds like you're saying, "I listened to it once or twice, and it kinda felt this way," rather than, "I looked at the score and thought about the way the meter is articulated, and it's this." But usually the students have analyzed the piece pretty well, so I don't know why they choose the non-technical term that I've never used in class over the technical one that we use all the time.
The other is "stagnant." For some reason, anything in music that has no sense of motion is "stagnant." To me, stagnant music not only doesn't move, but it's slightly rancid and probably a little smelly. But for some reason, students pass over the perfectly fine word "static," or perhaps even a subtler, clearer description, to use "stagnant," even when they mean it in a good way. Thus we get "stagnant harmonies," "stagnant rhythms," "stagnant melodies," etc., in music that (as far as I can tell) doesn't even have mold growing on it yet.
What's really baffling to me is the extent to which these words are used. I think I've seen both of them every single time I've graded a group of papers over the past couple of years, both at Indiana and at UMass. It makes me wonder if there's some cultural source for one of these words. I can come up with one for "feel," which might just come out of a general culture where the ultimate compliment is to be called "totally laid back" rather than "knowledgable," but stagnant still doesn't make sense.
I've decided to stop even marking these words unless I've specifically said something about them in class before the paper is due. If I want them to avoid these words in the future, I'll take the responsibility myself!
Dad and Mom, have you ever run up against these words in student work? Claire, do you use these words to describe music? Nate and Heather, are there odd words that students use in your fields?
3 comments:
I don't recall my students at Vassar writing about stagnant pitch class sets or the compound feel of Ligeti, but I'll be on the lookout next time. It's frustrating when there are such good and precise words available. Why not use them?!
Good luck finishing up your grading, Tim. See you soon!
Love,
Dad
Last week I had a student (as he was writing his final project composition) ask me what a step was. So your problems seem way beyond what I am experiencing...but probably equally frustrating.
I don't think I see enough students yet to notice general trends in language (mis)usage.
Although, last summer during their weekly presentations, I noticed my mentees lacking the right technical terms. So to prepare them for their final presentation, I gave them a list of possible questions they might get asked. For most of these questions they knew the answer, but the exercise was to help them articulate when they weren't on the spot. Then I edited their responses, using technical language appropriately, and gave the responses back to them to look over.
It worked! They got better at answering questions with technical terms. For example, they would say "We have not yet investigated that trend," instead of "I don't know," or, "There is an inversely proportional relationship between pore size and pressure drop," instead of "when we increase this then that decreases."
So I think being shown how to use certain terms can be a great help. There are many times where I choose a non-technical term to describe something because I'd rather do that than mis-use a technical term in my description. :)
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