ESTA MA Music – Plucked Strings
About the course
The instrumental teaching profession demands constant reflection and improvement from its practitioners. This course will help you to validate your personal development and formalise your academic qualification to teach.
Our programme of study is designed to enable you as an instrumental or vocal teacher to progress from the stage you are in your career and to take a fresh look at the way you approach your teaching.
Your studies will be online, engaging with tasks including webinars, meetings with your mentor, taking part in discussion groups, reading, making videos. You will reflect on and develop your teaching focusing on the context in which you work. This will help you to question things you may have taken for granted, explore work with and without notation and develop a holistic approach to your teaching.
You will be assigned a mentor who shares your specialism (e.g. brass, bowed strings, piano, voice, woodwind, percussion, plucked strings) and your mentor’s job is to guide you through the course, lead study sessions and feedback on your work and progress.
Being a student on this course is all about developing as a reflective practitioner, someone who is willing to stand back and look at their work and contemplate changing aspects if both you and your students will benefit. Your course leader will provide an overview of the whole course, lead study sessions, and also make assessments of all students’ work to ensure fairness.
To gain the maximum benefit for your investment in this programme of study you should plan your diary carefully to make sure you have all the deadlines for completion and submission of work highlighted – and then please take notice of them.
This programme is delivered by ESTA and validated by the University of Chichester.
Who is it for ?
Moving on from the ESTA PG Cert in Teaching, the ESTA MA (Plucked Strings) Practical Teaching provides students with the opportunity to reflect more deeply and demonstrate the application of learned theory in their own personal teaching setting.
The instrumental teaching profession demands constant reflection and improvement from its practitioners. This course will help you to validate your personal development and formalise your academic qualification to teach.
Participants will:
Develop practical skills in teaching musical and technical material, fostering an engaging and student-appropriate approach to music learning and performance
Foster an investigative and inquisitive approach to teaching by developing skills in both research and reflection
Actively develop communication skills to enable effective teaching
Develop skills in curriculum planning that are highly relevant in the profession.
Who teaches the course
Head of Department – Plucked strings
HELEN SANDERSON
British guitarist, Helen Sanderson, studied guitar at the Royal College of Music with Charles Ramirez
British guitarist, Helen Sanderson, studied guitar at the Royal College of Music with Charles Ramirez, and accompaniment with John Blakely, graduating with prizes including the Anthony Saltmarsh Prize and the Madeline Walton Prize for Guitar.
Her performing career reflects her passion for chamber music in partnerships with eminent counter-tenor James Bowman, tenor Mark Wilde and in guitar duo with Zoran Dukic. She was a founding member of the VIDA Guitar Quartet and her performances have included recitals at the Southbank Centre, Kings Place, St Georges-Bristol, and the Sage Gateshead. In 2010 Helen made her US debuts in Los Angeles and New York, and has subsequently toured extensively throughout USA and Europe.
In parallel to her role as Head of Guitar Performance at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Helen is an entrepreneurial educator, committed to nurturing young guitarists throughout the UK. In 2006 she founded the music education charity, Guitar Circus, and Helen’s wider work in guitar education was recognised in 2017 with the award of a Churchill Fellowship following her research in the USA of whole-class guitar programmes.
Helen is a sought-after masterclass artist, adjudicator and international jury member for competitions such as BBC Young Musician of the Year, the Guitar Foundation of America International Concert Artist, the Ida Presti competition and the Sky Arts series, ‘Guitar Star’. She is Artistic Director for the National Youth Guitar Ensemble UK and directs the London Camerata and Fellowship ensembles. Helen’s compositions and arrangements regularly feature in the ABRSM and Trinity College and syllabi and she is a D’Addario Classical Artist.
Course content by unit
Unit 1: Teaching plucked stringed instruments technique to children and young people learning plucked stringed instruments
Posture (tendon/muscle tension, points of contact, guitar support)
Principles of right and left hand position
Tone production (apoyando, tirando)
Right hand technique (chord playing – arpeggiated, simultaneous, planting)
Left hand technique (pivoting, barre, shifting, vibrato, slurs)
Hand co-ordination
Finger independence
Fingernail shaping/care/repair
Phrasing, voicing, musical awareness
Fingering technique (technical, musical)
Articulation (legato, staccato, damping)
Ambidextral weight control
Stretching, elasticity, dexterity
Extended techniques (pizzicato, harmonics, tremolo, rasgueado, tambora)
Unit 2: How children and young people learn to play plucked stringed instruments
How learners learn
Simultaneous Learning
Learning spiral
My learners now
Understanding, assimilating and consolidating skills, knowledge and understanding
Learning music musically
Developing aural awareness/perception and acuity
Pupil/teacher relationships
Learning scales and studies
Starting a lesson
Unit 3: Teaching strategies for plucked stringed instrument teachers working with children and young people
Understanding my teaching now
Preparation for teaching
Expectation of teaching outcomes
Diagnosis of learners’ needs
Audio-Visual-Kinaesthetic learning
Aptitude for learning
Motivation for learning
Simultaneous learning
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