Building on my last post, when considering curriculum planning, it is important to look at how the more automated skills are built across a curriculum to enable a student to develop their musical understanding.
To this end the review focuses on tacit, procedural and declarative knowledge. These classes of knowledge sitting behind a student's musical development and being used to support a student to think more musically.
Tacit Knowledge - knowledge gained through experience. We know more than we can tell you about. As a student gains more knowledge around composition and how the elements of music and musical devices interrelate, they will build an understanding of how the music works.
Procedural Knowledge - this is about playing an instrument or being fluent with using a digital audio workstation. It's the automated part - reading notation, knowing the geography of a keyboard, which finger to use next when playing or creating a musical idea. How hard to press a note to change dynamic.
Declarative Knowledge - crucial to supporting the processing of complicated concepts. This knowledge needs to be spaced out and revisited and not learnt once in a 'block of time'. For example, building a good knowledge of chords requires sequencing and incrementally building across a range of schemes of learning, ensuring active recall and retrieval strengthen the knowledge. Ensuring that the knowledge is progressed when revisited.