When UBC music theory lecturer Dr. Robert Komaniecki joined his school choir at 16, he didn’t even know he could sing. In fact, he admits music wasn’t really the motivation behind joining at all — he signed up because he had a “little crush” on one of the other members.
“[The crush] only lasted a couple weeks,” he laughed. “But then I ended up loving choir permanently.”
He still remembers his first choir room in detail: tiered choral risers arranged in a semi-circle around a Steinway grand piano, facing a mirrored wall where he and around 40 others could watch themselves sing. Narrow window slits allowed ample natural light, while a glass door, Komaniecki said, had the effect of making the room feel somewhat like a fish tank.
When he first began choir, Komaniecki struggled with matching pitch, and it took him a while to realize his voice was deeper than those of other boys in his class.
“I was pretty uncomfortable. It took a couple of choir teachers a little bit of time to explain to me what I was doing and that I could sing, and I could trust my ear.”
Recognizing craft
A classroom priority for Komaniecki is spotlighting music from a wide range of genres, cultures and eras. From western classical music, to video game tunes, to the “baby music” he listens to with his kids — anything might find its way into the curriculum.
“There was this song from Peppa Pig that had a perfect musical sentence in it. And so I was like, ‘All right, well, I guess my college students are hearing this Peppa Pig song today, because that’s what I listened to this morning.’”
Komaniecki said he emphasizes these broad music styles because it helps students “recognize craft and expertise in a wide variety of genres.”
This principle also guides much of Komaniecki’s music theory research, where he studies genres ranging from video game music to hip-hop. Music theory is the field of study interested in analyzing and articulating the workings of a piece of music.
“Hip-hop always interested me because so many of the parameters that rappers are focused on are parameters that traditional music theorists are maybe less focused on,” said Komaniecki. “[I really wanted] to be able to evaluate that music based on the cultural assertions from within the things that those musicians wanted to emphasize.”
But when asked how he integrates his research into the classroom, Komaniecki was quick to assert that it’s usually the other way around — his teaching informs his research.
“That’s one of the reasons why this is such a great job … You get to talk about something that’s really interesting to you, and you get to be in a room with a bunch of other interested experts in that area.”
“Sometimes I’ll mention something that I’m working on in my research, and a student will mention something that they want to contribute. And I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s a really interesting idea. I’ve never thought about that.’”
One particular instance stood out to Komaniecki, where a student pointed out that in Korean, the infinitive form of verbs tend to rhyme inherently.
“And that was really interesting to me, because English is not like that at all,” said Komaniecki. “How do Korean rappers make their raps sound skillful and interesting if the language is one that is relatively rhymed, just from the get-go?”
Normalizing musical mistakes
This term, Komaniecki is looking forward to a class he’s teaching about video game music.
“I think it’s really going to help me learn how to teach in different and fun ways,” Komaniecki said. “The best part is getting everybody in a classroom and then turning on a PlayStation and having them whoop each other in some game on the last day of classes. So, I think it’s going to be a really fun class. I’m looking forward to it.”
Komaniecki aims to inspire confidence in his students. And this starts on day one when, according to class tradition, he will have new students stand up and sing together.
He recounted the first time he led this activity with palpable warmth. It was in an ear training class, where students learned about sight-reading and dictating music.
“Nobody knew anybody and it was a huge class. Eighty students in a big auditorium,” Komaniecki said. “I had this bit of [four-part harmony] sight reading set up.”
He said they practiced sight reading the piece together at first before he split the students into four groups and had them sing in harmony. The piece of music was an excerpt of a Mahler symphony, arranged for four part chords sung by soprano, alto, tenor and bass voices. And, by his account, the students more than did it justice.
“It was just transcendentally good,” said Komaniecki. “We got to the last chord, and they all just looked at each other with their eyes wide, and they were like, ‘That was awesome.’”
Komaniecki acknowledged that singing together can be intimidating for students, especially those that consider themselves instrumentalists.
He said the best way to overcome this reticence is to “normalize making mistakes.”
Komaniecki asserted that processes like sight singing, aural skills and ear training are meant to involve failure — this is a philosophy through which he tries to lead, both in theory and example.
“If the students see me attempt something and mess up, and then just shake it off and figure it out and do it again, they start to feel a lot more comfortable messing up themselves when they realize that the expectation isn’t that they’re perfect, the expectation is just that they get their hands dirty and try.”
He also noted that a sense of community between students can make the classroom feel like a safe space to take risks.
“We have this tendency … where we assume that everybody else in the classroom is an expert, except us. And that’s definitely true in music. People will just assume that everybody around them is this flawless musician that’s never made any mistakes.”
As Komaniecki said, this mindset is detrimental when it comes to confidence and can often inhibit people from speaking or singing in class.
“Once you’re used to the people in the class and you’ve seen all the people around you make mistakes or try to struggle to get through something and it not be a big deal, then things just become easier.”
Komaniecki stressed the relationships formed in class are anything but trivial.
“It’s really one of the best parts of the job, watching those little friendships bloom.”
He pointed to one of the first music theory classes he taught as a master’s student at the University of Minnesota.
“Five years after that class,” he recounted, “two of the students that sat in the front row ended up getting married to each other. It’s kind of crazy, the significance of the connections that people can form in those 8 a.m. music theory courses.” u
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