The Four Diagnostic Methods Of Vocal Teaching

vocal education is a teaching activity through which the aesthetic concept of vocal music is transmitted and singing is taught, including its contents, forms, skills and creation. It is a crucial component of the inheritance of human civilization. Both vocal education and general education belong to the same category, but there exist certain differences. The foremost one is that vocal education is undertaken individually in terms of the different conditions of the individual student, such as the voice part, voice register, voice, learning level and existing problems. According to the specific learning capacity and level of the individual student, the teacher can employ a practical and feasible teaching method in order to achieve the best results. This resembles the procedures of treating a patient. First the patient goes to see a doctor, then the doctor adopt the right therapy and prescription in terms of the symptoms of the patient to cure him or her. It is assumed in this paper that teachers may address the students' problems occurred in their process of learning in the way doctors treat their patients. That is, the problems appeared in the process of singing can be solved in light of the their specific expressions and features.Chinese medicine is extensive and profound. The theory and methods applied by the Chinese medicine to diagnose diseases were recorded in the Oracle-bone Inscriptions, Chou Li, and Records of the Historian ( written by Si Maqian of the Han Dynasty) which can date bake to the early history of china. As early as the Shang Dynasty, the primary methods of diagnosis were invented. According to the statistics in the Oracle-bone Inscriptions, more than twenty diseases could be diagnosed in terms of the disease sites then, in particular, the diagnosis of the disease of mouth and teeth reached a relatively meticulous degree. In Zhou Dynasty, based on the further observation and the increased knowledge of the diseases, the symptoms began to be considered as the major evidence in diagnosis, therefore this period was called a stage of symptom diagnosis. It is said in Chou Li, Tian Guan that diseases could be diagnosed and predicted through the consideration of several factors, including the change of the patient's complexion, voice, and the five sense organs, as well as the abnormal feelings of the internal organs. It is an earlier historical record of the specific methods of diagnosis. In the Records of the Historian ( written by Si Maqian of the Han Dynasty), Bian Oue, the noted doctor, diagnosed the disease of the King of Qi kingdom through the observation of his complexion. He excelled in the methods of diagnosis, such as pulse-taking, observation, auscultation and inquiry.The essence of the dialectical materialism and the feasible methods to recognize the state of the physiological system of human body are involved in the four methods of diagnosis in the traditional Chinese medicine. Firstly the physiological state can be analyzed though inspection, auscultation, language communication and the touch of the skin. Then the symptoms are analyzed in a dialectical way, such as outside versus inside, sthenia versus asthenia and major versus minor. Finally the right prescription will be adopted to treat the diseases. The author thought that the diagnostic methods of the traditional Chinese medicine are in accordance with the teaching methods of the vocal education. In the process of vocal teaching, the teacher should specifically analyze the physiological state of the students while they are singing through observation, auscultation, language communication and the touch of skin. Then they can find out the "symptoms" , and select the correct "therapy" and "prescription". However, the theory and practice of vocal music is not as systematic and complete as medicine. The broad and profound Chinese medicine is based on the practical experience of thousands of years, having unique knowledge of the law of nature by learning from nature. It has remarkable instructions to the clinical practice. If vocal teachers can learn the dialectical theory from the Chinese medicine and apply it to vocal teaching, then the best teaching results may be achieved.It's presumed that vocal teaching can draw some instructions from the diagnostic methods used in the traditional medicine. According to this assumption, the following framework is built: in the preface the contributions vocal teaching made to vocal arts are discussed, and the interrelationship between vocal teaching and the four diagnostic methods of Chinese medicine is generally explored. In the first chapter the four diagnostic methods are introduced and the basis and significance of borrowing the four diagnostic methods to vocal teaching are demonstrated. The second chapter is the focus of this paper. It deals with the application of the four diagnostic methods to vocal teaching. Specifically, from the perspectives of both teachers and learners, the application of the four diagnostic methods is theoretically studied and a large amount of practice is carried out. The third chapter is designed to raise the qualities for the vocal teachers. It is claimed that the application of the four diagnostic methods to vocal teaching is depending on the improvement of teachers' qualities. The relationship between teachers' ability and the application of the four diagnostic methods is illustrated from the following angles: excellent professional knowledge, outstanding teaching ability, comprehensive knowledge and the knowledge of education.Based on the demonstration of the above arguments, the author attempts to clarify the feasible teaching effects the four diagnostic methods of Chinese medicine have on vocal teaching.